Summer Travel '09: New Brunswick

By Brian Banks - Thursday, June 11, 2009 at 8:20 AM - 0 Comments

World Acadian Congress/Acadian Peninsula (Aug. 7-23) The World Acadian Congress is a gathering of far-flung Acadians that takes place once every five years. This summer, it’s being held on New Brunswick’s Acadian Peninsula, in the northeast corner of the province. Sixty host communities will welcome thousands of guests and stage a large program of excursions, games, concerts and nights of storytelling. The towns of Caraquet and Shippagan are local hubs. Among notable permanent historical attractions, there is Caraquet’s Village Historique Acadien—a full-scale, fully staffed, working replica of a traditional Acadian community. Can’t go in August? The first nine days of July, Shippagan hosts its Fisheries and Aquaculture Festival.

St. Andrews by-the-Sea Just a stone’s throw from the Maine border, on Passamaquoddy Bay, overlooking the Fundy Isles and the Bay of Fundy, is St. Andrews by-the-Sea. There are few prettier seaside resort towns anywhere. Its appearance and character reflect two defining influences: the United Empire Loyalists who settled here after the American Revolution, as well as its subsequent development by prominent Canadian families in the late 19th century. That historic charm will be on full display this summer as two major landmarks celebrate anniversaries—the famous Tudor-style Fairmont Algonquin hotel in the centre of the old Loyalist town turns 120, while Kingsbrae Horticultural Garden, a multi-award-winning, 27-acre public garden created on the grounds of several old estates overlooking the town, marks its 10th birthday.

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The Commons: The baby face of Canadian conservatism

By Aaron Wherry - Monday, March 16, 2009 at 2:50 PM - 46 Comments

Pierre Poilievre climbed on stage, extended a hand and greeted Bernard Lord as “premier.” Noticing a couple dignitaries in the first row of seats in front of him, he smiled and struck up a conversation.

Organizers walked around handing out a workbook for “personal reflection.” Poilievre—baby-faced and not yet 30, short hair parted to the left and slick with product, wearing rimless glasses, a dark blue suit, light blue shirt and maroon-and-blue-striped tie—sat and studied his audience, a group of maybe 25, many of them his age or younger.

To his left sat Patrick Brazeau, a 34-year-old Aboriginal man, recently appointed to the Senate and the subject of various controversies. To his right, sat Fraser Macdonald, a 20-something who had already managed a campaign for federal office. At the microphone, stood Bernard Lord, emcee for this forum. In 1999, at the age of 33, Lord was elected premier of New Brunswick and was quickly hailed as a potential saviour for the federal Progressive Conservative party. Seven years later, the PC party now in the past tense, Lord was voted out of office in New Brunswick. Still charming and boyish, though with as much grey hair as black hair, he’s now a lobbyist for the telecommunications industry.

The panel, part of a weekend conservative conference in Ottawa, was entitled “Next Generation: For those new to politics, particulary students and young people—Imagine what could be, imagine what you could do.”

Though 14 years older, Lord introduced Poilievre in tones approaching reverence. “I’m very pleased to introduce Pierre Poilievre. He is an energetic and outspoken member of parliament, who gets results and is not afraid to take principled stands on difficult issues … a great example of youth, energy, results and success in Canadian politics.” Continue…

A pint of bureaucracy, please

By Alex Shimo - Friday, March 13, 2009 at 6:59 PM - 27 Comments

The New Brunswick government is now in the beer business, this week introducing two light ales—Selection Lager and Selection Light.

It is the first beer produced by a government in Canada, and officials say the move is a way to support sagging sales, as many New Brunswickers cross into neighbouring Quebec to take advantage of their cheaper prices. So why does the government think people will drink its brand? The price helps. In New Brunswick, as part of an effort to prevent binge drinking, beers are not allowed to sell for less than $20.55 a dozen. Exceptions can be made that allow stores to sell at a lower sale price, which the government is using to sell Selection for $18.67 a 12-pack.

The new brew has angered many in the industry, who worry it will cut into their market share. “There are a lot of draconian laws about alcohol in New Brunswick,” says Jesse Vergen, executive chef of the Saint John Ale House in Fredericton. The market is overly regulated, Vergen says, and it is difficult to import beers from the rest of Canada, let alone other countries. “The government should be working on opening up the market rather than making a mass market beer.”

To make the beer, the government hired Moosehead Breweries. The result is a beer, sold in cans, that tastes almost identical to Moosehead Light, says Vergen.

To get a better taste for it, Macleans.ca asked a few local experts to review the brew: Continue…

Is a bomb really a bomb if it doesn’t blow up?

By Michael Friscolanti - Thursday, March 5, 2009 at 6:27 PM - 7 Comments

Last winter, a 14-year-old boy in rural New Brunswick reached into his pocket and pulled out a homemade contraption: a small spice bottle with “what appeared to be the head of a sparkler sticking out the top.” To the untrained eye (in this case, a high school guidance counselor) the gadget looked a lot like a miniature bomb. The local police thought so, too, and after a brief investigation they charged the Woodstock student with unlawful possession of an explosive substance. The alleged substance? An “improvised explosive device.”

That specific term doesn’t appear anywhere in the Criminal Code, and when most Canadians hear the infamous acronym—IED—they think of Kandahar, not the Maritimes. But in order to prove that a suspect actually possesses an explosive substance, as per section 82(1) of the Code, prosecutors must put a name to the compound (nitroglycerin, for example, or TNT). In this case, the Crown chose a catch-all phrase—“improvised explosive device”—to describe what was essentially a few drops of lighter fluid and a lot of tape.

In the end, the wording turned out to be the least of the prosecution’s problems. The explosive substance—improvised or not—was simply incapable of exploding. No matter how hard the cops tried (and boy, did they try) the concoction just wouldn’t blow up. “The term improvised explosive device conjures up images of homemade land mines or bombs that are used to injure and kill our troops in Afghanistan,” said provincial court judge Leslie Jackson. “It is a term of common usage in the press these days but not one of precise definition. The common thread, however, is that there must be an explosion.”

No kaboom, no conviction.

The teenager, who cannot be named because of his tender age, was understandably relieved. He insisted all along that his finger-sized invention was a harmless science experiment, not a weapon. But this week, prosecutors took the surprising step of appealing the decision. The Crown isn’t necessarily worried that a mischievous 14-year-old slipped through their fingers, but they are concerned about the lingering legal precedent: Every time a person is charged with possessing an explosive substance, must the government now conduct a test to make sure the substance actually explodes? And if an aspiring terrorist—and not a troubled teenager—is arrested with his own version of an IED, is he innocent if the device turns out to be a dud? “A judge has ruled, apparently for the first time, that the offence is not made out unless it can be proven that the thing would actually have exploded,” says James Crocco, the boy’s lawyer. “The Crown doesn’t want this decision to stand, because in every case they would have to prove that what the person had was capable of exploding.”

That may sound like reasonable test. How, after all, can a person be charged with possessing an explosive if the explosive can’t explode? It seems just as ridiculous as charging someone with possessing marijuana if he’s holding a pack of DuMauriers. But until this student strolled into school that morning, the burden of proof was not so rigid. In 2005, for example, another teenager in Port Coquitlam, B.C., was found guilty of the same offence even though the item (a modified bottle rocket) did not detonate when tested by an RCMP expert. On the witness stand, the officer said that just because the doctored firecracker was stuffed with too much potassium nitrate for the fuse to ignite, it didn’t change the fact that the rocket was still an “improvised explosive device.” The judge agreed, and the teen was convicted. Justice Jackson reached the opposite conclusion: if the fuse can’t be lit, you must acquit.

His decision isn’t binding. Because it’s a lower court ruling, fellow judges are free to follow it or ignore it. But once an appeals court weighs in, the verdict will become the gold standard in New Brunswick—and very persuasive in every other province. The last thing the government wants is a legal loophole that allows an aspiring bomber to walk free because he was too incompetent to build a functional IED. Consider the potential scenario: if this judgment stands, future suspects would have the legal legs to mount the same defence for any explosive substance, from dynamite to gunpowder to fertilizer.

Take Lewis Casey, for example. The 18-year-old Saskatoon man, a university student who built a makeshift lab in his parents’ garage, was arrested in December and charged with the same Criminal Code offence as the Woodstock teenager. In his case, the alleged substance is ammonium nitrate, the infamous industrial fertilizer used to murder 168 people in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. Nick Stooshinoff, Casey’s lawyer, says his client is a “curious” and “intelligent” chemistry buff who had no intention of building a bomb, and he believes the New Brunswick ruling could have an impact on his trial. “We’re now in a position to argue: the Crown has particularized that ammonium nitrate is the explosive substance. Now prove it,” he says. “Ammonium nitrate is not going to explode on its own. What you have to do, at a minimum, is put it in a container and mix it with some sort of igniter or other volatile substance. To have it in a bag is not an explosive substance. It can be made into an explosive substance, but so can Mr. Clean, so can Comet, and so can icing sugar.”

That same logic could potentially apply to the “Toronto 18,” a group of young, radical Muslims accused of plotting jihad on Canadian soil. Police famously busted the group when a few of them allegedly tried to buy 3 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, and at least one suspect is accused of building a remote-controlled detonator. But what if the device doesn’t actually work? Could that be enough to warrant an acquittal? Probably not. The high-profile investigation generated millions of pages of complex evidence—from wiretaps to video surveillance to the testimony of confidential informants—and it’s unlikely that the verdict will hinge on whether a detonator does or does not function. But one thing appears certain: whether it’s an alleged terrorist or a disturbed student, prosecutors in New Brunswick don’t want to be blamed for giving defence lawyers that slim chance.

William Corby, the lead prosecutor in the district, declined to discuss the case when contacted by Maclean’s. “I am unable to comment because it is under appeal,” he said via email. In hindsight, though, Corby’s office may be regretting the fact that it pursued this charge in the first place. “This was a huge, big overreaction,” Crocco says. “There should have been some exercise in prosecutorial discretion. This kid never, ever intended to ever take a bomb to school. The real victim in all this is him.”

Indeed, some aspects of the case certainly smack of overkill. At trial, court heard how the boy was a victim of constant bullying and—according to the always-reliable cafeteria rumour mill—had drafted a “hit list” of his tormentors. Yet when school officials confiscated his so-called dangerous device, they waited until after the weekend to phone authorities. It stayed inside the building the entire time.
The following Monday, a police bomb squad removed the spice bottle, destroyed it at a remote location, and shipped the debris to the RCMP’s forensics lab in Ottawa for further analysis. The results? The thing was made of sparklers and “Magic Fire” lighter fluid. (Or, as the teen told police, “the blue stuff from the Dollar Store that you throw on a fire.”)

Still bent on a conviction, explosive experts with the RCMP and the Fredericton police reconstructed a carbon copy of the device using the same ingredients. When it wouldn’t light the first time, the officers modified it slightly, crushing up some extra sparklers and stuffing them inside the bottle. But again, it wouldn’t catch. Finally, the cops tried tying a much longer sparkler to the top of the device. In the judge’s words, “a very intense fire followed as the contents of the bottle deflagrated but did not did explode.” Prosecutors can only hope that their appeal is not such a flop.

New Brunswick leads

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, December 17, 2008 at 5:40 PM - 56 Comments

On a political landscape generally barren of ideas — or, these days, crowded with utterly mad ideas — an oasis of economic sanity has suddenly appeared. I speak, naturally, of New Brunswick:

The New Brunswick government will slash corporate income tax rates to the single digits, giving the province the lowest corporate tax levels in Canada, Finance Minister Victor Boudreau said on Wednesday.

Boudreau offered a broad outline of a tax reform agenda that will be fully announced in March. The finance minister said the cuts will start in 2009 and be fully phased in by 2012.

“The key elements of our tax reduction package include gradual, yet significant reductions in personal income tax, as well as a target of a single-digit general corporate income tax rate in New Brunswick,” Boudreau said.

“It will help us through the economic slowdown more quickly, and as importantly, position New Brunswick as one of the most attractive jurisdictions for economic investment in all of Canada.”

Although the Liberal government is not giving precise numbers on how deeply it will cut taxes, it will apparently be below the 10 per cent target federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty has asked provinces to hit within the next four years.

Alberta currently has the lowest provincial corporate tax rate, 10 per cent. New Brunswick’s is 13 per cent.

The all-party Select Committee on Tax Reform released its final report on Dec. 12 and recommended a flat personal income tax rate of 10 per cent, corporate taxes of five per cent and child tax benefits similar to the federal plan.

To pay for the deep personal and corporate tax cuts, the select committee on tax reform is calling for the harmonized sales tax to be raised to 15 per cent from 13, following two reductions implemented by the federal Conservative government.

CP has more:

Mr. Boudreau said the government is also looking at simplifying its personal tax system by either bringing in a flat tax or cutting the number of brackets from the four that are in place.

Meanwhile, back in (sigh) Ontario…

McGuinty criticizes banks, says he can’t cut taxes

…Mr. McGuinty said he cannot afford to cut corporate taxes because that would result in a loss of $2.5-billion in revenues for his government. He said Ontario is already heading into its first deficit in five years as the economy weakens. The deficit is expected to balloon well beyond the projected figure of $500-million for fiscal 2009 once Ontario kicks in its share of a multi-billion-dollar bailout package for the auto sector and provides a stimulus package for other ailing industries, Mr. McGuinty said.

Just so we’re clear: he can’t cut taxes for all industries, because he’s ploughing billions into one industry. Or in other words, the cost of the auto bailout will be borne by every other industry — directly, in terms of the taxes they pay, let alone opportunity costs. There it is, McGuintonomics explained in one paragraph.

And just in case you were in any doubt about the real cost of the auto bailout:

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty says a proposed $3.4-billion rescue package for struggling automakers is just the first of what could be several payments.

McGuinty says the money promised jointly by Ottawa and Ontario to the Detroit Three is simply a lifeline to sustain the industry. He warns it’s too early to speculate on how high the aid could go because the province is still assessing documents and plans.

Too early to speculate? Well, maybe:

Auto bailout tab pegged at $25-billion

Ottawa and Ontario would face huge bill by committing to 20% of U.S. contribution

TORONTO AND OTTAWA — Canadian governments could be staring at an auto bailout bill of between $15-billion (U.S.) and $25-billion, based on one estimate of the cost of keeping the Detroit Three car makers out of bankruptcy protection in the United States.

As the White House said yesterday it was still looking at the options for a bailout, Moody’s Investors Service Inc. said that preventing a collapse of the major Detroit auto makers during the next two years could cost Washington between $75-billion and $125-billion.

Ottawa and Ontario said last week that their commitment to Canadian units of the Detroit Three will be approximately 20 per cent of what the U.S. government provides, a number that matches those subsidiaries’ shares of their parent companies’ annual North American vehicle production. So the cost to the two governments could soar dramatically if they adhere to that promise, first outlined on Friday by federal Industry Minister Tony Clement.

TWENTY-FIVE BILLION DOLLARS.

Former New Brunswick NDP Candidates Against Carbon Tax?

By kadyomalley - Saturday, October 11, 2008 at 8:26 PM - 0 Comments

From the Elections Canada list of registered third party advertisers:

2008-10-02
Citizens Against Carbon Tax
Mr. Charles Vautour
106 Connolly Street
Moncton, NB E1A 3L1

Results from the 2006 New Brunswick provincial election:

DISTRICT: SHEDIAC-CAP-PELÉ

Victor E. Boudreau LIB 5116 56.61% X
Léo Doiron PC 3639 40.26%
Charles Vautour NDP 283 3.13%

(I wonder if he’s any relation to former NDP-turned-Progressive Conservative MP Angela Vautour?)

And today's award for War Room Desperation goes to …

By kadyomalley - Thursday, October 2, 2008 at 4:26 PM - 25 Comments

The Just The Facts Gang in the Little Shop of Tories for this truly astounding example of out-of-context-quote-yoinkage:

WHAT ARE LIBERALS SAYING ABOUT DION’S LEADERSHIP?

More and more Liberals are openly starting to muse about Dion’s leadership.  In fact, even one of Stéphane Dion’s few original caucus supporters is now wondering out loud whether he regrets supporting him.

Charles Hubbard:  “I sometimes say in my mind ‘what if Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff were leader?’” (New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal, October 2, 2008)

The context:

Does [Hubbard] regret his early support for Dion?

“I don’t think so,” said the low-key Hubbard, a former high school principal. “I sometimes say in my mind ‘what if Bob Rae or Michael Ignatieff were leader?’

“But the Conservatives would have done the same thing.

“No matter who it was, they would have run comparable ads.”

And, lest ITQ be accused of doing the same thing, here’s the story in its entirety:

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