Sons of Internet Anarchy

By Jaime Weinman - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 2:15 PM - 0 Comments

Kurt Sutter, the creator of Sons of Anarchy, is one of the most interesting of the many TV showrunners who post or tweet online, particularly in his relationship to the community of online TV critics. In a blog post after the season finale of Sons of Anarchy, he lit into the critics who, he argued, don’t get the show and what it’s going for – in particular, he felt that some critics want the show to be a realistic drama rather than the pulpy soap opera it is. Then, when he’d calmed down a bit, he gave a more mellow interview to Alan Sepinwall where he retracted or modified some of what he had said, and discussed the same issues in a less contentious tone.

The original post is still valuable, though, as an expression of some of the frustrations of a TV showrunner’s relationship to critics, and particularly to Continue…

The unlikely partnership behind MLSE deal

By Jonathon Gatehouse - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 1:36 PM - 0 Comments

Content has long been King. But in the wake of the joint Rogers Communications/BCE takeover of Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, it has been upgraded to Emperor, if not Supreme Galactic Ruler. How else does one explain two of Canada’s fiercest business rivals coming together to pay an astounding $1.32 billion for the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan’s 79.53 per cent share of the company that owns the NHL’s Maple Leafs, NBA’s Raptors, major league soccer’s Toronto FC, the minor league Toronto Marlies hockey club, and the Air Canada Centre?

It is a premium price, for what the rival communications giants and broadcasters—Rogers owns Sportsnet, and Bell TSN—believe is a premium TV product. And the driving force for the surprise deal was clearly self-preservation.

When the Ontario Teacher’s Pension Plan let it be known that they were willing to sell their 80 per cent stake in MLSE last spring, (purchased 17 years ago for $180 million) it was obvious that it would take very deep pockets indeed to seal the bargain. Both Rogers and Bell kicked the tires, fearing the other was motivated to buy. Regional TV rights for the Toronto Maple Leafs—a team that attracts viewers and advertisers like no other in Canada—currently split between the two sports networks were to come up for renegotiation in 2015. The national broadcast rights, shared between TSN and CBC, are up for grabs in 2014. In Canada, any sports channel without NHL hockey—and more specifically the Leafs—wouldn’t last for long. And in wedding themselves in MLSE ownership, BCE and Rogers have gained perpetual access to the most sought-after content in the land. Continue…

Avoid ‘New Year’s Eve’—it’s no guilty pleasure

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 1:33 PM - 0 Comments

Katherine Heigl and Jon Bon Jovi in 'New Year's Eve'

It’s a classic choice. You’re looking for an easy-going, no-brainer date movie. Everyone is raving about The Artist, including me. But it’s silent and black-and-white, and New Year’s Eve is beckoning with all those stars and shiny colours. You wonder if, just maybe, it could be a guilty pleasure. Stop!! Back away from the multiplex!! Don’t let the all-star cast fool you. The glitzy lure of New Year’s Eve, not unlike the night itself, is a trap. This regrettable confection is directed and produced by Garry Marshall, who also gave us Valentine’s Day, and the formula remains the same: movie as celebrity mix tape. Recruit as many stars as possible, throw them together in a gaudy holiday punch bowl of sentimental shlock, and wait for the box office to get high. But watching this movie was like going on a bender and mixing too many multi-coloured drinks. Usually I don’t mind watching bad movies. It’s my job, after all, and even the worst movies tend to offer some some bonbons of pleasure, guilty or not. But NYE, which takes place in NYC, is exceptionally toxic. Waiting for that ball to drop at Times Square felt like an effing eternity.

The script plays like the Hollywood casting version of a computer dating program. Continue…

RCMP scrambled to afford fight against human smuggling

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 12:23 PM - 0 Comments

The RCMP is defending its decision to invest $11.4 million dollars to step up efforts to combat human smuggling after almost 500 Sri Lankan asylum seekers aboard the MV Sun Sea cargo ship landed on Canadian shores last years, Postmedia News reports. Private emails obtained through a freedom of information request, though, reveal that some senior RCMP officers were concerned about how the program would be paid for, given that other units were already starved for funds. The initiative involved appointing a new special advisor on human smuggling and illegal immigration and deploying special services to Southeast Asia. Costs had to be absorbed from within, meaning resources were shifted from other areas, including criminal intelligence. Immigration officer Jason Kenney, however, said that the task force was successful in stopping at least three smuggling operations in Thailand.

Postmedia News

Ottawa to revoke thousands of citizenships

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:54 AM - 0 Comments

At least 2,100 people could have their citizenship revoked and another 4,400 permanent residents be barred from obtaining citizenship, Minister Jason Kenney announced on Friday morning. The crackdown follows an initiative started in July, when the government targeted 1,800 people its says obtained their citizenship through fraud. Kenney said the people losing their citizenship this time paid consultants to dodge the residency requirement when they had spent little or not time in Canada. All the suspect fraudsters are being contacted by mail and will have an opportunity to appeal the government’s decision in Federal Court before their citizenships and residency status are permanently revoked.

CBC

Scouts Canada finally apologizes

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:41 AM - 0 Comments

Scouts Canada’s blanket apology to anyone who was sexually abused by its volunteer leaders has met with praise and criticism from sexual-abuse counselors and former victims. Steve Kent, the organization’s chief commissioner, said in a video and written statement that the organization “sincerely and deeply” apologizes to any and all former scouts who suffered harm at the hands of leaders. The organization has been under pressure to respond to allegations that it kept confidential lists of known pedophiles associated with Scouting and kept the abuse suppressed by signing confidentiality agreements with victims. While sexual abuse counselors have praised the cathartic benefit of a public statement, a few former victims have come forward to say it’s “too little, too late.” Scouts Canada’s promise to review its child protection policies also was greeted with skepticism, with one lawyer calling it “a whitewash.”

CBC

Rogers and Bell buy MLSE

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:38 AM - 0 Comments

Rogers, which owns Maclean’s, has partnered with rival Bell to buy a 79.53 per cent share of Maple Leafs Sports Entertainment. The deal, reportedly worth $1.32 billion, gives the telecommunications behemoths control of the NHL’s Toronto Maple Leafs, the NBA’s Toronto Raptors, MLS’s Toronto FC, as well as specialty networks Leafs TV and Raptors TV. The deal is expected to be finalized this summer, at which point Rogers and Bell will each assume a 37.5 per cent share of the company, with current minority owner Larry Tannenbaum increasing his stake from 20 per cent to 25 per cent.

NHL.com

Make the polluter pay

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:36 AM - 0 Comments

Thomas Mulcair tables a cap-and-trade proposal.

Mulcair’s plan goes further than the cap and trade proposal advanced by late NDP leader Jack Layton in the party’s election platform last spring. It would apply the “polluter-pay” principle not just to the 700 largest industrial emitters but to all major sources of greenhouse gases. Mulcair says Canada “can no longer afford to focus only on the worst of the worst.”

The plan and Mulcair’s candidacy have been endorsed by Weaver, lead author of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and co-recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. ”Canada needs a prime minister who recognizes that a healthy economy does not have to come at the expense of a healthy environment,” Weaver said in a written statement Thursday. ”In my considered assessment, Thomas Mulcair is ideally suited for the task.”

The backgrounder distributed by the Mulcair campaign yesterday is here.

Feuds: fightin’ words

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

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

Environmentalists Vs. Keystone XL Pipeline

Environmentalists and anti-oil sands groups managed to delay U.S. government approval of a $7-billion, 2,736-km pipeline that would carry oil from Alberta to refineries in the Gulf of Mexico. Though pipelines are normally nothing to get excited about, TransCanada’s Keystone XL pipeline was singled out by those unhappy with U.S. energy policy and Canada’s development of the oil sands, a carbon-intensive source of crude. Protesters ranged from Hollywood celebrities like Robert Redford and left-leaning luminaries like Naomi Klein to concerned ranchers and residents along the pipeline’s proposed route.

Google Vs. Apple

The battle for control of the ballooning smartphone market got personal as Google’s open-source operating system, Android, overtook Apple’s iOS, which runs the iPhone. Steve Jobs, Apple’s late CEO, told his official biographer the search-engine giant didn’t play fair and accused Google of “grand theft” of the iPhone concept (among more colourful language). Google chairman Eric Schmidt, who once sat on Apple’s board, responded by saying “the Android effort started before the iPhone effort.”

Continue…

EU nations strike fiscal deal

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:59 AM - 0 Comments

Twenty three EU countries struck an early morning deal on Friday that calls for tighter fiscal integration and stricter budget rules in the economic and political union. The deal, aimed at stemming the ongoing euro crisis, leaves out the U.K., which walked away from negotiations after failing to secure concessions exempting the British financial sector from tightening regulation and scrutiny. Sweden, Hungary and the Czech Republic all left open the possibility of joining the new compact at a later date. Representatives from the three nations said they had to consult their parliaments before going further. The new agreement calls into question Britain’s role in an evolving Europe. Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron may now face pressure from within his own party to move the U.K. away from continental intergration.

Reuters

Conservatives to cut off Wheat Board debate in Senate

By macleans.ca - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:54 AM - 0 Comments

The Conservatives said they plan to cut off debate in the Senate on a bill to end the Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly on foreign grain sales so that it can be turned into law by next week. The decision to invoke closure came as Liberal senators were attempting to freeze the debate, and it mirrors how the Harper government cut off debate on the Wheat Board bill in the House of Commons in November. Earlier this week, a Federal Court judge found that the Harper government broke the law because it failed to hold a plebiscite for farmers affected by the bill before tabling it. Since the Conservatives have a majority in the Red Chamber, the approval of the bill is a foregone conclusion. Justice Minister Rob Nicholson, speaking with reporters in Toronto, maintained that the government could pass the bill despite the court ruling. “I’m confident that the legislation that we introduce to Parliament conforms to the Constitution and is within the powers of the Canadian parliament,” he said. Meanwhile, some Liberals senators argue that passing the legislation would amount to being in contempt of court. “It’s a matter of whether we respect the laws of the land or we don’t,” Liberal Senator Robert Peterson told the Globe and Mail.

The Globe and Mail

Comebacks: many happy returns

By Richard Warnica - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:45 AM - 0 Comments

Gene J. Puskar/AP

Sidney Crosby

At 24 years old, in the prime of his athletic life, Crosby was sidelined for almost a year after he took two hits to the head in consecutive games in January. His concussion was so severe he reportedly had trouble concentrating while watching TV. But when the Nova Scotia-born NHL superstar and Canadian Olympic hero took to the ice against the New York Islanders in November, he scored two goals and two assists. Hockey fans around the world let out a collective sigh of relief.

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic

The irony-free children’s cartoon, originally created to help sell toy horses, gained new life among adult fans, although exactly why remains a bit of a mystery. Unlike other cartoons popular with grown-ups, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic makes almost no concessions to its older audience. Each episode ends with a moral lesson—if you try to please everypony, you often end up pleasing nopony, for example—and the storylines are free of clever wordplay or in-jokes. None of that, though, has stopped the “Bronies,” as male fans are known, from spreading their pony love online in forums like 4Chan and Know Your Meme.

Continue…

What you don’t know

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 10:03 AM - 0 Comments

A former Progressive Conservative MP and Justice Department advisor says the government’s crime legislation will lead to worsening conditions in prisons.

Mr. Daubney said that, since the mid-2000s, the Justice Department has asked for less and less research to be undertaken and typically ignores recommendations against policies such as mandatory minimum sentences or prison expansion. “It is kind of sad that I have to do this, but somebody has to take the risk of talking,” Mr. Daubney said. “I feel sad for my colleagues who are still there. It was clear the government wasn’t interested in what the research said or in evidence that was quite convincingly set out.”

The prison ombudsman adds his concerns. A study by the Quebec Institute for Socio-economic Research and Information projects a total cost of $19 billion to build and expand prisons.

No longer needed

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:51 AM - 0 Comments

The Canadian Press reports that the Harper government is suddenly less interested in hearing from the auditor general.

Five different individuals – inside and outside Auditor-General Michael Ferguson’s office – told The Canadian Press this week that officials there expect the opportunities for him to testify on his quarterly reports will be reduced … This week, Conservatives on the public accounts committee rejected a Liberal motion to call the newly appointed Mr. Ferguson to testify about the controversial G8 legacy infrastructure fund … Earlier this fall, the Conservatives on the same committee declared it unnecessary to pursue the study of an auditor general’s report that was tabled before the May 2 election.

The top 11 films of 2011

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:50 AM - 0 Comments

Bérénice Bejo in 'The Artist'/ The Weinstein Company

In 2011 the big screen resembled a rearview mirror more than ever before. The death of originality has never been more evident: 2011 saw a record 27 sequels, including eight of the 10 top-grossing films. On the other hand, the box-office champ, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2, was a rousing finale that pointed to a positive trend: flashes of convergence between Hollywood muscle and creative nerve. Tabloid dad Brad Pitt showed us the actor behind the celebrity with superb performances as utterly different fathers in Moneyball and The Tree of Life. And it was a thrill to see movie stars take risks in both Tree and Melancholia, two cosmic visions of humanity that tried to bust poetry out of the arthouse. Even 3D acquired some class, bringing prehistoric art to life in Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and uncovering the magic of early cinema in Hugo. Between Hugo and the silent black-and-white delight of The Artist, film went far enough back to reclaim some of its vanished pedigree.

I’ve compiled 11 personal favourites for 2011. Strong contenders that missed the cut include Le Havre, Café de Flore, A Dangerous Method, Bridesmaids, The Trip, 50/50, Attack the Block, War Horse and Martha Marcy May Marlene. And some of the best performances were not always found in the best films: Michelle Williams in My Week With Marilyn, Meryl Streep in The Iron Lady, Michael Shannon in Take Shelter and Michael Fassbender in Shame. At press time I had yet to see a couple of titles.The list has since been revised online since its publication in Maclean’s.

Continue…

Amid an emergency in Attawapiskat—a strategy

By Paul Wells - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Oakland Ross/Toronto Star

The Prime Minister’s Office distributes a daily “media barometer” that lists the stories getting the widest coverage and generating the most buzz on blogs and talk radio. Last week the public relations crisis at Attawapiskat First Nation entered its second week. The humanitarian crisis has been going on for longer. For the first time since the Harper government was elected in 2006, a story on Aboriginal affairs made it to the top of the PMO barometer.

Standard PMO procedure is to do what it takes to get a story off the top of the barometer. That’ll be easy enough for news of the appalling living conditions at Attawapiskat. Short attention spans will do the job without any help from the Langevin Block. Fixing the actual problem will take longer.

On Nov. 29, Aboriginal Affairs Minister John Duncan met until 10 p.m. with the cabinet subcommittee in charge of the strategic and operating review. He had prepared for his appearance for days. Every minister has to go through this. Their task is to explain how they will cut 10 per cent of their department’s spending, if needed.

Continue…

How Ottawa’s foreign ownership rules are causing big headaches

By Chris Sorensen - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:10 AM - 0 Comments

Michael Christopher Brown/Corbis

Anthony Lacavera arrived on Canada’s wireless scene with a sunny attitude and a promise to shake up the industry. But after spending the past two years bogged down in regulatory and legal proceedings, the once-optimistic CEO of Globalive Communications is beginning to sound like a different man. Though he remains “bullish” on upstart Wind Mobile’s chances, Lacavera says he’s been forced to abandon his original game plan as dark clouds begin to gather over Wind and other new entrants.

It’s been a long, see-saw battle: Industry Canada, which paved the way for new wireless start-ups by preventing giants like BCE Inc., Telus Corp. and Rogers Communications Inc. from bidding on certain licences during a 2008 auction, approved Globalive’s corporate structure only to have the Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission reject it over concerns that the involvement of a giant multinational telecom and its Egyptian billionaire founder violated foreign ownership laws. Embarrassed, then-industry minister Tony Clement scrambled to have cabinet overrule the regulator and then promptly lost a legal challenge in federal court. The decision was later reversed on appeal and could possibly be overturned yet again if the Supreme Court of Canada decides to look at the case.

“It’s a ridiculous set of events,” a weary-sounding Lacavera says. “And it was all very high profile. So now any investor thinking of investing in Canada sees that on the radar screen and would be saying, ‘Do I really want to risk my money?’ ”

Continue…

REVIEW: The Oxford Companion to Beer

By Mike Doherty - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 8:00 AM - 0 Comments

A bumper crop of books has followed the recent proliferation of craft breweries, and this hefty tome is designed to loom over them all. Weighing in at nearly two kilograms—about as much as two pints of ale—it’s a one-stop resource for defining terms, historicizing styles and contextualizing beer business and culture, as well as a new way to settle arguments at the pub.

With over 1,100 entries by 166 contributors, the Companion is an encyclopedia in all but name. Its editor, Garrett Oliver, is brewmaster at the Brooklyn Brewery, one of America’s largest and most esteemed craft breweries, as well as a colourful writer. He pens a polemic in his preface: “Wine, beer’s great rival . . . cannot begin to approach beer’s variety of flavour, aroma and texture.” Indeed, arriving 17 years after the Oxford Companion to Wine’s first edition, this title seeks to lend scholarly legitimacy to beer. Each entry includes a host of facts and figures, but one needn’t dwell on, say, the relative Plato gravity scale measurements of various versions of Scotch ale; there are, thankfully, some juicy bits. You’ll learn, for instance, about the battle between two breweries called Budweiser, the intemperate story of India pale ale, and the beneficence of beer gods—from Sumeria to Asgard. Subjects range from the general (“flavour”) to the historically curious (“Burton snatch”) and the self-referential (“beer writing”).

Brewing history is often murky, and not just because of hazy memories: beers and beer styles alter over time due to the inconstant availability of ingredients, the evolution of consumer taste, technological developments, laws, etc. In brewing, “tradition” is an ongoing process, and this book does an admirably comprehensive job of tracking it.

A number of beer writers have, however, questioned some of the book’s historical details and interpretations of facts—there’s a wiki online to note disputes. Perhaps the second edition will clear these up. For now, one can nonetheless enjoy the book—ideally taken with a grain of malt.

‘Fundamental constitutional imperatives’, the man says

By Colby Cosh - Friday, December 9, 2011 at 7:53 AM - 0 Comments

Canadian judges are rightly protective of their independence. It takes no more than a whisper of political interference in their work—indeed, arguably much less than a whisper—to raise their hackles and bestir them to the clamorous defence of this most sacred principle. But this principle ought to cut both ways, yes? Mischievous interference in politics by judges should be castigated just as seriously, if we are to preserve the proper relationship between elected institutions and the bench—if only because involvement in law-making by judges invites reaction, pushing us toward an open contest of force between the branches of government. The branch that doesn’t command fighter jets probably shouldn’t want that.

This is worth considering, I think, after Hon. Douglas Campbell’s Wednesday afternoon decision in the Federal Court case of Friends of the Canadian Wheat Board et al. vs. Canada. Campbell’s decision has inspired an immediate loathing and derision from lawyers of a sort I don’t remember seeing since the Miglin case (2003).

Campbell was presented by the government with the argument that section 47.1 of the Wheat Board Act, which Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz pretty obviously violated, contravenes parliamentary sovereignty. 47.1 was added in 1998; it forbids the minister from introducing a statute to take grains out of the single-desk marketing regime without holding a plebiscite of growers. As I wrote earlier, the section has never been considered quite kosher. Parliaments can bind their future successors by means of “manner and form” procedural rules, but (leaving aside some quibbles and wrinkles and impish theoretical contrarianism) they can’t put a fence around their legislative legacy by making it harder to repeal individual statutes than it was to pass them in the first place. This is as much a matter of rudimentary logic as it is of the “constitution” per se, for whose will would we expect and desire to prevail in a contest between the Parliament of 1998 and the Parliament of 2011? Continue…

‘The Artist’: the year’s most unlikely crowd-pleaser

By Brian D. Johnson - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 11:59 PM - 0 Comments

Bérénice Bejo in 'The Artist'

This time of year I get a lot of people asking me to recommend movies. Whenever I urge them to see The Artist, the reaction is predictable. Something along the lines of, “Yeah, yeah, I know it’s supposed to be great, but I’m more in the mood for a movie-movie. Something that won’t be a chore.” And it’s really hard to convince someone that a silent, black-and-white film is not some cinephile specialty item but a ‘movie-movie’—a broadly entertaining romp that takes no effort whatsoever to watch. In fact, the reason I always recommend The Artist as my default pick is that it’s a safe choice no matter who’s asking—the year’s most unlikely crowd-pleaser.

In Cannes, where watching films in competition can be an endurance test, The Artist received the most jubilant response. It was like recess. In fact, the main knock it received from high-pedigree critics is that is was too broadly entertaining. Since then, after charming audiences at TIFF, the film has had remarkable staying power. It is emerging as one of 2011′s most unassailable Oscar candidates. And it also reflects a curious trend. Along with Hugo, Martin Scorsese’s uncharacteristic foray into 3D family fare, it has exhumed silent film from the art-house vault and given it a new populist pedigree. The Artist is, ironically, not an art film.

In trying to convey its  appeal, I’ve found it useful to say it’s the kind of film Woody Allen would like to have made. But it’s much better than Woody’s Midnight in Paris. The nostalgic reverie it inspires is more original; though it doesn’t advertise its intellect, it’s smarter. And  it actually is a French movie, one that has no need for subtitles. Continue…

“My children did a lot of cruelty to me”

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 11:51 PM - 0 Comments

Michael Friscolanti is covering the honour killing trial for Maclean’s, filing regular reports from the Kingston, Ont. courtroom to Macleans.ca and weekly dispatches for the magazine. The reports will continue for the duration of the trial, which is expected to run into January.

Standing in the witness box, hand on the Koran, Mohammad Shafia promised to “state the truth, and nothing but the truth, so help me Allah.” And for a few minutes, at least, the accused “honour killer” kept his oath. He told the jury he was born in Kabul, Afghanistan (true), that his family was very rich (true), and that he had two wives and seven children (until the night one of those wives and three of those children ended up at the bottom of the Rideau Canal).

Then his testimony turned to the wiretaps. Continue…

Two steps back

By Alex Ballingall - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 9:20 PM - 0 Comments

Dave Chidley/CP

Don Cherry

As the hockey world adjusts to stricter hitting rules and increasing concerns over brain injuries, Cherry’s tough-guy rhetoric seems more and more antiquated. The man of a million suits bowed to pressure in October and apologized after he called three former NHL enforcers “pukes” and “turncoats.” Weeks later, he declined an honorary degree from the Royal Military College after a professor took issue with Cherry’s alleged intolerance of French-Canadians, immigrants and homosexuals.

Conrad Black

In September the former business mogul was returned to the prison population he once described as “an ostracized, voiceless legion of the walking dead.” U.S. District Judge Amy St. Eve had re-sentenced Black to 13 more months behind bars in Florida for mail fraud and obstruction of justice.

Continue…

Farewell

By macleans.ca - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 9:10 PM - 0 Comments

Paul Morris/Getty Images

‘Stay hungry. Stay foolish.’

—Steve Jobs

The Commons: The tiny, perfect Conservative

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, December 8, 2011 at 8:42 PM - 0 Comments

The Scene. She is a pair of dimples in a room full of jowls.

Meet Michelle Rempel, the parliamentary secretary to the Minister of the Environment. She is short and smiley and perfectly patronizing. She speaks without holding a script, gestures with confidence and seems even to listen to what her counterparts are saying (even if only in search of a turn of phrase she can turn back on her opponent). Only 31 and barely six months into her first term in Parliament, she is already feigning indignation like she was born here. And so the government side is surely thankful that Peter Kent has been out of town this last little while. Continue…