Views from the lake - eh?

We have a pill for that

2012-01-05T14:04:00.001-05:00

Fat monkeys of the world, rejoice! A new fat-starving drug has been successful in reducing the amount of fat in experimental apes by as much as 11 percent of body weight. Researchers are all agog with dreams of the drug’s applicability to not only reduce weight but, by extension, also reduce certain cancers, etc. in the human population.

But is this really a success story we should be celebrating?

We have become a society of pill-takers. This is not new, but technology seems to have accelerated the pace of “miracle cures” for problems that we should be trying to avoid in the first place. If you have an obesity problem, exercise more and don’t eat so many Big Macs. But instead we say, go ahead, don’t worry about self control or discipline, we can fix you up later. (I know, there are people for whom obesity is truly a medical issue, but they are an insignificant number compared to the 25% of the population deemed obese by the Public Health Agency of Canada in 2007.)

Cancer is no different. Literally billions of dollars are spent trying to find a cure for a disease which we know is, in large part, triggered by lifestyle choices. How much is spent on prevention? Other than anti-smoking campaigns, a pittance. So go ahead and pollute the Athabaska River with tar sands run-off, spray our food crops with pesticides and fungicides and other toxins, chemically treat our fabrics and building materials, continue to mine and export asbestos to India, and when you get sick, which you inevitably will, we hope to have a pill for that too. (And by the way, please send more money.)

If we were to take the same approach to drunk driving we would celebrate the availability of cheap caskets as a solution to the problem of impaired drivers on our roads.

Life is all about choices. Some are easy (what to have for dinner) and some are hard (quitting smoking). If we as individuals, corporations, and governments really wanted to improve health and reduce medical costs we’d be spending as much money or more on the prevention side of the ledger as we do on the cure side. It only makes sense.

Shorter Gerry Ritz: “I have no effing idea”

2011-12-16T19:13:00.001-05:00

It turns out that my previous post on government’s attitude towards the use of public funds was a perfect segue into this post.

Gerry Ritz was on Power and Politics today defending his government’s action on the Canadian Wheat Board. Personally I have no opinion on whether dismantling the Board is a good idea or not. Logic would say an open market is better, but growing and selling wheat is not my business, so I don’t know. (Note however I do have an issue with the Harper government refusing to honour Section 47.1 of the Act that called for a farmers’ plebiscite before changing the Act, but that’s now a moot point as the Act has become law.)

During the interview the host, Chris Hall, tried to get Gerry Ritz to tell him what the expected cost to taxpayers would be from dismantling the existing Canadian Wheat Board. Ritz bobbed, weaved, and obfuscated, never coming close to answering the question, because clearly he didn’t know.

But it was this particular exchange that really lit my fire:

CHRIS HALL: So you think though that you can handle these outstanding costs? (…) Ultimately you feel that this can be handled within the confines of the money that's available now?

GERRY RITZ: Well absolutely because the Treasury of Canada will be available for those extraordinary costs.

So, in a nutshell, the government has no idea what the costs will be of implementing this particular legislation, but it doesn’t really matter because “the Treasury of Canada” will be available. And in case it isn’t abundantly clear, that’s you and me, folks.

Kind of gives you that warm and fuzzy feeling that these guys are the best custodians of the public purse, doesn’t it?

What would Peter do?

2011-12-16T15:05:00.001-05:00

The Canadian Taxpayers’ Federation has recently been uncovering some rather embarrassing expenses incurred by the Minister of National Defence, including $3,167 for flights to Boston to attend a “seafood show”. (To be fair, Mackay isn’t the only politician to abuse the public purse, he just happens to be the one who is doing so most outrageously at the present time.)

In response I threw up a quick Facebook comment suggesting that money could be much better spent on a variety of social services such as the Ottawa Mission ($3167 would provide more than 1,000 Christmas dinners for those who have no home to go to this year), women’s shelters, or halfway houses. But then I got thinking about it some more.

The problem is – as has always been the case in government – they are not spending their own money but rather money that comes from a bottomless pool (at least from the average politician’s/bureaucrat’s perspective). Now I don’t think for a moment that Peter Mackay, if he considered the cost at all, thought about how that money could be better spent for the “greater good”. And I am certain that his people didn’t either. (“The boss wants to go to this seafood thing, so better book the tickets. Never mind what it costs.”)

But imagine what would have happened if, for example, when Stephen Harper realised that his 2-day G8 photo-op was going to cost $2 BILLION or thereabouts, he said to his team, “That’s ridiculous. If we have $2 billion to spend let’s put it somewhere useful. Cancel the G8 meeting, we’ll do it by teleconference, and redirect that money to social programs for the homeless.” Just think what that would have meant for the homeless in this country, or anyone else to whom the money was directed (gazebos in Muskoka don’t count). And think about the legacy that would have created for Stephen Harper and his Conservative government.

But governments don’t think that way. Unlike those of us who have to live within our means, they don’t have to adhere to a zero-sum budget – if A gets $B then Y can only get $Z is a foreign concept to bureaucracies. And with nearly 300,000 federal public servants and countless provincial and municipal employees all sucking off the one taxpayer teat it doesn’t take long before it’s totally out of control – as it is now. So I applaud the Harper Conservative’s pledge to reduce taxes (if only they were smarter about it), but I would applaud even louder if they were to reset the priorities and direct the money they do collect to issues of concern to most Canadians – which, contrary to the Harper agenda, are NOT F-35 fighter jets, more and bigger prisons, tax breaks to the oil sands, or flying to a “seafood show” in Boston.

This is a wealthy country and governments collect more than enough revenue to meet our real domestic obligations. All they need to do is align spending with Canadians’ priorities (and I’m not referring here to the ~24% of eligible voters who elected the Conservatives, but rather the broader 100%, all Canadians, most of whom don’t drink the Conservative kool-aid).

Anyone who does that and clearly (and transparently) treats the public purse as if it were his/her own could count on running this country for a long, long time.

Caught between two worlds

2011-12-02T15:42:00.001-05:00

With all the negative news coming out of Attawapiskat these days it’s easy to simply assign blame to a) the government; b) the reserve; c) the Canadian public, or d) all of the above. And in spite of the government’s assigning of a third-party manager the solution will, in all likelihood, eventually amount to more money going into supporting the same dysfunctional model.

Let’s be brutally honest here – there is no future in Attawapiskat. There may be a few construction jobs available with the mines and some service jobs in the local hotel, but that’s the extent of it. And it’s not only Attawapiskat. There are dozens of reserves scattered all over Canada’s north, in places so remote they can either only be accessed by air or by winter ice road.

A hundred years ago (or even fifty in some cases) this didn’t matter. The people who lived in these remote settlements really did live off the land. They hunted, trapped, and fished and had a pretty good, if austere and challenging life. And yes, they spent the winter in tents, even when the temperatures did plummet to –40 on occasion.

But now that lifestyle is no longer viable, even if it is often idealised by native leaders in support of land claims and so on. The number of aboriginals who want to live the way of their ancestors at the time of the various treaty signings are dwindling quickly, amounting to no more than a few elders and those who would romanticise the past. Instead, today’s young aboriginals want the same things the rest of us want. They want televisions and computers with internet access. They want to get a good education. They want cars and trucks and good roads to drive them on. They want hospitals down the street and groceries that don’t have to be flown in at a ridiculous cost. They want a future that doesn’t involve trekking hundreds of miles to follow the herds.

So they are caught between two worlds, with a foot, literally, in each of two rapidly diverging cultures. If they are not to be figuratively split in two they will soon have to decide which way to go because both are not an option - that way lies Attawapiskat.

“Some honourable members: No.”

2011-11-23T11:24:00.001-05:00

On Wednesday November 2 Members of the House of Commons stood to mark the start of Veterans Week. As appropriate the Hon. Steve Blainey, Minister of Veterans Affairs, started off with a speech recognizing the contribution of so many men and women who served in the Canadian Forces over the decades. He was followed by Peter Stoffer (NDP) and Sean Casey (Lib) who both paid their respects.

However when Louis Plamondon (BQ) rose to pay tribute to Canada’s veterans some Conservative members (unidentified) refused the unanimous consent required in order for him to be allowed to speak.

In pressing his case Mr. Plamondon said:

“Mr. Speaker, I would like to seek unanimous consent once again, as dean of this House, as a member of this House. Like all other members, I would like to pay tribute to veterans on behalf of the four members of my party. I also ask on behalf of the Green Party. I do not see this as a partisan act. I see it simply as a noble gesture in order to say to those individuals who went and fought, and those who gave their lives, that we pay tribute to them.

How is it that I cannot get unanimous consent? This is not meant to be a precedent that I will use any other time. Today is a special day. That is all. I simply want to pay tribute to veterans, like everyone else, as we have always done.

I am seeking unanimous consent and I appeal to the Conservative members to grant it. It is only fair. The minister said in his speech that this House is a symbol of our freedom and democracy. He said that. I think I should have the right to speak.”

To which the Honourable(?) Gordon O’Connor responded:

“Mr. Speaker, the Standing Orders say, in response to a minister's statement, that only members of recognized parties can make statements. The Bloc is not a recognized party.”

Whether you agree with the BQ or not (and I don’t) the fact that the HarperCons refused to let them recognize the sacrifices of veterans on behalf of the thousands of Canadians (some being veterans themselves) who elected them is an appalling affront to not only all Canadians but the brave men and women who have served this country so honourably in the past.

To say I am disgusted would be an understatement.

If you want to follow the whole sorry affair, here’s the link to Hansard: http://www.parl.gc.ca/HousePublications/Publication.aspx?Language=E&Mode=1&Parl=41&Ses=1&DocId=5225821#SOB-4562632. Scroll to the 1520 mark.

What can be so hard about maintaining an accurate voters list?

2011-10-06T19:40:00.001-04:00

Today was election day in Ontario and, as any good citizen should, I did my duty and cast my ballot.

But first I had to prove my identity and place of residence because I am still not on the permanent voters list for this riding, to which I moved in 2006.

In 2007 I voted in the provincial election and completed the form to have the register updated.

In 2008 and 2011 I voted in 2 federal elections, both times completing the form to have my information updated on the federal register, which also serves as a source for the provincial register.

In 2005, ‘06, ‘07, ‘08, ‘09, and ‘10, I filed income tax returns dutifully checking off the box asking for my information to be added to the permanent register.

On 9 (count ‘em – 9!) separate occasions I have provided this information so some useless bureaucracy (bureaucrat?) somewhere can do nothing with it. And I am not confident that the 10th attempt, completed today, will be any more successful.

So, Gazebo Tony, if you want to reduce the size of the civil service there’s a real good place to start.

Ethical oil

2011-10-03T21:22:00.001-04:00

Anyone following the latest news on the Keystone Project is aware of the heavy and very public resistance to the project in some parts of the US and Canada. To counter that resistance, the Canadian government and oil producers are advertising heavily in the US, touting the fact that Canadian oil is “ethical” and buying from Canada means the US isn’t shipping greenbacks overseas to support dictatorships, terrorism, social inequality, and so on.

It’s an interesting argument that’s gaining some traction in the US: buy from a democratic friend and you won’t have to deal with those other suppliers with questionable social standards and political objectives.

But there’s an interesting (and disturbing, if you’re a Canadian) twist to this argument.

According to Stats Canada, in 2009 Canada produced 5.4 million terajoules (890 million barrels*) of crude oil. Canada exported 3.1 million terajoules (519 million barrels) of oil, primarily to the US, and imported 1.8 million terajoules of crude oil (300 million barrels).

While Canada produces sufficient oil to more than meet its own energy requirements, our heavy export commitments to the US mean that Canada must also import oil to meet its own needs. Typically the imported oil is used in eastern Canada, while the US exports come from western Canada.

And where do we get the oil we import? Statistics Canada’s Energy Statistics Handbook lists our primary sources, in order: Algeria (18%), Norway (15%), the United Kingdom (11.5%), Saudi Arabia (8.8%), Angola (5.4%), Nigeria (4.1%), Venezuela (4.1%), Iraq (3.2%), Mexico (2.8%), and Russia (2.3%).

Note Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Angola, Iraq, and Venezuela on the list. These are the very countries that we denounce in selling Canadian oil to the US markets, the countries that produce the “unethical oil” that we warn our American friends about, yet which constitute more than 40% of Canada’s foreign oil imports.

So in order to sell “ethical oil” to the American market, Canada imports “unethical oil” to meet its own needs. And, to my knowledge, not a single politician of any stripe, or at any level, has stood up to say there’s something seriously wrong with this picture.

* 1 terajoule is roughly the energy equivalent of 164 barrels of oil

Conservative debating tactics

2011-10-02T18:29:00.001-04:00

I recently entered into an online Facebook discussion over the recent Supreme Court Insite decision. This person (whom I don’t know personally - a friend of a friend) opened with “Promoting illegal drug use and the spread of disease ..... are you kidding me?” And it kind of went downhill from there. She claimed Insite was “giving them fixes” and eventually stated that “the police and the mayor are against these places” (which they aren’t, not in Vancouver at any rate).

Each time a patently false statement was repudiated she would come up with something else until, eventually running out of so-called “facts” to support her position, she reverted to the tried and true Conservative technique of when faced with a reasoned, rational response to go on the attack: “I gather you don’t believe in rehab.”

That totally missed the point, and intentionally so I suspect. This has been an effective technique, honed to a keen edge by the Harper Conservatives. If you question the economic and social impacts of tossing someone behind bars for several years for growing a few pot plants, you’re “soft on crime”. If you express concerns over Canada’s treatment of prisoners in a war zone you’re a “Taliban lover”. If you question Israeli government policy you’re an anti-Semite. In other words, when you no longer have an ethical, legal, or factual position go on the offensive, no matter how specious or irrelevant the counter argument.

Which probably explains why, whenever I get drawn into one of these facts versus ideology discussions, I think of this clip and the Black Knight, no longer with a leg to stand on (pun intended), finally resorting to simply name calling: “You yellow bastard.”

Targeting the non-Cons

2011-09-30T20:02:00.001-04:00

During the Harper Conservatives’ time in power they railed against the long gun registry as being heavy-handed, unfair to duck hunters and farmers. “We must stop targeting law-abiding gun owners and instead focus our resources on real criminals,” was, and remains, a popular refrain. And now they’re going to make good on their promise to abolish the registry once and for all, although not without, I expect, milking it one last time for contributions from the party faithful.

But now, instead of going after the true believers the Harper Cons have a new target in sight – the young, urban, technologically comfortable who are the very antithesis of the stereotypical Con supporter. And they are targeting them with Bill C-11, The Copyright Modernization Act.

Now to be fair, this is much to applaud with this bill, including a reduction of the maximum damages that can be awarded for copyright infringement from $20,000 to a still draconian but much more reasonable $5,000. (That is per infringement, so if you are caught with 100 pirated movies on your laptop, you could be on the hook for a cool half mil.) And the bill clearly spells out how copyrighted material can be used by educators, students, individuals, and so on for non-commercial purposes without penalty. All good stuff.

But the problem with this bill is that it allows the use of DRM (Digital Rights Management) technology to trump the rights provided elsewhere in the act. So if you purchase a DVD you are legally entitled to copy that DVD onto as many devices as you own, say onto your iPad, your smart phone, and your computer for viewing. However, if the DVD is DRM encoded by the manufacturer and you break that code in order to make copies that you are legally entitled to have, you have just broken the law.

Another example. With the proliferation of e-readers many people are now purchasing digital books. If I crack the DRM encoding in order to be able to download the same book onto both my e-reader and that of my spouse, I will have broken the law, even though had I purchased a hard copy of that same book I could share it at will, with potentially hundreds of people. (Although I read somewhere that pocketbooks are really designed – paper weight, materials, glues, etc. – to be read something like 10 or 12 times before falling apart, thus limiting the publishers exposure and ensuring additional sales.)

Like the gun registry, it is extremely unlikely that the authorities will go after otherwise law-abiding citizens for removing the DRM from an e-book for personal use. So then one has to ask why it is even necessary to enact that capability in law. Some have posited that the reason is because that’s what the Americans wanted, and the Harper Cons toned down the penalties to try to make it more palatable to the young, urban, technologically competent Canadians who are most likely to want to share files among their many devices. Perhaps. But one thing for sure, it’s not the Con base that will protest.

Politics: the art of double-speak

2011-09-13T08:36:00.001-04:00

Dalton “Dad” McGuinty announces a special program that will provide a tax credit of $10,000 to employers to hire immigrants who are having difficulty gain Canadian experience and/or credentials. The program is limited to new Canadian citizens who have been in the country less than five years. Regardless whether one considers this good policy or bad politics the fact that the program is not available to those here more than five years, or the thousands of native born Canadians currently out of work in this province, clearly creates a different class of unemployed – a few get provincial help; most don’t.

His opponent, Tim Hudak, gets it and calls McGuinty out on this plan, calling it an affirmative action program for foreign workers that does nothing for the other unemployed in the province.

So far, utterly predictable for an election campaign. But it’s McGuinty’s response to Hudak’s challenge that shows just how contemptible politics has become. His retort? “In my Ontario there is no us and them, there's just us.” Say what? That one sentence is completely at odds with this policy which clearly treats some Ontarians (us) different than others (them). But Premier Dad is apparently okay with that; it’s just politics after all.

Justin Bieber – two words I never thought I’d use in a post

2011-08-31T08:43:00.001-04:00

But I will make an exception in this case simply because this is so ludicrous it screams out for comment.

The intertubes and media today are awash in news of a supposed accident involving young Mr. Bieb.

The Ottawa Citizen: Justin Bieber driving Ferrari when ‘tapped’ from behind.

CTV News: Justin Bieber, Ferrari uninjured after fender-bender

Huff Post: Justin Bieber Is OK After Crash In Studio City

LA Times: Justin Bieber crashes black Ferrari; no one hurt

So what happened? According to all reports, absolutely nothing - no damages, no injuries, no citations. But that didn’t stop the LAPD from making a statement or the media wasting tons of ink and paper and tying up bandwidth (or, for that matter, me wasting a post on a soon-to-be has been.) What next, a headline breathlessly proclaiming “Justin Bieber survives; plane lands safely at La Guardia”?

The mind boggles at what the great unwashed now consider to be newsworthy.

May contain Nuts

2011-08-15T08:26:00.001-04:00

Up at the cottage last week we were drowning worms at a furious pace in a futile attempt to entice the exceedingly rare Doe Lake walleye to latch on to a hook and hence score a position of honour at the dinner table. By midweek we were out of worms, having gone through them at a rate of about 2 dozen worms per fish caught, so it was off to town to replenish the bait supply.

The nearest town with any kind of shopping is Novar. The shopping area comprises a liquor store, an Arctic Cat snowmobile dealership appropriately named Arnie’s Cat House, a Foodland grocery store, and precious little else. The grocery store sells worms. But these aren’t just any old dew worms plucked from the greens at the local golf course before the sun rises. No, these worms “May contain Nuts”.

Think about that for a minute. The mind boggles when trying to figure out the intent of this warning.

First of all, worms don’t have nuts, so the possibility of male worms being in the package is not the reason.

Perhaps the local population has taken to supplementing their daily diet with a side plate of deep fried worms in a crispy corn meal batter. Fish stocks are down and the tourism industry is no hell this year but is it really that bad? Besides, at $3.94 a dozen a Big Mac is a better deal.

Maybe it’s about the fish. Should we be concerned about a possibly nut-allergic fish going into anaphylactic shock before we kill it? How would a fish become sensitized to nuts in the first place?

And just where would an earthworm come into contact with nuts? Does Foodland package them on the same table they use to package snack foods and other grocery items?

Or is it just some anally retentive product liability lawyer in a 3-piece suit in Toronto who wouldn’t know a fishing worm if he swallowed one (with or without a very large hook) who has dictated that every product the store sells be so labelled, no matter how stupid?

My money is on the lawyer.

CBSA - Canada’s ambassadors? Not really.

2011-07-26T10:14:00.001-04:00

It used to be said that travelling into the US and having to deal with the US Customs authorities was an ordeal, the price of admission so to speak. And it was also said how nice it was to come back to Canada and the “pleasant” border control people who were friendly and generally much more laid back than their American counterparts.

Well, no more. As two recent stories can attest, Canada’s CBSA has taken the gloves off and is now showing bloodied bare knuckles.

In one case (link) a 66-year-old Minnesota woman heading to Canada to play bingo was arrested and held in jail for 12 days because a jar of motor oil was mistakenly identified as heroin at the border. Now, even if you give CBSA the benefit of the doubt and agree that heroin and motor oil can be easily confused, taking 12 days to sort it out is simply ludicrous. CBSA’s response? “all persons, goods and conveyances entering Canada may be subject to a more in-depth examination." And then ran and hid behind privacy legislation.

In the second case, some US fishermen on the St. Lawrence (link) were fishing just inside Canada’s territorial waters. This is a common practice that has been accepted on both sides of the border for generations, the only caveat being they don’t actually drop anchor, in which case they are obliged to phone the respective border authorities and advise of their presence in their territorial waters. CBSA agents, acting as judge and jury forced the two fishermen to pay a $1000 fine on the spot under threat of being arrested, handcuffed, and towed to shore. Conveniently, CBSA accepts Visa, MasterCard and American Express, so the boater was able to pay this extortion by credit card and head back home suitably chastised. CBSA claims this is “routine” but is unable (unwilling?) to provide any prior examples.

Whether these new bully tactics are as a result of higher level direction (tough on crime and all that) or simply a generally nastier tone being expressed by all those in a position of power (G20 comes to mind as well) remains to be seen. But what is certain is that examples of this new get tough attitude get wide press in the US border states further discouraging our southern friends from coming to visit, and encouraging tit-for-tat treatment of Canadians by US authorities – a downward spiral that will never end well. And all at a time when the Canadian government publically insists it’s trying to encourage the free flow of commerce and people between the two countries.

If Vic Toews is serious about that I have a suggestion or two on where he can start.

Crime is on the rise in Canada – not!

2011-07-21T10:21:00.001-04:00

Statistics Canada has just released their ‘Police-reported crime statistics in Canada, 2010’ report (link). And it supports what many have been saying for some time:

Police-reported crime reaches its lowest level since the early 1970's

The police-reported crime rate, which measures the overall volume of crime, continued to decline in 2010 (down 5%), reaching its lowest level since 1973 (Chart 1). In total, Canadian police services reported close to 2.1 million Criminal Code incidents (excluding traffic), approximately 77,000 fewer than in 2009 (Table 1a). Decreases among property crimes, namely theft under $5,000 (-23,000 incidents), mischief (-22,500 incidents), motor vehicle thefts (-15,300 incidents), and break and enters (-9,200 incidents), accounted for the majority of the decline.

Now I’m sure the Harper cons will be quick to dismiss this report (and probably push hard for the Chief Statistician to cancel the collection and reporting of this data), but the data is there for anyone who is the least bit interested in facts and not blind ideology.

The following chart clearly shows the trend and puts a lie to the Harper con that crime rates are increasing ergo we need more jails, more prisoners, more prison guards, etc., etc.

And, it must be pointed out, the absolute peak occurred after several years of the last major period of Conservative rule – the Mulroney years. Coincidence?

There’s something wrong here

2011-07-09T09:58:00.001-04:00

This story in yesterday’s Ottawa Citizen is indicative of the laissez-faire attitude of those whose job it is to “serve and protect” when petty crime is involved.

The story, in short:

Girl has laptop stolen.

Girl reports theft to police. Response is we’re busy and will get to it eventually.

Girl tracks down thieves and recovers laptop with the help of a friend.

Girl reports recovery to police and provides names and addresses of thieves. Response is the investigating officer is away on vacation next week, but they (the culprits) will still be around when he gets back.

(And in an ideal world the perpetrators won’t have been using the intervening week to rob anyone else.)

I understand the pressures of inadequate staffing levels and the need to prioritize, but I believe that a quick response to these types of petty crimes can have a profound impact in cases such as this. Many (granted, not all) of these cases are crimes of opportunity committed by youthful miscreants who, if caught and appropriately punished in their first attempt at crime, will not reoffend. But, like anything, the more you do it (and get away with it) the easier it is, until stealing becomes second nature.

These crimes do not have a high profile in the community (that is until they are reported in The Citizen), but they are the crimes that will eventually affect all of us in one way or another. It’s becoming increasingly hard to find anyone who hasn’t had a bicycle stolen, or a purse, or a cell phone or laptop, so just on the basis of population affected these cases should receive a higher priority. If the Ottawa Police Service needs to reassign staff from rounding up drunks, busting pot users, and escorting royal couples around town to the Robbery Unit (which, by the way has hours of Monday to Friday, 7:00am to 10:00pm and Saturday and Sunday 8:00am to 4:00pm as if robberies don’t occur outside those hours) then do it as the long-term societal benefit will be, in my opinion, significantly greater. And the feeling of why report it, the cops won’t do anything anyway, will have less currency.

What a spring it’s been

2011-05-27T09:35:00.001-04:00

“The sky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw, the streets were wet and sloppy. The smoke hung sluggishly above the chimney-tops as if it lacked the courage to rise, and the rain came slowly and doggedly down, as if it had not even the spirit to pour.”

Charles Dickens could have been describing the past two months in most of the eastern US and Canada. Rain, rain, and more rain.

Watching the grass grow offers nearly as much fast-paced excitement as Formula 1. Gravel roads are cut by rivulets of running water seeking lower ground, and wash-boards rattle even the most solid tooth fillings. Farmers look on in desperation as their fields remain wet, muddy, and un-seeded. And every week a new generation of ravenous mosquitoes arises from each tiny puddle, just waiting for a few seconds of exposed human flesh.

All thanks to el Niña and a seemingly immovable jet stream that has funnelled cool temperatures and unrelenting rain from Georgia to points north and east until it finally heads out over the north Atlantic.

Where I’d normally have 1,000 miles or more on the bike by now I have less than 100. Ten golf games played versus 30. A garden still unplanted instead of enjoying the first harvest of early radishes and the promise of more fresh veggies in a few weeks.

But the weather prognosticators still predict a hot, dry summer ahead. And for once I choose to believe them.

The digital dilemma: What will we leave for future generations?

2011-05-19T08:54:00.001-04:00

I recently completed a family photo album/history that relied heavily on faded photographs, some going back nearly 100 years, and various pieces of written correspondence and other documents. And as I scanned this material into my computer-based digital repository I began to wonder what we, our children, and our grandchildren will be leaving for future genealogists.

Our family collection of photographs, passed down since the early 1900’s, consists of perhaps three or four hundred images. Some are faded and some are blurry but they are real and they are physical, capable of being passed on again and again without any concern about technology or data formats. A couple of shoe boxes and a coffee table to spread them all out on is the extent of the technology required.

But in today’s digital era I have some 14 thousand pictures stored on my hard drive (a mere trifle compared to some). Do I advise my executor that upon my departure from this earth my hard drive is to be removed and handed to my family? Or that everything gets printed out and a garbage bag full of images gets passed around to surviving relatives? No. Any images that were not committed to paper (i.e. most of them) will simply be lost to future generations.

To be sure, the ease of taking photos and storing them is what leads to ballooning repositories, but even if we were as diligent as when working with film and printed images there is no technologically-independent physical product to pass on to others.

And this doesn’t just apply to still images. More and more music is being relegated to the computer, so gone are the days of inheriting your father’s 78-rpm jazz collection. Home movies? Ditto. Your parent’s love letters? Lost in the ether.

So ironically the very technology that allows us to so easily capture those important moments in life is the same technology that renders them so ephemeral, which will make us the last generation that will have this kind of insight into the lives of our predecessors. And that’s sad.

So you sent him packing....

2011-05-08T07:47:00.000-04:00

Now he's gone and you rejoice in your victory. You have politically destroyed a man who's only failings seemed to be that he was a decent and intelligent person. And that scared you. A man whose credentials were undisputed and recognized globally you deemed inadequate,unsuitable.

"Not a real Canadian," you said, because his career blossomed outside the parochial boundaries that you have decided must limit our leaders' life experiences.

"He's just visiting," you said, of a man who gave up a successful career at a world-renowned university to come home to make a contribution to the country that, ironically, welcomed his family so many years ago.

"I don't trust him", you said, while trusting the others for whom breach of trust with the Canadian people has become a defining characteristic.

"He comes from Russian noble stock," you said, "and is therefore elitist, a snob." Meanwhile you are glued to the television, revelling in every elitist, snobbish moment of the William and Kate royal wedding.

"I wouldn't want to have a beer with him," you said, as if what this country lacks is more Johnny Walker wisdom.

He wasn't a streetfighter, and in these days of UFC you needed to see blood flowing. The pen is no longer mightier than the sword and it was a death by a thousand cuts. You sent him packing and the Liberal Party shamefully obliged by applying the coup de grâce.

Disgraceful

A man with two watches

2011-05-04T11:31:00.001-04:00

There’s an old adage that goes something like, “A man with one watch knows what time it is; a man with two watches is never sure.”

Well the same applies to weather forecasts.

Of three separate forecasts for tomorrow (Weather Network, Environment Canada, and the newspaper) we have two calling for rain with a high of either 7 or 9 degrees. The third is predicting 9 degrees and sunny.

This has been the pattern all winter as various sources would regularly have quite significantly different forecasts. And sometimes none of them were right, with the only reliable forecast being the look-out-the-window one.

It amazes me still that we pay people for this.

The party for the perpetually angry

2011-04-23T14:18:00.001-04:00

From the here-we-go-again files, Canadians with Liberal Party lawn signs are finding tires slashed, brake lines cut, and their property vandalized. True to form some Conservative supporters are trying to lay the blame on the Liberals themselves (“Knowing the Liberals, they likely slashed their own tires in a bid for attention.”), or the NDP. But until someone is arrested for this criminal behaviour (and yes, it would still be a criminal act if a Conservative supporters’ tires were slashed) we’ll never know the truth.

But one thing we do know is that Stephen Harper has changed the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada into the party of choice for haters and fear-mongers, a safe haven for anyone who views a political opponent as the Antichrist, and indulges and even encourages a fearful populace: We need jets because the Russians are coming. We need more prisons because criminals are running amuck. Immigrants are taking our jobs and bringing terrorism to our shores. The Liberals/socialists/separatists are out to ruin the country. Michael Ignatieff is smart. Jack Layton is a Taliban lover.

It’s an unrelenting message of fear - fear of the future, your neighbours, a coalition, your (“Lieberal”) friends, the new (and different) family down the street. And those message tracks resonate most strongly with the perpetually angry, those who feel disenfranchised in some way and want to even the score. It’s the Palin effect and it drives a certain behaviour, a behaviour which I believe is sometimes manifested in slashed tires because someone truly hates you for having a different political viewpoint.

That’s why I intend to vote for a message of hope on May 2. We can have a strong democracy and solid fiscal management. We can be compassionate without triggering a crime spree. We can defend our borders without writing blank cheques for jets and imprisoning refugees. And we can work towards a better life for our children and not just for the most wealthy and prosperous among us. But it won’t happen with the Harper Conservatives.

“That’s not true”: Stephen Harper channels Alberto Fujimori

2011-04-13T09:32:00.001-04:00

According to the Sun’s intellectually challenged editorial writers and various blogging wingnuts, Michael Ignatieff’s comment in the debate about letting flowers bloom clearly demonstrates that he is a closet Maoist intent on bringing communism to Canada. And that’s real bad, eh?

So here’s a counter-argument, applied to Harper’s most often used phrase in the last few months:

I guess if Stephen Harper needed a mentor to provide him with content for last night’s debate he could do worse than Alberto Fujimori, the disgraced Peruvian president.

“That’s not true” is a quotation widely attributed to the Peruvian strongman who, according to the BBC, “rode roughshod over the country's democratic institutions in order to preserve his hold on power.” Appropriate, no?

Fujimori was in power in Peru for 10 years, from 1990 to 2000, a period marked with controversy, including claims of unfair control over the media and using government resources to support his campaign.

In 2000 he fled to his native Japan and attempted to resign his presidency from abroad. The Peruvian Congress rejected his resignation and sought his extradition. In 2007 he was finally returned to Peru to face the charges against him.

In December 2007 he was sentenced to 6 years in jail on charges of abuse of power and banned from holding office until 2011. In 2009 he was found guilty of human rights abuses and sentenced to a further 25 years for murder and kidnapping. Finally, also in 2009, he was sentenced to another 7 1/2 years for embezzlement of treasury funds. (Source: Wikipedia)

A gun registry primer

2011-04-10T11:34:00.001-04:00

For the purposes of full disclosure, I am not a fan of Canada’s gun registry laws as presently enacted. I am not at all averse to licensing owners or registering firearms, but I do take issue with the criminalisation of those who don’t register or simply forget to renew. The punishment is, in my opinion, nothing short of draconian for what is essentially an administrative issue. (Thanks to Stephen Harper it’s now acceptable to refer to illegal acts as “administrative issues”. Thanks Steve.)

Having said that, I can’t believe the Conservatives continue to get so much traction on this issue as registering your firearm is the very last and by far the easiest step in the process.

For those of you who are not familiar with the process, here it is in summary.

So you want to buy a .22 to keep your rural property free of varmints – the 4-legged kind, not the Liberal canvassers going door to door during an election campaign.

First you need to take a Canadian Firearms Safety Course and pass the Canadian Firearms Safety Course Test. The course takes a minimum of 10 hours to complete and the pass mark is 80%. Courses typically cost about $200. That’s Step 1.

Once you have passed the test you can apply for a Possession and Acquisition License (PAL). The application form asks for more information than a passport application, including details on your mental health, your marital status, and criminal background, among other things. The application also requires the signature of your spouse (“Current Conjugal Partner”) and any previous conjugal partners (good luck getting those).

A PAL costs $60 and is good for 5 years, after which time it must be renewed with reaffirmations of your mental health, etc. Failure to renew may result in charges under the Criminal Code. There is a waiting period of 28 days. RCMP background checks take a minimum of 45 days to complete, during which time the varmints are multiplying like crazy in your corn patch.

Once the authorities have deemed you mentally stable enough to own a firearm they will (eventually) send you your Possession and Acquisition License in the mail, and you have completed Step 2.

Now you can take your new license to your local gun store and purchase your .22. You fill out some paperwork there transferring ownership to you, and walk out with your rifle, all registered and legal and ready for varmint extermination. Step 3 and you’re done.

And it’s ONLY this VERY LAST STEP that is so objectionable to the Conservatives. They have no issue with asking personal questions far more intrusive than the long-form census. They have no issue with knowing all about your marital status, your mental health, and your financial health. But for some reason, knowing that you actually possess a weapon is a major affront to their sensibilities.

As Alexander Mackenzie once said, “Logic sometimes has very little to do with political action”.

How not to sell (me) a car

2011-04-10T09:46:00.001-04:00

I was waiting in my dealer’s showroom last week as my car was being serviced and overheard this conversation between a young sales rep and a potential customer.

“Can I help you?”

“Uh, yeah, I’m thinking of buying a new truck.”

“Will you be financing or paying cash?”

“Financing.”

“Okay, have a seat please.”

At this point the sales rep brought out a form and proceeded to interrogate the client. He had still not introduced himself.

“Name?”

“Address?”

“Own or rent?”

“How long at that address?”

“What is your annual income?”

“Where do you bank?”

etc.

The customer patiently answered every one of the questions. And it was only after all that the sales representative finally asked him what kind of vehicle he had in mind.

I can’t imagine this is how it’s taught in Selling Cars 101. Is meeting the clients need no longer the number one objective in the sales cycle? I would have been gone long before he got to asking whether I owned or rented my home, and the rep would likely still be wondering what happened.

Shampoo

2011-04-08T10:15:00.001-04:00

Those of you know me know I’m one of the follicly challenged members of the species.

While not the stuff of Harlequin bodice-ripper covers or heart-throb movie stars it does have its advantages. For example, I have not had to replace a lost or broken comb for 20 years. Nor have I ever had to worry about no shampoo in hotel rooms as a bar of soap will suffice. And hair dryers? No need. Five minutes (30 seconds in a stiff breeze) and my hair is dry.

All of which is to say that hair care is not a matter that preoccupies my mind. Until this morning that is. There was a new bottle of shampoo in the shower – Fructose or something like that – so I tried it. And now my head smells like a mango. I think I’ll go back to soap.

10 awesome things about spring

2011-04-07T15:59:00.001-04:00

In no particular order:

The first crocus pokes its head out of the ground.
Putting away your winter boots. (And coats, and hats….)
Your motorcycle is back on the road.
Hot cross buns.
Booking the first tee time of the year.
Every day getting longer.
Sitting on the deck with a cold beer and a good book.
The furnace no longer runs 12 hours a day.
Watching the last of the snow disappear.
Maple syrup.

Setting the record straight

2011-04-06T10:05:00.001-04:00

I have been accused in various online forums, and personally, of harbouring feelings of hatred towards supporters of the Conservative Party. “How can you sleep at night?” one person asked.

Well to answer that last question, I sleep just fine.

To lay all my cards on the table I will say this. Until Stephen Harper came along I was politically unaligned. I followed the campaigns and I voted for the candidate I felt would best represent me in Ottawa; sometimes that was a Liberal candidate and sometimes a Progressive Conservative. Stephen Harper changed that and, as I posted here, turned me from being undecided to becoming a vocal Liberal supporter.

And here’s why:

When campaigning, Stephen Harper assured Canadians, on numerous occasions, that they would never raid “Seniors hard earned assets” by taxing income trusts. Within the year they enacted legislation to tax trusts, taking billions out of the economy overnight, and have steadfastly refused to provide any financial justification for the move. I, and hundreds of thousands like me, will suffer the results of that betrayal for a very long time.

Stephen Harper campaigned on open and transparent government and has since led the least open and least transparent Canadian government of all time. Access to information requests are being held back and interfered with by political operatives. Duly elected members of Parliament are being refused access to budgetary information and details on international military operations – information to which they are fully entitled.

He has shut down Parliament through prorogation rather than being forced to address the legitimate concerns of the opposition parties.

His government has publically said they will not recognize bills duly passed by Parliament and the Senate (Bill C-377 for example).

His government has managed to alienate enough of Canada’s previous allies that we were denied a seat at the UN Security Council. That’s another first for Canada.

He has said that a Parliamentary construct, a “coalition of losers” in his terms, is illegitimate. It is not, although he and his caucus persist in claiming it to be so; this in spite of his own well documented attempts to establish his own “coalition of losers” in the past.

His government has been found in contempt of Parliament – the first time that has ever happened in Commonwealth history. And not by a so-called cabal of opposition parties, but by the Speaker himself. And his response? It’s just a “distraction”, and “you win some, you lose some”.

The Conservatives played fast and loose with election funding to improperly gain almost $1 million in taxpayer rebates. And Stephen Harper’s response to $1 million in taxpayer money illegally going to party coffers? It’s an “administrative affair”, move on, nothing to see here.

When Stephen Harper closed the doors on Parliament and went hat-in-hand to the Governor General, John Baird publically said that if the GG didn’t do what they wanted, they would bypass her and go directly to the Queen.

On two separate occasions he has used Senate appointments as taxpayer-funded pre-election campaigns for Conservative candidates – Michel Fortier and Larry Smith.

Senior civil servants and managers, when they tried to speak truth to power, were summarily fired or attacked: Linda Keen, Richard Colville, Munir Sheikh, Kevin Page, Robert Marleau, Marc Mayrand, Pat Stogran, Paul Kennedy, etc.

His government oversaw the largest abuse of civil rights in Canadian history with the G8/G20 fiasco in Toronto. And it cost the Canadian taxpayers somewhere between $1 and $2 billion for that 2 day photo-op.

In the current campaign, people are being turned away from his events because they also attended a Liberal or NDP function, or sported an NDP bumper sticker on their car, actions for which he blamed his staff – the usual response.

And the list goes on.

When I discuss any of this with my conservative friends (contrary to popular opinion I do have quite a few) the counter argument is usually some combination of: the Liberals were worse; Iggy isn’t a “real” Canadian; or the gun registry. That’s it. That’s all they’ve got. And I just don’t understand how that is enough to justify continuing the abuses of power we’ve seen over the past 5 or 6 years.

So no, I don’t hate Conservative supporters (although I do admit to despising Stephen Harper himself). But I am baffled by them.

An inconsequential, banal, silly word

2011-04-01T17:33:00.001-04:00

Stephen Fry was being interviewed on CBC this morning, and the conversation turned to Twitter. According to the New York Times magazine, he is one of the world’s leading twitterers (tweeters?) with a number of followers that is approaching 2.5 million (yes, 6 zeroes after that). In the conversation Fry described how he views Twitter as a vehicle for personal communications, and said that Twitter is “an inconsequential, banal, silly word for inconsequential, banal conversation”.

Having been on Twitter for a few weeks now, I can agree with part of what he said, but not all. Certainly the content is sometimes inconsequential and banal, which I find surprising even though most of those I follow are politicians, political journalists or news broadcasters. Not to pick on Kady O’Malley, for whom I have great respect, but I really don’t care if her dog Berry (of course) has a new sweater or she wore the wrong shoes for standing out in the cold. I follow her for her reporting skills and her ability to cut through the political BS. Ditto Andrew Coyne, Paul Wells, et al.

Where I do have the issue is with Twitter being considered a conversation medium. Following someone may give the illusion of having a conversation -- tweets appear in your in box much like an instant message pops up in Messenger -- but that’s where the similarity ends. Twitter is a broadcast medium and about as conducive to having a “conversation” as trying to have a tete-a-tete with the guy on the podium who’s yelling through the bull horn when you’re in the middle of a crowd of five thousand. When the famous, almost famous, and the merely well-known can easily have thousands of followers, there is no way to engage in any meaningful way. If even one-tenth of one percent of Fry’s followers sent him a message on any given day, he would have to wade through 2,500 tweets, clearly an impossibility.

So the next time you fire off a tweet to Steven Harper (115,815 followers), Michael Ignatieff (78,102 followers), or even Kady O’Malley (9,598 followers), don’t hold your breath for a response, or even an acknowledgement. You’re in the crowd and they have the bull horn.

Our veterans deserve better

2011-03-31T09:15:00.001-04:00

There’s a disturbing story coming out of Ottawa concerning the issue of family violence and post-traumatic stress in returning veterans. The CBC is reporting that incidents of family violence were being reported by the military police at five times the normal levels for those members returning from serving in Afghanistan. These numbers are also consistent with reporting by the local detachment of the OPP in Petawawa.

What is the Canadian Forces response?

"We found, unfortunately, some methodological flaws in the way some of that military police data was collected and analyzed," said Col. Jean-Robert Bernier, Deputy Surgeon General with the Canadian Forces.

And,

"… this is new research that needs to be investigated," said Col. Suzie Rodrigue, head of social work with the Canadian Forces.

While any increase in domestic violence is disturbing, what is most outrageous about this story is the military’s cavalier dismissal of the problem. This is not a new issue. It’s been recognised with returning veterans as far back as the First World War, and probably earlier than that. The Americans first started to really study the phenomenon of post traumatic stress and its impact on “normal” relationships when the Vietnam vets started returning home and domestic violence incidents spiked. We saw it again after the first Gulf war, and then the second, and now Afghanistan. In fact it was an issue with returning peacekeepers as well, but the numbers were much lower and so didn’t tend to hit the radar so to speak. No, this is a very old issue.

And Col. Rodrigue says “… this is new research that needs to be investigated”!

The time for research is over. This is a problem that needs action. Now!

Surely if the Canadian Forces can afford billions for new jets, a few hundred million dollars to restore the mental health of those who we send into harm’s way cannot be an insurmountable financial challenge. To do anything less is, in my opinion, nothing less than a breach of trust by those in the senior ranks of the Canadian Forces and the government of the day.

“Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.”– Albert Einstein

2011-03-28T18:35:00.001-04:00

I was just thinking about the first 2 days of this election campaign and all the lies, half-truths, and innuendo spouting from the mouths of the various leaders and candidates.

A common metaphor for running a country is that it’s not unlike running a large business. You have employees and customers (taxpayers), a revenue stream (taxes), a product (services), and Cabinet is the executive team.

To take the metaphor a step further, an election campaign then becomes like a new stock offering where the executive branch trot out the financial status of the company, their future plans, and other details intended to entice investors (voters) into the fold.

But that’s where any semblance of similarity ends.

Imagine the CEO of a major corporation standing in front of shareholders and saying things that he knows to be untrue a major financial change in the business. Or how about the CFO intentionally misleading investors over several fiscal periods, and refusing to provide line item details. Or what if the COO knowingly understated the costs of a major departmental expansion? If they were lucky they’d only be fired.

However that kind of lying, deceit, obfuscation, and downright unethical behaviour have become de rigeur for our elected representatives. And instead of holding them to account as we would business people (in which case they’d all soon find themselves roomies with Bernie Eberts or Conrad Black) we give them a free pass. We have come to expect them to lie. We have come to expect them to cheat. We have come to expect them to be ethically challenged. And they do not disappoint.

This could all be passed off with a cynical observation that you’ve got to tell the public what they want to hear (and there’s some truth to that), but at the end of the day how can these men and women sit down at a dinner table across from their families and be proud of their day’s labours? “Yes I lied on national TV today son, and let me tell you it felt damn good!”

Sadly, it seems that’s exactly the kind of person a significant portion of the population deems most suited to the highest offices of the land.

Time for a new leaf

2011-03-25T14:39:00.001-04:00

Spring is the season of renewal. As the sun rises in the sky the snow disappears and the earth awakens to start afresh. It’s a time to reflect and prepare for the upcoming year.

It’s in that context that I have been reconsidering my blogging experience.

When I first started this blog 3 years and a few hundred posts back the intent was for this to be a generic blog, a means of sharing my thoughts and ideas with anyone interested enough to read and/or comment. Unfortunately over the past year or so it has evolved into primarily a political blog, a development with which I am not particularly happy as it has been my experience that political blogs tend to be angry, written for an audience that is already in agreement, and subject to moronic commentary by trolls who hide behind their keyboards to insult, belittle and otherwise demonstrate their lack of intellectual maturity.

And I’m sick of it. So it’s time for a return back to the roots of this blog.

I will still comment on politics on occasion because I’m interested in it, but I will also be making a conscious effort to expand my horizons beyond the narrow-mindedness of Canadian politics these days. And although I have requested to be dropped from the various political aggregators that carry my blog, I will still be checking in periodically to see what I’m missing, especially over the next few weeks as election rhetoric heats up.

Now please excuse me while I try and think of something positive to write about for a change.

Duffy’s X-Ray vision penetrates NDP caucus

2011-03-24T19:59:00.001-04:00

Mike Duffy was on CFRA yesterday afternoon explaining why we were going into an election. Here’s his take on it.

The buzz here is that Layton was going to let the budget pass, tell his caucus: let it go, and in a couple of months when I'm feeling better we’ll pull them down on a supply motion; there'll be other chances – basically once a month they have a chance to vote non-confidence - in a couple of months when I'm feeling better we’ll do this and go to an election, and if I don't feel better in a couple of months what I'll do is I'll quietly resign, set a convention for around Labour Day to choose a new leader, let the new leader come in and get settled. And then we'll have an election a year from now after those who were elected in 2006 qualify for their pensions.

January 23 or 25th 2012, the class of 2006 will become pensionable, including Olivia Chow, Jack's wife. Now, in other words this is a scenario that would work for everybody. It would work for Jack and his health problems. It would work for the class of 2006. Let's see what happens as we go down the road. That was the buzz that was supposed to happen. Then all of a sudden Jack changes his course 180 degrees and we have to go to an election. Why? Because we are told that Thomas Mulcair has told our colleagues from Québec in the media, former colleagues, that he put the gun to Jack's head and said we have to go now. There's no way. And they pressured Layton into backing down from what was his inclination was to give it time to see how his health worked out, and they forced him, the hotheads in the NDP caucus and in the rank and file, have forced Layton to do something that he didn't want to do and now we’re in an election that nobody needs.

He also stressed that labour loved the budget saying how CLC leader Ken Georgetti came out in support of it. Apparently Duff didn’t get the message (here) nor did the obsequious Rob Snow who came across like he had a school-girl crush on the big man.

And so the lying ~~begins~~ continues.

Wag the Dog

2011-03-21T09:35:00.001-04:00

In 1997 the movie Wag the Dog was released. Starring Robert de Niro and Dustin Hoffman, the movie’s premise is that the president, besieged by scandal, uses the media to manufacture a war that he can heroically end, thus restoring his honour and his chance of electoral success.

Stephen Harper’s “act of war” performance last week immediately brought this film to mind. Hounded by scandal at home, what better way to deflect attention from his failings as a leader than to stand up to a tin-pot dictator on the world stage?

There’s no question that Gadhafi needs to go, but our trifling commitment of 6 CF-18s and one frigate will not be a significant factor in whatever the outcome eventually is in Libya. So make no mistake, Canada’s involvement in this war is nothing more than a timely and welcome distraction for the prime minister to be able to appear statesman-like.

So far the writer has been unable to confirm rumours that every copy of Wag the Dog in Ottawa video stores has been commandeered by the PMO.

Head shots

2011-03-15T17:21:00.001-04:00

March 8 – Zdeno Chara lays a life-threatening hit on Max Pacioretty and gets a light slap on the wrist.

March 10 – Stephen Harper weighs in, saying “I don’t think that is good for the game and I think the league has got to take a serious look at that for its own sake.”

March 15 – NHL General Managers decide not to ban head shots saying, “We don’t want to slow down the game.”

March 16 – Jason Kenney releases Version 3 of the Canadian Citizenship Guide which list “head shots” as one of the barbaric cultural practices not acceptable in Canada.

Con appointee laughing all the way to the bank

2011-03-04T17:30:00.001-05:00

As the Globe and Mail is reporting today, Christiane Ouimet is walking away with a sweet half-million dollars for quitting after 3 years of questionable service to the Crown. Along with other benefits her deal apparently includes about $120,000 in severance pay.

In what Bizzaro world does one get severance pay for quitting? Instead, in Ms. Ouimet’s case, the government should be suing her for breach of contract as she quit, without notice, before completing her term.

According to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada’s own web site, Christiane Ouimet is definitely NOT entitled to severance pay.

Are You Entitled to Severance Pay?

Severance pay is a monetary entitlement (compensation) that is intended to provide financial support to ease your transition from one place of work to another.

{……….}

You are not entitled to collect severance pay if:

you have been dismissed for just cause;

you quit your job;

you did not return to work after your employer recalled you from a layoff; or

you were entitled to a pension under a registered pension plan, the Old Age Security Act, the Canada Pension Plan and/or the Quebec Pension Plan on or before ceasing to be employed.

(emphasis mine)

In response to an earlier boondoggle involving severance pay (and a Liberal appointee), Stephen Harper is quoted as saying:

"There is no common law saying the government has to pay severance to someone who voluntarily quits. That may be the common practice of the Liberal Party, but it is not the common law," Mr. Harper told the Commons in October of that year.

"Given that there is no requirement to pay severance to someone who quits voluntarily, and given that Mr. Dingwall received hundreds of thousands of dollars he should not have received, why is the prime minister contemplating giving him any money at all?"

So why has the Harper Government agreed to pay Ms. Ouimet such a sum? According to federal labour standards and the Prime Minister’s own statements they are under no obligation to do so. Hush money perhaps? Whatever, it sure stinks to high heaven.

Repair the broken windows and the rest will follow.

2011-03-02T20:08:00.001-05:00

The local news tonight covered a story about some Carleton University students who had figured out a way to obtain laundromat services for free. A lot of them took advantage, which isn’t all that surprising really since I don’t know any university student who wouldn’t try to get something for nothing if they could. Not only are budgets tight, but let’s face, there’s a thrill associated with doing something you know is wrong and getting away with it, or “putting it to the man” in 60’s vernacular.

But what was surprising to me were the number of students prepared to go on television and say publicly, yeah, I defrauded the University (or the laundromat franchisee) and I have no intention of paying up. They are basically admitting that, yes I stole some money, and no, I’m not going to pay it back. (The amounts aren’t trivial, in the hundreds of dollars for some students. The University is however going after the money, for which there is now mucho howling and whining from the perpetrators about how unfair that is.)

Is this the same sense of entitlement at play that says it’s okay to download stolen, or pirated, movies without paying for them? Or music? Or 3rd year term papers?

I don’t know, but when I see our prime minister stand up and defend illegal funding actions as “accounting disagreements”, or justify tampering with signed government documents as “administrative issues”, it becomes significantly more difficult for society to take a moral stance and challenge the ethics of those who see nothing wrong with such behaviour.

We have a lot of broken windows to fix.

Breaking news–Alberta gets less than fair share of Order of Canada medals!

2011-02-28T08:50:00.001-05:00

It must have been a slow news day in Ottawa; the Ottawa Citizen actually assigned someone the responsibility to do an analysis of Order of Canada recipients to determine if there was a geographic bias in their rewarding.

And of course they found one because there wouldn’t have been a story otherwise.

The writer provides a grade-school level analysis and speculates on why such a bias should exist, (I won’t go into details; you can read it all here) but really, it’s irrelevant. Unlike Senate seat awards (which I’d personally much rather have) for which the only current requirement is that you be a failed Conservative candidate willing to prostrate yourself at the feet of the Great Leader, there is no constitutional mandate for regional balance in the awarding of civilian honours.

Let’s face it, the Order of Canada is a nice piece of bling to hang on the office wall to prove you are really a “somebody”. But aside from the recipient him/herself, who cares?

Conservatives lying? No, it’s just being very precise with words.

2011-02-24T08:38:00.001-05:00

On Newfoundland’s VOCM Backtalk Tuesday, Vic Toews said, in response to a question about a federal penitentiary in Newfoundland:

“I have to say, without getting partisan, I'm rather surprised given the position that all of the Liberal MPs have taken against the expansion of prisons that they would even want one in Newfoundland and Labrador. I mean they've made it very clear to me they don't want one.”

Well, as it turns out, that may be a bit disingenuous. (Quelle surprise!) According to Toews now, the fact that a formal request was made by Liberal MP Scott Simms to his predecessor Stockwell Day doesn’t count. It had to be made to Vic Toews personally in order to be legitimate apparently. And if you don’t buy that load of steaming crap, the Liberal leader has also changed since the request was made so that means it doubly doesn’t count.

I’m tempted to call him a moron, but I think weasel is more appropriate.

CSA to define Metis status?

2011-02-08T20:01:00.001-05:00

The Department of Indian and Northern Affairs is apparently confused about who is/isn’t/should be/shouldn’t be Métis. It seems that the determination of Métis status has been somewhat haphazard, with various provinces having different processes and systems ranging from simple self-identification to the provision of rigorous genealogical proofs.

This drove the minister and his minions a little bit crazy. So like the good bureaucrats they are, they decided a standardized system was required and initiated a competition through MERX to “identify a set of conditions, standards and means of verifying those standards to a level that provides the government with confidence as to what constitutes a satisfactory membership system”. In other words, design a protocol that will assure the government that anyone identified by any Métis association as Métis really is Métis and is not just a poseur, perhaps a refugee from Ford’s Toronto, who thought it would be cool, or some such thing.

So far so good. While the benefits of being designated Métis are, at present, pretty much limited to having pride in your heritage, there’s certainly value in having a consistent model across the board – a point not lost on the Métis leadership who have been working to define just such a set of standards for some time now.

But what has got the Métis people (or Métis Nation, if you prefer) just a bit riled is that this all happened without any consultation with them. In fact they only found out by accident. And then to put the icing on the cake, the contract was awarded to the Canadian Standards Association. Yup, the same folks who approve your toaster for sale in Canada are now in the business of deciding how the Métis get to prove they are, or aren’t who they claim to be. (Rumour has it if they do a good job on this, Jason Kenney will use them to help decide whether Iggy is a real Canadian… or not.)

But silliness over having CSA-approved Métis notwithstanding, one has to wonder at the motivation of this government in taking this step. The Métis are starting to flex their muscles in terms of land claims, hunting and fishing rights, resource rights, and so on. And so it’s clearly in the best interests of the federal government to limit their exposure by limiting the numbers of potential recipients of any negotiated deals. But imposing a national protocol will be no easy task, especially since the Supreme Court has already ruled that in order to qualify as Métis an individual must meet these three broad criteria (source: Wikipedia):

self-identification as a Métis individual;
ancestral connection to an historic Métis community; and
acceptance by a Métis community.

And so is the new protocol intended to simply refine these criteria? Or is it to replace them and set up a challenge to the Supreme Court? Only Stephen Harper knows for sure, and he’s not talking. But whatever the motivation, it’s just more of the same with the Harpercons taking unilateral decisions, sowing division across the land as only they can. The mess the next government will have to clean up just keeps getting deeper and deeper.

Whoa Nellie!

2011-02-07T12:27:00.001-05:00

Recently Ontario followed many other jurisdictions in banning the use of hand-held devices while driving. As a victim of a texting teen driving into me at a stop light, I support such a ban, and in fact would go one further and ban the use of any cell phone, hand-held or not, while driving.

But has the government created an unintended consequence by this ban? Twice yesterday, in the space of about 15 minutes, I had the car immediately in front of me slam on the brakes and dive for the shoulder of the road – no signal, no shoulder check. As no road hazard was obvious, it could only be because they’d dropped their lit cigarette between their legs, or it was a Pavlovian response to a ringing cell phone.

Fortunately I was able to avoid any unpleasantness due to good road conditions, little traffic, and my own attentiveness, but it got me to wondering if the authorities have seen a hike in rear-end collisions since the imposition of the ban. I wouldn’t be surprised.

Who are these people

2011-02-03T19:26:00.001-05:00

who have absolutely no concept of value for money when it comes to spending taxpayer dollars?

It’s a trivial thing, and a trivial amount as far as governments go, but this is the kind of thing that really burns my ass (as reported in The Ottawa Citizen today):

As Canadians dug into their pockets for donations to Haiti last year, the Department of Foreign Affairs spent nearly $27,000 on backdrops used at a ministerial conference to co-ordinate response to the earthquake. According to recently released documents, the backdrops were used only once, when Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon hosted the Ministerial Preparatory Conference in Montreal on Jan. 25, 2010. The department paid $26,534 for the backdrops. The banners were in Conservative colours -medium blue, with red highlights -and bore the slogan, "Strength in union."

$27,000 is but a drop in the bucket when it comes to making ministers look good (and let’s face it, Lawrence “Loose” Cannon can use all the help he can get) but to spend even that much on a throw-away prop for a pol’s photo-op, especially one dealing with a huge humanitarian crisis that could have used that $27,000 for something useful, just shows how out of touch with the real world most of these ministers’ handlers are.

The problem is that when you and I see $27,000 we envision a large number of real dollars and consider it in terms of whether we should save all or part of it, or how to spend it in the most productive way. When a civil servant sees $27,000 they just see numbers on a page.

Sadly it was ever thus, and I don’t expect to see any changes in my lifetime. But it still pisses me off.

A tale of two headlines

2011-01-27T11:10:00.001-05:00

National Newswatch listed these two headlines today.

So, curious to find out just what was said, I clicked.

The first headline is from the Toronto Sun, and the second from the National Post. Both media outlets were reporting on the exact same meeting with reporters, and used many of the same quotes from Ignatieff in the body of their articles.

It’s all about spin folks.

Sadly, the illiterati are winning

2011-01-18T18:57:00.001-05:00

One can but despair at the degree of illiteracy displayed by many who frequent the intertubes, especially among those who make it a habit of commenting on various news sites. Perhaps it’s because most of them are up at 3 AM, or have absolutely nothing better to do with their lives than post nasty and/or inane messages (usually anonymously) in response to various news items, or they’re 6 years old.

But c’mon people, would it hurt to actually read before pounding the keyboard and firing off a comment?

Here’s a prime example.

The Winnipeg Free Press posted an article today about Canada Post hiring a new chief executive with an interesting name. The first two sentences of the article were:

Deepak Chopra, an experienced executive who has overseen mail delivery services around the world, is taking over the reins at government-owned Canada Post Corp..

Chopra, not to be confused with the Indian-American self-help guru of the same name, lives in Toronto and was formerly the president and CEO of the Canadian and Latin American regions of Pitney Bowes, a global mailing and communications firm. (emphasis mine)

Seems pretty straightforward. The guy shares a name with a more famous personage. Not hard to understand at all. Or at least I wouldn’t have thought so.

But to prove me wrong, the very first three comments on this article were:

Comment 1: “Is there more than one person with that name?” Thank you Tammy4 for asking a totally idiotic question. I expect there may even be more than one Tammy out there….. Oh yeah, Tammy Faye Baker. She wasn’t the sharpest pencil in the box either.

Comment 2: “Deepak Chopra??? The new age alternative medicine guy??” Yes, Mark9, the same. That’s why the SECOND SENTENCE in the article points out the fact that he’s NOT that guy. But you know how those new agers are, it’s all a plot to take over the world, post office by post office.

Comment 3: Then philE wades in with “I'm sorry but does anyone find a spiritual guru being hired as Canada Posts CEO at all funny? I however highly doubt its the same deepak…”. Earth to philE, Hello! Your tinfoil hat is too tight. Loosen it and reread the second paragraph again. Got it now? I’m still not laughing.

These people walk among us folks… And they vote!

Who made Don Cherry Mourner-in-Chief?

2011-01-16T09:07:00.001-05:00

I intend no disrespect to Officer Ryan Russell. His death was one of those senseless killings that happen all too often in our communities. And any untimely death, whether a police officer or the corner grocer, deserves to be recognised in an appropriate and solemn manner.

But Hockey Night in Canada is neither the time nor the place.

In a fitting tribute to a hockey lover, Don Cherry paid homage to fallen Toronto Police officer Ryan Russell on Coach's corner Saturday night.
In a style only the Canadian hockey icon could get away with, his voice immediately cracking with emotion, Grapes described how a "whacko" ran down Sgt. Russell in a stolen snowplow early Wednesday

Don Cherry’s Chief Mourner shtick has become as tedious and banal as Coach’s Corner was before he started waving the flag. And every time I hear of him “choking up” I am reminded of the old pro bible salesman telling the young trainee, “100% of this job is sincerity. Once you can fake that you’ve got it made.”

I am a big fan of the CBC, but if cutting federal funding means that this old fool would lose his national soapbox, I’d be all for it.

Fox news of a different sort

2011-01-14T12:09:00.001-05:00

From Reuters:

A wounded fox shot its would be killer in Belarus by pulling the trigger on the hunter's gun as the pair scuffled after the man tried to finish the animal off with the butt of the rifle, media said Thursday.

The unnamed hunter, who had approached the fox after wounding it from a distance, was in hospital with a leg wound, while the fox made its escape, media said, citing prosecutors from the Grodno region.

"The animal fiercely resisted and in the struggle accidentally pulled the trigger with its paw," one prosecutor was quoted as saying.

Fox-hunting is popular in the picturesque farming region of northwestern Belarus which borders Poland.

Here’s hoping the fox survived.

At what point to we stop rewriting the past to avoid offending the sensibilities of the present?

2011-01-14T11:28:00.001-05:00

I have been very fortunate. As a middle-aged, heterosexual, mostly normal, white male I have never felt the sting of real prejudice or racism. To some that would immediately disqualify me from commenting on this topic, but it is an important subject that affects us all in some way.

History abounds with books and stories, and more recently audios and videos, that by today’s standards of tolerance, common decency, and it must be said political correctness, are considered to be unacceptable. But where do we draw the line? Does every group that is offended by something they’ve heard or read have the right to not be exposed under any circumstances to the offending material? Or more extremely, have it expunged completely from our collective history?

The N-word in Huckleberry Finn and the F-word in the lyrics of Money For Nothing are but two high-profile examples in the press this week. But the list is endless. Do sex workers who legitimately object to the word “whore” have the right to have a significant percentage of rap music removed from the airwaves so they don’t have to hear that pejorative term? And how about the N-word in music; does that not count? Wartime movies often referred to the enemy in disparaging and some would say hurtful tones; do we now sanitize those? And after 9/11 should the movie studios have gone back and erased those twin towers from recent releases to avoid the possibility of some of us being emotionally hurt?

I don’t know.

But what I do know is that we are all a product of our history - the good, the bad, and the indifferent – and when we go back and rewrite that history with a 21st century pen we are changing the collective experience of our species and our societies.

And I’m not sure that’s a good thing.

Separated at birth?

2011-01-13T19:02:00.001-05:00

I know I’m coming late to the party, but I’ve just stared watching Mad Men, that TV series about a fictional Madison Avenue ad agency back in the 60’s. And I have to say I’m loving it. Not only is it a great series, but it also shines a light on what life was like in those days, with all the sexism, racism, and politically incorrect behaviour that we sometimes think we have outgrown, but which periodically surface even today. The characters are the usual damaged people that make these shows interesting, and the writing and acting are both very good.

Except for one thing.

I cannot look at Pete Campbell, that smarmy, arrogant, self-aggrandizing little rich kid,

without seeing this:

It really takes the shine off.

Meow once for guilty.

2011-01-13T18:26:00.001-05:00

From Boston comes more evidence that Tony “The Slasher” Clement was right to kill the census. Sal Esposito, a cat in Boston that was apparently named as a pet on a recent US census, has been called to jury duty.

Despite the fact that the prospective juror doesn’t speak English, and is not between the ages of 18 and 70, court officials continue to insist that he must show up for jury duty.

The owners claim that if this matter is not settled by March 23, Sal’s service date at Suffolk Superior Court, they’ll bring him to the courthouse, presumably along with his litter box, some squeaky toys, and headgear that would raise concerns about his mental competence.

Just another example of the danger to society caused by those hated census forms.

Kanata: It hasn’t been paradise for a long time.

2011-01-11T13:07:00.001-05:00

In 1960 the former City of Kanata was nothing more than forest and farm lands just outside the Ottawa Greenbelt. Then developer Bill Teron acquired about 12 square kilometres of land and started building his “model community”.

Skip forward 50 years to find that by now over 130 square kilometres of woodlands and farms have been developed, providing homes for about 90,000 people. The separation between Kanata and Stittsville has been all but erased as both communities grew and the boundary lines became blurred, and the town of Carp is next to be subsumed. And the development continues unabated, providing more roads, housing complexes, office buildings, and shopping centres, all designed to attract even more residents and businesses to the area.

Now there’s a big fight underway over one particular tract of land that developers have owned for decades, and are now starting to develop. And the outcry from the local burghers as what has until now been essentially a free park (bought and paid for by developers) is about to go under the dozer just like the previous 130 square kilometers is deafening.

All those people who are themselves now living on once was productive farmland and pristine forests apparently see no irony in their political action to stop this development. “Where will we walk our dogs?”, they cry. “Where will we cross country ski?” they bleat. And spare me the oh-so-righteous indignation that drips from their calls for the developer to “do the right thing” and give the property to the city so the locals will still have a place to “experience nature” without, presumably, having to get in their SUVs and drive down the road a piece.

Clearly there need to be controls on urban growth and, I suppose, in the case of Kanata it’s better late than never. But for all those beneficiaries of past developments to decry this initiative strikes me as nothing more than the height of hypocrisy.

Quote of the Day–Peter Kent

2011-01-09T14:21:00.001-05:00

This morning on CTV’s Question Period, Craig Oliver was doing his usual pat-a-cake routine with Conservative ministers, talking to Peter Kent about his new job, and specifically his role (along with Julian Fantino) to capture more Con votes in the GTA in the next election they don’t want.

Kent responded with the usually Con rote pieces, making sure that there was at least one shot at the Liberals and a reference to the dreaded “opposition coalition”. (Bonus points for that Peter.)

But it was this comment, made in the context of a “political reawakening” in Toronto, as evidenced by Rob Ford’s election, that caught my attention. Kent was discussing how he meets with man-in-the-street Torontonians on a frequent basis and this is what they are telling him: “they are interested in getting more service for greater encroachment on their hard earned dollars, and that's exactly what we intend to deliver.” (emphasis mine)

I’m sure that didn’t come out quite right. Expect a retraction soon.

I’m with the kids on this one

2011-01-04T19:44:00.001-05:00

The Windsor Star reports that a group of female students from a local Catholic high school were subjected to a 1 day suspension for cheering on their hockey team by wearing tops made of coloured duct tape.

It seems that this had become a tradition (the duct tape outfits, not the suspensions) during the school’s annual Father Zakoor Catholic Cup hockey game.

Mike Seguin, assistant superintendent of education with the Catholic school board, said the practice was never a board sanctioned tradition. He added it was banned this year after school officials got worried the outfits were getting increasingly “immodest.”

Apparently the girls asked permission to wear the outfits at the game and were told by the school authorities not to. They wore the outfits anyway and were therefore subject to disciplinary action.

Seguin said the girls were not suspended because their outfits were too skimpy. They were suspended for disobeying the rules, he said.

To the girls I say bravo. You were simply showing some school spirit, and did nothing that could in any way be deemed offensive. Take your lumps but be proud that you shone a bright light on one more piece of petty bureaucratic idiocy. We would do well in this country (and especially in this province) if more people followed your lead.

And to Mr. Seguin I say, get a life, lighten up, and watch more Red Green.

How others see us

2010-12-30T15:00:00.001-05:00

The Gulf News is pretty brutal in its take on the “new” Canada under the Harper Cons.

Beginning with the statement “Prime minister's authoritarian approach has damaged its progressive outlook”, the opinion piece goes on:

Canada had rightly earned a status in the international community as a fair and open-minded country, willing to open its doors to all, willing to assist the needy, willing to embrace the downtrodden. It was always viewed as a nation willing to accept those fleeing political, religious and ethnic strife; its fabric enriched by the fact that one-in-three of its people were born elsewhere.

Sadly, this progressive outlook has changed.

Ever since Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his right-wing Conservative government came to power, the veneer of civility has slipped. Politics in Ottawa has become polarised — it is Harper's way or the highway. Independent institutions such as Statistics Canada or the Atomic Energy Control Board have suffered from political interference from the Prime Minister's Office.

This is followed by references to Canada’s protectionism, stance on the Middle East, and even Omar Khadr.

And ends with, “That's why Canada's citizens need a visa.”

Pretty hard to argue…

The woman’s just trouble I tell ya.

2010-12-12T08:10:00.001-05:00

Why the surprise?

2010-12-03T08:41:00.001-05:00

According to this John Ibbitson piece in the Globe and Mail, the Cons, Libs, and NDP have quietly agreed to scrap Bill C-12. The proposed legislation would have increased the number of seats in the House from 308 to 338 and gone some ways towards rebalancing the provincial distribution based on current populations.

The Harper government and the opposition parties have agreed to quietly sink legislation that would have given Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta more seats in the House of Commons. As a result, urban and visible-minority voters will continue to be discriminated against in Parliament.

When any provinces (in this case BC, Alberta, and Ontario) gain more representation then, by definition, the other provinces lose relative power. So facing outrage from Quebec and strong pushback from the Maritimes, our honourable members caved.

Is this a triumph of cowardice over principle? Or simply a matter of political expediency? Both I would suggest. While the NDP don’t really stand much of a chance in Quebec, both the Libs and the Cons are looking to make some solid gains there come next election, and the last thing they want is to have a bunch of Bloc-heads trotting out the “humiliation” card.

Inferiority complex? Not bloody likely!

2010-12-01T14:07:00.001-05:00

So some flunky buried in the basement of that Sussex Drive monstrosity called the US Embassy doesn’t think Canada measures up to the US. And now, thanks to Wikileaks, everyone is reporting on Canada’s “inherent inferiority complex” as if it were a fact.

It’s true that the Harper Cons seem to operate in awe of the US and want to play with the big boys and their big toys, but I know of no Canadian who feels in any way inferior to our southern neighbours – except possibly for the fact they get to enjoy better weather.

If Canadians can be found guilty of anything in this regard, it’s that we can sometimes feel superior, smug in our social safety net as we look southwards at the current economic disaster our friends and neighbours are having to deal with. Now that’s something worth paying attention to – when we’re not busy reading the latest inane email from some low-level embassy staffer.

How to make government irrelevant

2010-11-29T08:47:00.001-05:00

There’s a great story in The Ottawa Citizen that serves as a case study in how to make government not only ineffective, but ultimately irrelevant. It concerns the relatively mild (thankfully) earthquake that hit Ottawa on June 23 of this year.

The article provides a complete timeline of the government’s failure to respond to the public and media about the earthquake until some hours after the event. In fact the media had to rely on the US Geological Survey web site for timely information about the strength and the epicentre of the quake because Natural Resource’s phone lines and web servers were down and most civil servants were still standing outside their buildings waiting for the all clear to return to their desks and phones. (Clearly lots wrong with that picture and some real work to be done there.)

But the piece that strikes at the heart of government ineffectiveness is a description of the approvals process required before Natural Resources could host a media conference call to explain to Canadians what had happened.

The first issue is that it wasn’t until 2 1/2 hours after the event that someone decided a media conference call might be a good idea. But then it still took more than 2 additional hours before the call was held.

At 4:15 p.m., the department decided to hold a conference call — hopefully within the hour — to link its earthquake experts with all the reporters at once. Seismologists were standing ready in English and French.

But there was a hitch: a tangled approval process for notifying the media about the conference call. Even though the announcement was 75 words long (not including phone numbers), it needed:

- Approval in principle from an assistant deputy minister — but still subject to approval of “media lines,” a sort of script outlining the department’s central message.

- Approval from the office of minister Christian Paradis.

- Translating the announcement of the conference call.

- Approving the translation.

- Approval from the Privy Council Office.

- Posting the announcement on the Natural Resources website — and immediately pulling it off again, because media lines were not yet approved by the assistant deputy minister.

- Approving the media lines.

- Last-minute copy editing, literally. One minute before the call, someone felt the French copy should list the time as 18 h, not 18h00.

- Finally, at 6:24 p.m., sending out the conference call invitation on a commercial wire service — 24 minutes after the call began.

When the call was actually held (at 6 PM) only 3 media representatives were on the line, which wasn’t surprising since the advisory hadn’t even been sent out yet. So it was basically a waste of time as, in the final analysis, the media and the Canadian public got their information from other, non-Canadian-government sources.

But that’s what controlling the message ultimately gets you – irrelevance.

Andrew Weaver of the University of Victoria’s Earth and Ocean Sciences School summed it up best when he said, “The prime minister believes that the civil service is there to work for him and his government, and not the Canadian public”.

How true.

Even a blind squirrel can find a nut now and then.

2010-11-17T20:35:00.001-05:00

I have nothing but disdain for Tony Clement so it almost pains me to say this. But this time he’s got it right.

As reported in the Globe, Clement has come out quite strongly against any further taxes on smart phones and handhelds to compensate artists for file swapping.

Mr. Clement says it's up to artists to find a new way to make money in the age of Internet distribution.

ACTRA have long been lobbying governments of all stripes to implement various taxes and surcharges on commonly used items based on an assumption that they were being used to cheat its members out of their due rewards. As a result we have been paying a few cents extra on every blank CD and DVD purchased (and cassette tape before that), whether or not they were ever used to copy copyright materials.

Now as technology progresses they’re going after smart phones and handhelds.

I fully appreciate the frustration many artists must feel when the results of their talents and hard work are depreciated to nil because of illegal distribution. However as one whose MP3 collection consists only of the music taken from the CDs on my bookshelf or purchased through iTunes, I don’t appreciate being forced to pay extra on any products or devices (tiny though the amounts may be) because the industry still operates with a 1970’s mindset.

And if they are successful, what is the message being sent? Obviously that it’s okay to download music and videos because you paid extra for your cell phone/iPad/DVD recorder to compensate the artists for that very use. I can’t imagine that’s what ACTRA wants people to think, but it is a logical extension of indiscriminately imposing these extra surcharges/taxes on entire ranges of products.

So Tony, I agree with you. Just don’t let it go to your head.

With a little help from my friends – Con style

2010-11-14T18:22:00.001-05:00

A Barrie city councillor, Michael Prowes, ran out of money in his communications budget but still wanted to reach out to his constituents. There was, after all, an election coming up in a few months and he wanted to be seen to be proactive on a particular development issue.

So he called his Con MP, Patrick Brown, who agreed to mail out the councillor’s literature using his (Brown’s) House of Commons free mailing privileges. (News flash to Brown: It may be referred to as “free”, but it really isn’t you know. The taxpayer (remember us?) is paying for it.)

Brown said he saw no issue with this but, ever the ethical Con MP, he claims he would have refused to mail out Prowes’ information had it been closer to the municipal election date to avoid the perception that he was getting involved in the municipal election.

Well Patrick Brown, to state the blindingly obvious, as soon as that flyer arrived under your letterhead you became involved whether you intended to or not. And just what in hell ever gave you the idea that you were entitled to use federal taxpayer dollars to publicly support a municipal councillor running for re-election in the first place?

This shit drives me crazy, and one can only hope the good residents of Barrie feel the same way come the next federal election.

Here for more: http://www.torontosun.com/news/canada/2010/11/14/16137916.html

On the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month….

2010-11-10T19:27:00.001-05:00

Harper’s prison escapade

2010-11-06T09:29:00.001-04:00

I’m always interested in the (usually unintentional) juxtaposition of news stories and the opportunities they present for comment.

This morning, National Newswatch (www.nationalnewswatch.com) referenced these two stories, linking to the Montreal Gazette and the Ottawa Citizen respectively.

While I am not in any way comparing what happened in the Prison at Lonsky with the Canadian penal system, I can’t help but think that Harper would benefit from touring a prison or two in his home country instead of just as a tourist abroad. Perhaps then the Harpercons might begin to understand the implications of their blinkered tough-on-crime agenda and the very real negative impact it has and will have on Canadian society as a whole.

C’mon Steve, visit a Canadian prison. Talk to the inmates. Learn something.

It’s MY MONEY dammit!

2010-11-01T18:10:00.001-04:00

There’s an old expression that goes something like “Look after the pennies and the dollars will look after themselves.”

$24 Million dollars isn’t a huge amount as a percentage of the tens of billions of dollars spent by the government every year. But put $24 million for 4 temporary meeting rooms in the context of that old adage and it serves as an apt example of why governments and the highly proficient spendthrifts who work for them have absolutely no fiscal credibility.

I live in a rural area. We have a population of about 5,000 people spread over 1000 square kilometres. We have a Town Hall, arena, library, fire service, road maintenance, and all the other amenities you would expect in a rural area. And our municipal budget is under $6 million per year.

So the cost of those 4 temporary meeting rooms would run our township for 4 years, with some left over for decent coffee and really good doughnuts at the council meetings.

But someone in the upper reaches of the federal bureaucracy decided $24 million was a fair price to pay for 4 temporary meeting rooms. And someone at the political level (I assume) signed off on it.

Is it because when you are used to dealing in billions a few million here or there don’t actually show up on anyone’s radar? Are we all so inured to the $50 billion deficit and the multi-billion F-35 deal (numbers which no normal person can even begin to get their head around) that neither the MSM nor the politicos understand that $24 million is still real money?

Because all those billions are spent a few million at a time, and someone should be paying attention.

How better to motivate the base

2010-10-24T20:57:00.001-04:00

than by stating you expect your opponent to win 2 of the 3 seats up for grabs in the November by-election?

In this story in the Globe and Mail:

A Conservative source told The Canadian Press the Tories expect the Liberals to take at least two seats.

If head office (the PMO) is worried, then every true blue Harper-worshipping Conservative will be sure to get out and vote. And the Liberal supporters? Well the PMO is obviously hoping they’ll view a Liberal win as a given and not bother to vote at all. Voila - 3 Con seats!

Some pundits have actually come out asking “What were they thinking?” with that announcement. Well it’s actually pretty obvious, and quite clever in a Machiavellian sort of way. Expect to see lots more “We don’t expect to win” messaging over the next 4 weeks.

Cheap shot of the day

2010-10-23T09:40:00.001-04:00

In today’s Ottawa Sun Joe Warmington goes on a rant about apparent special treatment afforded convicted killer Russell Williams at Kingston Pen. Warmington’s unnamed sources told him that Williams was met by the warden and given the “VIP treatment” on arrival.

If true, and if Williams is being given special treatment, then that is clearly an affront to everyone who is disgusted by his actions and applaud the fact he will spend the rest of his miserable life behind bars. The report would be more credible if Warmington had anything to offer as evidence other than information from an “outraged insider”, but he has succeeded in fanning the flames so the story was successful.

But then he goes on with this, an unfair cheap shot aimed squarely at Williams wife.

My source says stay tuned for the conjugal visit application which should come around the same time as the taxpayers pay Williams’ too silent wife Mary-Elizabeth Harriman $3,000 for the OPP disturbing her home while they searched for vital murder investigation evidence.

I can’t imagine anyone in their darkest hours would want to go through what Mary-Elizabeth Harriman has had to experience over the past few months. And just what did he expect her to do? Stand beside her man all weepy and supportive as in the “till death do us part” bit? Or create another media circus by publicly decrying the monster she didn’t know? Get serious. Silence was, and is, the best and only option for her.

And as for his unnamed “source” anticipating a conjugal visit any time soon, that’s clearly just another figment of someone’s imagination and unworthy of publication, even by Warmington’s low standards.

Note to Peter MacKay: Don’t buy this sub!

2010-10-22T21:41:00.001-04:00

A few more florid than normal faces around the UK Ministry of Defence these days.

One of their newest submarines, an Astute-class boat, somehow ran aground off the Scottish coast.

Now how on earth (or on sea) can a modern warship, with literally tens of millions of dollars of navigation gear, sonar, depth sounding technology, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera, run aground? Well that’s what the MoD would like to find out. (One rumour is that the Captain was ashore replenishing his Scotch inventory when the tide went out, but that has yet to be confirmed.)

While the British are feeling very safe in their beds knowing that the Royal Navy is out there protecting their island home, the Ministry of Defence is putting together another offer of a “gently used” submarine for their former colony’s naval forces.

So I say to Peter MacKay, remember the Upholders and HMCS Chicoutimi.

Randy Quaid a refugee?

2010-10-22T20:56:00.001-04:00

According to this story, Randy Quaid (yes, that Randy Quaid, of Brokeback Mountain and National Lampoon Vacation movies fame) and his wife Evi have applied for refugee status in Canada.

The article isn’t clear on what basis they have made application, but it did mention an outstanding warrant in California for “vandalizing a Santa Barbara home they lived in” and “allegations the couple defrauded an innkeeper in Montecito, Calif.”.

Right now they remain in a Vancouver jail as designated flight risks while their application is processed.

With all the changes Jason Kenney is making to the various refugee acts to fix the supposed problems with the system, he should put a superfasttrack process in place that would have had Mr. and Mrs. Quaid on the first bus back to the US as soon as the word “refugee” came out of their mouths. That we allow this sort of crap to clutter up our refugee determination system is just plain nuts!

Air Canada nut-free buffer zone gets OK.

2010-10-19T20:53:00.001-04:00

When I saw this headline I was quite relieved to know I‘d never again have to worry about having a Harper Cabinet Minister as a seatmate on any long-haul Air Canada flights. Or short-haul ones either.

View Full Album

But then I read further and discovered they were talking about real nuts and passengers who had severe allergies.

Too bad. I thought Air Canada was really onto something there.

Why there’s a productivity gap.

2010-10-17T20:21:00.001-04:00

A client recently had a requirement to purchase up to 4 high-end PCs for a very specific business function. We scoped out the requirement and approached 4 different local suppliers for quotes. To be fair it wasn’t going to be a huge order (under $10,000), but we were dealing with small locally-owned computer stores which, one would assume, would like the business. We got these results.

Supplier 1 initially told us they were interested in quoting but even after 2 reminders did not. Nor did they acknowledge either of the follow-up requests.

Supplier 2 quoted a system that did not meet one of the key requirements. The error was akin to quoting a pickup truck when the requirement was for a 4-door sedan.When this was brought to their attention they re-quoted with a station wagon.

Supplier 3 quoted a system which seemed the best solution. It was purchased but when delivered a key component had not been installed. It was on a minimum 2-month backorder, which the supplier neglected to mention beforehand. The system was returned and the order cancelled.

Supplier 4 quoted a system that included several items not in the original specification because “we thought you overlooked them.” (We did not.)

In each case the supplier didn’t read the specifications and/or made unwarranted assumptions without contacting the client. As a consequence none of them got the business, nor will any of them ever get another opportunity to quote on future business.

I expect this is not an isolated situation as I’ve heard similar stories from others trying to deal with small businesses. The lost productivity hours on this buy alone are significant. Multiply that by several thousand transactions per day and one gets a sense why there’s such a productivity gap in this country. And also, I expect, why small businesses come and go like mayflies in spring.

None of this is rocket science. 1. Read the specification. 2. Configure the system. 3. Verify it meets the specification. 4. Deliver the quote. 5. Win the business.

But for some reason even that basic checklist seems beyond the capabilities of so many businesses today. It’s actually quite depressing.

Just black and white please. We’re Cons.

2010-10-15T19:47:00.001-04:00

Sometimes I wish I was more like the Cons and many of their supporters, able to view the world and the human condition simply in terms of black and white, yin and yang, with us or against us.

Let’s face it, life would be simpler if one never had to think in shades of gray – no nuance, no subtlety, no opinions other than your own to consider. No debate or intelligent discussion, just yelling matches.

I thought of this today when the news broke that maybe Omar Khadr would cop a guilty plea in the hopes of coming back to Canada to serve out his sentence. I expect that’s a faint hope, and it will happen only over Harper’s cold, dead (political) body, but that didn’t stop the wingnuts from commenting in their usual erudite fashion.

- “Terorrists(sic) don't have RIGHTS!!!”

- “I don't give a rat's @ss about this home grown terrorist. He should have been shot in the face back on the battle field.”

- “Personally I think he deserves to hang!”

The US military’s story on Khadr is so full of holes you could drive a Humvee through it. But regardless of the legality of the case and the guilt (or innocence) of this man, he is entitled to due process. And as a Canadian, he is entitled to it here, whether the Harperites like it or not.

But to understand that requires some thought, and thinking is in awfully short supply on the far right side of the political spectrum. Which is not so surprising because thinking is difficult and, done well, doesn’t always result in a reaffirmation of preconceived views. Heaven forbid considering another perspective or alternative viewpoint, that’s for elites.

And do I really wish I could see the world in simple black and white terms? Of course not. I can think of little that would be more horrible, more mind-numbingly dull, than not being able to consider multiple sides of a situation and be able to take a considered position based on a rational understanding of the facts rather than simply ideology and fear.

Money can’t buy class… or taste!

2010-10-15T18:25:00.001-04:00

Indian tycoon Mukesh Ambani, reportedly worth about $30 billion (yup, with a “b”), has built a new home for his family in Mumbai.

And this is it:

Worth approximately $1 billion (also with a “b”), the home is 27 stories high, has a staff of 600, parking for 160 cars, 3 helipads on the roof (Don’t you just hate it when you have to wait your turn to land?), 9 elevators, and a 50-seat theatre.

The family of 4 will live on the top floors so they can enjoy the best views of the Arabian Sea. And the slums of Mumbai, no doubt.

The only adjective that comes to mind is ugly!

Watch for heads to roll at HRDC

2010-10-14T08:21:00.001-04:00

“The Conservative government wants to help unemployed Canadians find careers as strippers and for-hire escorts.”

This according to an HRDC draft policy memo concerning occupations acceptable for posting to the Job Bank.

To be clear, the Job Bank will not list prostitution per se, but, it is suggested, should include:

• Exotic dancer, erotic dancer, nude dancer, striptease dancer and table dancer.

• Escort, chat line agent, phone agent for personal services and telephone agent for personal services.

Not one of which professions is, in any way, shape, or form, illegal in this country.

Of course all the usual shrill voices have jumped all over this. Charles (“Chuckles”) McVety says “This is appalling activity by our government” and goes on to point out the hypocrisy of a Conservative government (this one in particular) taking this position after hounding Judy Sgro out of Cabinet over a relatively minor breach of their Victorian morals some 6 or 7 years ago.

And you can also be sure talk-line radio will be all over this today, “coast to coast to coast” as they like to say.

Expect a strong denial from the PMO, heads to roll at HRDC, and McVety to claim victory once again over the forces of evil. Stay tuned.

NHL hypocrisy in plain view

2010-10-13T09:24:00.001-04:00

If there was ever any doubt about the NHL’s nudge-nudge-wink-wink approach to cleaning up dirty play on the ice, these two stories bring the reality into sharp focus. Clearly the NHL has NO serious intention of taking the steps necessary to protect its most valuable (and only) assets, its players. As a result, more and more fans are being driven from the sport, disturbed by the on-ice antics of some players and the Neanderthal attitude that seems to permeate head office.

In the first instance, the New York Islanders’ James Wisniewski gives an opponent the finger after an on-ice verbal exchange. The recipient of said gesture, (Sean Avery - himself no angel), is uninjured and continues the game but whinges and moans about the insult after the game.

In the second instance, Chicago’s Niklas Hjalmarsson blind-sides Buffalo’s Jason Pominville and drives him into the boards. Pominville suffers a concussion and is carried off the ice on a stretcher. It’s uncertain when he will be back playing.

And the punishments meted out? 2 game suspensions in both cases.

Is it still a Tim’s if they don’t sell Dutchies?

2010-10-12T20:47:00.001-04:00

Running into the city the other day I had a craving for a medium black and a Dutchie, so I swung off the Queensway and headed down to a Tim’s on Carling Ave. for my fix.

I pulled into the parking lot (I don’t do drive-thrus) and went inside only to find they don’t sell Dutchies at that location!

How can it be a Tim’s if they don’t sell Dutchies? It’s the iconic Tim Horton’s sugar-enriched, 360-calorie treat widely credited with hardening the arteries of an entire generation of Canadians. It was also, along with apple fritters, the first product ever sold by Tim’s. And it’s still one of their best selling items – at least at any outlet near where I live.

Clearly the universe is dangerously unbalanced and something must be done. Does Jimbo Flaherty know this? Maybe they stopped carrying Dutchies during the Chretien years, in which case it’s obviously the Liberal’s fault. Perhaps a few Economic Action Plan dollars could be tossed in Tim’s direction. (Note to PMO: Think of the photo op this presents. Against a backdrop of non-elites, Harper could scarf down a Dutchie while holding a double-double emblazoned with the EAP logo.)

It’s no wonder Ottawa’s going to the dogs. (Sorry, dogs, no Dutchies for you.)

Amateur hour on The Hill

2010-10-06T21:38:00.001-04:00

According to this story at thestar.com:

“The Harper Conservatives injected partisan politics into their UN Security Council campaign, telling international diplomats Wednesday that Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff puts his party before his country.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence “Loose” Cannon levelled the charge at a gathering of non-partisan international diplomats, defying the normally accepted international protocols of leaving partisan politics at “the waters edge”.

If these guys weren’t such complete fools they’d understand there’s a reason why a country, no matter the politics at home, should appear united in the international political sphere. To do otherwise damages the country’s reputation abroad and brings into question the stability of it’s government, and hence it’s value as an ally and/or trading partner.

Is it possible they are that stupid? Or is this just another indication of the Cons seemingly insatiable need to destroy this country and all that it stands for, piece by piece?

“The audience of about 150 sat impassive and silent throughout the address offering polite applause at the end.”

Like Flaherty’s bombast a week or so ago, this is just another example of amateur hour, and I can’t wait for an audience, somewhere, to pointedly stand up in the middle of one of these inappropriate partisan diatribes and leave the room. And then watch Soudas try to spin it as a Liberal conspiracy.

Buffoons, the lot of them.

“It Can’t Get Any Worse”

2010-10-05T10:43:00.001-04:00

That was the campaign slogan of Tiririca, an illiterate clown who was just elected to the Brazilian Congress.

Voters responded overwhelmingly to his platform, the main plank of which was a promise to tell voters what their elected representatives actually did on a day-to-day basis – a platform of transparency one might say.

And how could one not vote for a politician who’s honest enough to come right out and state that one of his reasons for seeking office was to help the needy, “including my family”?

It’s not a slam-dunk however as the Brazilian constitution requires lawmakers to be able to read and write, and there’s some dispute over just how illiterate Tiririca is. But should he take his seat I can only hope, for the voters’ sakes, that their illiterate clown does a better job than our illiterate clowns on the whole transparency and integrity issue.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/americas/no-clowning-around-brazilian-voters-get-behind-grumpy/article1742574/

Conservative fiscal responsibility? An oxymoron.

2010-09-27T10:44:00.001-04:00

Just as a matter of curiosity I went back a few years and took a look at the annual contributions to the national debt. Then I overlaid the party in power at the time.

83/84 was the last of the Trudeau/Turner years, followed by Mulroney/Campbell. During Mulroney’s reign annual debt contributions grew by nearly 100%.

In late ‘93 Chretien came into power and with Paul Martin began to turn things around. By 2005-06 annual debt had been reduced by close to 50% – almost to pre-Mulroney levels – and a $13 billion surplus was on the books, which would have reduced it even further.

Now we have the Harper Conservatives in charge, and guess what’s happened. The $13 billion surplus has been spent and the annual debt contribution is now in excess of $50 billion a year, far surpassing even Brian Mulroney’s profligacy.

And they have the gall to represent themselves as being the best custodians of Canada’s financial health? One can only laugh at the self-delusion.

Darwin contender

2010-09-27T08:19:00.001-04:00

I’m always suspicious of those Darwin Awards that periodically cross the blogosphere and end up in my inbox, but here’s a real case that deserves special consideration as a contender. According to the Seattle Times, this happened in Dover, N.H.

A New Hampshire high school student shocked so severely in shop class that his heart stopped beating is suing his teacher, the school district and the city of Dover.

Kyle Dubois and his parents claim teacher Thomas Kelley did not warn Dubois and other students of the dangers of the electrical demonstration cords in their electrical trades class.

On March 11, Dubois attached an electrical clamp to one nipple while another student attached another clamp to the other. A third student plugged in the cord.

Dubois was critically injured.

The New Hampshire Union Leader says Dubois' suit contends he suffered permanent brain damage.

Kelley resigned from his teaching position about a month after the incident. He declined to comment on the lawsuit.

I expect the brain damage may have been a pre-existing condition.

Rob Ford – just 1 of 45

2010-09-24T09:31:00.001-04:00

If there was ever any doubt about Rob Ford’s credentials to become mayor of Toronto, the fact that he is being endorsed by his friend Jimbo Flaherty should quickly put that to rest.

As an outsider I can stand back and smile condescendingly as the good burghers of Canada’s largest city all but acclaim Ford amidst the chorus of calls for sanity from the main stream media (except for the Sun, of course). But having seen Ottawa’s Larry O’Brien experience up close (which has many similarities, including a Sun endorsement, if I recall correctly) it’s worth remembering that Rob Ford has only 1 vote out of 45 on council.

So unless he’s a helluva salesman and can convince at least 22 fellow councillors he has the right answers he’s just going to be another angry white guy with a pulpit, doing little permanent damage other than providing the rest of Canada with 4 more years of entertainment at Toronto’s expense.

How not to impress the boss

2010-09-18T09:00:00.001-04:00

From today’s Toronto Sun, online edition. (http://www.torontosun.com/comment/2010/09/17/15388356.html)

On September 5, 2010, a column by Ezra Levant contained false statements about George Soros and his conduct as a young teenager in Nazi-occupied Hungary.

…

The management of Sun Media wishes to state that there is no basis for the statements in the column and they should not have been made.

Sun Media, this newspaper and Ezra Levant retract the statements made in the column and unreservedly apologize to Mr. Soros for the distress and harm this column may have caused to him.

Well aren’t we sensitive.

2010-09-15T08:40:00.001-04:00

Last Sunday, Ian Davey quipped on CTV’s Question Period that “It was once said about the Toronto Sun that it’s a newspaper for people who can’t read.”

Well that prompted a flurry of indignation from Sun editorialists and reporters (of which there are some apparently, when they’re not watching CTV) who failed to see the humour in Davey’s comment.

But instead of being a 1-day wonder, the story is still being reported in the Sun media empire days after the dastardly deed.

Of course the one common element is that in every story and editorial Davey is prominently linked to Michael Ignatieff, even though he hasn’t worked for him for about a year.

Today Lorrie Goldstein, in an open letter to Ian Davey also made the requisite link to Ignatieff, but at least contributed this bit of humour to the discussion.

“The Globe and Mail is read by people who think they are running the country but aren’t. The Toronto Star is read by people who know they should be running the country, but aren’t. The Ottawa Citizen is read by people who are running the country and don’t know how to. And the Sun is read by people who don’t give a damn who’s running the country, as long as she has big boobs.”

Now isn’t that a LOT better than being told you can’t read?

Welcome to Faux North.

“Scrap the registry” hypocrisy

2010-09-12T10:38:00.001-04:00

The Toronto Sun reports today that the Conservatives are mounting a targeted ad campaign against those MPs who might vote against Hoeppner’s long-gun registry private members bill.

The huge 10-by-20 foot billboards will go up in the key ridings early this week, calling on constituents to pressure the local MPs to vote with the government and support Conservative MP Candice Hoeppner's private member's bill to scrap the registry later this month.

(I wonder who’s paying for those – Candice Hoeppner? The Conservative Party? Canadian taxpayers?)

Party deputy director Fred DeLorey said, in support of the initiative:

"This will be a part of our plan to encourage the 20 Opposition MPs to keep their word to their constituents. These MPs need to be reminded they work for their constituents who want the long-gun registry scrapped, not their Ottawa bosses who want to keep it."

The hypocrisy is palpable. Is John Baird “working for his constituents” in Ottawa-West Nepean when he stands to vote for this bill? How about Pierre Poilievre (Nepean-Carleton)? Or Alice Wong (Richmond, BC)? There are numerous Con MPs representing major urban areas where the majority of the population has, and will continue to support the long-gun registry, and those Con MPs are most certainly NOT “working for their constituents”.

"Whatever the leader said, I stand behind what the leader said,"

2010-09-12T10:17:00.001-04:00

This according to Vic Toews as reported in the Winnipeg Free Press. Reporting on the Quebec Conservative hockey arena fiasco (to be named the Stephen Harper Coliseum?), Toews is further quoted as saying "Manitoba has received, in fact … more than its fair share" of infrastructure spending.

I don’t particularly care who got more or less of MY money (for it is, in fact, my money (and yours) the feds are throwing around to seed the Conservative vote garden) but that they are getting any of it at all – especially for commercial/professional sports facilities.

But the real point of this is that, yet again, another Conservative Minister has publicly admitted that he cannot or will not think for himself, but instead just blindly follows the orders of the supreme authority.

Say what you will about the so-called dysfunction in the Liberal and NDP caucuses where individual members sometimes take a principled stand on an issue, or publically disagree with their leadership, but I for one would much rather have thinking MPs in Parliament than just a bunch of bobbleheads doing what the boss tells them. That’s how Kim Jong Il operates and we’ve all seen how well that’s worked out.

The voters in Provencher should think hard about that come election time.

What values?

2010-09-11T08:36:00.001-04:00

This morning the Ottawa Citizen reports Majority of Canadians say Muslims don't share their values.

The poll, conducted earlier this week by Léger Marketing in Canada and Caravan in the United States, found that 55 per cent of Canadian respondents and 50.3 per cent of Americans disagreed when asked whether "Muslims share our values."

This is such a breathtakingly stupid poll as to be laughable. What values are we talking about? When you broad-brush the question to that degree (i.e. lumping all “Muslim” values into a single question) you are going to get similar, if not more extreme results on just about any subject.

Ask mainstream Canadians if the “Conservative Party of Canada share our values” and you’ll get 70% or so who disagree.

Ask Canadians if the Bloc Quebecois shares their values, and you’ll get even higher disagreement numbers.

Finally, since the topic is religion, ask Canadians if the “fundamentalist Christian right share our values” and I’d be willing to wager the results would be very close to the question posed about Muslims.

No, this is nothing more than fear-mongering about those among us who may be different.

“The state does not belong in the bedrooms of the nation”

2010-09-02T11:45:00.001-04:00

That according to Pierre Trudeau in 1967. And, I would suggest, neither does the CBC.

The CBC has been twisting itself in knots trying to justify why it “outed” Lori Douglas, associate chief justice of Manitoba Court of Queen's Bench (family division).

Justice Douglas had the misfortune of having a husband who, back in 2003 at least, didn’t quite get the concept of discretion when it came to one’s (private) sexual relationships and practices. As a consequence she has now been cast into the spotlight by the CBC for what are personal choices that have absolutely no bearing on her performance as a judge.

Is she a good judge? I have no idea. But she is not automatically a bad judge simply because she and her husband have been known to indulge in certain sexual activities when she removes her robes.

The CBC claims that they are justified in running the story because of “a lawyer's duty to a client; the duty of other legal professionals to report matters of concern to the relevant professional associations; the duty of a potential judge to disclose pertinent matters in advance of his or her selection; and the responsibilities of judicial selection committees as they make their choices.”

In other words, the CBC has determined that a person’s sexual proclivities are and should be “a matter of concern to … professional associations”. What utter bullshit. Unless the individual in question is breaking the law, anything else they do in their free time is no one else’s business but their own.

And don’t even get me started on the lowlife that took $25,000 to shut up in 2003 and 7 years later decided to go public.

What price a few hundred votes?

2010-09-02T11:02:00.001-04:00

The asbestos industry in Quebec has become a national embarrassment. The health risks from this mineral have been known since the early 1900’s and ultimately led many countries to ban the mining or use of asbestos. Not so in Canada where the federal and Quebec governments continue to actively support an industry that kills in those third-world countries and elsewhere where a ban does not exist.

According to the World Health Organization, asbestos-related illnesses result in as many as 107,000 deaths a year. And since Canada produces about 10% of the world’s asbestos (virtually all of which is exported), 10,000 of those deaths could be directly attributed to this industry, and by extension, to the federal and Quebec governments.

The Chrysotile Institute maintains that the form of asbestos being mined in Canada, chrysotile, is significantly less dangerous than the amphibole types used in years past. On their web site they state, “they are much more less dangerous than amphiboles which were ban a long time ago” (all typos and grammatical errors included.) but then go on to provide a series of safe handling considerations which are all intended to help avoid the inhalation of fibres.

Some reports claim that asbestos mining accounts for about 700 direct (mining) jobs and another 2,000 indirect jobs – most if not all in the Province of Quebec. If those 10,000 deaths were all occurring in Canada you can be sure our governments would have reacted by now, but since they are predominantly in 3rd world countries like India and China one has to wonder whether the two governments consider 3 to 4 deaths per year a reasonable trade off for each of those Quebec jobs and votes.

“This is the stuff of … whack job conspiracy theorists …”

2010-09-02T09:21:00.001-04:00

This according to Charlie Angus commenting on Saskatchewan MP Garry Breitkreuz’s statement that “[Police chiefs] won’t admit it, but it appears they don’t want Canadians to own guns. To that end, they need a database that will help them locate and seize those firearms as soon as a licence or registration expires.”

Well Charlie, you nailed that one – at least the “whack job” bit.

Now I have been opposed to the gun registry from day 1, not because I disagreed with the premise (You have to register your dog for Pete’s sake, why not a lethal weapon?) but because I disagreed with the criminal sanctions associated with failing to register. Make it a misdemeanour punished with a modest fine and remove the draconian search and seizure components and I‘d be fine with that.

But MPs like Breitkreuz and even Hoepner with their over-the-top rhetoric are clearly just pandering to the most hard-core of the tinfoil-hat wearing conspiricists out there. And sadly, that’s a pretty large segment of the Harper base.

Who will do the right thing?

2010-07-24T08:20:00.001-04:00

Tony Clement is reported to have said in one interview this week that "There’s not a micron of difference of opinion between myself and the prime minister on this."

Now it appears from some reports that Clement actually argued, in Cabinet, against the change but was overruled by His Harpiness. After tugging at his forelock he then went out into the wider, more intelligent, real world and tried to sell what was essentially unsellable, using all the tools so readily at hand for the Reform-a-Tories – lies, obfuscation, denial, blame, misdirection, fear.

By all accounts Tony Clement is not a stupid man, and one whom I assume went into politics with honourable intent. But where is the honour when he so clearly checks his integrity at the Cabinet doors? (And that’s not to pick on Clement. Think Poilievre, Baird, LeBreton, Day, and on, and on, and on – well some of them really are stupid, but you get the point.)

I’ve blogged on this before (http://viewsfromthelake-eh.blogspot.com/2007/11/if-we-both-think-alike-one-of-us-is.html), and like I said then, I just don’t understand how smart people can let themselves be manipulated and abused by a tin-pot dictator day in and day out without screaming “enough” and trying to salvage at least a small amount of their pride. I know many others who have quit more lucrative jobs (myself included) for far less reason, so what is their excuse?

I know some would say it’s easier to effect change from within, and that’s true to a point, but I would also suggest that when your boss tells you to lie in public it’s time to take a stand, and I for one, would hope that at least one or two of the principled people in whom we entrust the management of our country would stand up and be counted.

But sadly, in Canadian politics today, I can’t think of a single Member of Parliament that I would trust to do the right thing.

Tony Clement – hoisted on his own petard

2010-07-22T08:58:00.001-04:00

The news yesterday that the head of Statistics Canada has resigned over the long-form census debacle brought this bit of Tony Clement disingenuity into focus.

Speaking to Susan Lunn on CBC’s The House Saturday, Clement offered this gem:

... if you’re critics of the government you're not going to necessarily trust a member of the government and his point of view on this, but if you don't trust Tony Clement you can certainly trust Stats Can.

Now would he be possibly be referring to Mr. Munir Sheikh, the Chief Statistician, who resigned over Clement’s incompetent handling of this file?

As also quoted in the same Globe and Mail news item:

“With Dr. Sheikh’s resignation, Statistics Canada, and indeed the nation’s statistical system, has lost the committed services of a man of integrity and honour,” Mr. McKinnon said.

Of course Messrs. Clement, Harper, et al wouldn’t know “integrity and honour” if it hit them in the face, and in fact appear to have now mounted an attack campaign criticizing Dr. Sheikh.

This one’s a long way from over folks.

So explain to me again who’s winning the war on terror.

2010-07-04T22:14:00.001-04:00

One doesn’t have to look too far these days to see that while the “terrorists” may not be winning militarily, they have still managed to inflict a flurry of body blows on the west. Whether it’s the economic impact on business caused by enhanced border security and air travel restrictions, the increased financial burdens for security (the billion dollar boondoggle in Toronto being just the most recent egregious example), or the curtailment of the most basic of human rights (ditto billion dollar boondoggle), western governments are now dancing to their tune.

And here is the latest example of stupidity on this file.

The federal agency in charge of airline security admits its staff were wrong to force the head of a non-profit agency off a plane at a B.C. airport and then detain her because they believed she was carrying too much money.

Wendy Toyer of the ALS Society of B.C. was carrying cash and cheques donated at the ALS Walk in Kamloops as she boarded a plane at the city’s airport last Saturday.

So here’s a woman who hardly matches the profile of a terrorist, yet she was forced off a plane and detained because someone “believed she was carrying too much money.”

CATSA of course is all apologetic, as they should be, but only for forcing her off the plane in Kamloops. Instead they should be apologizing to her for breaching her privacy by reporting her to the RCMP in the first place. But here again individual rights are being tossed out the window under the guise of fighting terrorism and it’s poorer cousin, crime.

Kamloops RCMP Staff Sgt. Quentin Smith said CATSA shares information with the police under the Privacy Act where proceeds of crime and terrorism are concerned.

CATSA staff are asked to contact RCMP if someone is travelling with a large amount of cash although there is no law against doing so. (emphasis mine)

Read the full story here: http://thechronicleherald.ca/Canada/1190381.html

The “Liberalisation” of the Reforma-Tories

2010-06-08T08:26:00.001-04:00

The Harpercons won’t admit it, but they have always had a great admiration for Jean Chretien and are trying, not so secretly, to emulate the the previous Prime Minister in the hopes that by doing so they will be able to achieve that elusive (thank God for that) majority.

The latest evidence comes in this quote from Tony “Pork barrel” Clement. As reported in the Ottawa Sun, Clement explained the building of the University of Waterloo’s new environmental research facility in Huntsville with money from the summit budget as follows:

“The building of this building is made possible because we are taking $9 million from our G8 infrastructure fund and using it as a way to build the building, and so this fits into our organizing for the summit.”

Don’t believe me? Well Jean Chretien said it best himself.

“It's a proof. A proof is a proof. And when you have a good proof, it's because it's proven.”

Q.E.D.

The bizarre world of road race timing

2010-06-03T12:57:00.001-04:00

Having a marathoner in the family one is exposed to the various rules and regulations associated with competitive running. Most make some degree of sense, but one particular rule is so patently stupid as to beggar the imagination.

According to the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) Road Race Handbook, “The official time shall be the time elapsed between the firing of the starting gun and the athlete reaching the finish line. However, the time elapsed between an athlete crossing the start line and the finish line can be made known to him, but will not be considered an official time.”

So what this means is that race results are not actually based on the time a runner takes to go from the start to the finish line over a measured distance.

In a 100-yard dash, the runners all line up right on the start line, so it matters not, but in a large race, it’s not uncommon for competitors to be lined up 200 or 300 yards behind the start line. Once the gun fires, it can take those runners a couple of minutes to get to the start line therefore doubly penalizing them, first for having to “run” a longer distance, but also having to do that extra distance at a much slower pace as the runners in front get under way.

This can result in a situation where a runner who was actually faster over the measured distance places lower in the standings than a runner who was slower over the measured distance but was closer to the start line when the gun sounded. And that’s not fair, or accurate.

Runners today are all equipped with transponder chips to precisely determine when they cross the start and finish lines, thus giving a very precise elapsed time required to cover the measured distance. That should be the only “official time” as it’s the only accurate measurement of how fast the runner covered the actual distance.

It’s time for the various organizing bodies to move out of the 19th century and change this rule.

Ontario knows what’s best for you (or not!)

2010-05-27T09:39:00.001-04:00

According to this story in the National Post:

Ontario's alcohol regulator has moved to ban an Austrian beer favoured by connoisseurs because its name, Samichlaus, means St. Nicholas in Swiss-German.

The Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario has decided the beer's label contravenes rules against advertising to children. It features the name of the beer, Samichlaus, a Swiss-German nickname for the saint behind the Santa Claus legend, and a small black-and-white bearded figure.

Now while that’s stupid enough, here’s the kicker:

A spokeswoman for the commission said the ruling dates from 2001, had lain dormant for years after the commission moved to complaints-based enforcement, and was only "reactivated" recently after a "single complaint from a private person."

A “single complaint from a private person.”

First of all I’d like to know who the idiot is that finds this product unacceptable. (In my opinion, all such complaints should be public and open up the complainer to the appropriate level of ridicule.)

But second, if the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario takes this sort of action based on a single complaint, I think I’ll go to the LCBO today and file complaints about every wine with ducks or kangaroos or little penguins on the label. Or how about wines with names like “Fat Bastard”. That offends me, even though I’m neither. And those British strong ales like Hobgoblin. Why they surely represent Halloween, and are obviously targeting children. The list is nearly endless for anyone with a common sense deficiency and an axe to grind.

What do we need to do to get the adults back in charge?

Personal responsibility

2010-05-17T12:59:00.001-04:00

Although I’m no fan of Rogers, I have to admit I’m on their side (mostly) on this one.

A Toronto woman says the billing practices of Rogers Wireless Inc. led to her husband discovering her extramarital affair.

Now the woman, whose husband walked out, is suing the communications giant for $600,000 for alleged invasion of privacy and breach of contract, the results of which she says have ruined her life.

Supposedly this woman’s extramarital affair was exposed when her husband saw some suspicious calls from her cell phone statement which Rogers had bundled in with the regular family bill. The husband then phoned the number and spoke with the person there who confirmed the affair.

I may be a minority of one, but I don’t make it a habit of calling the numbers on my wife’s cell phone records to see who she's been talking with, and why. So I imagine there was already cause for suspicion and this was but one more indicator. That still doesn’t excuse his behaviour, but it does suggest the marriage was already in trouble and a divorce was inevitable.

But more importantly, she was cheating and got caught. I make no moral judgement on her behaviour, but it does seem typical that these days, when one is caught with one’s hand in the proverbial cookie jar the first response is to blame the manufacturer for making the lid too easy to remove. That decision was hers and hers alone, and to try to lay the blame elsewhere just doesn’t fly.

As for Rogers’ behaviour, if the report is correct in that they “unilaterally terminated its cellular contract with the plaintiff that had been in her maiden name and included it in the husband’s account that was under his surname.” then they are, at the very least, in breach of any number of privacy rules and regulations. Other aspects of the claim against Rogers raise even more troubling concerns about their privacy processes which must be corrected if true, and so they have work to do.

But the bottom line, Gabriella Nagy, is that you made a decision that had unexpected consequences. It sucks, but that’s what accepting personal responsibility is all about. And laying a $600,000 lawsuit on Rogers just means you’re trying to make someone else pay for your own errors in judgement. I hope the courts see it the same way.

Well some things drive me to drink too.

2010-05-04T21:01:00.001-04:00

Recently the Ottawa Citizen ran this story under the headline “Watching R-rated movies can lead children to drink, study finds”

According to the report,

“The researchers found that of children whose parents never allowed them to watch R-rated movies, only three per cent had started drinking when questioned a couple of years after the initial survey. For children whose parents "sometimes" let them see R-rated films, 19 per cent had started drinking. For children who were allowed to watch R-rated films "all the time," 25 per cent had started drinking.”

And from that the researchers seem to have decided that,

“… watching R-rated movies can lead to children drinking alcohol earlier in life.”

This reminds me of the “study” that was done back in the 60s that proved, beyond any reasonable doubt, that breastfeeding your infant was the single biggest causal factor that led to later marijuana use because 90%+ of users were breast fed as infants. Something to do with oral fixation as I recall.

Did it not occur to anyone that perhaps parents who allowed their young children to watch R-rated movies weren’t particularly good role models themselves? Maybe there was already alcohol abuse/overuse in the household and the kids were just emulating mom and pop. Who knows what other factors were at play – the paper didn’t elaborate – but I expect the linkage is tenuous at best, despite the alarmist headline.

Rubbish then, and rubbish now.

Shorter Vic Toews: I haven’t a clue.

2010-04-29T08:55:00.001-04:00

Our illustrious Minister of Throwing Away the Key honoured us with his presence on the John Oakley Show (AM 640 Toronto) this morning.

The topic was the increased cost of all the ReformaTories’ proposed tough on crime legislation.

Responding to a series of softball questions (it was John Oakley after all) about the costs (now admitted to be $2 billion by the Cons) versus the Parliamentary Budget Officer’s estimates of $8 to $10 billion, Toews had these gems to offer:

“What I believe is going to be happening is there's going to be a shift in the expenses from the provincial coffers to the federal coffers.”

“Now there will be additional expenses from some of the other legislation that we’re bringing in, but quite frankly I think it's worth the cost.”

“I'm quite frankly quite puzzled as to where he gets his numbers.”

“The cost benefit analysis is often difficult to estimate in straight dollars but I can tell you that the benefit to ordinary Canadians far outweighs the costs that our government is prepared to keep dangerous individuals in prison.”

All of which is to say that any cost estimates put out by this government are, at best, based on a back-of-the-envelope calculation over drinks at Hy’s, and will be spun in the general context of “it’s worth it” to “protect Canadians”. (And coincidentally, protect Con votes. But we won’t go there.)

And just in case there was any doubt as to who the good guys are, he threw out this little gem as well.

“Our Liberal opposition seems to think that ordinary Canadian citizens should be locked in their own homes and the dangerous criminals roaming the streets. We think the reverse should be true, that it’s the dangerous criminals who should be locked up and ordinary citizens should be entitled to walk the streets any time of day or night.”

Sure. Got it already. But “dangerous criminals roaming the streets” don’t scare me nearly as much as people like Vic Toews being on the loose in positions of authority.

Dalton McGuinty – Yes! No! Maybe!

2010-04-23T21:18:00.001-04:00

Dalton McGuinty finds himself in distinguished company, having flip-flopped on changes to Ontario’s sex-ed program faster than Stephen Harper could throw Helena Guergis under the bus.

The product of several years of consultation with experts in the field and parents’ groups, Ontario’s new sex-ed program was released back in January. No one paid any attention until this past week when some Christian conservative groups found out about the changes and threatened to protest.

Of course the media didn’t help either, with their, some would say unnatural, obsession with “masturbation”, “vaginal lubrication”, and “anal intercourse”. Reporters and news anchors couldn’t wait to say those words on air as they excitedly informed the great unwashed who apparently all managed to survive into intolerant and ignorant adulthood without having to learn all that nasty stuff in school.

These changes are not only timely, but necessary because while some parents are conscientious and teach their children the facts of life at an appropriate time, most children’s sex education occurs in the schoolyard or from watching porn videos on the cable channel or the internet. And presumably not even the incensed Christian lobby groups would agree that’s appropriate. (Although they would defer such education until well after the time it was needed by the kids, and eliminate most of the stuff they don’t agree with, absurdly rendering the whole exercise pretty much useless.)

Sadly this episode also shows Dalton McGuinty for what he is, an opportunist for whom principles are merely trial balloons to be floated to see which way the wind blows. This was not his finest hour. Instead of showing courage and doing what’s right, he ran.

But the highlight of this news item for me was when Sister Joan Cronin of the Institute for Catholic Education said, presumably with a straight (and very pinched) face, “The church disapproves of masturbation on any level”. Apparently it is even lower on the Roman Catholic acceptance scale than some other sexual practices that have recently (again) been in the news. To which I would suggest better sex education and a little (or a lot) of masturbation might be just what the Catholic Church needs.

Tanning beds addictive? Who knew?

2010-04-21T13:39:00.001-04:00

According to this article in the Ottawa Citizen, tanning beds may be addictive.

Individuals who use UV tanning beds may meet the criteria for addiction, a study released Monday said. [Subjects] showed signs of tanning addiction, based on measures used to judge other forms of addiction, including substance abuse. "In addition to the desire for appearance enhancement, motivations for tanning include relaxation, improved mood, and socialization," researchers wrote in the Archives of Dermatology.

I especially like the rationale, being that motivations including “relaxation, improved mood, and socialization” constitute addictive behaviour. By that measure I am addicted to golf, motorcycling, sporting events, parties, and long lunches, so where do I go to apply for disability benefits?

Tourism now a “human right” in Europe?

2010-04-19T20:24:00.001-04:00

I thought the European Union pretty much made itself the laughingstock of the world when, 10 or so years ago, they came out with regulations banning the importation and sale of bananas with, as I recall the term, “excessive curvature”. I expect the petty Euro-bureaucrats found them too hard to peel.

But they have now set a new standard for collective insanity that I certainly hope will be hard to surpass.

Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry, has stated, "Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life". Not content with simply making tourism a “right”, Mr. Tajani goes on to present a plan that “would see taxpayers footing some of the vacation bill for seniors, youths between the ages of 18 and 25, disabled people, and families facing "difficult social, financial or personal" circumstances.”

Under a pilot program slated to continue until 2013, “The EU and its taxpayers are slated to fund 30% of the cost of these tours, which could range from youth exploring abandoned factories and power plants in Manchester to retirees taking discount trips to Madrid, all in the name of cultural appreciation.”

It probably goes without saying that Mr. Tajani was appointed to his post by Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Perhaps the EU should send them both to an abandoned Manchester factory. One-way ticket only.

For more: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=2923469#ixzz0lavcBpue

New Liberal strategy?

2010-04-16T08:41:00.001-04:00

I was torn between titling this post “Quote of the day” or “New Liberal strategy”, which I finally used (as you can see). And here’s why:

“When asked how she felt about losing to a dead man, Brock said "I'll live."”

Apparently this small town in Tennessee was so upset with their mayor that when one of the candidates died during a recent election campaign the townspeople voted him in anyway. One voter was quoted as saying:

"I knew he was deceased. I know that sounds stupid, but we wanted someone other than her."

The Liberals have tried everything else, so why not give it a go? It just might work.

Link: http://inform.com/politics/dead-man-elected-mayor-tennessee-town-904368a

Plus ça change…

2010-04-14T15:58:00.001-04:00

The ReformaTories have made an art out of trotting out the same crisis over and over again, each time with more high dudgeon and outrage, and each time with more shallow promises to “get the job done”.

Contrary to popular belief, it’s not always youth crime, or pardons, or environmental controls. Here is the latest crisis du jour and the typical Cons kneejerk reaction (which could be best characterised as walk loudly and carry a small stick).

Apparently they have just (re)discovered that some gasoline vendors are overcharging at the pumps because their pumps aren’t properly calibrated. Horrors!

"In some cases, customers were being charged an extra $1.50 to $2 on a normal fill-up. This is unacceptable. Families, individuals, and small businesses spend enough of their money on gas. They shouldn't have to pay a penny more due to inaccurate gas pumps."

And so a Fairness at the Pumps Act is born, only to eventually, if past history is any indicator, either die on the order paper or disappear into the open maw of parliamentary committees.

And if this just seems to be déjà vu all over again, you’re right. It was back in 2008 when Industry Minister Jim Prentice promised to “move quickly” to introduce legislation to fix this problem because

"All consumers in this country need to know that when they go to gas up their vehicles that the pumps are accurate and they are getting what they paid for."

I expect someone in the PMO must have an issues list from which nothing ever gets removed. They just cycle through it every 2 years to gain a few headlines and maximum political benefit from the great unwashed who are too lazy or stupid to pay enough attention to realise we’ve heard it all before. Next up: bank fees!

The Quebec question, again…

2010-04-07T09:43:00.001-04:00

Today Sun Media is reporting the results of a recent Leger Marketing poll conducted on behalf of The Association of Canadian Studies.

According to the reports, the poll found that “A surprising 26% of Albertans and 15% of English Canadians believe Quebec would be better off if it were to separate” As would be expected the results varied widely by province with a high of 39.9% in Quebec supportive and a low of 5.3% in New Brunswick.

According to the reporter, Elizabeth Thompson, the exact question that was asked was whether respondents strongly agreed, somewhat agreed, somewhat disagreed or strongly disagreed with the following statement: "Quebec would be better off if it were not part of Canada."

“Better off” how? Economically? Culturally? The poll doesn’t differentiate. I expect most Canadians feel that Quebec is better off economically within Canada if for no other reason that the equalization payments flooding in their direction. Would Quebec be better off fiscally without those? Unlikely. But culturally I don’t think there’s much question that Quebec would certainly be no worse off as a separate entity. They would still have complete control over their culture and language but would no longer have to answer embarrassing questions about English language rights within their borders or cultural and social initiatives that don’t fit within the broader Canadian multicultural framework.

But if the pollsters were really trying to get a sense of what Canadians think about Quebec staying in Canada they asked the wrong question. To get Canadians to tell you how they feel about Quebec as part of Canada, the question should be whether respondents strongly agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree or strongly disagree with the following statements:

- "Canada would be better off economically with a separate Quebec"

- “Canada would be better off politically with a separate Quebec", and

- "Canada would be better off culturally with a separate Quebec".

Now those results would be interesting. Any takers?

Bring out yer dead…

2010-04-06T16:35:00.001-04:00

Sometimes the connection between two weird news stories on the same day is just too delicious to ignore. Today’s stories come from Liverpool and Vancouver.

In one case, two women tried to carry a dead person on board, and in the other a dead (asleep) person was left on board.

In a scene reminiscent of Weekend at Bernie’s, a women and her step-daughter tried to bring the woman’s deceased husband on board a flight from Liverpool to Berlin. Insisting he was “just asleep”, his widow said “He was pale but he wasn't dead”. (Just pining for Germany no doubt.) Both women have been arrested.

Meanwhile back in Vancouver, a British law professor (and very sound sleeper) managed to sleep through an Air Canada landing at Vancouver International, taxiing to the terminal, deplaning, and towing the plane into the hangar where a maintenance person discovered him and woke him up some 1 1/2 hours later. So far no word on a lawsuit, but he’s not very happy with the airline.

So the lesson here is if you want to take a dead person on board a flight with you, pick Air Canada. You can be sure they won’t notice anything amiss.