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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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?

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.