Vanessa Paradis on motherhood, Johnny Depp and ‘Café de Flore’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 11:58 AM - 0 Comments

Vanessa Paradis (centre) with Marin Gerrier and Alice Dubois

In Café de Flore, a virtuosic new film from Quebec director Jean-Marc Vallée, French pop singer Vanessa Paradis gives a fierce, powerful performance as the obsessively devoted single mother of a Down Syndrome boy. Paradis has two children of her own with Johnny Depp (Lily-Rose Melody Depp, 12, John Christopher “Jack” Depp III, 9). I interviewed her in September at the Toronto International Film festival.

Q. How did you end up in this movie? Continue…

Sony’s visor and in-your-face 3D

By Peter Nowak - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 11:55 AM - 0 Comments

When Sony showed off its futuristic-looking 3D visor at the Consumer Electronics Show in January, few people thought the company would actually follow through with it. Many wrote it off as one of those concept devices that technology companies bring to CES just to get media attention.

Well, nope. Sony has indeed put the visor into production and is currently taking pre-orders. The device officially hits stores in Canada on Nov. 25, although at $800, it’s not much cheaper than a full 3D television.

This is one of those oddities I simply had to try for myself and the folks at Sony were nice enough to lend me one for a week. First off, it’s obviously not for everyone. With its price tag, it’s clearly aimed at gadget lovers who get all the latest and greatest stuff, regardless of cost. Sony says the visor is in high demand through pre-orders so far—I’m willing to bet the vast majority of buyers (or the ultimate recipients of said purchase) are probably males between 25 and 40. Continue…

Harper’s foreign policy review is (almost) in (probably)

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 11:52 AM - 0 Comments

What an unexpected and not-entirely-pleasant surprise Canadian Press reporter Mike Blanchfield had for the bureaucrats at Fort Pearson yesterday: he wrote about their ongoing foreign-policy review, which they thought they were doing a good job of keeping secret. (This is actually not the first we’ve heard of this low-profile review; Carleton University’s Fen Hampson complained about its rumoured existence in July.) Oh well. Highlights from Blanchfield’s report:

The FPP will attempt to enlighten the Conservatives about a number of strategically important countries. Among them are two major Muslim countries — Indonesia and Turkey.

Indonesia is the world’s fourth largest country with the largest Muslim population and is spread across a sprawling archipelago that spans the Indian and Pacific oceans. Turkey is a NATO ally that shares land borders with Syria, Iran and Iraq.

A core purpose of the FPP is to give the government a heads-up on potential flashpoints across the globe. Sources say the Tories believe Canada has been caught off guard in recent years by international events and the new plan would serve to mitigate that.

The document could be tabled in Parliament at some future point after Harper’s office gives it the green light. But some sources say the FPP is unlikely to ever see the light of day because it could box the Tories in politically at a later date.

Why the low profile? Because Paul Martin’s foreign-policy review was a bit of a joke, more for its process (long delays; endless redrafts) than for the unobjectionable result, which handily remains archived at the DFAIT website.

In the heady days after the 2006 election, the Harper legions could sometimes be heard to boast, “We don’t review foreign policy; we do it.” But it turns out that boldness and a photogenically jutting jaw don’t keep a government from being blindsided, again and again and again and again and again, by the big cruel world. When that happens to you enough times, you start to wish you could see the hits coming. Hence Blanchfield’s line about Tories who (it’s said) “believe Canada has been caught off guard in recent years by international events.”

The bad news is that no foreign policy review will keep a country from being caught off guard. The world is really good at catching you off guard. Every time something surprising happens — the Arab Spring uprisings early this year were only the latest example — a chorus of second-guessers wonders why “we” (or “Obama” or “the West”) didn’t see it coming. But you don’t have to go to Egypt to discover life is full of surprises. Closer to home, nobody foresaw the 2008 post-election Dion coalition play, or its out-of-focus denouement. Nobody, including the NDP, expected the NDP to win most of the seats in Quebec. This is stuff that has happened in a country Stephen Harper knows well. How can he expect to be more clairvoyant in Syria or Turkey or Myanmar? Continue…

‘Not to be forgotten’

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 11:34 AM - 0 Comments

An ad hoc committee of Conservative, New Democrat and Liberal MPs has released an extensive report on how government can better deal with palliative care, home care, long-term care, pain control, suicide prevention and elder abuse.

The palliative care philosophy is person-centered, family-focused and community-based. It moves us from disease or condition-specific care to person-centered care. It recognizes that the psycho-social and spiritual dimensions have profound impact upon health and well being, and that a variety of specific conditions may be operating on different levels in the chronically ill or dying person’s life. The philosophy of palliative care permeating medical culture is more important than the simple delivery of “services.” As family physicians and local nurses come to accept a palliative care philosophy, palliative care services can begin to develop organically in communities.

The committee makes 14 recommendations, ranging from calls for national strategies to specific tax and funding measures.

Police re-open investigation into death of Natalie Wood

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 10:56 AM - 0 Comments

The investigation into the death of actress Natalie Wood, who drowned 30 years ago while boating, has been re-opened by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The death of the iconic actress, who was on the boat with her husband Robert Wagner and their friend Christopher Walken, was ruled an accident, but has spawned many conspiracy theories about what really happened, many of them based on the fact that Wagner and Walken had an argument over Wood’s career. The captain of the yacht, Dennis Davern, has claimed that he lied to authorities about the circumstances of her death and that it may have been related to the argument. Now the police say they have been contacted by “persons who stated they had additional information about the Natalie Wood Wagner drowning,” and will look at the case again. A press conference will be held today to discuss the new information.

CBS News

The 308 plan

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 10:22 AM - 0 Comments

Drawing their inspiration from a young Stephen Harper, the Liberals have released their proposal for rebalancing the House of Commons without increasing the number of seats. The numbers, by province, break down as follows (with changes in parentheses).

Ontario 110 (+4)
Quebec 72 (-3)
British Columbia 38 (+2)
Alberta (+3)
Manitoba 12 (-2)
Saskatchewan 12 (-2)
Nova Scotia 10 (-1)
New Brunswick 10
Newfoundland 6 (-1)
PEI 4 

The real fun of this plan might be trying to figure out which current MPs would lose their seats. Half—17 of 34 seats—of the seats the Liberals currently hold are in provinces that would lose seats under their plan.

François Legault to the rescue

By Martin Patriquin - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Tim Snow/The Gazette

Long before he became Quebec’s would-be saviour, François Legault was a businessman who, in 1986, co-founded a popular Quebec-based charter airline. Having been obsessed with efficiency in the private sector, Legault was reportedly put off by the cumbersome process by which new political entities are registered in the province. So when it came time for him to turn his Coalition pour l’avenir du Québec, Legault’s right-leaning pseudo think tank, into a full-blown political party, he chose a novel way to make it legit.

Rather than having 100 candidates mail in their support of the party and wait for the province’s director-general of elections to authenticate everyone—a part of the law that can take upward of two months—Legault and 100 of his supporters marched into the election authority’s Quebec City offices themselves. It was an irresistible bit of political theatre, a jaunty example of participatory democracy you rarely see from the right flank of Canada’s political spectrum: Legault the Pied Piper, literally leading his supporters toward the supposed reinvention of Quebec’s political scene.

Yet if Legault’s approach was novel, the popularity of this formerly retired politician is anything but. Legault, who has ridden high in the polls for nearly a year, is the latest in a long line of federal and provincial leaders from Quebec who find themselves suddenly, and almost absurdly, popular. The next provincial election is as many as two years away; still, given his sustained perch at the top of the polls, it is safe to say that Legault has benefited from the politician-as-saviour phenomenon, one seemingly as Québécois as Bixi bikes, depanneurs and the adding of curd cheese to gravy and french fries.

Continue…

Newsmakers: Nov. 10-17, 2011

By Colby Cosh, Chris Sorensen, Emma Teitel and Alex Ballingall - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Susan Walsh/AP

Nix that name

Joe Paterno’s long fall from grace continues, after the legendary former Penn State football coach had his name scrubbed from the trophy awarded to the winner of the Big Ten conference championship. It was the latest blow to Paterno, described as the “winningest” coach in major college football, after he was fired for not doing enough to stop former assistant coach Jerry Sandusky from allegedly molesting eight young boys over a 15-year period. The scandal shook the university to its foundations, leaving students rioting in the streets and raising difficult questions about the undue influence of college athletics on American education.

The other Kirk

Buffalo Bills linebacker Kirk Morrison wanted the @kirkmorrison Twitter handle. But University of Regina business student Kirk Morrison had gotten to the social networking site first. If you know the Coase Theorem of economics, you know what happened next: the property flowed to the highest-value user. Linebacker Morrison, 29, flew student Morrison, 20, to the team’s Oct. 30 home game against the Redskins, in Toronto. The Canadian Morrison got VIP treatment in exchange for surrendering the username, receiving sideline passes and tailgating with Bills great Jim Kelly. Football Morrison tweeted that he had “great times” meeting his “brother from another mother.” The tweeter now known as @kirkmorrison91 agreed, but is scrambling to catch up on “neglected homework.”

Continue…

Good news, bad news: Nov. 10-17, 2011

By macleans.ca - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Good news

Plastic $100 bills—hard to counterfeit and rip—are put into circulation. (Mark Blinch/Reuters)

A call to action

Jordan’s King Abdullah called on Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to resign this week. It’s the first time an Arab leader and neighbour to Syria has called for regime change in the country where an eight-month-long uprising has led to 3,500 deaths. The European Union, meanwhile, extended sanctions against Syria. The moves come on the heels of a decision by the Arab League to suspend Syria’s membership. The international community has been reluctant to step in to stop the violence, but these rebukes are a welcome sign that there are limits to its tolerance.

Last one out . . .

The police in Halifax moved to evict Occupy protesters. “Our parks are for all of the public, not an unregulated campground for some,” said Mayor Peter Kelly. In New York, campers were removed from the original Occupy site, and in Toronto they were served eviction notices this week. The Occupy movement has been a positive voice, but its tactics have run their course, with sites devolving lately into fire and health hazards. To the credit of city officials and most protesters, the camp cleanups are being handled patiently and peacefully.

Paradise regained?

Ever since park wardens found her body on Feb. 2, Kimberley Blackwell’s relatives in Canada have wondered what led to her shooting death, at age 53, in the remote corner of Costa Rica where she’d lived for 18 years. Last Friday, police arrested a local man living near Blackwell’s cacao farm. Blackwell was an eccentric animal-lover who courageously, sometimes recklessly, defended wildlife against the poachers her family believed killed her. The arrest appears to support their theory.

Air recompense

The holiday travel season is set to begin. As terrible as that sounds—think lineups, pat-downs, cancelled flights—things may be better this year for those travelling south. The U.S. Department of Transportation fined an airline $900,000 for keeping hundreds of passengers on planes for hours on a Chicago tarmac earlier this year. It’s the first time a tarmac-delay rule has been enforced in the U.S. and sends a loud warning to airlines that mistreating passengers won’t be tolerated.

Bad news

Hollywood great Brad Pitt says he may retire from acting in three years. (Jo Yong-Hak/Reuters)

Euro crash

Europe is facing its most difficult hour since the Second World War, said German Chancellor Angela Merkel this week. Under the strains of its debt crisis, stocks are falling, industrial production is down and GDP growth is grinding to a near halt. The EU economy grew just 0.2 per cent in the third quarter. Many economists now fear that the barely two-year-old recovery may be dead and a double-dip recession is in the cards. That would spell trouble for North America, too. A study by the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, citing Europe’s difficulties, put the odds of a U.S. recession at 50 per cent, up from 30 per cent last summer.

Damage control

The Conservative party has pleaded guilty to charges relating to the “in-and-out” campaign case. While the Crown dropped charges against two Tory executives and two sitting senators, the party admitted it exceeded election spending limits in 2006 and improperly reported expenses. Curious, then, that the party issued a statement that it had scored a “big victory” and that it “plays by the same rules as everyone else.” The only victory was dodging the embarrassing scenario of four of its officials being found guilty.

Is nothing safe?

A 16-year-old hockey player, Kyle Fundytus, died in Edmonton after being hit in the neck with a puck. It was a tragic fluke, as his coach described it. This week, there is also new evidence that even seemingly harmless plays can have serious impacts on young athletes. University of Rochester researchers examining brain scans of high school football and hockey players found that routine, mild hits to the head cause “subtle injury.” They hope to uncover if there is a critical number of head hits young players can endure.

Party pooper

U.S. President Barack Obama said world leaders at the Asian-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit in Hawaii won’t be wearing traditional dress for photo ops—a break from a long-standing custom that has seen leaders dressed in memorable costumes from Canadian bomber jackets to ponchos in Peru. These were the best parts of the suit-and-tie summits. And we were so looking forward to the aloha shirts and grass skirts.

Spain’s Mariano Rajoy isn’t popular—but he’s way ahead

By Jane Switzer - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 9:20 AM - 0 Comments

Cesar Manso/AFP/Getty Images

Spaniards think he’s boring, but anger over Spain’s economic crisis is expected to propel opposition leader Mariano Rajoy to victory in the country’s Nov. 20 election.

Rajoy’s conservative People’s Party is expected to win a landslide parliamentary majority with 47.6 per cent of the votes, according to a Nov. 13 poll published in Spain’s centre-right El Mundo newspaper. The second-place Socialist Party, led by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, trailed the People’s Party by 17.8 percentage points, with a predicted 29.8 per cent. Various polls also widely declared Rajoy the winner of a Nov. 7 televised debate against Rubalcaba, the sole face-to-face exchange of the campaign.

Rajoy, 56, and Rubalcaba, 60, squared off on how to solve Spain’s debt crisis and kick-start its stagnant economy. Rubalcaba accused Rajoy of hiding plans to cut benefits and pensions to curb Spain’s growing deficit: “If you tell people the plans you have in your head, not even your own party members will vote for you,” he said. But Rubalcaba’s interrogation did little to stop Rajoy, who rebuffed his rival by evoking the spectre of Spain’s debt crisis: “I think Spain needs a change and needs it urgently.”

Continue…

Write-in campaign

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 9:00 AM - 0 Comments

Romeo Saganash considers rural policy (at the Huffington Post).

The Conservatives and Liberals have always shared one concern: that of large multi-national corporations. The beneficiary of the softwood lumber agreement was not the Canadian forestry worker: it was our international competition. The largest beneficiary of the ending of the wheat board is not the family farmer: it is agribusiness giants like Viterra and Cargill. The largest beneficiary of pipeline projects like Keystone KL that ship raw bitumen out of Canada is not the average worker in Canada’s oil patch: it is international oil companies who would reap the benefits while leaving us with the environmental bill to pay.

Paul Dewar explains his economic policy (at the Mark). Brian Topp considers Keystone and selling oil to China (at the Globe). And Niki Ashton pitches new politics (at MichaelMoore.com).

Taking George Clooney sideways in ‘The Descendants’

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8:32 AM - 0 Comments

(from left) Shailene Woodley, George Clooney, Amara Miller, and Nick Krause in 'The Descendants'

George Clooney is his generation’s Cary Grant. The smoothest man alive. Whether he’s leading a heist in Oceans 11 or playing a slick presidential candidate in The Ides of March,  he has built his career on a debonair image of manly prowess, dry wit and impeccable charm. Which is not enough for an actor of note. So it’s interesting to see Clooney struggle to subvert his image. What’s curious is that Hollywood’s most eligible, and durable, bachelor remains as unattached onscreen as in life: unlike, say, Ryan Gosling, he hardly ever ends up cast as a romantic lead. This guy’s screen kisses can almost be counted on the fingers of one hand. His emotions have also remained largely off limits—until Up In the Air director Jason Reitman finally pried open a crack in his armour and located some vulnerability. Now with The Descendants, Clooney goes further, and finally takes a plunge into the emotional deep end. It’s the first film in seven years from Sideways writer-director Alexander Payne, who casts George sharply against type as an awkward, ineffectual father blundering around Hawaii looking for his balls. (And no, it’s not a golf movie.) The result is one of the year’s most original and affecting films, a bittersweet comic drama that steers clear of Hollywood formula and comes at us sideways, surprising us at every turn. Continue…

Consummating ‘Twilight’—the honeymoon is over, but not fast enough

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8:21 AM - 0 Comments

Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart in 'The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn—Part 1'

Much faster than the Harry Potter series, the Twilight franchise is grinding to a close. Stephenie Meyer wrote just four books in her series, and her final tome, like the climactic Potter book, has been split into two movies—better to suck more blood from the box office. This weekend brings us The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part One. Or, to put it more simply, the Beginning of the End. But Stephenie Meyer is no J.K. Rowling, and the narrative in this penultimate movie is so diluted it’s anemic. More like Breaking Down than Breaking Dawn.  (If you’re a Twilight fan, you may want to stop reading right now. You already know what happens, and you’re going  to see this baby no matter what I, or anyone else, has to say. For the rest of you, who may simply be twi-curious, bear with me.)

In Breaking Dawn: Part 1, the tortured love affair is consummated. The ancient Byronic vampire Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson)  finally weds Bella (Kristen Stewart), his 18-year old human sweetheart. This Twilight panders to the junior chick-flick fan base so abjectly it makes the last Sex and the City movie  look like Mean Streets. That’s clear from the first few seconds of the film: upon receiving the wedding invitation, Edward’s romantic rival, Jacob (Taylor Lautner),  draws a collective scream from the audience by ripping off his shirt in rage and flashing his now notorious abs. Edward and Bella have a picture-perfect wedding-in-white, a staged by the Cullen family outside their mountaintop home,  then fly down to Rio for the picture-perfect honeymoon. Edward spirits his bride by speedboat to a beachfront villa off the Brazilian coast, where the newlyweds luxuriate in the simple pleasures of paradise: chess on the terrace, moonlit skinny dipping, and vampire-powered plunges down a giant waterfall. The wedding and the honeymoon both seem endless. The scenes are dragged out as sheer Harlequin fantasy, padded with a wall-to-wall soundtrack of piano shmaltz. I suppose there’s an ironic subtext. Who knows? Mix in the real-life romance of Pattinson and Stewart, who appear to be on the verge of engagement (just like their characters, who are forever on the verge of something), and it all gets very meta.

Continue…

Pippa’s got the look

By Patricia Treble - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

SAV/FilmMagic/GETTY

Every day that Pippa Middleton goes to her office in London, she runs a gauntlet of photographers eager to snap her picture. Because her older sister Kate, a.k.a. HRH the duchess of Cambridge, is often secluded on a rainy Welsh island with her husband or behind palace walls getting a private introduction to royal life, it is Pippa who bears the brunt of tabloid fascination, something she does with the trademark Middleton silence and polite smile.

While the public is curious about her love life (the latest rumour has her breaking up with boyfriend Alex Loudon) and her work in the party planning sector (reports are swirling that a publisher wants to hand her $1.5 million for a book on the subject), those areas are dwarfed by interest in her clothes. That hasn’t diminished since she wore that plunging, form-fitting bridesmaid dress at her sister’s wedding to Prince William.

Interestingly, while big sister mixes the occasional inexpensive outfit—such as a $300 Reiss dress to chat with the Obamas at Buckingham Palace—into her increasingly high-end fashion rotation, Pippa eschews couture houses and instead buys the bulk of her daywear in the affordable retail stores that dot the main streets and malls of almost every country in the world, including Zara, French Connection and H&M.

Continue…

Italy’s oversexed billionaire buffoon

By Anne Kingston - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Tony Gentile/Reuters

It wasn’t the notorious “Bunga, Bunga” hooker orgies that did him in. Nor was it any of the 19 criminal and civil charges over 17 years, including allegations of bribing judges, tax fraud and embezzlement. Nor was he felled from within, like Caesar, or rejected by the vox populi. It took a deus ex machina—global financial markets freaked out over the eurozone debt crisis—to unseat Italy’s scandal-saturated prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. Concerns over Italy’s high bond rates, not some kinky bondage escapade, forced the 75-year-old billionaire to resign last week, with less than two years left in his term. As with the mobster Al Capone, who was imprisoned for tax evasion, the train Berlusconi couldn’t hear coming was the one that hit him.

Not that Italians hadn’t grown weary of the Silvio Berlusconi reality show, a grotesque burlesque that dominated—and distracted—national life for decades. His public approval rating, down to 30 per cent, had been in decline since 2009, the year the perma-tanned, pomaded, seal-like “playboy” permanently shifted from satyr to satire. His second wife, Veronica Lari, publicly announced she’d filed for divorce, fed up with her husband “consorting with minors,” and a parade of prostitutes boasted they’d shared paid intimacy with him. The final straw came last February, when Berlusconi was ordered to stand trial for paying for sex with an underage erotic dancer, Karima El Mahroug, who goes by the stage name of “Ruby Heart Stealer.” He was also charged with abusing his office by interfering in a 2010 police investigation when El Mahroug was being held for theft, accused of calling a police station and claiming she was the niece of then-Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak.

Discontent with the man once dubbed “Il Cavaliere”—the Knight—was evident last month as women took to the streets calling for Berlusconi’s resignation with signs proclaiming “Italy is not a brothel!” Local elections in June saw a leftist mayor voted into power in Milan, Berlusconi’s birthplace and former stronghold. Some 40,000 residents swarmed the Piazza del Duomo chanting “Berlusconi go home” and “Berlusconi, you are finished.” Frustration with Berlusconi’s reign was also on full display after his resignation in Rome last Saturday with the kind of dancing-in-the-streets jubilation seen after the fall of dictators Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi. The analogy is apt: the media tycoon became the world’s first democratic despot by shrewdly exploiting the resources he controlled. Long before he was elected, he’d amassed wealth and cultural power; later, he built on it by nimbly navigating a media-saturated world. The self-styled political saviour was the “first postmodern” politician, says Alexander Stille, author of the 2007 book The Sack of Rome: Media + Money + Celebrity = Power = Silvio Berlusconi. “He’s about selling an image, personalizing politics; he’s not about ideas or policy or winning legislative battles,” Stille told Maclean’s.

Continue…

The RCMP: a Royal Canadian disgrace

By Charlie Gillis and Ken MacQueen - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Arlen Redekop photo/PNG

A sleep-deprived Catherine Galliford is running on adrenalin and ragged nerves after a wild week that saw the RCMP corporal rock her employer with claims that she was sexually harassed and bullied by senior officers, even as she served as the spokesperson for two of the biggest investigations in the force’s history. Galliford was calm and competent on camera as the public face of the RCMP’s investigations into the Air India bombings that claimed 329 lives, and serial murders committed by Robert Pickton on his Port Coquitlam pig farm. But while Galliford’s allegations of harassment reached as far as the House of Commons this week, one of her most explosive claims is only now being made public. Galliford says the rampant sexism within the ranks of the RCMP that ruined her health and career may also have contributed to the mismanagement of the Pickton murder investigation, at a cost of many lives.

Galliford said during an internal affairs meeting with RCMP staff this April that a senior officer “did nothing” with information that could have broken open the Pickton murders more than two years before his arrest, and attributed the flawed investigation to sexist attitudes and misogyny. In two extended interviews with Maclean’s this week, she said her examination of a file from the Coquitlam RCMP, with information dating as far back as 1997, showed the force had more than enough information by the late 1990s to obtain a warrant to search the Pickton property. Instead, surveillance on the farm was curtailed, indicative, she says, of the “indifference” that marked the investigation of the disappearance of women from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, and a “misogynist” attitude toward women.

She said in October 2001 she read an RCMP file dealing with the Pickton farm as she briefed herself on her assignment with the missing women’s task force. “I had one of those ‘oh, no’ moments because I saw what was already on the file. There was enough evidence there for another ITO (information to obtain a search warrant),” she said. She said the file included evidence of guns on the site of the farm, as well as women’s clothing, government identification and an asthma inhaler later tied to one of Pickton’s victims. Yet, she said there was only a cursory attempt at surveillance, which was cut short because it was impossible to see activity at Pickton’s trailer, which was set back far from the road.

Continue…

A troubled EU is nothing to snicker at

By Paul Wells - Friday, November 18, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

Christian Hartmann/Reuters

The good news is that when the cover of Canadian Business magazine says “Europe’s Still Doomed,” they don’t actually mean tens of millions of Europeans are about to die a horrible death. For centuries that was the standard for measuring a bad day in Europe.

France lost more of her citizens in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71, about 139,000, than Canada lost in the First and Second World Wars combined, and it was barely getting warmed up. Next came 1.7 million French deaths in the First World War, then another half-million in the Second World War. Maybe seven million Germans died in the latter war, and nearly six million Poles. Belarus, at the time a Soviet republic, lost a quarter of its population. It’s easy for us to be glib about these things. They remain present and felt in Europe.

Canadians who chuckle at Eurocrats and Brussels bean-counters don’t pay enough attention to what those tweedy legions of paper-pushers have replaced. They’ve replaced hell. That doesn’t mean they’ve brought heaven, far from it, but the distance travelled is worth remembering. Germany and France work far more closely together than Canada and the U.S. do. Europe’s attractive power has pulled a dozen countries away from Russia’s grasp and closer to prosperity. The European Union’s eastern border, even with quasi-failed states like Belarus, is at least peaceful.

Continue…

The Commons: Darkness in the mid-afternoon

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 7:42 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. The obscenity on the Hill carries on undaunted.

Maybe it is just the season—as soon as the clocks are turned back each fall, Ottawa is suddenly made even darker and colder than usual—but the daily insulting of the public’s intelligence seems particularly dreary of late. For sure, it has been worse. And it may yet get worse. But has it ever seemed so witless? Has it ever felt so leaden? Is it just us or is it getting dim in here?

There is much to be said—with expletives and otherwise—about the government’s recent penchant for shutting down debate. But it is surely more than that.

It is, no doubt, certain practicalities: the temporary status of the two opposition leaders, the prolonged nature of certain disagreements or the lack of some tangible new gazebo-based outrage to focus on, for instance. But it is also the collective and universal decision that sound economics, study and evidence are not particularly necessary when formulating public policy. It is the rote demagoguery. It is general neglect. It is smug disregard. It is the willingness of grown men and women in business attire to stand and allow themselves to be used to read scripted banalities and invective into the official record.

It is not all bad, of course. Continue…

Mark your calendars

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 4:07 PM - 0 Comments

The NDP has released its official schedule and themes for leadership debates.

December 4th, Ottawa – Building an inclusive economy
January, Halifax – Giving families a break
February, Quebec City – Providing leadership on the world stage
February, Winnipeg – Building bridges between urban and rural Canada
March, Montreal – Building a strong united Canada
March, Vancouver – Creating opportunities for youth and new Canadians

Paul Dewar is calling for 10 debates, including two each in the regions of Atlantic Canada, Ontario, Quebec, the Prairies, British Columbia and the North.

Insite: ‘Too early to tell’ if it works?

By Julia Belluz - Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:56 PM - 0 Comments

“I think it’s just too early to tell.”—Ontario health minister Deb Matthews on whether she opposes safe-injection sites, 11/02/2011

In the 1990s, Vancouver was Canada’s capital of drug-related crime and home to the fastest-growing AIDS epidemic in North America. Back then, drug users injecting were a common sight in the city’s Downtown Eastside. They were doing so against the backdrop of a changing HIV epidemic in Canada, with the concentration of the disease shifting from men who have sex with men to addicts sharing needles.

Thus, the city on Canada’s west coast was a fitting locale for Insite, the first safe-injection site on the continent. Allowing people to use pre-obtained drugs under medical supervision could potentially reduce the harms associated with this type of drug use—namely, the risk of overdose and infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis C.

Insite fell into the category of what health policy wonks call “harm reduction,” or policies and programs implemented to reduce the adverse health, social and economic consequences of illegal drugs (and other high-risk activities). International health organizations—such as the WHO and UNAIDS—believe in harm-reduction interventions, and endorse them as a key part of a global HIV-prevention strategy. Continue…

Google Music debuts in the U.S.

By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:30 PM - 0 Comments

Google Music, the search giant’s own free music streaming service, launched on Thursday, joining long-time rivals Apple’s iTunes and Amazon’s Cloud Player, the Financial Times reports. Google music offers streaming and cloud-based locker that enable users to play songs through Web browsers or Android devices. The launch comes after the tech behemoth signed licensing deals with three major music labels: Universal Music, Sony Music Entertainment, and EMI. For now, Google Music is only available in the U.S.

The Financial Times

Kenney stands by decision to reject Afghan intepreter

By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 3:10 PM - 0 Comments

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney defended the government’s decision to deny Afghan interpreter Sayed Shah Sharifi a visa to Canada on Wednesday, saying in a letter sent to the Toronto Star that Sharifi did not meet certain established criteria. The minister’s statement comes after the Star reported that Sharifi, who served Canadian troops as a battlefield interpreter during the war in Afghanistan, was twice denied a visa to immigrate to Canada. “The program I established was designed to help those who face specific, individualized threats to their lives as a direct result of having worked with Canadian troops as translators,” Kenney wrote. Sharifi, the letter noted, simply couldn’t convince immigration officials that he faced such threats. Star columnist Paul Watson, however, retorted in a column on Thursday that, “I’ve been reporting from Afghanistan since 1996, and have interviewed Taliban commanders and fighters numerous times, most recently in January 2009. I have never met a Talib, and I don’t know of any expert on Afghanistan, who would say the insurgents aren’t hunting for people like Sharifi.”

The Toronto Star

The Toronto Star

Week in Pictures: November 14 – 20, 2011

By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 2:59 PM - 0 Comments

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Week in Pictures: November 14 – 20, 2011

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Greek photographer Yannis Behrakis runs to avoid an exploding stun grenade thrown by riot police

Greek photographer Yannis Behrakis runs to avoid an exploding stun grenade thrown by riot police during violent clashes following an anti austerity protest in Thessaloniki September 10, 2011. (Ken Cedeno/Reuters)

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Winnipeg MP stands by Twitter slurs

By macleans.ca - Thursday, November 17, 2011 at 2:49 PM - 0 Comments

Winnipeg MP Pat Martin, one of the NDP’s most prominent members in the Commons, refused to apologize on Thursday for a slur he tweeted against the Harper government on Wednesday, after the Tories shut down debate on a budget bill, the Globe and Mail reports. “This is a f–ing disgrace… closure again. And on the Budget! There’s not a democracy in the world that would tolerate this jackboot s–,” read the tweet. Interim NDP Leader Nycole Turmel appeared to stand by Martin’s Twitter utterings, noting in a statement that, “his language was not appropriate and could have been offensive to some,” but also that “the Conservatives’ actions are not appropriate in a democracy and offensive to all Canadians.”

The Globe and Mail

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