‘Canada’s help is required’

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 12:38 PM - 20 Comments

John Baird explains why we’re bombing Libya.

That’s what took me to Libya late last month. I wanted to meet senior members of the NTC for myself. I must say they and their organization impressed me.

That is not to say that anything to do with Libya in the coming weeks or months will be easy. No one should be under any false illusions of that. Nor is the NTC likely to be a perfect interim government once Gaddafi is gone. They will likely make mistakes. All governments do from time to time. But their intentions are good. I honestly believe that.

‘This place is what Canada is all about’

By Ken MacQueen - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 1 Comment

Phil Noble/Reuters

What drew Yellowknife Mayor Gordon Van Tighem to the Northwest Territories 20 years ago, after years in Calgary and Toronto, are some of the same experiences Prince William and Catherine were able to sample during their 40-hour visit to the territorial capital and the wilderness beyond. “You’re on the edge of some of the little remaining, but accessible, wilderness in the world,” says the mayor. “Twenty minutes in any direction you won’t be finding any cigarette packages or Tim Hortons cups, and you can get lost.”

There was little risk of William and Catherine going astray during their whirlwind visit to what the BBC breathlessly described as “the remote settlement of Yellowknife.” The description amused rather than offended the mayor. With almost 20,000 people, representing 120 ethnic groups—and “two McDonald’s”—the mayor considers Yellowknife “a little-big city.” But he couldn’t have been more delighted with William’s glowing description of life above the 60th parallel. “This place is what Canada is all about,” the duke of Cambridge told a cheering crowd of about 3,000 at the civic plaza beside city hall, “vast, open beauty, tough, resilient, friendly peoples. True nature. True humanity.” Behind him were the glistening waters of Frame Lake. Beside him and Catherine on stage were territorial leader Floyd Roland and Aboriginal dancers and drummers. William earned an even bigger roar of approval when he closed his brief remarks by adding his thanks in the languages of the Dene and the north coast Inuvialuit. After opening with a few words of French, the duke looked pleased at acing what may have been his first-ever quadrilingual speech.

The couple, having travelled almost 3,700 km from Charlottetown through three time zones, was allowed a late start Tuesday, and looked the fresher for it. Yellowknife, this time of year, is murder for the sleep deprived. The sun pulls 20-hour days, and the city is bathed in twilight for the remainder of what passes for night. Once up, the couple had a full agenda, “the full meal deal,” as the mayor put it. After opening remarks at the plaza, they watched demonstrations of Dene hand games (a form of gambling) and Inuvialuit high kicks. They also were presented with red Canadian Olympic hockey jerseys with “Cambridge” written across the back. They watched a brief but spirited game of street hockey with a group of young people. William picked up a stick, but failed at three shoot-out attempts to get past goalie Calvin Lowmen, despite the duke’s joking plea that “You’ve got to let one in!”

Continue…

A blind spot for one’s own skills

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 0 Comments

British Columbia: Nearly half (49 per cent) of the province’s drivers think their fellow road warriors are ruder behind the wheel today than they were five years ago. The most common complaint—something 82 per cent of those surveyed have experienced in the last three months—was a fellow driver’s late signal, or no signal at all. Seventy-three per cent have been tailgated. And yet, when asked to rate their own performance on the road, 82 per cent of those surveyed gave themselves an A or B.

Alberta: With 74 per cent support, Albertans are the most likely in Canada to say they have a good quality of life. That’s probably due, say researchers, to the province’s strong economic standing. Quebec, on the other hand, has the lowest degree of satisfaction. Only 61 per cent of Quebecers say they have a good quality of life.

Ontario: It’s been over a year since the G8 and G20 meetings in Ontario, and the support for police actions that weekend has dropped significantly among residents of Toronto, where over 1,100 people were arrested. Just after the summits, 73 per cent of Torontonians said the police actions were justified. Now, only 41 per cent feel that’s the case.

Continue…

Let there be data

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 11:57 AM - 0 Comments

David Eaves commends the launch of CIDA’s new open data site.

The site is now live and has a healthy amount of data on it. It is a solid start to what I hope will become a robust site. I’m a big believer - and supporter of the excellent advocacy efforts of the good people at Engineers Without Borders – that the open data portal would be greatly enhanced if CIDA started publishing its data in compliance with the emerging international standard of the International Aid Transparency Initiative as these 20 leading countries and organizations have.

Let there be television

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 10:55 AM - 6 Comments

A clip from the first televised Question Period on October 17, 1977, back when desk thumping seemed like a good idea.

Emmys: Who Got Helped

By Jaime Weinman - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 10:34 AM - 0 Comments

It’s Emmy nominee time out there in television land.

Here are the Emmy nominations announced this morning, and here’s a shorter list beginning with the major categories.

The complete snub of Community surprises me a little (despite my status as a Commu-skeptic). As I mentioned in the post below, I didn’t think it had enough industry respect to get the big nomination, but did think there might be one or two nominations scattered around in other categories, just to give it hope for the future. But no. It’s not nominated in any category. It may be a bigger disconnect between critical/fan respect and industry respect than even The Wire or Buffy, but as I said, there’s not an absolute relationship between the two. Perhaps it was hurt by the fact that Best Supporting Actor was its best chance to get a nomination, and that category is completely dominated by Modern Family – more so now that the voters have stopped snubbing Ed O’Neill.

Another snubbed show is Fringe, or rather John Noble from Fringe, who ought to be getting nominated. On the bright side, Friday Night Lights is an example of a show that has built up its Emmy recognintion over the years, finally getting its well-deserved Best Drama nomination as it heads out the door. So a show can go from being mostly snubbed by the Emmys to being respected by all in and out of the industry – if it lasts long enough.

On to which shows are helped by getting some nominations: Louis CK’s nominations for Louie, for both writing and acting, should shore up the show very nicely. The Killing got a lot of nominations, including writing and directing, likely because many voters didn’t watch beyond the pilot. (You can’t force busy voters to watch more than the pilot, especially if that’s the episode the show sends out, but it’s probably advisable.) But though its nominations are undeserved, the network will benefit from being able to pitch it as “the Emmy nominated The Killing“; Emmy nominations are a powerful shield against the (however accurate) perception that their drama development is not what it was.

Parks & Recreation moved into the big category this season after the Best Actress nomination gave it a foot in the door last year. That should hopefully give it a boost, maybe not in ratings, but at least at the network. Nick Offerman was another actor adversely affected by the Modern Family-palooza in Best Supporting Actor. He obviously deserved the nomination and he didn’t get it. It’s very difficult for such a non-show-offy acting performance to get nominated in that category (that may be why Ed O’Neill didn’t get nominated last year); when you’ve got four guys from the voters’ favourite show all submitting themselves as supporting actors, a lot of really good actors are going to fall by the wayside. How Jon Cryer manages to last in that category when Neil Patrick Harris and others have been pushed out, I don’t know; maybe it’s a sympathy nomination for carrying a collapsing show on his shoulders.

Other shows got rewarded with one or two deserving nominations, to make up for something like Dexter will never stop being nominated in Best Drama. Justified got nominations for Tim Olyphant, Margo Martindale, Jeremy Davies and Walton Goggins. As before, Men of a Certain Age‘s only nomination is for Andre Braugher, which may not be enough to save it.

And Pamela Fryman finally got a directing nomination for How I Met Your Mother, which is good news, because she’s done an extraordinary directing job on that show over the years, and has never been nominated (for this or any other show). It helps that she had the “Subway Wars” episode to submit, which looked a bit more difficult to direct than others. (They’re all difficult to direct, but nominations go to episodes that look like they were hard to direct.) Baby steps: maybe next year someone will get a nomination for doing a more traditional four-camera show. Well, actually, someone already did – Beth McCarthy Miller got nominated for directing the 30 Rock live show, because it was a gimmick. If it had been on videotape, though, she never would have gotten a nomination. Such is the problem of the directing category.

The Kennedys got a whole bunch of nominations for acting, production, and best miniseries. I don’t know if that means Hollywood industry people don’t have such a liberal bias, or if it’s just that the new combined movie/miniseries category is going to be just as weird as the old miniseries category sometimes was. Anyway, Mildred Pierce will win.

One thing to note about the comedy nominations: earlier this year there was some controversy about whether half-hour shows with strong dramatic elements, like Nurse Jackie, should be eligible for Best Comedy, or whether there should be a separate “Dramedy” category. (Personally I think half-hour shows – except for out-and-out half-hour dramas – have enough in common with other half-hour shows, structurally and otherwise, that they can compete. It’s a bigger question whether something like Glee or Desperate Housewives should compete directly with shows that require a different, more economical kind of storytelling. There are reasons Nurse Jackie shouldn’t be nominated, but it’s not a completely separate type of show from other half-hours, any more than M*A*S*H was.) Anyway, there are signs this year that there has been a backlash against dramedies or otherwise unclassifiable shows. Of the six nominees in that category, five are unquestionably, no-confusion-about-the-genre, pure comedies. The only “dramedy” is Glee.

Finally, others have made this point, but it’s a treat to see Maurice LaMarche nominated for playing “Orson Welles” (in a Futurama episode where that was one of his characters). He deserves a lifetime award for playing Orson Welles, in all his forms.

Review: Lost in Shangri-La

By Charlie Gillis - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

In May of 1945, as the Second World War was winding to a close, two dozen American servicemen and Women’s Army Corps members took off from a supply base in Dutch New Guinea in search of “Shangri-La”—a pristine valley deep in the island’s interior, populated by what was thought to be tens of thousands of pre-contact natives. It was a sightseeing flight, meant as a treat to Americans stationed in a sleepy corner of the Pacific Theatre. But the C-47 crashed in the jungle, and only three survived to fight their way to the open space of the valley floor.

Lieut. John McCollom, Sgt. Ken Decker and Cpl. Margaret Hastings then found themselves at the mercy of stone-age tribesmen who split their time between primitive farming and village-to-village warfare. Thus began a saga that was largely forgotten after the first atomic bombs landed on Japan. Through newly declassified documents, along with interviews and contemporary press accounts, Zuckoff has pieced together the long lost story of the survivors befriending the natives and fighting wounds, burns and gangrene as they awaited rescue. The Dani and Yali were not technically pre-contact peoples, as one group of researchers had made a cursory trip through the valley seven years earlier. Yet only a handful had ever seen a white-skinned human.

The rescue, when it eventually came, was every bit as improbable as the Americans’ survival (hint: it involved gliders), while the resulting press frenzy transformed the trio into reluctant celebrities. The tribesmen, meanwhile, struggled to adjust to the onslaught of Western civilization, as Zuckoff found after travelling to the valley to interview survivors among those who had assisted the Americans. Still, their recollections add considerable poignancy to a grand adventure: they lived, loved and warred, we realize, during the same lifetime as those who unlocked the power of the atom.

Continue…

Stealing from mom and dad

By Risha Gotlieb - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 16 Comments

Joost van den Broek/Hollandse Hoogte/Redux

Léony de Graaf, a Burlington, Ont.-based financial adviser, witnessed first hand how lives can be ruined by the unscrupulous use of power of attorney. She received a call from an 82-year-old client who had been forcefully incarcerated in a Hamilton psychiatric ward. “Rose was still capable of handling her affairs, including her own banking,” says de Graaf. “I had a very strong suspicion that her son, who had a power of attorney [POA] for his mother, was trying to have her deemed incompetent so he could take full control of her assets.” She suspected Rose’s son misled the psychiatrist whom he himself had arranged to evaluate his mother, whose family doctor had recently retired.

De Graaf fought to have Rose (not her client’s real name) released from the facility, advocating for her capacities and a reassessment. The medical team relented and allowed Rose to move into a retirement residence. Unfortunately, even after Rose’s release, de Graaf was powerless to stop the son from redirecting his mother’s investment statements to himself, putting her house up for sale, and eventually moving her west, where he lived. “One of the fastest growing crimes against seniors is POA abuse,” says De Graaf, who chairs the local chapter of a group called Seniors and Law Enforcement Together chapter.

Having a senior declared incompetent is a commonly used legal manoeuvre by POA abusers to nullify the senior’s ability to make choices for themselves, including revoking the POA, says Ann Soden, a Montreal lawyer who specializes in elder law and heads the National Institute of Law, Policy and Aging. Sadly, perpetrators of many types of abuse against seniors are often their own children and others they trust. According to the Canadian Centre for Elder Law, the most conservative statistics suggest one in 12 older Canadians are abused or neglected, with the most commonly reported type of abuse being financial.

Continue…

Review: The upright piano player

By Martin Patriquin - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:10 AM - 0 Comments

This debut novel is perfectly, maddeningly British, populated as it is by a lonely, horny protagonist, Henry Cage, who brims with clammy repression and polite disdain for most human beings. “Bleeding saintly at work and a bastard at home,” as his estranged son Tom puts it, Cage is ousted from the firm he founded when his executives tire of him. The lull of gilded, forced retirement—including pissy letters to the editor about the BBC—is ruined by the news of his ex-wife’s pending demise from cancer in Florida, and the sudden, cold-water knowledge that he had been a grandfather for four years without knowing it. And he is hounded by acts of malevolence by a violent thief whose girlfriend Cage dares keep his eyes on for a fraction too long at the local brasserie.

As with Ian McEwan’s Saturday, The Upright Piano Player relies heavily on happenstance, and Abbott is nearly as deft as McEwan in suspending the reader’s disbelief. The book’s strength lies in Abbott’s ability to write compellingly about the petty psychodrama of family dysfunction, as well as his intricately webbed storyline, in which memories and backstories are dashed off in his tight, efficient prose seemingly at random.

There’s no sense in calling it a spoiler: the reader knows, by the end of a 14-page prologue set four years after the following 250-odd pages, that even after properly weathering all these travails, Cage will be forever ostracized and miserable through no real fault of his own. What would be overkill in the hands of a lesser author comes off as a bracing paean to the book’s larger theme: that nothing, not happiness and certainly not success, can cut through the enduring misery of chance. How perfectly sad. How perfectly British.

Continue…

The boyfriend’s lunatic heist

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 1 Comment

Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Boston author Ben Mezrich, 42, has made his name (and fortune) by crafting suspenseful, bestselling and film-friendly accounts of clever young people armed with daring, ambition, cutting-edge technological ideas and—often enough—a certain insouciance about legal niceties. His Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions (2002) became the successful 2008 movie 21, while The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal (2009), about social media pioneer Mark Zuckerberg, was turned into the Oscar-winning film The Social Network. Mezrich’s latest book, which will be released on July 12, is Sex on the Moon: The Amazing Story Behind the Most Audacious Heist in History, which describes how Thad Roberts led three other NASA interns in the 2002 theft of 100 pieces of incalculably valuable lunar rock from the space agency—a crime committed primarily to impress his girlfriend.

As much as he likes writing fiction, Mezrich thinks non-fiction provides “great stories”—if you can find them. That’s more easily done now than earlier in his career, he adds in an interview: “Ever since 21 and The Social Network, every genius kid who pulls something crazy emails or calls me.” But everything is still “all about the story,” Mezrich says, and he sifts everything he hears to find “something compelling enough that I want to become a part of it, for as long as it takes to get inside. Sex on The Moon is certainly one of those stories. Thad reached out to me through mutual friends; he’d just gotten out of prison and wanted to tell his story.” It was an immediately appealing project. “It was really something I had never heard about, and had all the elements I look for. I’ve always wanted to write about NASA—not the NASA of the ’60s but the NASA of today.”

That was only the start of a long slog. “I had to get deep inside Thad’s character, and he is extremely complex. It took a long time to gain his trust, but also to get to the real story beneath all the layers.” And Roberts was the co-operative part of the story. “It was tough working my way into NASA because NASA didn’t really want me to write this book. I also had to file with the FBI to get the file case, and I had to get all the court documents to corroborate what Thad was telling me.” The result is one of the summer’s best reads, part high-stakes Ocean’s Eleven, part crazy love story.

Continue…

Still fighting over Alexander the Great

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

He lived and died more than 2,300 years ago, but still, few can rally Greek and Macedonian nationalists more than Alexander the Great—or Alexander the Macedonian, or, to be safe, simply Alexander.

Alexander ruled Macedon, a small kingdom on the northeastern corner of the Greek peninsula, and from there founded an empire that stretched from North Africa to the Indus River. Macedon existed on the fringes of the classical Greek world, and its system of government differed from those of city states such as Athens to the south. Yet the culture and language that Alexander spread as far as Afghanistan was undoubtedly Hellenistic, or Greek.

His heritage, however, is today claimed by both Greece and Macedonia, neighbours who also dispute Macedon’s linguistic patrimony. Athens has blocked Macedonia’s bid to join both the European Union and NATO, arguing the country’s name implies a claim on Greece’s northern region of the same name. Now Macedonia has unveiled a massive bronze statue of Alexander in the centre of Skopje, the capital. The 12-m-high figure atop a 10-m pedestal depicts a horseman, sword drawn, iconic locks swept back in the wind. Its official name, “Warrior on a Horse,” doesn’t fool anyone, and probably isn’t meant to.

Continue…

Your own personal art ‘mixtape’

By Mike Doherty - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

Photographs by Jenna Marie Wakani, Getty Images; Photo Illustration by Bradley Reinhardt

Your next trip to an art gallery may go something like this: first, you download an app onto your phone and flip through reproductions of the work you’re going to see. At the gallery, you take pictures of paintings; your phone recognizes them, and the curator’s voice in your earbuds gives you information. One work in particular captivates you, but prints aren’t available in the gift shop; no matter—you order one online. While you’re at it, you “like” the work on your social networking profile, and a link tells you there’s another gallery nearby with work by the same artist.

This is the future of art appreciation, according to Artfinder. The start-up company’s office near the British Museum in London may be in an unassuming schoolroom-like space, but its project is ambitious. With digital reproductions of over 500,000 artworks from major galleries around the globe in its database and the backing of financial giant Wellington Management and LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s company Greylock Partners, it’s aiming for a revolution in the art world.

Art “hasn’t really been digitized as an experience. We’re trying to fix that,” says CEO Spencer Hyman, his long frame curved over a laptop at his office’s one table. He’s delivering a one-on-one version of the sales pitch he’s been giving galleries and museums since the company’s founding in October. Hyman seems in equal parts enthusiastic art-obsessive, tech geek and smooth salesman: exactly what you’d expect from someone whose resumé includes creating software for Amazon, digitizing board games for Hasbro Japan, and acting as COO of music social networking site Last.fm.

Continue…

From ancient grains, a healthy new oil

By Anne Kingston - Thursday, July 14, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Photographs by Nayan Sthankiya

It’s a long way from Midale, Sask., to Pusateri’s Fine Foods in north Toronto. Some 2,500 km—and a seismic attitudinal shift—separate the rural farming town (pop. 500) from the urban emporium that sells $40 olive oils and $8 quarts of strawberries. Bridging that gap is what brought sisters Elysia and Natasha Vandenhurk to Toronto last month in their first promotional push for Three Farmers’ oil, made from camelina sativa, an ancient grain formerly used only in North America to make biodiesel fuel.

That was before three lifelong Saskatchewan farmers—Colin Rosengren, Ron Emde and Natasha’s and Elysia’s father, Dan Vandenhurk, along with soil scientist Ken Greer—embarked on their bold culinary-alchemy experiment: cold-pressing the grain into an “artisanal” oil targeted at food- and nutrition-conscious consumers who want to know where their food comes from and are willing to pay $24.99 a 500-ml bottle for the privilege.

That quest has brought the 24-year-old Elysia, a trained chef, to Pusateri’s where, on a June weekend, she has set up a tasting station with the pure oil (which has a pleasant, nutty flavour), a herb-infused version and hummus, accompanied by bread for dipping. As curious shoppers hover, she enumerates the various marvels of the oil, which is used in Europe: it’s rich in omega-3 and omega-6 as well as vitamin E, which gives it shelf stability for 12 months. “It’s fantastic for roasting asparagus and drizzling on mashed potatoes,” she says, with a high smoke point of 475° F that makes it good for sautéing.

Continue…

Humble brag

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 5:02 PM - 3 Comments

The Prime Minister explains his cameo on Murdoch Mysteries.

“[There] is a little bit of irony there,” Harper notes. “It’s kind of picking on my reputation as an expert in both politics and hockey and kind of deflating that a little bit.”

Video is here.

“This is the biggest farce I ever saw.” “What about the Emmys?”

By Jaime Weinman - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 4:52 PM - 0 Comments

The Prime Time Emmy nominations will be announced tomorrow (Thursday) morning. Most of the slots are, as always, nailed down tighter than something tight, so most of the predictions involve questions like “assuming 30 Rock, The Office, Modern Family and Glee always get nominated, who gets the other two spots?”

I’m mildly surprised that most of the predictions have Big Bang Theory getting a nomination for Best Comedy; I feel like the network gave it an intense amount of promotion last year, as well as the biggest viewership numbers it’s ever had, and it didn’t get a nomination. As I understand it, the logic is that shows have to pay their dues and build an audience among voters, and last year’s Best Actor win could be the gateway to a Best Comedy nomination this year.

Similarly, there’s a perception that of NBC’s two beloved low-rated comedies, Parks & Recreation has a better shot than Community, because Parks got a Best Actress nomination last year, demonstrating that there is some industry awareness of it.

Industry awareness overlaps with critical or fan awareness. But there are differences. Emmy voters tend to be older and, more importantly, have somewhat different barometers of quality. The reason Buffy the Vampire Slayer rarely got Emmy nominations was not just that it was a teen show, or that it was a fantasy show; it was that for many voters, the things it did well were not as important as the things it didn’t do well. I recall an older writer saying it did have good dialogue, but that the plotting was ramshackle and haphazard – and that’s sort of true, albeit not very important to the show. (It would be like complaining about Moonlighting‘s terrible mystery plotting. And in fact, writers of mystery shows did complain about that, frustrated that their careful plotting got less acclaim than a show that didn’t care about well-made mysteries.)

Emmy voters don’t usually nominate shows that are plodding or completely unadventurous – they like shows that do edgy stories and morally ambiguous characters, hence all the nominations for Showtime every year. But I think they also don’t like shows that discard the rules of well-made storytelling. Nominees and especially winners are often the shows that are extremely well-structured and very literate-sounding dialogue.

In the comedy category, Modern Family had the advantage last season and will probably have it this season too: there’s nothing ramshackle about it, and every plot always seems like it’s been carefully planned from beginning to end. (Another comedy that is a dark horse, and may get a few nominations though not the big one, is Hot in Cleveland. It’s not really very good in my opinion, but it does seem to command a fair amount of industry respect, and the very tight plotting and structure is a big part of why. It’s no surprise that Modern Family and Hot In Cleveland are both from former producers of Frasier, the most tightly-structured and most Emmy-loved sitcom of the ’90s.) Shows that de-emphasize plotting, or wink at their own plots, may be doing the right thing: whether it’s Moonlighting or Buffy or Community we’re talking about shows that respect their genres up to a point, but clearly signal that the plot is not as important as the theme. The likeliest route to Emmy love is a show that places a lot of emphasis on both plot and theme; not that these shows are inherently the best, just that they make Emmy voters happy.

Side note: did you know that Murder, She Wrote got three consecutive Emmy nominations for Best Drama back in the ’80s? Okay, there was less drama competition then, but still, that’s a bit startling; I can’t imagine a show like that getting a nomination today (it wasn’t even common then, despite the age of the voters; Matlock never got nominated).

‘The lodestar is human dignity’

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 4:32 PM - 2 Comments

Jason Kenney talks about faith and politics with the National Catholic Register.

I guess the big question is how your religious faith and your politics relate. Is there a connection?

Well, I believe in a pluralistic, liberal democracy. Everyone comes into the public square with certain core convictions, a certain worldview that’s informed by most deeply held convictions about the ultimate questions. For me, that view is partly formed by my Catholic faith. I think it’s important in a liberal democracy that people of faith not be excluded from participating in democratic debate, but it’s also important they not impose a kind of narrow, sectarian agenda, but rather to advance the common good in a way that brings others along.

For me, the lodestar is human dignity, the inviolable nature of human dignity. This is a principle which obviously is deeply grounded in Catholic social thought, but it is also one that has universal social application.

For your own good (II)

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 3:44 PM - 0 Comments

The government has decided to release the Champlain Bridge report, but denies this constitutes a change in position.

“I think that they will be released, actually,” Sara MacIntyre, a spokeswoman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, told The Canadian Press on Wednesday. ”I think that those reports will be out shortly.”

A spokeswoman for Lebel added that a statement from his office would be out Wednesday afternoon. She rejected the suggestion that the government had a change of heart. ”It’s just a question of timing,” Vanessa Schneider said. ”We received the report, I think, in the department just before the election, and as you know, Minister Lebel was appointed in late May, so it’s just a question of going through all our processes.”

Connoisseurs of the subject matter can read the report here.

The House: Disturbances in the House

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:59 PM - 7 Comments

Another in our episodic consideration of the House of Commons.

Watching Prime Minister’s Questions this last little while, one notices a few things.

First, David Cameron’s looking a bit rough.

Second, there is, even in the rarefied air of the mother Parliament, plenty of muttering, howling, chuckling, grumbling, mumbling and mocking.

Third, there’s no clapping.

These latter two points are perhaps relevant to Mackenzie Grisdale’s attempt to understand the nature of heckling—everyone’s favourite scourge—in the House of Commons. Continue…

Police confirm Richard Oland’s death was a homicide

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:47 PM - 0 Comments

The body of 69-year-old New Brunswick businessman Richard Oland was found in his Saint John office Thursday, but police refuse to comment on a report confirming that he was murdered with an axe. The Toronto Star acquired evidence from an unnamed source suggesting that the murder weapon was an axe, but police have yet to confirm the cause of Oland’s death. At a press conference on Monday, police chief Bill Reid said that Oland’s death was a homicide, but left it at that. Oland belonged to the family who owns Moosehead Breweries Ltd. Rothesay, N.B.’s mayor, Bill Bishop, says Oland was a valued member of his community.

The Chronicle Herald

Home retrofit subsidy program reintroduced

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:31 PM - 0 Comments

Renovating your home this summer? The federal government has reintroduced home retrofit subsidy program ecoENERGY, which gives up to $5,000 in grants toward energy efficient home upgrades. Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver says the program will be available until March 31, 2012. The Conservatives had cancelled the program, but said they would bring it back for one year in the March budget. In order to be eligible, homeowners must hire a Natural Resources-licensed company to perform home energy audits. After the upgrades have been completed, another audit must be completed before homeowners receive their cheque from the government.

CBC News

Canadians want Will next in line for the throne

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:29 PM - 0 Comments

More than half of Canadians want Prince William to bypass Prince Charles and become the next King of England, according to a new poll. Before Will and Kate toured Canada, 40 per cent of Canadians thought Prince William should be next to take the throne. But after the nine-day visit, 60 per cent now say it’s Will’s turn next, according to polling firm Ipsos Reid. Of the 1,100 people surveyed, 81 per cent also said the young couple would improve the monarchy’s relevancy in Canada.

Ottawa Citizen

Netanyahu defends boycott law

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:28 PM - 0 Comments

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has defended a controversial law that bans calls for boycotts on Israel passed on Monday in the Knesset. The law allows any person or organization that calls for the boycott of Israel, including settlements, to be sued by the boycott’s targets without proof of damage. It’s up to the courts to decide how much compensation must be paid. The law also stipulates that a person or organization that calls for boycotts won’t be able to bid in government tenders. “I approved the law, and if I hadn’t approved it, it wouldn’t have passed.,” said Netanyahu Wednesday, who was absent from the vote. Opposition leader Tzipi Livni accused the prime minister of stoking tensions in Israel: “You are leading Israel into an abyss.”

Ha’aretz

Murdoch scraps bid for satellite broadcaster BSkyB

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:23 PM - 0 Comments

The phone-hacking scandal that brought media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s The News of the World to its knees may also be responsible for Murdoch’s decision to scrap his bid for British satellite broadcaster BSkyB, the BBC reports. Murdoch scrapped the bid shortly before the House of Commons made plans to vote for a major party-backed motion that would prevent him from going through with the deal. Chase Carey, News Corp. deputy chairman, told the BBC that the bid was “too difficult to progress in this climate”. On Friday, Prime Minister David Cameron told press that a public inquiry into the phone hacking scandal would begin shortly. BSkyB’s share price dropped briefly after Murdoch scrapped the bid, eventually recovering and improving 2 per cent.

BBC News 

National Chief calls for new federal-aboriginal relationship

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 2:21 PM - 2 Comments

Shawn Atleo, National Chief of the Assembly of Fist Nations, called for the abolishment of the Indian Act and the federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs on Wednesday. Atleo said there should be a return to the “original intent” of treaties between the federal government and aboriginal communities. That would entail “mutual respect, mutual recognition and shared prosperity of the land,” said Atleo at the annual meeting of the pan-Canadian aboriginal organization in Moncton, N.B. In place of the Department of Aboriginal Affairs, Atleo says there should be two entities. One would focus on the relationship between First Nations and the Crown, and the other would continue providing services. The national chief’s comments come after a five-year-old boy was shot and killed on a Samson Cree reserve about 100 kilometres south of Edmonton. Atleo said the incident highlights the need for a new relationship between Canada and its aboriginal communities.

CTV News