The one thing you can’t fight

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 1:48 PM - 0 Comments

Olivia Chow reflects.

“Arguing with fate is a completely useless exercise,” she said. “There’s one thing in life, you don’t know when you’re going to die, how you’re going to, so why question it . . . It’s a waste of emotional energy.”

Harper shrugs off Keystone stall

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 1:35 PM - 0 Comments

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he’s serious about selling Canadian oil to Asia, and cast doubts on a U.S. approval of the Keystone XL pipeline in an interview with CTV National News to be aired on Boxing Day. The comments were made a day after the Obama administration signalled it could reject the $7-billion project linking the Alberta tar sands to Texas, following approval by the U.S. Senate of a bill that could force his government to make a decision on the project within 60 days. Although approval of the project is still possible, pending a U.S. State Department review of alternate pipeline routes, Harper seemed skeptical it would actually go forward. When asked about the likelihood of selling oil to China at the expense of angering Washington, the prime minister said he was recently told in the U.S. that Keystone would get done, but added that Canada is now on a different track.

Postmedia

Maclean’s story leads to Christmas treat for Coquitlam family

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 1:00 PM - 0 Comments

It all started with a story published by Maclean’s in the early 1980s about families on welfare. The article happened to feature the family of Chad Joe, then a 14-year-old boy and now president of Westcoast Mining Contractors. Shortly after the piece hit the presses, Vancouver Sun sports writer Greg Douglas contacted Joe’s mother to inform her that her family was being treated to a limousine ride and a Harlem Globetrotters game at Vancouver’s Pacific Coliseum. The experience made a big impression on the young Joe. So big, in fact, that 30 years later–last week to be precise–he wrote to Douglas to say he would return the gift, by donating Canucks tickets and limousine service to and from Vancouver’s Rogers Arena to a family that, in Joe’s words, “needs a positive experience.” Coquitlam single mom Alison Goulding, who lost her husband in 2006, and her two kids–along with three friends–are counting down the days till a limousine will stop in front of their door on Friday, Dec. 23.

The Vancouver Sun

Flaherty’s non-negotiable terms fit health spending reality [UPDATED]

By John Geddes - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 12:33 PM - 0 Comments

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty’s decision to lay down the law, rather than open up negotiations, on health care transfers from the federal government to the provinces might have been a tad undiplomatic. But there’s only so much anyone can say about the etiquette of federal-provincial relations without losing all contact with reality, and that leaves us with numbers, not niceties, to consider.

And the figures Flaherty put on the table look pretty big. He promises to maintain the current 6-per-cent a year pace of growth in health transfers to the provinces until 2016-17, and after that peg the annual hike to nominal gross domestic product growth, or the increase in GDP plus inflation. Projecting with confidence that far out is impossible, but you’d expect nominal GDP to grow by at least 4 per cent [check the update below].

Continue…

Crank yankers

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 12:06 PM - 0 Comments

The Kitchener-Waterloo Record traces mischievous calls made during the election to the Conservative party.

The complaint filed by Joe Nowak, president of the Kitchener-Conestoga federal Liberal association, was obtained by The Record and includes the phone number Siopiolosz traced. When called, the number goes to a voice mail for the “Conservative Party.” The message asks callers to leave their name, number and a detailed message and says the party will get back to them within three business days. [Fred] DeLorey, director of communications and deputy director of political operations for the Conservative Party of Canada, confirmed in an email “that the number was ours.”

Numerous complaints about crank calls were made during the spring campaign.

The Conservative party has now released a statement explaining its side of the story. Continue…

Tories tie health transfers to GDP growth

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 12:01 PM - 0 Comments

Jim Flaherty is not a man who respects the sanctity of the buffet. The diminutive federal finance minister stunned his provincial colleagues over a pick-and-eat lunch Monday when he presented them with a new health care accord. According to the Globe and Mail, the text of the agreement spoiled more than one meal. The new deal, which Flaherty said will not be negotiated, ties future health transfers to GDP growth. By contrast, the previous accord, terms of which will continue through 2016-17, guaranteed the provinces a six per cent increase per annum. Western premiers seemed mostly sanguine about the take-or-leave-it offer. But from Manitoba eastward, there was outrage. “My feelings have moved from surprise to anger,” Stan Struthers, Manitoba’s finance minister, said, according to the Globe. “They just landed this on the table over the lunch hour. It caught us all by surprise.”

Globe and Mail

‘The CBC continues to ignore our daily newspapers’

By Martin Patriquin - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 11:50 AM - 0 Comments

In its home province, at least, Quebecor is very much the incarnation of its name. The company’s myriad media properties are populated by old-time separatists and fleur-de-lys blue nationalists for whom the Canadian flag is a nuisance at best and an incursion at worst. Le Journal de Montréal, the scrappy populist tabloid founded in 1964, remains the organ grinder of choice for Quebec’s long-standing language debates, and it is clear on which side the paper falls. “Soon [the English] are going to call us frogs and pea soup in the street, just like when I was young!” opined Gilles Proulx recently. Quebecor’s news agency regularly publishes the words of former FLQ member Jacques Lanctôt, whose kidnapping of British diplomat James Cross touched off the October Crisis of 1970.

Beyond Quebec’s borders, though, Quebecor’s message is decidedly different. “Coast to coast and as Canadian as you are,” intones the promotional baritone over scenes of flowing rivers and snow-capped mountains, during a commercial for Sun News Network. Far from disparaging it, the network uses the Canadian flag extensively in its branding.

You might call it Canada’s two-faced media empire. Yet while Quebecor’s French and English divisions may be firmly ensconced in their respective linguistic and cultural solitudes, they share the overriding editorial bent of the company itself—and that of its president and CEO, Pierre Karl Péladeau. The reclusive and often contradictory Péladeau has a well-known disdain for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, and has used his media holdings to attack the publicly funded Quebecor competitor—attacks that have taken on a new level of intensity over the last two years. Quebecor’s lawyers recently scored a victory against the CBC, when the Federal Court of Appeal ruled that the CBC must make public certain financial records.

The CBC, wrote Sun News host and columnist Ezra Levant recently in a typical broadside, is “a mega-corporation that demands a yearly $1.1-billion bailout from taxpayers, violates transparency laws and doesn’t register its secretive lobbying.” Yet Péladeau has been personally petitioning the CBC for a chunk of those taxpayer dollars while his media properties deride the CBC’s very existence. Over a period of 15 months, the Quebecor president, who oversees in excess of 16,000 employees, sent 12 personal letters and one handwritten fax to CBC president Hubert Lacroix requesting (and at times demanding) the CBC print its advertisements and promotions in Quebecor publications.

The letters, obtained through an Access to Information request and posted at the bottom of this article, reflect Péladeau’s combative nature—as well as his belief, however unsubstantiated, that the CBC has a long-running boycott of Quebecor. “[The CBC’s] total absence from [Quebecor daily] 24 Heures and but a small presence in Le Journal de Québec is flabbergasting, while both our competitors Metro and Le Soleil received the lion’s share,” Péladeau wrote in a letter dated Aug. 31, 2009. The Quebecor CEO further admonished Lacroix for what he called the CBC’s “frankly disproportionate coverage” of the labour strife at Le Journal de Montréal at the time. Two months later, Péladeau wrote that it “was unacceptable to democracy” that the CBC hadn’t advertised its municipal election coverage in Quebecor-owned media.

“Dear Hubert, I know that advertising choices interest you, so I include pages from Samedi Magazine,” Péladeau wrote in a handwritten note on Nov. 23, 2009. “Don’t worry, it’s not Quebecor Media that publishes it.” The note included two CBC advertisements that Péladeau had apparently clipped from Quebecor’s dishy (and since defunct) competitor; in his note, Péladeau makes light of Samedi’s low circulation numbers. Another of his missives decries the lack of CBC advertising dollars despite “a rather favourable article” written about a CBC personality in a Quebecor paper. Others still include graphs, pie charts and demographic data supporting Péladeau’s argument against what he calls CBC’s “totally unjustifiable boycott.”

“The CBC continues to ignore our daily newspapers, which are the biggest in Quebec,” Péladeau wrote in his final letter to Lacroix last December. “I can but protest once more this discriminatory attitude toward the group I have the privilege of overseeing, and it is equally detrimental to state television that it deprives itself of reaching an important part of the population.”

While he admits the CBC has never officially boycotted its media, Quebecor spokesperson Serge Sasseville says the facts speak for themselves: “There have simply been no CBC/Radio-Canada ads (except, ironically, in November 2010, when CBC/Radio-Canada went on a campaign to boast about its access to information record) in Quebecor Media since the beginning of 2009, a date which coincides with the beginning of the Journal de Montréal lockout,” Sasseville told Maclean’s via email. As well, “our sales staffs have been informed by media placement agencies working on behalf of CBC/Radio-Canada that they had received explicit orders from CBC/Radio-Canada not to advertise in our publications.” Not advertising in Quebecor publications, Sasseville adds, is akin to “depriving many of the very people that fund the state broadcaster of valuable information about CBC/Radio-Canada programming and coverage initiatives.”

For its part, the CBC says it has “over the years purchased advertising in [Péladeau’s] papers,” Lacroix told Maclean’s via email. “As we have said to Mr. Péladeau in our replies to his letters, we run our campaigns according to our objectives and choose the most appropriate media to ensure their success. That is our business and our expertise. In the same way, we do not suggest to Mr. Péladeau how to build his marketing, promotion or advertising campaigns or launch his programs . . . We would note that Radio-Canada does not receive advertising from Quebecor.”

Doubtless, Péladeau’s anti-CBC campaign is at least partly ideological. What unites the differing editorial stances of his English and French properties, apart from their visceral dislike of the public broadcaster, is a populist, free-market ideology of lower taxes and less regulation. Though it has its own public sector connection: roughly 45 per cent of Quebecor Media Inc., Quebecor’s media group, is owned by Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, the province’s pension manager funded in large part by taxpayer dollars.

Then there is the matter of Quebec City’s arena. Quebecor recently inked a deal that would give the company naming rights to the future home of Les Nordiques, should the city land an NHL franchise. The deal, finalized in September, will see some $400 million taxpayer dollars put toward a new stadium, which would then be rented to Quebecor. The deal, which wasn’t put to tender, required legislation to circumvent the government’s own laws against using public funds for a private company.

Like his English and French newspapers, Péladeau’s own political bent is conflicted. His father, Pierre, was in favour of Quebec’s separation from Canada; today, his son owns a cable news channel that peddles the very flag-draped brand of Canadian patriotism Pierre Sr. disdained. Yet Pierre Karl Péladeau remains strongly attached to the Québécois identity. In 2009, after losing a bidding war for ownership of the Montreal Canadiens, Péladeau implied that he didn’t like how the deal was strictly financial; it would have been better, he said, had the team owners better reflected Quebec’s identity. (The team was bought by the decidedly English Montreal Molson family.)

Perhaps there is method in all of Quebecor’s seeming contractions. “He’s a businessman above all else,” says Jean-Martin Aussant, a former Péquiste MNA who has since launched Option nationale, a splinter separatist party. “I think Pierre Karl found a niche and exploited it.” And, in the case of the CBC at least, he’s doing what any good businessman would do, contradictions be damned: trying to hobble the competition.

Juan Carlos’s bad year

By Patricia Treble - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 11:30 AM - 0 Comments

EPA/Keystone Press

This hasn’t been King Juan Carlos’s year. Since June, the Spanish monarch has had his right knee replaced, had surgery on his left Achilles, and suffered a black eye and injured nose after colliding with a door. However, all those health problems pale in comparison to an intensifying corruption scandal centred on his son-in-law, Iñaki Urdangarin, that threatens to damage the monarchy itself.

Urdangarin is under investigation for allegedly siphoning millions from his non-profit foundation, the Nóos Institute, into private companies under his control. An Olympic handball player before being elevated to duke of Palma when he married the king’s younger daughter Infanta Cristina in 1997, Urdangarin headed the foundation from 2004 to 2006. As well, leaks from the prosecutor’s office in Palma, the capital of the Balearic Islands, state the institute charged inflated fees and prices on big public contracts to organize events in the region. Police have raided Urdangarin’s offices and removed documents. He’s expected to be named a formal suspect within weeks, with charges coming later.

Urdangarin broke his silence this week, telling the news agency EFE, “I deeply regret that [the accusations] are causing serious damage to the image of my family and the house of his majesty the king, who have nothing to do with my private activities.” His lawyer says “he is fully innocent.”

Continue…

Apple’s iMothership

By Alex Ballingall - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 11:20 AM - 0 Comments

Apple's proposed HQ in Cupertino

By 2015, if things go according to schedule, 13,000 employees at Apple Inc. will be able to jog to the office along a meandering path hedged by leafy trees and wildflowers. They will approach a sleek, saucer-like ring—four storeys high—that will be made of glass, with a roof almost entirely covered in solar panels. On Dec. 6, Apple announced the updated plans for its new headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.: dubbed the “spaceship,” it will be a 1,463-m loop nestled in a park-like campus, housing a 45,000-sq.-foot fitness centre and restaurant. From the nearby street, the building will be barely visible above the greenery.

The massive, futuristic design might seem over the top for most companies. But for Apple—the tech trendsetter behind the iPod and iPad, and now among the biggest companies in the world (with $81 billion in cash on its books)—it almost seems fitting.

REVIEW: Tolstoy: A Russian Life

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Count Leo Tolstoy—novelist nonpareil, Christian mystic, proto-Communist, mad aristocrat and very embodiment of Mother Russia—may have lived until he was 82, but he has always left the impression that his lifespan was twice as long. One reason is caught in Bartlett’s subtitle: Tolstoy’s wildly eventful 19th-century life (1828 to 1910) spanned all the changes in pre-revolutionary Russia that would make it one of the most important nations of the 20th century. Born in a land without railways, he was eventually filmed by movie cameras wielded by celebrity-hunting American journalists. He died only seven years before the Bolshevik Revolution, but his father was a veteran of the war against Napoleon. At Tolstoy’s birth, the Russian nobility controlled serfs as though they were slaves—his grandparents gave his father a peasant girl when he was 16, for his “health.” Tolstoy abused his female serfs too after he became a landowner at 19, before he squandered his inheritance on gypsy singers and gambling.

Later, after a spiritual crisis in the 1870s, Tolstoy emerged as a Christian heretic opposed to violence and property, and a champion of peasants. (Of interest to Canada, he published his last novel, Resurrection, in 1899 to enable members of the Doukhobor sect to emigrate here.) A later influence on Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Tolstoy the political-religious thinker was also the subject of articles by Lenin. Like most great artists, he matters to most people precisely because of his art, but Bartlett makes a case for the rest of Tolstoy’s life too, and for the real possibility that he would be remembered now, even if he hadn’t written War and Peace and Anna Karenina.

Yet he did write them, and in the end that does matter most. Between the aristocratic excess and the ascetic zeal, Leo Tolstoy, for all his imperiousness and focus on large ideas, demonstrated a genius for observing and describing the smallest changes in human consciousness that has awed his readers ever since.

Is free trade with Europe an ill-timed diversion from Asia?

By Kathleen Harris - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

After nearly three years of measured, cordial talks, negotiators on both sides of the Atlantic are privately hunkering down to deal with the finer points of a high-stakes international trade game.

Most details remain under wraps after the recent completion of the ninth formal round of negotiations, but the Canada-European Union Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) is already being hailed as the landmark deal of a generation. For Canada, it represents the biggest, most significant bilateral initiative since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994, and in the words of International Trade Minister Ed Fast, it is, “by far, Canada’s most ambitious trade agreement.”

“It offers huge opportunities,” Fast says. “It’s an expansive agreement that is not only restricted to goods. It will include services, it will include procurement, it will include investment provisions. We expect it will also include provisions on the environment and on labour. This may become the gold standard agreement if we do this right.” Fast insists the Canadian government won’t be boxed in by any set deadline, but officials are quietly eyeing a mid-2012 completion date.

Continue…

Are members of organized religions inherently more generous?

By Ken MacQueen - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 11:10 AM - 0 Comments

Simon Hayter

When the management team of Vancouver’s Canuck Place children’s hospice met a few years back to consider a fundraising campaign to build a facility to meet the growing needs of the Fraser Valley, they were advised it was folly to consider a multi-million-dollar capital project in the teeth of a recession, says Filomena Nalewajek, CEO of Canuck Place.

She admits the board wavered before pressing ahead last year after making one key decision: they would locate the hospice in Abbotsford. “We did our homework and recognized we were going into a community that was different,” she says. “We just didn’t know how different.” A year later, the campaign is already “a stone’s throw” from hitting its $13-million target, says Nalewajek. “It is because of that community. It is unbelievable. It is unprecedented, especially in this economic climate.”

For nine years in a row, the tax filers of Abbotsford-Mission have given the largest per-capita charitable donations in Canada, Statistics Canada reported in December. Overall, Canadians gave $8.3 billion in 2010 to charities, based on income tax returns. The median Canadian donation was $260 per person, meaning half of donors gave more and half gave less. In Abbotsford and neighbouring Mission, however, the median donation was $610, which is impressive considering the median income is a modest $46,490. Calgary was next highest among metropolitan areas with a median donation of $380—but with a median annual income some $20,000 higher.

Ask observers why the Abbotsford area is so uncommonly generous, and invariably they note it is the heart of the Bible belt of B.C. There are about 90 churches in Abbotsford alone, including some of the largest in the country. As well, the community benefits from its vibrant, long-established Sikh, Muslim and Jewish communities. “There’s a faith base and there’s multiculturalism, people coming from abroad and knowing what it’s like to not have a lot to start off with,” says Hugh Franklin, a supervisor at the Abbotsford Food Bank and Christmas Bureau.

However, Dave Murray, the food bank director, questions how much of the donations go to church overheads and salaries. As well, Abbotsford attracts like-minded organizations, including a couple of Bible colleges, the provincial headquarters for the Mennonite Central Committee, which conducts relief and missionary work around the globe, and the national office of American fundamentalist preacher Charles R. Swindoll, among others, he notes. Still, he says there’s no denying faith-based institutions instill a culture of giving, though this year he frets that donations to the food bank are lagging by 20 per cent. “Eighty per cent of our budget comes in December-January, so it’s pretty stressful.”

Are members of organized religions inherently more generous? The short answer seems to be yes, but the devil is in the details. “Religious people do tend to give more than non-religious people,” says Michael Wilkinson, a sociologist specializing in religion at Trinity Western University in the Fraser Valley. This generosity is at the foundation of many faiths, he says. “It’s part of their value system. They’re motivated to give; they believe they’re doing something that’s important for the community. They believe they are involved in something bigger than themselves.”

When charities seek to learn what motivates donors, they often turn to Cygnus Applied Research, a Hamilton-based company that tracks donor intentions and charitable trends in the U.S. and Canada. Its annual survey of some 22,000 donors on both sides of the border confirms religious conviction has a major impact on philanthropy, says company president Penelope Burk. “It’s not just giving to one’s own faith,” she says. “Actively religious donors are more likely to give to, stay loyal to and give at a higher level to other causes.” Its survey of some 4,100 Canadians who regularly give to charity found the average donation in 2010 for those professing no religion was $2,345. Those who identified as “spiritual” gave an average $2,889. Those who called themselves “actively religious”—about one donor in five—gave an average $7,178.

Perhaps those numbers help explain why Quebecers—in what is considered Canada’s most secular province—give the least to charity. The median donation claimed by tax filers there was just $130.

Nationally, donations climbed by 6.5 per cent after a recessionary 2009, but Burk warns charities face a looming problem. Her surveys find the number of religious young people is falling, and with it the level of donations. The tiny minority of those under 35 who define themselves as religious gave over five times more generously than others their age, she says. As the influence of religion wanes among younger people (even in Abbotsford the average age of donors was 52), she wonders what is needed to instill a higher level of philanthropy: “I don’t know what the answer to that question is.”

REVIEW: The Saddam Tapes: The Inner Workings of a Tyrant’s Regime 1978-2001

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

“You are Iraqis and you realize that even the special weapons that the brothers have, if they use it, it will lose its value. Sometimes what you get out of a weapon is when you keep saying, ‘I will bomb you’; better than bombing him, actually.”

Saddam Hussein spoke these words to his inner circle in the midst of Iraq’s war with Iran in the 1980s, almost two decades before the United States finally overthrew him in 2003. If American war planners had had access to that conversation they might better have understood that Saddam’s lack of co-operation with UN weapons inspectors didn’t mean he still possessed chemical and biological weapons, but that he needed his enemies to believe he did.

As it stands, recordings of this conversation, and thousands more between Saddam and his top advisers, emerged only after Saddam was toppled and the invading Americans discovered a treasure trove of audiotapes. Transcripts of a small selection are presented here. The editors and translators involved were dogged and meticulous. The recordings were not all clearly dated and labelled. Sorting out who spoke, and when, must have been an enormous task.

The portrait that emerges of Saddam is of an intelligent, crafty, but also deluded, cruel, and bigoted man. He urged officials to read The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, apparently unaware that it is a fraudulent anti-Semitic text. He advocated distributing heroin to Kuwaiti youth during Iraq’s 1990 occupation of that country, and used murderous counterinsurgency tactics there. “This issue between the Arabs and Israel will never be resolved. It is either Israel or the Arabs,” he fumed. Saddam’s greatest enemy, though, was the United States. He sought to understand it but never really did. “America, comrades, America is not an easy country,” he said. But then neither was Iraq during Saddam’s rule. “We will never lower our heads as long as we are alive,” he once vowed, “even if we have to destroy everybody.”

Sondheim sings an ambiguous tune

By Jaime Weinman - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

Ron Galella/Getty Images

Just like his musicals, Stephen Sondheim’s Look, I Made a Hat has an ambiguous ending. The book, a sequel to last year’s Finishing the Hat, completes the annotated collection of lyrics by one of musical theatre’s greatest figures. But the book contains little recent material, and Sondheim, who hasn’t had a Broadway show since 1994, seems unsure if he will create a new one. In the book’s epilogue, he notes ruefully that “most theatre songwriters sound old-fashioned after the age of 50.” The bad boy of musical theatre, who appalled Broadway escapists with challenging shows like Sweeney Todd and Company, sometimes seems to be coming to terms with being an elder statesman.

To the disappointment of some fans, Sondheim spent the last decade mostly revising existing works, such as Road Show, a troubled musical he first tried to launch in 1996 and that had a series of short-lived, out-of-town and off-Broadway productions until 2008. Mark Horowitz, a music specialist at the Library of Congress who interviewed the 83-year-old lyricist for his 2002 book, Sondheim on Music, says that Sondheim hasn’t “made any conscious decision to focus on revising,” but that it’s mostly a result of the increased cost of getting anything produced on Broadway. Still, Horowitz adds, “I do know that he feels it’s hard to live up to the expectations other people have of him.” After all, Sondheim has won an Oscar, eight Tonys and shared a Pulitzer Prize for drama for the 1984 musical Sunday in the Park with George.

Continue…

In Bosnia, divided they stall

By Katie Engelhart - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

Amel Emric/AP

In late July, a great crowd gathered in Sarajevo to mark an occasion: the opening of Bosnia-Herzegovina’s first McDonald’s. Beneath the golden arches, perched high above the routine bustle of Marshall Tito Street, there was much fanfare. The president was on hand, as was the U.S. ambassador and Sarajevo’s stern-faced mayor (who bought the first burger). Patrons, who gathered by the hundreds, were quoted in the international press, saying things like, “We’re a normal country now!” or, “McDonald’s is a symbol of the Western world and I’m happy that Bosnia is joining it.”

It had been a long haul for the burger behemoth. “We faced problems with a very complicated system of government and administration, a difficult tax system and patent corruption,” Adi Hadziarapovic, McDonald’s local marketing director, explained. The chain must be relieved, then, that months later the place is still hopping with round-bellied men and flocks of well-heeled women in floral dresses clasping Big Macs. And the venue, a colossal new building whose glass facade overlooks the central thoroughfare, is still pristine. Two tidy-looking employees stand at attention by the door, straight-backed, brooms in hand—watching stoically over Bosnia’s new national treasure.

Continue…

In conversation: James Altucher

By Colin Campbell - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

James Altucher is the managing partner of Formula Capital, and the author of several finance and motivational books based on his wild career—he has made millions, lost it all and recovered it again, suffering an emotional breakdown along the way. His website Altucher Confidential has been viewed 10 million times since its launch last year. And his latest self-published book, I Was Blind But Now I See, is among the top-ranked motivational books on Amazon’s Kindle store. Altucher, who created StockPickr.com, was also a columnist for London’s Financial Times.

Q: Your self-help books focus on your own losses and failures and how you overcame them. What has struck a nerve with people?

A: I think everybody is ashamed. Of what? That in 2009 the tide came in and they either lost their job, their marriage or they had trouble paying their mortgage, or at any time in the past 15 years they didn’t make as much money as their friends. I think my book gives permission that that’s okay. We’ve all been through it.

e

What the Conservatives promised

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 10:43 AM - 0 Comments

The new health transfer model apparently comes with no strings attached.

Like the six percent promise, that seems at odds with what the Conservatives promised during the campaign. This from the party’s election platform (emphasis theirs).

Canadians expect and deserve timely access to high-quality health care services. To help achieve that goal, we will work collaboratively with the provinces and territories to renew the Health Accord and to continue reducing wait times.

In our discussions we will emphasize the importance of accountability and results for Canadians – better reporting from the provinces and territories to measure progress, and guarantees covering additional medically necessary procedures.

In the spirit of open federalism, when renewing the Health Accord we will respect the fact that health care is an area of provincial jurisdiction and respect limits on the federal spending power.

Recognizing asymmetrical federalism, we will follow the precedent of a separate agreement with the Government of Quebec regarding the implementation of the renewed Health Accord.

Accountability was a favourite word of the Conservatives after the campaign too. The Health Minister invoked it as recently as a week ago.

Laureen’s letter to China and the tree-planting MP

By Mitchel Raphael - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 10:10 AM - 0 Comments

Photograph by Mitchel Raphael

‘As Canadian as the maple leaf’

Sen. Mike Duffy is championing Anne of Green Gables in China. He has been working with Duncan McIntosh, president of the firm Anne in China Inc. as well as artistic director of the Montgomery Theatre in P.E.I., which promotes the works of Lucy Maud Montgomery. McIntosh says the 30,000 copies already translated into Mandarin have almost all been sold, so he is pushing to get more printed. Aside from bringing the popular story to China, the hope is to get Chinese tourists to come to P.E.I. in the same way Japanese visitors flock to the island because of Anne mania. The introduction to the book includes a message from Laureen Harper, which was arranged by Duffy. Mrs. Harper writes: “The story you are about to read is as Canadian as the maple leaf on our national flag, yet it has been enjoyed by tens of millions of readers all over the world. I think the reason Anne of Green Gables has won the hearts of readers from so many countries is because the story and the characters transcend linguistic and cultural differences . . . I hope you find yourself wanting to explore more of Anne’s world, and I invite you to come to Canada and visit beautiful Prince Edward Island.”

Political fashion leader

NDP leadership hopeful Niki Ashton was in an Ottawa Harry Rosen store recently getting her husband a Christmas gift. “Why aren’t you out campaigning?” said the salesman. He confessed that his party is No. 3 in the House. The Liberal supporter wished Ashton luck and congratulated her on making a smart fashion choice for her husband. On the fashion front, Ashton says she intends to avoid pantsuits for her leadership campaign, and if she does wear one, she will work hard to balance it with a fabulous shirt. After the first debate, a friend told her that the patent leather collar she had on was sure to “get you the gay vote.” At 29, Ashton is the youngest person running to lead the NDP. She will be 33 when the next election comes around in four years. Ashton notes that Manitoba’s Ed Schreyer was in his 30s when he became premier and 43 when he was selected to be governor general by Pierre Trudeau in 1978. Schreyer recently threw his support behind NDP leadership candidate and Quebec MP Thomas Mulcair.

Tree planting with Scott Brison

Nova Scotia Liberal MP Scott Brison still has his Christmas tree from four years ago. Since 2008, the MP has bought live trees he saves and plants in the spring. The past trees consist of an Austrian pine, a Sitka spruce and a blue spruce. This year Brison has a Serbian spruce. The trees have a special place in his front yard in Cheverie, N.S. Tree planting is not just a Christmastime pursuit for Brison; in recent years he has planted 85 apple trees and 600 white spruce at his rural property.

Brotherly love and jokes

Newfoundland Liberal MP Scott Andrews recently got this Christmas joke texted to him from his brother: “Why are politicians like Christmas lights? They all hang around together. Some don’t work. Others aren’t so bright.”

Tory picks CBC over CPAC

Ontario Tory MP Chris Alexander was recently double booked in the House foyer to appear on both French CPAC and on Evan Solomon’s Power & Politics on CBC. In the end he chose CBC to talk about border security.

Moustaches till Manuary?

Movember moustaches have come and gone, but several Liberal MPs are still sporting facial hair. Justin Trudeau has convinced others like Scott Simms to keep them for an event at the Liberal convention in mid-January that Trudeau has dubbed “Manuary.”

What Jim Flaherty said

By Aaron Wherry - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

After the Liberals and Conservatives exchanged campaign promises in April, Jim Flaherty was interviewed by Kathleen Petty on CBC radio’s The House. Here is my transcript of the portion of that conversation that dealt with health care transfers and the six percent increase.

Petty. Now let’s talk about health care because Stephen Harper, this week, along with the Liberals and we know the NDP as well, have all agreed to maintain health care transfers to the provinces to six percent as the escalator year-over-year after 2014, which is when the accord expires. But it’s not found in the platform, it’s not found in the budget, except as an assumption in 2015-16 that says that it’s subject to discussion or review, so I’m not quite sure how this is all being costed out.

Flaherty. Well, it is, I can assure you that the six percent increase is built into the fiscal track. That is, we go forward when we budget and make certain assumptions. We have assumed six percent on an ongoing basis for the Canada Health Transfer and we’re committed to that.

Petty. For how many years?

Flaherty. Well, until 2014 and then thereafter. Now, we have to negotiate…

Petty. But what’s thereafter? That’s the part I’m asking.

Flaherty. Thereafter’s at least two years…

Pause. So there’s the caveat to the six percent promise, right? Well, there might’ve been the caveat, except for the fact that the interview wasn’t over and Mr. Flaherty wasn’t done explaining himself. Continue…

The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo 2.0

By Brian D. Johnson - Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 12:01 AM - 0 Comments

There was good reason to be skeptical about a Hollywood remake of  The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. There was nothing wrong with the first movie, except that it was in Swedish and came with subtitles. (Strange paradox: while millions of  readers are capable of plowing through novelist Steig Larsson’s turgid prose in English translation, not so many are willing to read a few subtitles). Also, it was hard to imagine another actress improving on Noomi Rapace’s ferocious performance as Larsson’s cyber-punk heroine, Lisbeth Salander. But if anyone was qualified to take another crack at Larsson’s franchise, it would be director David Fincher, who has showed his mastery of the ritual murder genre in both Se7en and Zodiac.

Well, Fincher has succeeded admirably. His Girl With the Dragon Tattoo improves on both the book and the first movie. Right from the opening credits, we realize that this Tattoo will be a more luxurious, enjoyable ride. The über-cool black-and-grey title sequence, with bodies flowing like liquid mercury, could serve as the opening of a Bond movie. Of course, the current 007, Daniel Craig, stars as the Man Without the Dragon Tattoo—investigative journalist and Larsson alter-ego Mikael Blomkvist—but Craig is in strictly civilian mode here. Although his pyramid torso doesn’t quite match the book’s disheveled image of the hard-drinking, chain-smoking Blomkvist, Craig gives a modest, almost diminutive performance, leaving ample room for Salander to cut a swath through the story.

Rooney Mara rises to the insane challenge of the title role and nails it. She doesn’t take anything away from Noomi Rapace, who was sensational. But while Rapace cleaved to the Super Goth template set by the novel, Mara manages to make Lisbeth more human, and more believable, yet no less ruthless.That deep fault line of vulnerability—scarred over by a litany of childhood abuse—is always dimly visible, as a glint of desperation behind her bravado. Also, the love affair between Lisbeth and Blomkvist is also given a little more heat. In the book, she’s not permitted a shred of romantic feeling. In the film, as our feral avenger beds a man old enough to be her father, there are stirrings of emotional complexity.

Forgive me if I don’t labour through a byzantine plot summary. Even if you haven’t read the books, you probably have some familiarity with the story by now. But for those unafraid of spoilers, here’s the gist: Blomqvist is convicted of libel, set up by the tycoon he targeted. He’s then hired by industrial patriarch Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to investigate the 40-year-old disappearance of his niece, presumed murdered by a family member. Leaving behind his editor/girlfriend (Robin Wright), Blomqvist buries himself in research on a cold and remote island off the Swedish coast. Eventually he joins forces with Salander, who outstrips him with her computer-hacking skills, and slides naked into his bed. She, meanwhile, has been raped by her state guardian, and wreaked vengeance, blackmailing him in ink and blood.

For much of the story, Salander and Blomkvist drive separate narratives, and the film skates between them with great finesse. The movie is a flat-out masterpiece of editing. Also it’s not easy to make dry research compelling, but Fincher shoots, cuts and collates text and photographs and web images with the dexterity of a card shark; I’ve never seen a more virtuosic dance of stills in a movie. There’s a long history of solving mysteries by photo editing, and in watching Dragon Tattoo I was taken back to the seductive power of images in its early prototype: Antonioni’s Blow-Up.

Screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List, Moneyball) does a superb job of upgrading, and streamlining, Larsson’s narrative without losing essential ingredients. If anything, the story seems to have more substance and depth than on the page, or in the previous film. Even though the running time clocks in at 2 hours and 32 minutes, the movie flies by. The Hollywood budget brings a lustre to the filmmaking that the Swedish movie could not afford—from Lisbeth’s motorcycle rides through the night to the glass hilltop mansion occupied by the Venger dynasty’s  CEO (Stellan Skarsgård).  It’s not as if Fincher has softened or sold out the story for a mass audience. Although the violence is slightly less lurid, and the romance more fully-fleshed—both welcome tweaks—it’s still a tough R-rated thriller.

Tattoo‘s blockbuster pulp origins likely won’t allow the film to achieve the pedigree of, say, Fincher’s previous movie, The Social Network. Although his movie is better than the book, it will be difficult for it to be seen as anything but a subsidiary of the Larsson franchise. Hopefully, however, the box office will allow this new franchise to play itself out, and Fincher won’t lose interest. After all, the only good film in the Swedish trilogy was the first one, directed by Niels Arden Oplev. He didn’t direct the second and third installments, and they played like cheesy TV movies. Lisbeth Salander deserves better—and Rooney Mara has got her back.

Harper’s flat-tire federalism

By Paul Wells - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 11:08 PM - 0 Comments

Stephen Harper and some friends signed the so-called firewall letter in 2001 urging Alberta’s premier “to limit the extent to which an aggressive and hostile federal government can encroach upon legitimate provincial jurisdiction.” But there are ways and ways to do that.

If you can’t build a firewall, you can progressively sap any federal government’s ability to encroach upon provincial jurisdiction. You do that by getting money out of Ottawa — by the billion — or by binding it up to other ends — by the billion. It’s hardly a subtle business.

Perhaps you’ve forgotten the Canada First Defence Strategy.

Over the next 20 years, these increases will expand National Defence’s annual budget from approximately $18 billion in 2008-09, to over $30 billion in 2027-28. In total, the Government plans to invest close to $490 billion in defence over this period.

(The 2008-09 recession led to some trims in the defence strategy’s spending projections — I’ll add details in an update — but the prognosis remains, robust spending growth for a long time into the future.)

And the foregone revenues from the GST cuts. I’m actually less interested in echoing the value judgment Stephen Gordon makes here than I am in reminding us all of the scale of the change in Ottawa’s fiscal position:

Unlike, say, corporate income taxes, the effect of the GST on the budget balance is fairly easy to calculate. …it blew a $12b hole in the federal balance that will have to be filled somehow.

What else? Jails. Actually not a huge incremental cost in the scheme of things, but worth throwing in:

When the Conservatives came to power in 2005-06, Canada’s federal corrections system cost nearly $1.6-billion per year, but the projected cost for 2011-12 has increased to $2.98-billion per year.

And now the health-care transfer announcement.  Continue…

‘What the federal government campaigned on’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 6:05 PM - 0 Comments

Ontario is unimpressed.

Moments after Mr. Flaherty announced the new five-year funding commitment, Ontario Finance Minister Dwight Duncan issued a statement, accusing the federal government of reneging on a promise made during the election campaign to support health care … “All we were looking to do was implement what the federal government campaigned on – 6 per cent a year growth in the Canada Health Transfer for the duration of the next health accord,” he said. “Today they backed away from that.”

The Globe counts Quebec, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, PEI and Manitoba as standing, quite literally, in the general vicinity of the Ontario finance minister. Quebec is definitely displeased. Canadian Press counts Manitoba among the visibly angry.

Canadians feel like they’re on top of the world: poll

By Nicholas Köhler - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 5:00 PM - 0 Comments

For the past three weeks or so, the highest reaches of the Billboard 200, which ranks top-selling albums in the U.S. across all genres against Nielsen SoundScan sales data, has been dominated by one single, identifiable group: Canadians. In late November, the Toronto-born hip-hop artist Drake entered at No. 1 with Take Care, its 631,000 in sales making it the third-bestselling debut of 2011. Michael Bublé, of Burnaby, B.C., followed at No. 2 with his Christmas album, and Stratford, Ont., native Justin Bieber rounded out the top five with another seasonal offering—Under the Mistletoe. Billboard magazine writer Keith Caulfield noted, though, that Drake wouldn’t hold on to the top position for long, “as early forecasts from sources suggest Nickelback’s new Here and Now (released Nov. 21) may open at No. 1.” The prediction didn’t entirely carry: Bublé climbed to the top spot, and Nickelback debuted at No. 2.

A coincidence, likely, this preponderance of Canuck talent gathered at the top of America’s premier pop chart. It may also reflect a new Canadian swagger on the world stage, and yet another sign we’ve become a nation less timid and more muscular—no longer “punching above our weight,” as we’ve long liked to claim, but stepping into a brand new, beefier class altogether.

Fact is, Canadians have been feeling pretty terrific about themselves lately. According to an Angus Reid Public Opinion poll conducted recently in partnership with Maclean’s, we’re much more satisfied with our lives than our counterparts in the U.S. and Britain. Forty-two per cent of us think Canada’s best days lie in the future rather than the past. By contrast, only 36 per cent of Americans are that optimistic, and fully 58 per cent of Britons believe their day in the sun has been and gone. And where once a vague sense of inferiority defined us, the online Angus Reid survey now shows most Canadians—86 per cent, in fact—agree with the idea that their country is “the greatest in the world.”

Continue…

McCain, Obama, and Iraq

By John Parisella - Monday, December 19, 2011 at 4:52 PM - 0 Comments

Last week, Senator John McCain celebrated the end of the war in Iraq by lauding the sacrifice of thousands of American soldiers and crowning the surge led by current CIA Director General David Petraeus back in 2007 as its most important moment. But McCain wasn’t so kind when referring to the man overseeing the withdrawal of troops. He concluded his remarks by chastising Barack Obama for playing domestic politics by withdrawing all U.S. troops from Iraqi soil without leaving a residual force, and said history will judge the president’s leadership with “the scorn and disdain it deserves.” This was quite a fierce statement by the former presidential contender .

The end of U.S. military involvement in Iraq should have been a good news story, one in which a cruel dictator was overthrown and replaced by some semblance of democracy. Having the troops home for the holidays was certainly grounds for a more measured disagreement. Continue…