‘A slow process’

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 4:25 PM - 7 Comments

The Canadian general overseeing NATO’s operations in Libya quibbles with the suggestion that the conflict has reached a stalemate.

“I disagree with the term stalemate,” Lt.-Gen. Charles Bouchard told Postmedia News on a busy day Friday as NATO dealt with conflicting reports about the possible death of Gadhafi’s son and fended off criticism from Italy on the handling of fleeing migrants … ”How do we define stalemate? If we judge it against perhaps the operation in Iraq one would say, ‘Well, it’s certainly not as fast,’ but from my perspective, and I know that of (NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen), is that this is not a stalemate but rather a slow process.”

Google graph too small to show S&P/TSX tumble this morning

By Erica Alini - Monday, August 8, 2011 at 12:09 PM - 33 Comments

The Canadian stock market took such a dive this morning it went–literally–through the bottom of a Google Graph of the S&P/TSX Composite, the Canuck benchmark index (see this screenshot we took at 10.14 AM). The drop was largely attributed to Standard and Poor’s downgrading of the US’s long-term creditworthiness from AAA to AA plus on Friday.  The S&P/TSX Composite tumbled over 3 per cent in early morning trading before rebounding slightly.

Drinks with the duke and duchess

By Anne Kingston - Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 3 Comments

Paul Darrow/Reuters

The invitation, issued by the press secretary of “TRH The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge,” was impossible to decline: a 7:10 p.m. drinks reception with the royal couple immediately after their arrival in Charlottetown on Sunday night. Just 200 or so journalists and provincial organizers for 40 minutes. The setting was shockingly intimate, given that royal tour coverage dictates the royals are always at least a three-metre remove from the ink- and digitally stained wretches. Following the couple around feels like being embedded in a military mission without any proximity: journalists wait hours in a slightly more privileged position than the hoi polloi for a glimpse of the couple, and are forever on the lookout for colourful crumbs with which to pad out reports.

The soiree had rules. It was to be casual, no cameras—which is like asking hunters who’ve been tracking big, exotic game to come face to face with their quarry stripped of their weapons.

The gathering was held on the second-storey deck of a casual restaurant overlooking the harbour. The night was gorgeous. Drinks flowed. Oysters were shucked, lobster rolls served and a fiddle band played. Before the newlyweds arrived, journalists were herded inside and divided by media type—Canadian, print, etc. Then the royals worked the reception line separately, each led by handlers. The prince came through first, shaking hands in a dark suit with a Canada flag pin, carrying a drink that looked like Coke, though he joked about wanting to have a couple of them. He’s an old pro at this—engaged, leaning in, making eye contact, quick to joke in a self-deprecating manner. Yet if you look closely, his jaw clenches; there’s tension there.

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Canada’s next mission

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

Xinhua News Agency/eyevine/Redux

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

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

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

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In conversation: Stephen Harper

By Kenneth Whyte - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 at 8:30 AM - 0 Comments

Photographs by Blair Gable

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

A: It’s always fun when you win.

Q: Did you take a moment to enjoy it?

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

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

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

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

How to celebrate our 150th?

By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, June 30, 2011 at 1:33 PM - 14 Comments

We could build a couple NHL arenas. Or we could lower the voting age, institute mandatory voting and reopen the Constitution.

Canada’s 150th birthday bash in 2017 could highlight the fun and symbolic — such as a nationwide hockey tournament and a cross-country canoe pageant — but could also involve serious policy changes, such as lowering the voting age to 16 or instituting mandatory voting, newly obtained public documents show…

Bureaucrats reckon 2017 could be an opportunity to reopen debate on Canadian federalism. ”This discussion has been held for boomers (in the ’80s and ’90s), but it’s not closed yet,” officials write. “By 2017, a whole new generation will have a whole new outlook.” Jeremy Diamond, director of the Historica Dominion Institute, expressed support for democratic reform initiatives. He said the 18-24 age range is ripe for increased political participation, and that Canada’s 150th could be an ideal time to restart the constitution debate.

Original sin

By Aaron Wherry - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 3:09 PM - 61 Comments

JJ McCullough blames the founding fathers for the Senate.

Canada is a living example of why constitution-writing is not a task to be taken lightly. The Harper government’s current efforts to carve a workable second chamber from the breathtakingly incompetent mess that the Fathers of Confederation devised nearly a century-and-a-half ago is a testament to just how intellectually uncurious and uncreative many of our nation’s supremely overrated founders were. Indeed, the entire Senate reform exercise really highlights the degree to which “Canada,” as a whole, is a fundamentally ungovernable creation under any political system except the uninspiring status quo. A country that cannot reform even its most universally reviled institution (only 5% of Canadians like the Senate as-is) is not a country that’s built on solid foundations.

Are you one of us?

By Erica Alini - Wednesday, June 29, 2011 at 10:13 AM - 174 Comments

Michael Ignatieff reemerges with some thoughts on expatriation.

May 2 must have been the only Canadian election, and maybe one of the few elections anywhere, when expatriation became an issue that moved votes – in my case, the wrong way. I’d never say it was the decisive factor, but friends on the doorsteps kept reporting back: They all think you’re an American. To the degree that this issue mattered, the results of May 2 have a message: As far as expatriates are concerned, you can’t come home again if your destination is politics.

That’s how it is now, but pretty soon no one will remember what the fuss was about. The next generation is quietly redefining what it means to be a Canadian. They’re ignoring the attack ads and the chatter from the schoolyard of Ottawa politics. So many of the young Canadians I meet want to be global citizens. They want to be expatriates. They want a life that includes a couple of years in Mumbai or Shanghai, a summer teaching English in Tanzania, a year or longer working for some company in South Korea.

Canada’s warning shot to France via the IMF

By Erica Alini - Tuesday, June 28, 2011 at 3:27 PM - 105 Comments

Photo by Flickr user danorbit

U.S. treasury secretary Tim Geithner announced today that the United States will back French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde to head the International Monetary Fund, effectively sealing the race for the organization’s top job.

The race seemed tilted towards Lagarde’s candidacy from the beginning. When former Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned in May to defend himself against sex assault charges, Europe immediately rallied behind Lagarde, eager to substitute a European national with another one. And although the U.S. has been cagey about its stance in the race, few doubted it would eventually also nod at the French minister, continuing the unspoken convention of having a European heading the IMF and an American the World Bank.

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Can asbestos be used "safely"?

By Julia Belluz - Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 9:44 AM - 48 Comments

Photograph by Flickr user shaymus22

The Statement: “All scientific reviews clearly confirm that chrysotile [white asbestos] fibres can be used safely under controlled conditions.” (Dimitri Soudas, PMO communications director, 06/15/2011)

Chrysotile, or white asbestos, is back in the news again, and doctors around the world are questioning the Canadian government’s championing of a substance that has been banned in most developed countries. “My jaw dropped when I heard [Soudas’ statement],” says Dr. Matthew Stanbrook, a specialist in respirology at Toronto’s University Health Network and assistant professor in the department of medicine at the University of Toronto. “It’s so completely misrepresentative of the science.” Continue…

Standing firm in Afghanistan

By Michael Petrou - Tuesday, June 14, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 0 Comments

CPL Tina Gillies/DND/MDN

The staccato chattering sound of machine-gun fire drifts over Canada’s forward operating base at Masum Ghar in Afghanistan’s Panjwaii district shortly after dusk. The prolonged bursts are answered by other angry shots until, after a couple of minutes, the echoes fade away and silence returns. “That’s probably Wilson killing somebody,” says a soldier relaxing on a makeshift bench outside the metal shipping containers where many of them sleep on stacked bunks. Wilson is an American patrol base a few kilometres north of Masum Ghar, across the Arghandab River in Zhari district.

At dawn, from the same direction, the muffled crunch of a distant explosion sends a mushrooming plume of dust skyward above the green cultivated fields and rough mud compounds that spread from Masum Ghar beyond the river. It might have been an improvised explosive device, discovered and intentionally triggered, or perhaps something deadlier. No gunfire follows the blast, only birdsong and the puttering hum of a man coaxing a motorbike along a rutted dirt path.

“It’s the Americans at Wilson,” says another soldier. “They get more contact than we do. It’s closer to the highway, and now, with the prison break, there are 400 more Taliban there.”

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Canada is about to rock Venice

By Sara Angel - Thursday, June 9, 2011 at 10:50 AM - 0 Comments

Steven Shearer, Image of the Artist in the Studio, 2010 by Chris Gergley

Canadian artists have suffered from a sense of inferiority since 1958 when they began exhibiting works in our own underwhelming space at the Venice Biennale, the world’s most prestigious art fair, which opens this week. But thanks to Steven Shearer, 43, the British Columbia-born painter, sculptor and draftsman, this is all about to change.

Shearer’s selection as Canada’s representative to the Biennale sent a thrill through the art world. The antithesis of the cerebral, photo-based Vancouver school of artists— including Jeff Wall, whose works have come to characterize Canadian art over the last decade—Shearer is best known for making majestically beautiful paintings of heavy metal fans. These works, which capture the aggression that is a counterpoint to polite society, have earned him an international audience and a reputation as an artist with an edge.

His Poem for Venice, an installation he created for the Biennale, lives up to expectations. A towering nine-metre billboard of heavy metal-inspired shock talk, the work projects skyward like an outdoor movie screen. With phrases like “triumphant secretions,” “erection of possessed flesh” and “shivering whore of light” set in 30-cm-high raised white capital letters, it is impossible for anyone to walk through the Biennale grounds without noticing Shearer’s modern-day frieze.

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The French are coming

By Alex Ballingall - Wednesday, June 8, 2011 at 9:35 AM - 0 Comments

Sean Kilpatrick/CP

Mathieu Lam was 23 when he decided to leave his home country of France in 2005 to work and travel in Canada. He was interested in the country’s reputation for natural beauty and its relatively high standard of living. Plus, he felt his prospects for employment at home were dismal.

Now, six years later, Lam is a permanent Canadian resident who runs a software development company in Toronto. He also operates a website called Programme Vacances Travail, which helps French youth who, like him, want to live and work abroad. “Canada has always been a country that attracted me,” he says in French, describing why he chose to come to Canada.

Lam’s not alone. Over the past decade, the number of French people coming to Canada has risen significantly. Permanent residents admitted from France jumped from 4,345 in 2000 to 6,930 in 2010. The increase in temporary workers is even more dramatic. In 2000, 5,932 temporary foreign workers entered Canada from France. By 2010, that number had risen to more than 17,000.

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Sisters with a vision

By Sally Armstrong - Monday, June 6, 2011 at 10:30 AM - 2 Comments

Photographs by Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 approaches, and an increasingly skeptical international community looks to the future of Afghanistan with one eye on the exit, the women of this war-weary country have something to say to those who answered their clarion call for help a decade ago. They claim that finding the finish line requires a rebooting of the original plan that focuses on human rights and education. That plan requires security. The Afghan army and police force are not yet ready to provide it. And so, as far as the women are concerned, the coming adieu to Canada’s military, which will withdraw from its combat role in July, is bittersweet.

While news from Afghanistan has focused mostly on the insurgency taking place in the four southern provinces, the other 30 provinces are marginally better off. Much has changed. Almost three million girls are back in school, women are back at work, 40 per cent of the media are women and 25 per cent of regional councillors are female. What’s more, the fundamentalist mentality is changing. Only a few women in urban centres still wear a burka. Religious doctrines are slightly less oppressive. The constitution demands that 25 per cent of seats in the parliament are reserved for women. Says Shinkai Karokhail, 49, a long-time women’s activist and member of parliament for Kabul: “It’s the presence of countries like Canada that have made that happen. It has given me the right to speak out and to claim my space. The international community is like a thousand eyes on the government. Even the warlords are more gentle, knowing they’re being watched.”

Her concern, which is shared by most of the women in this country, is that if the international community pulls out, the gains women have made will be wrenched away. Karokhail’s colleague Fawzia Koofi, 35, a sassy, media-savvy MP from Badakhshan province who has ambitions to run in the next presidential election, puts it more bluntly. “You’re leaving before putting an end to the war,” she says. “We can’t function yet as a government. Do you think Afghanistan won’t change back after you leave? Terrorism doesn’t know borders. Your border could be next. You need to wait until we have an effective government and a qualified army and police force.”

Continue…

'Afghanistan is no longer a threat to the world'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 30, 2011 at 3:22 PM - 13 Comments

Stephen Harper visits Afghanistan.

“The biggest single success of this mission, and this is the big picture: We came to Afghanistan, the world came to Afghanistan, because Afghanistan had become such a terrible and brutal place that it had become a threat to the entire world. And whatever the challenges and the troubles that remain, Afghanistan is no longer a threat to the world.”

He added: “Afghanistan is still a violent place, a dangerous place for its citizens, and we’re working to improve things for them. But this country does not represent a geo-strategic risk to the world. It is no longer a source of global terrorism. This is a tremendous accomplishment, one that obviously serves Canadian interests.”

The Russians are mocking

By Aaron Wherry - Friday, May 27, 2011 at 12:02 PM - 25 Comments

Russia’s Arctic ambassador questions the Harper government’s fears of invasion.

“It could come from lack of knowledge of reality,” Vasiliev told The Canadian Press during a major conference on Canada-Norway-Russia Arctic co-operation at Ottawa’s Carleton University. ”I think that time and reality proves that this is all wrong.”

Surprise: We're not flying kites

By Andrew Potter - Wednesday, May 18, 2011 at 9:13 AM - 22 Comments

Dave Pugliese reports that Canada has ordered 1300 bombs at $100k apiece  for our war against Libya. Opines one analyst:

What kind of war did Canada think it was going to fight? Did they think this war was going to be over quickly or that the Americans would drop all the bombs?”

Is democratic reform dying out?

By Charlie Gillis - Tuesday, May 17, 2011 at 10:05 AM - 25 Comments

Mark Blinch/Reuters

For would-be reformers of the mother of all parliaments, it was a brief and ill-fated courtship—ending with a door-slam to the face. One year ago, nearly six out of 10 Britons were telling pollsters they’d gladly dump the familiar first-past-the post electoral system (FPTP) in favour of a method that better reflected their democratic will. But when given their say in a referendum last week, voters dispatched the alternative with extreme prejudice: nearly 68 per cent opted to retain the old method of electing MPs, soundly rejecting the proposed system of preferential balloting known as the alternative vote (AV).

Advocates for change were quick to marshal explanations. The rejection spoke less to disapproval of AV than to dissatisfaction with its chief proponent, Liberal-Democrat Leader Nick Clegg, they said. Some complained voters had been hoodwinked by hysterical-sounding advertisements suggesting that a costly overhaul of the electoral system would suck money from, among other vital services, intensive care for infants.

None seemed to consider the possibility that FPTP might have its own inherent appeal. “It’s simple, and it normally produces parliamentary majorities,” says Louis Massicotte, a Université Laval political scientist who has studied electoral reform initiatives around the world. “The ambiguities of minority parliaments may fascinate intellectuals. But for the average folk in the street, a clear outcome is always better than a murky one.”

Continue…

'All options are back on the table'

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, May 16, 2011 at 4:17 PM - 5 Comments

According to a leaked cable from the U.S. embassy in Ottawa, the Harper government was considering its options in Afghanistan as far back as March 2009.

At a cabinet meeting in March, ministers “agreed that ‘all options are back on the table’ with respect to Canada’s military role in Afghanistan after 2011,” the March 17 cable marked secret says. The cable — among a batch of Canada-related U.S. diplomatic cables released to CBC News from whistleblower website WikiLeaks — quotes extensively from conversations held with a senior adviser from the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade.

“It will take time for the government’s public rhetoric to catch up to this ‘new reality,’ however, requiring some ‘patience’ on the part of allies,” the senior adviser apparently told U.S. officials on March 16.

See previously: ‘The government would look at the possibility’

Who will be king of Canada?

By John Fraser - Friday, April 29, 2011 at 6:00 AM - 9 Comments

Highnesses-in-Training greet Monarch of the North" © Charles Pachter 2011

Everything is in readiness for Prince William to receive Catherine Middleton on Friday, April 29, when she takes the long walk down Westminster Abbey’s storied nave and they pledge to each other “to have and to hold, for better, for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health.”

The RAF trumpeters will be standing ready for their post-signing fanfare; the princess-to-be managed to get herself confirmed into the Church of England in the nick of time; Prince Harry will be planning some sort of practical joke in the manner of the better sort of best men; and the Middletons, père et mère, have probably worked out what on Earth they will say to the Prince of Wales and Camilla, duchess of Cornwall as they ride together during the carriage ride from the Abbey to Buckingham Palace after the ceremony.

Most of the burning questions of the day will have been answered by the day’s end, from the name of the fashion designer who got to make the Dress of Dresses to whether or not the bride’s over-the-top millionaire uncle (his colourful-sounding residence on the Spanish island of Ibiza is called La Casa de Bang-Bang) behaved himself at the palace. The only real question that can’t be answered, despite all the royalist hoopla, is whether or not William will ever be king. That’s king as in King of Canada.

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Foreign aid accountability: Poland vs. Canada

By Michael Petrou - Thursday, April 14, 2011 at 12:59 PM - 18 Comments

Researching this story on Polish support for the democratic opposition in Belarus, I called up a contact at the Polish embassy in Ottawa. Within a couple of hours, he sent me personal cell phone numbers for the relevant deputy ministers working on the file. The Polish ambassador invited me to come by for a chat. Did I want to interview Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski? No problem.

You might find this unremarkable. Surely most ministries want to publicize the work they do. You would be wrong — at least if we’re talking about Canada and its current government. In the past five years, I’ve spoken on the record with precisely one person at Canada’s Department of Foreign Affairs who wasn’t a spokesperson reciting usually banal and evasive talking points that someone else had written.

As it happens, Canada also says it is supporting democracy in Belarus. It pledged $400,000 to the cause in February. Of this, $100,000 was pegged to support Belsat, a Belarusian language television station based in Warsaw and broadcasting into Belarus. I contacted Belsat in March and was told they hadn’t received the money. Continue…

Creation story

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, April 11, 2011 at 11:32 AM - 81 Comments

Stephen Harper, addressing a rally in Kitchener last Friday.

Friends, we are here for Canada, the country we as Conservatives created.

Fodder for debate on this point here and here.

Too many elections? Please.

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, March 31, 2011 at 3:36 PM - 35 Comments

Which is more annoying?

(1) Politicians in a democracy moaning about the inconvenience of having to audition for their jobs (that is, run for election); or

(2) The innumerate mantra, “four elections in seven years.”

Since No. 1 is merely par for the course among our grumbling political class, perhaps we should strive to erase the second from polite discourse. When Barack Obama runs for re-election next year, not a single American will complain, “two presidential elections in four years, that’s too many; as for two Congressional campaigns in two years… well!”

Yet that’s exactly the way the 4-in-7ers calculate, counting only elections and not the periods in between them. This is actually Canada’s fourth election in 11 years, since the campaign of 2000. That’s one vote every 2.75 years, not too far off the historical average of one every 3.6 years.

As for other parliamentary democracies, Continue…

It’s time to make St. Patrick’s Day a national holiday

By macleans.ca - Tuesday, March 29, 2011 at 11:00 AM - 0 Comments

Graham Hughes/CP

Holidays in Canada fall into three general categories. There are holidays that involve presents, holidays that involve candy and holidays that involve alcohol.

And judging from the evidence last week, St. Patrick’s Day has become this country’s most popular and widely celebrated day for raising a toast, far surpassing New Year’s Eve or Canada Day. In the minds of many Canadians, March 17 even appears to have replaced Easter as the true herald of a coming spring—and in ways that have little to do with the self-restraint of Lent. What should we make of this annual outbreak of Irishness?

Bar owners across the country report St. Patrick’s Day is now the most popular event on their calendar. “It’s the biggest one-day sales for us every year,” says Tania Richards, director of sales and marketing for Granville Entertainment, which runs three bars in Vancouver. Pub owner Grant Sanderson of Edmonton notes that “in the last five years it has gone from being a good day to being the best day in the pub business—it’s two or three times as big as New Year’s.” The reason is to be found in the length of time people spend celebrating. Richards observes that New Year’s events typically don’t begin until dinner time, while “St. Paddy’s is a flow of people all day long. It lasts 16 hours.” It’s become common to quit work at lunch to perfect one’s brogue on St. Patrick’s Day.

The same holds for students. Many university professors now debate the wisdom of holding classes on March 17, as attendance drops precipitously. This year herds of well-refreshed students were spotted wandering about in plastic green bowlers and green facepaint (and leaving behind bright-green messes) in many Ontario cities such as London, Waterloo and Peterborough. St. Patrick’s Day parties have become as reliable an indicator of spring on campus as short skirts and final exams.

Of course all this excitement has properly caught the attention of police as well. St. Patrick’s Day is now one of the most important days of the year for scheduled drunk-driving patrols.

How did all this happen?

History tells us the real Saint Patrick was likely born somewhere in Britain around 385. He was kidnapped by Irish pirates as a young man and brought to Ireland. He escaped, studied for the priesthood and eventually returned to organize the Church in Ireland. He died around 461, after a life of poverty and religious dedication. It hardly seems the raw material for a day of good cheer and green beer.

Nonetheless, several centuries of Irish immigration, and those immigrants’ well-earned reputation for conviviality, have turned St. Patrick into the patron saint of all. It probably doesn’t hurt that the middle of March also marks the coming end to a long winter for residents in most parts of Canada. The combination of melting snow and the opportunity to spend a day celebrating this fact has turned a once-obscure ethnic celebration into a rare unifying secular event that all Canadians seem to agree on—like Olympic hockey, only less stressful.

Montreal’s long-standing St. Patrick’s Day festivities nicely illustrate its broad crossover appeal. The annual parade, which dates back to 1824, appears as popular with French-speaking Montrealers and recent immigrants as with Anglos. It is a moment for all to enjoy, regardless of the shamrocks in their background.
Given that Canadians across the country have already voted with their feet, and mugs, to make St. Patrick’s Day more important than other existing public holidays, perhaps we should be making it official.

Many provinces have arbitrarily declared the third Monday in February to be a public holiday. It’s called Family Day in Ontario, Alberta and Saskatchewan. Manitobans call it Louis Riel Day. Prince Edward Island has Islander Day. While these provinces seem eager to give their citizens a day to relax, February has little to recommend it by way of weather or relevance. So why not simply shift the date to March 17?

Official recognition of everyone’s inherent right to be Irish for one day a year would sanctify the fact many people already take the day off. Combining St. Patrick’s Day with March break would broaden its appeal away from drinking and encourage more family-friendly celebrations. It would also serve as recognition of Canada’s proud reputation as a nation of immigrants. And allow Canadians a glimmer of hope that spring is just around the corner.
They say that if you’re lucky enough to be Irish, you’re lucky enough. On St. Patrick’s Day, that ought to apply to everyone.