Entertaining Will and Kate

By Paul Wells - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 16 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

From 2003 to 2006, Fox Television carried a strange TV comedy called Arrested Development. It featured a story arc involving a failed actor named Tobias Fünke who auditions for the theatre troupe Blue Man Group because he thinks it’s a support group for depressed men. For several episodes, Fünke wears blue body paint, which comes in handy when he realizes he can blend in with the blue parts of outdoor billboards, allowing him to spy on the rest of his family.

For a while, on July 1, I wondered whether Kate Middleton was inspired by Tobias Fünke when she decided to show up at the big Canada Day celebration on Parliament Hill dressed as a Canadian flag.

In a release to the Ottawa press rabble, “the Press Secretary to TRH the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge” described Kate’s outfit as “a cream dress by Reiss, with The Queen’s Maple Leaf brooch and a hat by Sylvia Fletcher at Lock and Co.” From any distance, however, the most striking thing about Kate’s outfit was that it was red at both ends—hat and pumps—and whitish through the middle, except for the reddish purse where the maple leaf would be if she were flapping sideways from a mast, not that I would ever advocate such a course of action.

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A decade in Afghanistan

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 9:22 AM - 10 Comments

Murray Brewster summarizes the end of the military mission and considers the potential for peace. Stephanie Levitz looks at the aid effort. Dene Moore looks at those left wounded.

From our Michael Petrou, three stories: Standing firm in Afghanistan, Another civil war in Afghanistan? and Canada’s next mission.

The National Post prints stories from those on the front lines and the Walrus publishes portraits of the dead.

And thoughts from Campbell Clark, Shaun Francis, Olivia Ward, Heidi Kingstone, JL Granatstein and Brian Hutchinson.

Why Kate might need to put on a few pounds

By Barbara Amiel - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 37 Comments

Arthur Edwards/Getty Images

Unlike some observers of the duke and duchess of Cambridge, I am not, to borrow the easy grammar of a Globe and Mail columnist, “conflicted” by royalty. I’m often ambivalent about eating another chocolate biscuit and I certainly have conflicting feelings about whether to get another dog since my husband has said one more and he’s building a house for people, but a constitutional monarchy isn’t something that bothers me. As an organizing principle of society compared to religion or tribal rule it looks harmless.

Royalty may irritate some female columnists given the infernally good-looking crop of princesses these days, all of them young, size four and about six feet tall. As if it were not enough to be sporting about the stunning former Miss Kate Middleton, now we have the wincingly gorgeous South African champion swimmer Charlene Wittstock beaming next to new husband Prince Albert II of Monaco. I saw their wedding announcement in last Sunday’s New York Times.

The Monaco royal marriage did not get the featured spot in the Times’ wedding section, which is called “Vows” and is ever a gold mine of joyous moments in courtship. This week’s “Vows” was given over to Laura Hwang, a classical viola player and former cashier at Blue Apron Foods in Brooklyn who married Steve Rosenbush, a business writer. Steve had to spend up to $100 a visit getting to know Laura because obviously it’s tricky to chat up a cashier with an impatient lineup behind you. They were married by a Universal Life minister, an unfamiliar denomination but apparently used by almost every American Jewish person who marries a non-Jewish person.

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Newsmakers: June 30 – July 7, 2011

By Nancy MacDonald, Alex Ballingall, Emma Teitel and Cigdem Iltan - Friday, July 8, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Stephen Colbert (Cliff Owen/AP)

They love you, you big hairy ape

A French couple has spent the last 13 years raising a 120-kg gorilla in their home. Zookeepers Pierre and Elianne Thivillon adopted Digit after her mother refused to breastfeed her. Digit spends her days with other animals at the Saint Martin la Plaine Zoo near Lyon, but returns to her adoptive home at night where she sleeps in the Thivillon bed, according to a new BBC documentary. Digit’s brother Ginko used to live there too, but had to return to the zoo after becoming too aggressive. Life with Digit, however, is much more pleasant: she is reportedly gentle with the couple, and has been photographed hugging and kissing them. “We have a very strong bond,” Pierre told Sky News.

Royal gaffe

Meaghan Blanchard blew every rule of etiquette at once when she seemed to combine “duke” and “duchess” and accidentally called Prince William a “douche,” moments before performing for William and his new wife Kate in Charlottetown. “I can’t believe that just happened,” the red-faced, 22-year-old singer exclaimed. But the royal couple saw the funny side of the gaffe, sharing a hearty laugh, and Blanchard recovered quickly, delivering a flawless performance of the self-penned Waltzing With You. “I felt awful,” Blanchard later said, “but sometimes that’s just life, you gotta roll with the punches.”

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Rogers launches LTE network

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 5:09 PM - 4 Comments

Rogers has launched Canada’s first LTE (Long Term Evolution) network in Ottawa, with a rollout in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal expected this fall. The service is both faster and boasts lower latency than current mobile Internet offerings, making it a better replacement for interactive applications like gaming. Download speeds will at first have a maximum of 75 Mbps, though customers should typically see speeds of 12 Mbps to 25 Mbps. HTC and Samsung are expected to release LTE-capable smartphones later this year.

Rogers Redboard

Canada’s military mission in Afghanistan was…

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 3:52 PM - 16 Comments

The people and the press

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 3:52 PM - 21 Comments

The Boston Globe compares what Barack Obama was asked about during yesterday’s Twitter town hall with what journalists asked during the last two weeks of White House press briefings.

A similar experiment here would likely produce similar results: comparing, for instance, what Michael Ignatieff was asked about during his various town halls with what the departed Liberal leader was asked about during scrums would probably find the same disconnect.

You could theorize all sorts of reasons to explain that disconnect, but it is perhaps worth wondering whether something should be done to shrink the gap.

From the American standpoint, Matthew Yglesias sees the “leading failure of the press”

Trashing trucks; burning rubber

By Emma Teitel - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 2:25 PM - 1 Comment

British Columbia: A Vancouver couple has been charged with organizing illegal entry into the country under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act for allegedly smuggling a Filipino into Canada from Hong Kong, and then forcing her into “domestic servitude.” The housekeeper-nanny was reportedly required to serve the family 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Police say they were called to the residence on an unrelated inquiry when they realized a woman was living there illegally. The couple claims she came to Canada legally.

Alberta: Two men were charged with several counts of possession of a weapon dangerous to the public after allegedly dropping burning bags of balloons from a high-rise apartment in Calgary. The balloons were filled with propane, lit with candles, and launched from a 10th-floor balcony one night in late June. The men, 23 and 26, were also reportedly waving a pellet gun and a plastic sword, respectively. Police say alcohol was a factor.

Saskatchewan: A 50-year-old woman in Saskatoon was charged with jaywalking after getting hit by a car while crossing 22nd Street West at around midnight. She was admitted to the hospital with a leg injury. The 24-year-old driver was following all traffic laws.

Manitoba: A Hanover teenager was charged with three counts of auto theft after allegedly stealing three Dodge Ram pickup trucks in the town of Steinbach, over the span of a few hours. He crashed two of them.

Newfoundland: An Israeli woman was charged with fraud and two counts of impersonation in St. John’s when police caught her going door to door, allegedly trying to pass off generic art prints as original works at a cost of $150 each. The 26-year-old woman, who claimed the prints were from Asia, was also accused of falsely assuming two identities. She pleaded guilty on June 21. Emma Teitel

The organized grassroots

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 2:18 PM - 12 Comments

Tony Keller profiles Nick Kouvalis, political strategist behind Rob Ford and the founder of Respect for Taxpayers.

Respect for Taxpayers is one more step toward a politics of permanent election, in which elected officials are constantly pressured, attacked or influenced by opponents who don’t sit next to them or across the aisle at city hall, at Queen’s Park or in Parliament. It’s also a move away from parties as the sole vehicles for politics, to a politics that is more and more outside of the legislature, in what 19th-century British parliamentary reformers called “out of doors.” Unlike those in the early 19th century, who were on the outside because they didn’t have the vote, today’s out-of-doors groups are there by choice. It’s easier on the outside—you can spend as much as you like, and your fundraisers don’t have to wear straitjackets. Going direct to voters may even deliver greater influence.

Emptying the beer fridge

By Cigdem Iltan - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 2:00 PM - 1 Comment

Tara Brautigam/CP

It’s last call for drinkers of Canada’s only government-brand beer. The New Brunswick liquor board, which created Selection Lager and Selection Light in March 2009 in response to lagging domestic beer sales and cross-border competition, has stopped production of the private-label beers. Selection Light wasn’t meeting the minimum sales cut-off of 100,000 litres per year, says board spokeswoman Nora Lacey. Selection Lager met the sales cut-off, but because the beers were marketed together, the board decided to stop sales of both brews to make space in its cold rooms for different products. “It’s all peformance based; we have to look at our own brands in the same light and take the appropriate action,” says Lacey.

At $19.99 for 12 cans, Selection was a clear choice for New Brunswick’s wallet-conscious beer drinkers. But reviewers on ratebeer.com seemed to agree that when it came to taste, drinkers got what they paid for: Selection Lager scored an average rating of 1.83/5, with one reviewer likening it to “water from a cheap plastic garden hose that’s been lying in the sun all afternoon.” Selection Light fared similarly, mustering up an average of 1.64/5 and comments that are far from ringing endorsements: “Pours a clear, pale, sickly urine yellow . . . probably the worst looking beer I’ve seen but merely pathetic otherwise.”

Lacey maintains that while Selection’s sales fizzled, both beers’ first year doubled expectations, with each boasting a one per cent market share. She turns to a recent overall decline in domestic beer sales across Canada as an explanation for its demise, rather than the particular taste of Selection’s suds.

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Good news, bad news: June 30 – July 7, 2011

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:45 PM - 0 Comments

Good news

Taliban hostages for 18 months, two French TV journalists return home. (Gonzalo Fuentes/Reuters)

Boots on the snow

Canada is planning its biggest summer military exercise in the far North. More than ever, a grand show of force in the Arctic is vitally important. Russia recently announced that it plans to send two new military brigades to the Arctic and is boasting of plans to build a year-round port there. Tensions between Arctic nations are on the rise over the drawing of borders in this resource-rich part of the world. And while flag-planting displays may seem trivial, when it comes to Arctic sovereignty, Canada needs to use it or risk losing it.

Adult intervention

The Greek government has prevented a likely tragedy by stopping a flotilla of pro-Palestinian protesters from embarking for Gaza. An attempt to break the Israeli blockade last summer ended in a confrontation on the high seas that left nine dead. With both sides bent for a repeat showdown, the results this year could have been even worse. The Greeks are offering to work with the UN to ferry the ship’s cargo—food, medicine and building materials—to the Gaza Strip’s many needy. A bit of reasonableness that should serve as an example to the radicals on both sides.

A liberating decision

Ottawa reversed course and approved trials for a controversial procedure used to treat multiple sclerosis called “liberation therapy,” which involves opening blocked neck veins. Canada, which has among the highest rates of MS in the world, said last year it would not fund the trials due to concerns about the procedure’s efficacy and safety. Advocates, though, argue it is life-saving. The trials may finally provide some much-needed answers.

Loose connections

Cellphones don’t cause cancer after all, according to a major academic review of research by experts in Britain, the U.S. and Sweden. The report comes two months after the World Health Organization said the devices should be classified as “possibly” carcinogenic (along with pickled vegetables and coffee). Such cancer scares haven’t curbed appetite for the technology. The last wireless patents held by Nortel were bought for US$4.5 billion by a consortium including RIM, Apple, Ericsson and Microsoft.

Bad news

Ongoing efforts to fight flooding in Manitoba will cost over $550 million. (Tim Smith/Brandon Sun/CP)

Crackdown

Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian dictatorship, one of the Middle East’s most repressive regimes, continues to plumb new depths as it confronts pro-democracy protesters. This week its security forces opened fire on peaceful crowds in several towns, wounding dozens and killing at least three. With the West focused on removing Moammar Gadhafi from power in Libya, Assad seems to feel untouchable. And to our collective shame, he appears to be right.

Upper-class twit(ters)

A couple of months back, Treasury Board President Tony Clement was criticized for tweeting a comment on a CRTC decision that was effectively a change in government telecom policy. Now he’s been caught out sharing photos of Will and Kate snapped at a private reception. Clement says he’s done nothing wrong, but clearly his desire to self-publicize is getting the better of him. Facing similar aggrandizers, the BBC is reportedly considering adding a clause to its contracts with its talent to prevent tweeted leaks and spoilers. But it all pales compared to the numbskull who hacked the Fox News Twitter account on July 4 and shared the “news” that Barack Obama had been assassinated. Can’t we all find better things to do with technology?

This case has no clothes

An Ontario court this week heard arguments about whether laws preventing public nudity are unconstitutional. Lawyers for Brian Coldin, who was arrested when he showed up naked at a Tim Hortons drive-through, argue police should have discretion when enforcing nudity laws. In Coldin’s case, restaurant employees testified they felt “uncomfortable” seeing his genitals on display. If anything, this case offers an all-too-clear example why nudity laws exist and shouldn’t be fiddled with.

Social ills

Researchers writing in the American Journal of Public Health say they have calculated how many deaths may be caused by poverty each year: 133,000 in the U.S. That’s not to say money guarantees good health. A Canadian study found low-income, urban children are more likely to walk or bike to school and are therefore in better shape than their more privileged counterparts.

Canadian doctor Anthony Galea pleads guilty in U.S. court

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:34 PM - 2 Comments

A Canadian doctor has pleaded guilty to charges he brought unapproved and misbranded drugs into the U.S. in a Buffalo courthouse on Wednesday. Dr. Anthony Galea, 51, who has treated a number of NFL players, Olympic medalists and even Tiger Woods, accepted responsibility for a five-count indictment by a federal grand jury handed out last October. Prosecutors had accused him of traveling to the U.S. multiple times between 2007 and 2009 to administer treatments using growth hormones and Actovegin (derived from calf’s blood) that were not sanctioned for use by either the Canadian or U.S. governments. Galea was arrested in October 2009 by the RCMP at his office in Etobicoke, ON, and will be sentenced on October 19. He faces up to 24 months in prison and a fine of up to $40,000 if convicted.

New York Times

How he sees Canada’s role in the world and where he wants to take the country

By Kenneth Whyte - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:30 PM - 235 Comments

Photographs by Blair Gable

Q: Let’s start with election night. Was it fun?

A: It’s always fun when you win.

Q: Did you take a moment to enjoy it?

A: Yeah. Look, as I think you know, we were pretty confident we were going to win, frankly, from the outset—the question was the margin—and we were feeling pretty good in the days leading up to it. I suppose, yeah, it was exciting that night. But you’re also coming off the end of a long, gruelling campaign, so there’s also a sense of relief and a sense of exhaustion all wrapped up together.

Q: If you’re not going to stop and enjoy that one, what are you going to stop for?

A: I did enjoy it. We have to enjoy things. These guys—my staff—probably enjoyed it more than I did. I’m always thinking. The next task is almost immediately on my mind.

Q: I saw you give an interview after the election in which you alluded to the next task: you want to establish the Conservatives as the natural governing party of Canada. What does that entail?

A: What I want to do, of course, is really entrench, over time, a Conservative-majority coalition in the country. I probably—the more I’ve thought about it—I should probably stay away from the natural governing party terminology, because I think as soon as a party believes it’s the natural governing party it’s in a great deal of trouble. Since coming to office, we’ve grown steadily. We’ve grown from our base out. We haven’t tried to re-engineer the Conservative movement, we’ve built on it by bringing more people into it. We still have more work to do to be as representative of people as we’d like to be, but all the elements are there in terms of the coalition. I think, obviously, it has to be backed up with an agenda, and the agenda has to be successfully implemented, and the country has to buy into it and be happy with the results. So that’s the big thing we have to do, but I think in the end—given the outcomes of the election—we’re greatly helped not just by our own result but by the relative incoherence of the opposition as an alternative for government.

Q: This is a fundamentally different mission from when you started off in politics. The Reform Party, by virtue of its name, was about changing the political landscape, changing the political structure in Canada. When you’re trying to become the natural governing party you want to be where Canadians are, you have to be where Canadians are, so it’s more about managing a consensus than being a catalyst for change.

A: Well, first of all I think you have to remember, I began my serious political involvement in the Progressive Conservative Party way back, so my involvement has always been about conservatism. I began in the traditional Conservative Party and then became involved in the Reform Party, and—I think as you know probably better than anyone—my involvement in the Reform Party was really to re-invigorate conservative principles in Canadian politics. And I think with the eventual merger of the Reform Alliance and Progressive Conservatives, we’ve achieved an organization that embodies conservative principles but is also pragmatic and trying to reach a sufficient number of Canadians to form a government. But it’s also about, in the success of advancing conservative principles, of moving the country toward the values that you represent and that you demonstrate through the policies and the programs you deliver. And I think that both those things are happening. I also think the party and the government have been moving the country toward conservative principles. I think there’s an increasing number of people who vote for us not just because they think we’re the best choice but because they actually believe we [have] the values that are closest to their long-term values. And we’re starting to see in our own polling that at the federal level more people identify themselves as Conservatives and as voting Conservatives than any other party, and that is a huge change, and that never happened even during previous Conservative governments. So I’m optimistic that we’re moving in the right direction, but we have a lot of challenges.

Q: You’ve been running for something for nine years now, and you have had no real job security, you haven’t known from year to year where you’re going to be.

A: Yeah, in nine years I’ve run four national election campaigns, two leadership campaigns, a party referendum merger, and a couple of other convention processes. And of course by-elections. You know, I’ve been elected five times in my riding in nine years. I’ve been literally running non-stop.

Q: In addition to that, you’ve had all the false alarms about elections.

A: Yeah, every three months. Look, it’s been exhausting. I wouldn’t say as much for me as for my senior staff and for, frankly, senior public servants. Every three months we’ve had the plan for the government and every three months we’ve had the plan for the election. The great irony is that only once did I threaten an election, then I actually called it—that was in 2008—but every single three months in between we’ve had a threat of an election, and we’ve always taken it seriously. One of the reasons we won is in spite of the fact the other guys made the threats, we were always the best prepared. But yeah, it’s been two tracks, and it’s been exhausting to everyone involved in it. So it’s very different now planning for a four-year period.

Q: Over that nine years you develop habits of mind. I would imagine that you’re making short-term calculations all the time about how this is going to play, how that’s going to play. You try and look long-term but you have to be constantly aware that you may be going to the polls soon. Now that you’re in this longer-term mandate, how do you stop thinking that way?

A: Well, I’m not sure you completely do. There are some good disciplines this teaches you. Even when we were thinking short-term, you don’t ignore what could be the long-term or mid-term consequences of your actions. I would always point that out to staff: something may be great today, you know—we got a great headline today—and six months later everybody goes, “What were you thinking?” You’ve got a big problem, especially in a minority context. So it does heighten your political instincts, but I think that’s good. The party has to—and the government has to—move the country with it. Now, does that mean the country has to agree with you on every single issue? No, but even in a minority I never took the view that the opposition parties or even the country at large had to agree with every single thing we were doing, but they had to agree with the direction we were taking and that will remain the case. It’s just that we’re less under the gun from day to day.

Q: At the Conservative convention on June 10, you made quite a remarkable speech. The first thing I noticed was how much time you spent thanking people who worked in the parties, and thanking your MPs, your ministers, your staff, in great detail and with great specificity. And having watched you deliver speeches over more than 20 years now, I don’t think I ever recall an occasion where you went so far out of your way to express personal gratitude. Was that deliberate?

A: Well, I’m not sure it is that different. I think I’ve done similar things, maybe not at quite the same length, but on similar occasions. The party convention is unique in that you have, literally in one room, almost every single person who is responsible for whatever success the organization has had, and they also happen to be in the room at the moment where the organization has its greatest success, and so that’s obviously the appropriate thing to do. I’m the first to say, you look over the past nine, 10 years, we’re today a majority government not because we have the best leader but because we have the best team, and we have the best team on every level—and they actually work together as a team far more than any of the other guys.

Q: You don’t think that you operate differently at a human level than you would have 10 or 20 years ago?

A: Well, I think as you spend more time at any occupation you get better at everything you do—I hope—and so I think I’m better at a lot of things than I was 10 years ago. But do I think there’s a sudden change at the convention this year? No, no, no.

Q: Another striking thing, to me, was some of the language around foreign affairs, and you said that, essentially, Canada needs to redefine its national purpose, and that its national purpose is no longer just to go along with everyone else’s agendas. How would you describe Canada’s definition of its national interest in the past?

A: Well, I’m not going to belabour analyzing previous governments, I’ll just say this: since coming to office—in fact since becoming prime minister—the thing that’s probably struck me the most in terms of my previous expectations—I don’t even know what my expectations were—is not just how important foreign affairs/foreign relations is, but in fact that it’s become almost everything. There’s hardly anything today of any significance that doesn’t have a huge international dimension to it, beginning first and foremost with the economy. Yeah, we have a strong economy, but really we have a stronger Canadian economy within a world economy. When we had a world recession it didn’t matter that there wasn’t a single thing that had caused the recession anywhere else that was present in Canada, we were still in a recession, and we didn’t go down as far as the others, and now that it’s recovering, we’re recovering ahead of the others. But nevertheless, we’re just a piece of the global economy. That’s the first thing, and whether you go to security matters or pandemics, it’s all international. I’m not saying it is not necessary to have good relations with a lot of people; in fact, having good relations, first and foremost, with our most critical ally, the United States, is essential to Canada’s well-being, as are our good relations or good dimensions of relations with a large number of other players. But it isn’t enough, in this day and age, to say we get along with people. We have to have a clear sense of where we want to be and where we would like our partners to go in the various challenges that are in front of them. Whether they’re economic challenges or security challenges or anything else, we better know what we’re trying to get out of this and where we’re going to align ourselves, and it’s not just good enough to say, “everybody likes us.” That is not a sufficient way to protect your interests when your interests are so deeply enmeshed with everybody else’s.

Q: So what do we do differently?

A: First and foremost I think you see the differences in this government in terms of how we approach foreign relations. First of all, we take pretty clear stands. We take stands that we think reflect our own interests but our own interests in a way that reflects the interests of the wider community of nations, or particularly the wider interests of those nations with whom we share values and interests. Whether it’s taking strong and clear positions, for instance, at the G20 on something like a global financial regulation and a banking tax, we don’t just say, “Well, a consensus is developing for that. We’ll go along with it.” It was not in our interest. It actually happens to be bad policy as well. So we worked to oppose that particular agenda. I won’t get into specifics, but in some issues of foreign affairs or conflicts, what are the Canadian values or interests at stake? We think it’s pretty important that our long-run interests are tied somewhat to our trade, but that they’re more fundamentally tied to the kind of values we have in the world: freedom, democracy, human rights, the rule of law. We see over time—it’s not an ironclad rule—but those societies that promote those values tend to share our interests, and those that do not tend to, on occasion, if not frequently, become threats to us. We also make sure as well—and this is important—that we have the capacities. I know we’ve received some criticism for re-investing in our military, but when you’re in a dangerous world and countries are from time to time called upon to do things to deal with those dangers, if you don’t have the capacity to act you are not taken seriously. Nobody takes your views seriously unless you can contribute to solutions, and it’s very difficult to contribute to solutions unless you can contribute across the range of capabilities, up to and including military capabilities. I think if you look back—I think Hugh Segal’s written quite eloquently on this recently—Canada’s been at its most influential when it’s actually had a range of capabilities, so we’ve made sure we have capabilities.

Q: And when it’s actually been using them.

A: And when it’s been using them. If capabilities are just in the freezer all the time then they’re not really capabilities, right?

Q: You think Canadians are prepared?

A: We’re trying to make our foreign aid more effective. We don’t fund talk shops anymore, we fund aid that actually makes a difference. On the economy, if there’s a banking crisis and a debate over banking we make sure we’ve got a good record on that, but we also make sure we have good people who understand the subject matter who are able to be at the table and drive discussion. So that’s what we do across a range of issues. I say it’s a very different shift from simply every country likes us and would raise its glass to us at a cocktail party. That’s not the issue.

Q: It’s one thing to say you want a strong-in-principle foreign policy, and another thing to carry through. I admired a lot of things the government initially said on China and human rights violations, but when we had a negative response from China on the trade front, your government’s line shifted. We’ve also seen different policies with regard to Afghanistan, some based on principle, some buffeted by what our allies would want, or the public wants.

A: I think on China we’ve been clear from the beginning that we’re anxious to have good relations and to pursue vigorous economic relations, but we are going to continue to speak out on democracy and human rights issues, and we have. I think it took the Chinese government some time to get used to the fact we had shifted the approach from one of utter silence on those issues, but the shift was made and I think it’s a productive relationship. On Afghanistan, look, the issue is complex and obviously the government’s been trying to decide as it goes forward each step of the way what’s the next best thing to do. I’ve said from the beginning we’ve needed to be engaged there on all levels to try and affect outcomes, but that the goal cannot be the permanent military occupation and kind of de facto governance of the country. This is a position not only that we’re pursuing but that I’ve argued with our allies. I think if you look at what’s happened, the positions we’ve been arguing have, over the past two or three years, become the positions of our allies, after we’d already been clear which direction we were going.

Q: Do you think you can wield the same influence on Israel? You’ve been a strong supporter of Israel for some time, but you’re now more or less isolated in the G8.

A: The Middle East question is more difficult in terms of the opinion of others. I wouldn’t go so far as to say isolated, but it is a difficult position. That said, in my mind, the stakes are very clear, the issue is very clear and the stakes are very important. We all recognize there has to be a two-state solution, but we have in Israel essentially a Western democratic country that is an ally of ours, who’s the only state in the United Nations whose very existence is significantly questioned internationally and opposed by many, including by the other side of that particular conflict—still, to a large degree—and when I look around the world at those who most oppose the existence of Israel and seek its extinction, they are the very people who, in a security sense, are immediate—long-term but also immediate—threats to our own country. So I think that’s a very clear choice. That doesn’t mean there aren’t individual issues that become quite complicated and nuanced, but I think it is important and I will continue to be very clear with other leaders the way I think we should see this problem.

Q: You’re confident that Canadians are prepared to accept a more muscular foreign policy? I noticed that when you talked at the convention about Canada’s founding principles, you mentioned first the phrase “courageous warrior.”

A: I think you have to take the triumvirate: the courageous warrior, compassionate neighbour, confident partner.

Q: Yes, but you didn’t choose to say a nation of peacekeepers, nation of immigrants, or hewers of wood or drawers of water, you said a courageous warrior, and that is not a way that Canadians are really accustomed to thinking of themselves.

A: Well, not recently, but in fact Canada has a proud military history, beginning with the War of 1812 that essentially began to establish our sense of national identity. That was really the genesis of the geographically wide and culturally diverse nation we have today. We’ve been consistently involved on the right side of important conflicts that have shaped the world in which we live, that are largely responsible for moving the world in the overall positive direction in which it is moving. Look, let me give you the two big threats of the 20th century. First, fascism. Canada, next to its big-three allies, played one of the largest roles in the world in the defeat of fascism, which purged the world of one evil, and obviously the most robust military engagement anyone’s ever been involved in. And then through a different kind of engagement, the long, sustained state of alert of the Cold War against Communism, the other great threat to the world and to our civilization. In spite of, quite frankly, the ambivalence of some Liberal governments toward that, Canada, in fact, remained engaged in that from the beginning to the very end. I’m not dismissing peacekeeping, and I’m not dismissing foreign aid—they’re all important things that we need to do, and in some cases do better—but the real defining moments for the country and for the world are those big conflicts where everything’s at stake and where you take a side and show you can contribute to the right side.

Q: You suggest that we are in one great conflict, or that we’re heading to one that we need to be prepared for.

A: I think we always are.

Q: What is the nature of that present threat?

A: Well, I think it’s more difficult to define now. We know there are challenges to us. The most obvious is terrorism, Islamic extremist terrorism. We know that’s a big one globally. We also know, though, the world is becoming more complex, and the ability of our most important allies, and most importantly the United States, to single-handedly shape outcomes and protect our interests, has been diminishing, and so I’m saying we have to be prepared to contribute more, and that is what this government’s been doing.

North Korea paid Pakistani officials for nuclear weapons technology

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:29 PM - 0 Comments

North Korea purchased millions of dollars of nuclear weapons technology from senior Pakistani military officials, says A.Q. Khan, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program. Khan has released documents and a copy of 1998 a letter written to him by a North Korean official, Jo Byong Ho, to back up his claim that two Pakistani military officials were paid $3.5 million as part of the secret deal. Khan gave the documents to Simon Henderson, an expert on Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, because he claimed his government has accused him of running a covert nuclear smuggling operation while denying any involvement. “He gave it to me because he regarded it as showing that the story, the perception that he had been a rogue operator was false,” said Henderson. The Washington Post, which obtained the documents and first reported on them Wednesday, said Khan’s assertions could not be independently verified, and the two Pakistani military implicated have dismissed the allegations as fabrications. Nevertheless, the revelation is bound to add to the strain on U.S.-Pakistan relations in the war against Islamic extremists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

CBC News

U.S. debt negotiations include talk of program cuts

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:24 PM - 3 Comments

The GOP indicated its willingness on Thursday to work with the White House on striking a deal that would see Congress raise the debt ceiling in the U.S. President Barack Obama has been meeting with congressional leaders from both the Republican and Democratic parties in a bid to come to an agreement that would forestall a possible default by the federal government on some of its debt-related obligations. Sources say Obama is open to cutting as much as double the $2 trillion over 10 years that has been discussed at previous negotiations. House Speaker and Republican John A. Boehner met secretly with Obama last week to discuss spending cuts to social programs that were previously off the table, such as Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. The spending cuts would be in exchange for $1 trillion in new revenues that would include an overhaul of tax laws. The U.S. could face its first-ever default if the government’s borrowing authority isn’t increased by Aug. 2.

New York Times

The Montenegro miracle

By Leah McLaren - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:15 PM - 0 Comments

Alexey Galyzin/Getty Images

On a mild June morning, the medieval city of Kotor in Montenegro seems a place lost in time. A maze of worn cobbled corridors swirl inward from the walled town’s three stone archways, opening onto a string of courtyards. The main square is filled not with shoppers and Starbucks latte guzzlers but old men drinking muddy Balkan coffee, playing chess and throwing back fiery doses of rakia, a regional fruit liquor. Female merchants lean in the doorways of their shops, sucking on hand-rolled cigarettes and gossiping in Serbo-Croat across the narrow cobbled laneways. If it weren’t for the smattering of tourists, mostly German and Russian judging by the gutteral noises in the air, it could be a regular morning in 17th-century Europe.

Until you notice the cruise ships, that is. This week there are two enormous, floating hotels docked in this secluded nook in the Bay of Kotor on the country’s northern coast. With the deepest fjord in the Mediterranean, the bay is one of the few still-rustic locales that can accommodate both full-size cruise ships and the international elite’s expanding fleet of super-yachts, many of which require $200,000 for fuel tank fill-ups (marina fuel in Montenegro is sold duty-free). In addition to tax breaks, the country offers heartbreaking scenery: steep, scrub-dotted mountains plunge dramatically into the pristine Adriatic Sea. The incongruity of these monolithic floating energy-guzzlers transposed on such unspoiled natural beauty provides a visual metaphor of the extraordinary transition gripping one of the world’s youngest and smallest democracies.

As established EU countries like Greece, Spain and Ireland continue to struggle through the sovereign debt crisis, this tiny Balkan nation (population 660,000, and landmass only 14,000 sq. km), is enjoying an awakening. According to data released earlier this year from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) and Oxford Economics, Montenegro is expected to be the most rapidly expanding travel and tourism economy in the world over the next decade, with regard to that sector’s contribution to employment and GDP. At present, tourism is worth 16 per cent of its economy, a figure that’s expected to rise to 36 per cent by 2021, when it will have a projected value of $2.5 billion. For a country with a population smaller than New Brunswick’s, that’s a significant cash infusion.

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Quebec City ponders bid for 2022 Olympics

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:14 PM - 0 Comments

Quebeckers will know if their provincial capital will join the race to host the 2022 Winter Olympic Games by next week. An analysis of the decision to award the 2018 Games to Pyeongchang, South Korea is expected to influence the city’s decision. Quebec City Mayor Régis Labeaume recently said his city’s bid would be hurt if Pyeongchang were chosen over Munich and Annecy, France, because it would be more likely a European city would be chosen the next time. Officials dismissed media reports that have said the city has already decided not to enter the race. Quebec Premier Jean Charest has said several times he “dreams” of bringing the Olympics to Quebec City.

Vancouver Province

Canada’s next mission

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:10 PM - 5 Comments

Xinhua News Agency/eyevine/Redux

Headquarters for Canada’s new training mission in Afghanistan smells of fresh-cut wood and is located around the corner from a gymnasium with wall murals that proclaim “Freedom over tyranny” and “Afghanistan rising from the ashes.” The art is obscured by new construction.

Located at Camp Phoenix, a NATO base in Kabul, this is where the Canadian Forces will run the new phase of Canada’s engagement in Afghanistan. The current combat mission in Kandahar province ends in July, but Ottawa has committed to keep 950 trainers in the country until 2014 as part of NATO Training Mission-Afghanistan. Most will be based in Kabul, with smaller contingents, including police and medical advisers, in Herat and Mazar-e-Sharif.

Col. Peter Dawe, a combat veteran of the war in Kandahar and former commanding officer of 3rd Battalion, Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, is deputy commander of the Canadian mission. Because its commander, Canadian Maj.-Gen. Michael Day, is also in charge of the entire army component of the multinational NATO training mission, Dawe will be running day-to-day operations for the Canadians. “It’s not to dismiss for a second what we’ve been doing for 10 years down south. It was an incredible accomplishment, and I think it’s set the conditions for the surge and the successes that are being achieved down there,” says Dawe. “But this is where the campaign will be won or lost.”

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Canada ends combat mission in Afghanistan

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 1:02 PM - 0 Comments

At 11:18 am, local time Thursday, Canada’s combat mission in Afghanistan was brought to a close. It was Canada’s first war in more than 50 years and it ended with Brig.-Gen. Dean Milner officially handing the reigns of Canada’s battle space in Kandahar to American Col. Todd Wood. The mood was hopeful, as Canadian officers made speeches commemorating lives lost and Afghan-Canadian relationships forged. In all, 157 Canadians were killed in Afghanistan since 2002.

Montreal Gazette

Canada Post struggling to catch up on deliveries

By macleans.ca - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 12:58 PM - 40 Comments

Canada Post is still trying to get some 40 million pieces of mail that were held up by a labour dispute out the door. The company has offered overtime shifts to its employees in order to clear the backlog. Canada Post spokeswoman Anick Losier told reporters on Wednesday that 70 per cent of letter carriers have agreed to add an extra hour to their shifts. The labour dispute—roving strikes that morphed into a full-blow lockout—lasted 12 days before back-to-work legislation forced union members to return to their job.

Ottawa Citizen

Taking the law in their hands

By Alex Derry - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 12:50 PM - 0 Comments

Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

In the Hungarian town of Tiszavasvári, members of the far-right Jobbik party have taken it upon themselves to combat what they call “gypsy crime.” Mayor Erik Fülöp has formed a “gendarmerie”—a band of 10 unarmed vigilantes, half of them paid by the city council, who patrol Roma areas and can detain suspects until the police arrive. Fülöp has defended the “gypsy crime” term: “[There are] certain types of criminality which are unfortunately especially prevalent among the Roma—extortion by loan sharks, and robberies from homes and gardens.”

Jobbik’s support is rising just as tensions between the country’s Roma and non-Roma communities are also escalating. Nine people, including two children, were killed in 49 attacks on Roma communities in Hungary between January 2008 and April 2011, according to the European Roma Rights Centre. And the historical allusions are troubling—the original Hungarian gendarmerie was a nationwide force that played a key role in rounding up Hungarian Jews for the Nazis before being disbanded in 1945. Hungary’s conservative Fidesz government has discredited the new gendarmerie as rogue vigilantes who are violating laws prohibiting citizen-led paramilitary groups from targeting ethnic or religious communities.

Starring in a Greek tragedy

By Cynthia Reynolds - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 12:45 PM - 0 Comments

Karoly Arvai/Reuters

Perpetual crisis is not what George Papandreou imagined when he was elected prime minister of Greece in 2009. But that was before the stunning revelation that his predecessors had run up a debt so enormous—and so much larger than they reported—that if he failed to fix it, the resulting chain reaction would not only cripple his country, but potentially destabilize the euro, as well as a still-vulnerable global financial system. In 2010, he called his economy “a sinking ship.” Today, for Papandreou, things are so much worse.

Last year’s $155-billion bailout package, which included tax hikes and hefty public sector pay cuts, was supposed to rescue his country. Instead, the economy has shrunk 5.5 per cent over the past year, plunging Greece deeper into recession and sending Papandreou back to the so-called Troika—the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF—to ask for another bailout to service its debt, which now stands at $479 billion, or 150 per cent of its GDP. His socialist party, the PASOK, is in shambles, with members defecting or threatening to defect during this week’s votes on whether to approve another round of austerity measures demanded by his eurozone counterparts. Meanwhile, a 48-hour general strike in protest of the cutbacks shut down schools, transportation and other services, while demonstrations turned violent.

Unlike his charismatic father, who also served as prime minister—and helped create the financial mess he has to mop up—most consider Papandreou an uninspired speaker, lacking the oratory skills to rally a rebelling population. Perhaps worse, they consider him an outsider. Born in the U.S. and educated abroad, he’s increasingly viewed as too quick to appease the Troika, willing to trade sovereignty for bailouts that will keep the country dependent and the population poor. Grappling with a 16 per cent unemployment rate—36 per cent for youths—protesters shout “George, go home” outside of Parliament.

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Lots of room at the inn

By Cigdem Iltan - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 12:40 PM - 0 Comments

Veronika Lukasova/Keystone Press

Beirut’s luxury hotels had only just stolen the spotlight back from bombed-out ones when Arab Spring uprisings and trouble on Lebanon’s domestic front dealt a debilitating blow to the city’s tourism industry this year. After the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, the city’s reclamation of its hedonistic reputation and “Paris of the East” moniker was made official in 2009 when the New York Times named Beirut the top place to visit in the world. And the numbers followed: in 2010, Lebanon set a new tourism record with more than two million visitors, exceeding pre-civil-war numbers. But tourism dropped 15.5 per cent in the first four months of this year, while Beirut’s hotel business has dropped 40 per cent. Dozens of restaurants have shuttered, while many that remain open have laid off employees or cut their salaries. Business owners also blame Lebanon’s precarious political situation: after more than five months without a government, the country finally got one on June 13, albeit an administration dominated by militant group Hezbollah. The fast-deterioriating situation in neighbouring Syria is no help, either, as the country is an important land route for tourists travelling from Jordan and Turkey.

Lacking curb appeal

By Cigdem Iltan - Thursday, July 7, 2011 at 12:35 PM - 0 Comments

Citizens of Coral Gables, Fla., who don’t keep their pickup trucks hidden in their garages at night will soon face fines—the first ticket will be $100, subsequent violations could be as much as $500.

The city established its ban on parking pickups both on the street and in driveways overnight in the 1960s. But enforcement of the contentious law was put on hold in 2003 when a man sued Coral Gables after officers ticketed him for parking his truck on a residential street. Last month, the Florida Supreme Court ruled against considering an appeal from the man, giving the city a green light to put the law into effect once again.

Enforcement officers will begin by giving out warnings, then tickets starting on Aug. 8, to residents who don’t hide their truck away between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. A city spokeswoman told the Miami Herald that the law is meant to preserve the bayside city’s character, citing Coral Gables’s attractiveness as one reason why property values stayed at a higher level than in neighbouring communities during the recession. But critics say the law is old-fashioned, as pickup trucks no longer only function as work trucks, as they did 50 years ago when the law was created.

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