Defence Department to freeze membership of Canadian Forces, sell properties

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 12:12 PM - 5 Comments

The Canadian Forces are set to cap membership at 68,000 troops, while the Defence Department and military are looking to sell off properties and shut down facilities, according to documents obtained by The Ottawa Citizen. The moves are part of the military’s plan to trim its budget between now and 2016. The Defence Department’s holdings include about half of all federally owned buildings, or 21,000 units—of which 318 are considered cultural and historic sites,—as well as 2.25 million hectares of land. Speaking with the Citizen, Liberal Sen. Colin Kenny said closures make sense, since some underused facilities are costing the government millions of dollars to keep open. He pointed to Newfoundland and Labrador’s Goose Bay site as an example. But he also called for financial compensation packages for the communities in which Defense Department facilities are to be closed.

Ottawa Citizen

The pro-business candidate

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 12:11 PM - 6 Comments

Megan Fitzpatrick profiles NDP leadership candidate Martin Singh.

Singh outlines his call for a new national strategy to encourage more innovation and entrepreneurship on his website, and he says he wants to engage Canadians in a conversation about “the positive value of business, innovation, profit, wealth creation and entrepreneurship.”

He says he wants to create an environment where it’s easier for people to invest and become entrepreneurs. His proposals include: Tax incentives for people who invest in a family member’s business; Lowering the cost of consulting programs; Developing youth mentorship programs; Increasing financial literacy; Encouraging more foreign investment.

US pulls ambassador out of Syria

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 11:54 AM - 1 Comment

The United States has temporarily recalled its ambassador in Syria, as a result of “credible threats against his personal safety,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told the CNN on Monday. Washington has accused the Syrian regime of “incitement” against US Ambassador Robert Ford, after he was attacked by an armed mob of government supporters last month. The US envoy created a diplomatic firestorm in July, when he paid a visit to the Syrian city of Hama, one of the hotspots of the ongoing popular revolt against the government of president President Bashar al-Assad.

CNN

Recession may have already hit eurozone

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 11:36 AM - 0 Comments

A composite index that measures business activity at thousands of manufacturers and service sector companies across Europe indicates the eurozone may already be in recession, Reuters reports. The flash Markit eurozone purchasing managers’ index fell to 47.2 this month from 49.1–where values below the 50 indicate a contraction. The reading was below economists’ forecasts, and “it definitely suggests recession from this point,” Jeavon Lolay, head of global research at Lloyds Banking Group, told Reuters. Eurozone leaders have pledged to agree on new, comprehensive measures to contain the continent’s sovereign debt crisis by Wednesday. Meanwhile, concern is mounting that Italy’s Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi is not doing enough to reduce his country’s debt and restore investors’ confidence.

Reuters

Financial Times

Islamists poised for sizable win in Tunisia’s first free elections

By macleans.ca - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 11:09 AM - 0 Comments

According to initial, unofficial estimates, the Islamist An-Nahda party is poised to win Tunisia’s first free elections, the Guardian reports. On Sunday the North African nation was the first country of the Arab Spring to head to the polls. The election will allocate seats in an interim assembly charged with drafting a new constitution within a year. An-Nahda, which was banned under Tunisia’s authoritarian regime, calls itself a moderate force, and says it does not harbour extremists in its ranks. However, prospect of a strong win by an Islamist group is bound to unnerve secularists in Tunisia and other Arab Spring countries. Final election results are expected tomorrow.

The Guardian

The buck stops where?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 10:36 AM - 4 Comments

Donald Savoie considers the new process that oversaw the latest round of shipbuilding procurement.

The process is not without implications. The anonymous public servant central to the doctrine of ministerial responsibility took a back seat. François Guimont, deputy minister of public works, was front and centre before the cameras not only explaining the process but also declaring who the winners were. Politicians were nowhere to be seen in the $33-billion announcement. Indeed, the first politician to appear on camera was an opposition MP applauding the process and declaring victory. Prime ministers and cabinet ministers of eras past must have given their heads a shake at the sight.

The process also raises a number of fundamental questions. What if we discover down the road that the process or the decision was flawed? Who will be responsible and answerable before Parliament? The minister or the deputy minister?

A phony class war

By Andrew Coyne - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 105 Comments

Photographs by Carlo Allegri

Was there ever a more ersatz political movement than that which purported to “occupy” Canadian cities over the last week? The Occupy Wall Street protest on which it was modelled may betray the same cartoonish understanding of the world, but it at least reflects the genuine despair felt by many people in a country with a number of deep and serious problems: a housing collapse that left millions with homes worth less than their mortgages; a financial sector that, having lent the money to buy these homes to people who couldn’t afford them, then resold the bad loans via opaquely bundled securities to others—then had to be bailed out when the whole house of cards collapsed; high and seemingly intractable levels of unemployment, poverty at a 17-year record, declining social mobility, and a general stalling in income growth. The reasons for these may be debated, but if you lived in the United States, you would have good reason to be ticked.

By contrast, well, let’s just run down the list, shall we? Canada did not have a housing bubble, hence had no housing collapse, nor the resulting epidemic of mortgage failures. Our banks did not get overextended, did not have to be bailed out, and are lending, again unlike the U.S. banks, at a good clip. Unemployment is not rising in Canada, but has been falling steadily for more than two years: at 7.1 per cent, it is still above its pre-recession lows, but remains lower than at virtually any other time since the 1960s. Ditto for poverty: even when measured against a moving target like Statistics Canada’s low income cut-off, it is just off its 40-year low, at 9.6 per cent, from a peak of 15 per cent in the mid 1990s.

The observed stagnation of income growth in recent decades is more a phenomenon of periodic recessions, and associated spikes in unemployment, than a generalized inability to get ahead. Outside of recession years, median incomes have in fact grown steadily. In the long boom from 1993 to 2008, for example, median family income grew by 21.5 per cent after inflation. Indeed, it is hard to reconcile the supposed stalling of living standards with the spread in ownership of a wide range of household appliances that were once affordable only to the few. Since 1980, the percentage of Canadian homes with a dishwasher, for example, has more than doubled, from less than 30 per cent to 60 per cent. Fewer than one in 10 homes had a microwave oven in 1980; today it is upwards of 90 per cent. Washing machines, colour televisions, computers, cellphones and so on: the trend is the same.

Continue…

REVIEW: Just My Type

By Rebecca Kohler - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 10:00 AM - 0 Comments

Somewhere at the bottom of the River Thames lies a font. Thomas Cobden-Sanderson, creator of the typeface known as Doves—first seen in the 1902 Doves Bible—was fearful that after his death the font could be used to print objectionable material or in sloppy printing jobs he wouldn’t be on hand to oversee. Instead of abiding by a legal agreement to leave the font to his business partner, Cobden-Sanderson, over a three-year period, threw the blocks of Doves type off the Hammersmith Bridge until there were none left. In an age of hand-cut typeface, Doves was forever lost.

Who knew someone could feel so strongly about something most of us take for granted? Garfield points out that we are surrounded by fonts, on storefronts, clothing labels, elevator buttons—you’re looking at one right now—and lightheartedly shows us that behind the scenes of what he calls “the uncelebrated hardware of our language” lies a rich history that, at times, can border on soap opera.

There are font pirates, font thefts and font controversies, as when Ikea abandoned Futura for Verdana. There is even font hijacking: the Obama campaign tapped Gotham, designed by Tobias Frere-Jones, during its 2008 campaign, and Hope and Change never looked so good; much to Frere-Jones’s chagrin, Sarah Palin and other Tea Party activists later adopted his font. If only Frere-Jones could throw Gotham off the Brooklyn Bridge—but that would be a lot of computers.

Continue…

Standing up for women’s rights

By Alex Ballingall - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 1 Comment

Picture yourself at Edible Canada, a restaurant that opened a patio and dining area this summer on downtown Vancouver’s Granville Island. You’re enjoying their signature local duck-fat fries with Fraser Valley bacon aioli. You’re a man, and you’ve been drinking. When you get up to drain the contents of your expanding bladder—as one tends to do in such situations—you notice something peculiar in the unisex bathroom stall: a small silver sign indicating you’re not allowed to pee standing up. You’ve got to sit down like everybody else.

Calm down. It’s a joke. But even though the signs were put in place largely “for a giggle,” the instructions are causing quite a stir, Edible Canada owner Eric Pateman tells Maclean’s. Early last week, a blogger for the Vancouver Sun wrote about the sign he found in the restaurant bathroom. Since then, Pateman says journalists from around the world have been contacting him about his supposed ban on peeing standing up. “It’s been an interesting couple of days,” he says. “We just put them up as a conversation piece, and it certainly seems to have generated that.”

Pateman says that, typically, guests at his restaurant get a laugh out of the signs, return to their tables and tell their friends to check it out. “The patrons think it’s been hilarious,” he says.

Continue…

Why are judges giving immigrants who commit serious crimes a second chance?

By Michael Friscolanti - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 9:50 AM - 8 Comments

Canada Border Services Agency

When his son was born, Hamidullah Barkza celebrated the occasion with an epic bender. For eight straight days, the Red Deer, Alta., resident skipped work and pounded the bottle, pausing only when he passed out. On the night it finally ended—April 18, 2008—Barkza stumbled into the bedroom and plopped down beside his wife. “He wanted to have sex,” a prosecutor would later tell a judge. “But she said no due to the fact he was intoxicated and she had recently given birth.”

Enraged, Barkza grabbed a kitchen knife and lunged at the mother of his two children. He stabbed her once in the chest before turning the blade on himself, again and again. By the time police arrived at the apartment, he was covered in blood and barely conscious. (Thankfully, his wife’s wounds were far less severe, requiring only a short hospital visit.)

Originally charged with attempted murder, Barkza pleaded guilty to aggravated assault and received a 26½-month prison sentence. Then came the real punishment: like hundreds of other landed immigrants convicted of serious crimes, the Afghanistan native was slapped with a deportation order. Canada, home since 2004, wanted him gone.

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The man who got passed over for the Supreme Court

By John Geddes - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 2 Comments

Adrian Wyld/CP

The selection of a new Supreme Court of Canada judge is a process so shrouded in secrecy that it’s an irresistible invitation for lawyers to speculate, gossip and argue about the best candidate. Yet after the Prime Minister announces an appointment, the legal community tends to close ranks, praise the new pick, and rarely mention those passed over. So it was this week, when Stephen Harper nominated Justice Michael Moldaver and Justice Andromache Karakatsanis, both of the Ontario Court of Appeal, to fill two Ontario vacancies on the top court.

But Don Stuart, a law professor at Queen’s University, after echoing the general consensus by admiring the nominees’ credentials, added an unusually blunt note of regret about a particular judge who didn’t get the nod—Justice David Doherty, also of the Ontario Court of Appeal. “Every person who is associated with criminal justice would know that David Doherty has written most of the leading judgements in most of the areas,” he told Maclean’s. “He’s our leading judge, really. It seems disappointing that he was not chosen.”

In fact, Doherty’s name has been on short lists of possible Supreme Court of Canada judges from Ontario going back to the 1990s, when then-prime minister Jean Chrétien was making the selections. He is far from the only eminent judge to be repeatedly passed over, but, at least on paper, he seemed an especially obvious contender this time. The two retiring judges being replaced are Justice Ian Binnie and Justice Louise Charron. Charron had been the court’s heavy lifter when it came to writing decisions on criminal law, which has lately made up about a third of its caseload.

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The trigonometry of tortellini

By Anne Kingston - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 0 Comments

George L. Legendre; Photo Illustration by Sarah Mackinnon

Like many brilliant, if lunatic, brainstorms, the idea for Pasta by Design was hatched late at night over good food as the red wine flowed. Architects George Legendre and Marco Guarnieri, who share an address in London’s Bermondsey district, were dining on spaghetti all’aglio, olio e peperoncino two years ago when talk turned to the mathematics of various pasta shapes. Such inquiry comes naturally to the Paris-born, Harvard-educated Legendre. The 42-year-old principal of IJP Architects uses a “mathematics-based knowledge model” that reduces objects to schematics and trigonometric equations which are then used as a blueprint for everything he makes—from bridges to playground slides.

Why not subject fusilli, orecchiette and linguine to the same scrutiny, they wondered. So Legendre did. The result is an oddly surreal, poetic paean to pasta that invites readers to view it not as a carb smothered under sauce but pure, beautiful form in itself.

Legendre has created a taxonomy of 92 pasta types—from tiny peppercorn-shaped acini di pepe to tubular ziti. The presentation is elegant: on one page, a photograph of the pasta; beside it, its ghostly reproduction in Matrix-like schematics with a trigonometric equation, cross-section and data on its physical properties. A brief note on regional provenance and serving suggestions is also supplied. Curled gramigna, or “little weed,” from Emilia-Romagna, we learn, is best with a chunky sausage or light tomato sauce. As a bonus, Legendre includes a zany three-page pull-out, “Family Reunion Seating Plan,” a phylogenetic diagram of pasta types that’s delightful in its inscrutability.

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How about a little NDP trash talk?

By Scott Feschuk - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 9:40 AM - 5 Comments

Getty Images; CP; iStock; Photo Illustration by Taylor Shute

Let’s get to know the men (and so far it is only men) who are running to become leader of the New Democratic Party. This is a very important job because, as the old saying goes, the winner will be a heartbeat away from being four years away from having a very slim chance of being prime minister. Also, he gets a nice house.

Romeo Saganash. I don’t know much about Romeo Saganash but I know this: Romeo Saganash is a terrific name. It sounds like a 1970s concept album by Styx or a fake boyfriend invented by an unpopular high school girl. You guys, you JUST missed seeing Romeo Saganash again! He was totally here in his Corvette and sideburns!

Nathan Cullen. The B.C. MP keeps emphasizing that he relishes his role as an underdog, which is a fancy way of saying, “Hey, everybody, look at me—I’m losing.” Cullen says his main goal is to bring climate change to the very top of the nation’s policy agenda, which is so adorable that you just want to tousle his hair and make the guy a cup of hot cocoa. Crazy kids with their dreams.

Continue…

Where’s the report?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 9:36 AM - 7 Comments

Stephen Maher wonders where the G8 Legacy Fund paper trail is.

FedNor official Tom Dodds “noted that FedNor is going to evaluate all projects applying basic tourism principles and provide a recommendation in a report for March 30.” This is the way things are supposed to work. Municipalities make submissions. Officials consider those submissions, apply criteria, and select projects. So when the auditor general later reviewed the fund, auditors were surprised to find there was no paperwork showing how projects were selected. Where’s Dodds’ report?

REVIEW: Infectious Behaviour: Brain-Immune Connections in Autism, Schizophrenia, and Depression

By Brian Bethune - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 9:05 AM - 0 Comments

His title is a little daunting, but neurobiologist Patterson has succeeded in his aim of crafting an accessible, even fascinating, book about one of the hottest topics in mental health. In the long-running nature versus nurture argument, our era is all about nature. There is no one left—no one with scientific credentials, at least—who believes the way we nurture our offspring (cold mothers, distant fathers) creates autistic or schizophrenic children. But nature for too many people, experts and laypersons alike, means our genes alone. And they, Patterson shows, are not the whole story.

He notes how the final health effects from the great flu pandemic of 1918, which killed more people than the Great War, played out very recently. Those who were in their mothers’ wombs during the pandemic went on to a lifetime of health and socio-economic problems disproportionately worse than those of children born before or after: lower educational achievement and lower incomes, higher rates of diabetes and heart disease. Those outcomes are suggestive of the virus’s effect on fetal brain development; the fact they often did not appear before adulthood supports the emerging hypothesis of the fetal origins of many adult diseases.

Patterson describes the womb as a “battlefield,” in which a fetus has to struggle to fend off rejection by the mother’s immune system. Infection, which ramps up the immune response, can have devastating effects on fetal brains. The latest studies indicate that the risk of schizophrenia among the male offspring of women who come down with the flu during the first half of their pregnancies is three to seven times higher than usual. Patterson notes that common-sense ways to cut down on flu infection are widely known—wash your hands and avoid airplane flights if at all possible—but often ignored, even by pregnant women, because the stakes seem so small. He’s done his best to correct that assumption.

How will we repel an imaginary Russian invasion?

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 15 Comments

The new F-35s will be state-of-the-art in every way except one.

Canada’s new multibillion-dollar stealth fighters are expected to arrive without the built-in capacity to communicate from the country’s most northerly regions — a gap the air force is trying to close.

The F-35 Lightning will eventually have the ability to communicate with satellites, but the software will not be available in the initial production run, said a senior Lockheed Martin official, who spoke on background. It is expected to be added to the aircraft when production reaches its fourth phase in 2019, but that is not guaranteed because research is still underway.

Which MP gives out the best halloween treats

By Mitchel Raphael - Monday, October 24, 2011 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

MP lives at ‘popcorn house’

NDP MP Olivia Chow’s Toronto home will be dark for a third year this Halloween. Ever since Sarah Layton, daughter of Chow’s late husband, Jack Layton, was pregnant three years ago, the spooky action has moved to her house. The garage at Chow’s stepdaughter’s house is dressed up with huge fake knives and bones. There is a headless horse and eerie noises. The candy is given out at the back of the garage but it’s so scary that Chow says some kids won’t make the trek. “Sometimes mom and dad are too scared, too,” quips the MP.

Vancouver NDP MP Don Davies says that on Halloween, “I man the candy. It’s the one time of year I don’t have to go door-knocking.” He says he hands out the candies he had always hoped to get when he was a kid: the good chocolate bars. “Dentists love me. Parents don’t.”

Continue…

Human rights, the rule of law and the death of Gadhafi

By Aaron Wherry - Sunday, October 23, 2011 at 3:18 PM - 23 Comments

A statement from the Prime Minister on the liberation of Libya.

“Today, Canadians join with the Libyan people in celebrating the liberation of their country. The Libyan people have courageously risen up against decades of tyranny. Canada’s involvement, as sanctioned by the United Nations and led by NATO, has supported their aspirations for the future. We join Libyans in welcoming the post-Gaddafi era and the transition of the country to a democratic society – one that respects human rights and the rule of law.

“We again commend the work of members of the Royal Canadian Navy and the Royal Canadian Air Force and the leadership of Canadian Lt. Gen. Charles Bouchard. Their efforts have led to the success of NATO’s mission in Libya. NATO has taken a preliminary decision to conclude the mission at the end of October. Canada will continue to work with transitional leaders as the new Libya takes shape.”

Speaking of human rights and the rule of law, Liberal MP John McKay questioned Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird on Friday about the demise of Moammar Gadhadi. Continue…

This is the week that was

By Aaron Wherry - Saturday, October 22, 2011 at 3:22 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Dewar and Brian Topp divvied up endorsements. Nathan Cullen proposed joint nomination meetings. Mr. Dewar worked the room in Winnipeg. Mr. Topp dared suggest raising taxes.

John McCallum and Tony Clement exchanged tweets. The shadow cabinet was shuffled. House of Commons redistribution proposals were floated, but Tim Uppal cautioned against believing everything a government source tells you. The Harper government tabled its Wheat Board reforms and took aim at its crime-fighting partners. Dean Del Mastro’s lamented selectively. Steven Blaney sided with the French. Charlie Angus kept on mocking Mr. Clement. John Turner kept on complaining. And Pat Martin tried to explain himself. Continue…

This week has three sketches

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 5:20 PM - 0 Comments

Tuesday. Life under occupation
Wednesday. Democracy and testicles
Thursday. There must be something here to disagree about

The quiet cuts

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 4:43 PM - 9 Comments

The government is eliminating 42 jobs with the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency.

The Department of Fisheries will have its budget cut by $56.8 million.

And Veterans Affairs will be cutting somewhere between 500 and 800 jobs.

Freedom to hyperlink has copyright consequences

By Jesse Brown - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 4:27 PM - 6 Comments

The Supreme Court of Canada gets the Internet.  This week, it unanimously ruled that linking to libelous or defamatory content is not the same thing as publishing libelous or defamatory content. The case involved a former Green party campaign manager, Wayne Crookes, who wanted one Jon Newton to remove links from an article about Crookes on his website. While Newton’s article was not libelous, Crookes felt the material he linked to was. Publishing the link, Crookes’s attorneys argued, was no different than publishing the material it linked to.

The Court did not agree.

First of all, there’s an unsolvable technical problem involved in deeming linking and publishing to be the same thing. Unless I’m linking to my own content, I have no control over what lies at the other side of my link. The page I link to today may change tomorrow. If linking in Canada were to be considered publishing, then publishing would instantly become too risky to pursue for anyone with assets to protect. It would be like telling a cookbook publisher that the latest tome about cupcakes they just sent to the printer may or may not hit stores with images of child pornography included.

The effect on the Internet in Canada, the Court ruled, could be “devastating.” Continue…

CityNews wants your messages for Mayor Rob Ford

By macleans.ca - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 3:51 PM - 4 Comments

What a wild first year it’s been under Mayor Rob Ford.

Not since amalgamation have municipal politics been so front and centre in Toronto, with headlines almost too numerous to count—from the killing of Transit City to all-night public meetings to the controversial KPMG Core Services review to Ford’s famous “stop the gravy train” mantra.

As Toronto approaches the one-year anniversary of Ford’s election victory—Oct. 25, 2011—CityNews want to know what messages you have for the mayor heading into year No. 2.

Here’s how it’ll work: Continue…

From the magazine

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, October 21, 2011 at 3:38 PM - 2 Comments

From this week’s print edition, a thousand words on the new majority government, the new official opposition and the general notion of organized labour.

In that piece I note Lisa Raitt’s public musing about amending the Canada Labour Code. Speaking with reporters after QP today, in reaction to news of a settlement between Air Canada and its flight attendants, Raitt seemed to walk those musings back.

Well, you know, we were just talking in general about whether or not there was a difficulty in ratification this time. We referred it to the CIRB. But I don’t expect we’re going to get anything from the CIRB on the matter because they settled their differences and they found a process that worked so I’m very content with the Labour Code that it’s working as the way it should so it’s not priority for me at all … You know we went through a process of taking a look at the Code in general and I met with both labour and we met with employers and the Minister before me did the same thing.  It’s working in today’s situation. It worked in this case and I’m very happy with the way that it worked out. I think what I was referencing is just we were going to use the Code in a different way by having Section 107 reference to the CIRB and that’s what I was indicating we were thinking of and that’s what we did. And it worked very well so we’re happy with it.