Quotulatiousness

February 17, 2019

When Trump gets serious with Canada about defence spending

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Ted Campbell notes that, despite all the nay-saying, President Trump appears to be getting results with US allies on defence issues. That being the case, he’s wondering when Prime Minister Trudeau will get the message:

A right rear view of a Canadian army Cougar wheeled fire support vehicle being used as an observation post by soldiers standing watch during the combined U.S./Canadian NATO Exercise Rendezvous ’83. Location: Camp Wainright, AB

I was commenting on this before president Trump was elected; and shortly after his 2016 election victory I said that

    “Prime Minister Trudeau and most European presidents and prime ministers will have to face a newly elected US president who wants them to pay for a bigger and bigger slice of their own defence. Real leaders would do well to recognize that the Americans have a valid point … some, probably many of them, including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, may try to pretend that it doesn’t matter; they will be wrong.”

I was impressed, then, with how deeply many, many Americans felt about Donald Trump’s campaign message which said that allies were “freeloading,” and taking unfair advantage of America’s innate generosity … I was very, very conscious of the fact that, when I was a young man, a junior officer in Canada’s tough, superbly disciplined, well trained, trained, nuclear armed “vest pocket army” (as more than one allied general called us) brigade group in Germany, Canada used to pay its full and fair share … but we stopped, in the late summer of 1969, when Pierre Trudeau tried to totally withdraw from NATO and, indeed, from the world.

I wonder when President Trump will send someone like Timothy Betts, the Deputy Assistant Secretary and Senior Advisor for Security negotiations and Armaments in the US State Department, to Ottawa to demand that Canada should pay up after a half century of “freeloading” on the US taxpayers’ goodwill. That will come as a nasty shock to Team Trudeau and, indeed, to a majority of Canadians who have gotten used to the notion that the Americans will defend us out of the kindness of their hearts. I’m not sure that Canada is next in line, but I suspect we’re on his short list.

February 16, 2019

The state of play in the SNC-Lavalin affair

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Law, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

If you happen to have misplaced your Libranos scorecard, Daniel Bordman has a quick summary to bring you up to date:

So here is how the accusation stands: The PMO put pressure on the AG to the benefit of SNC-Lavalin, she refused and was shuffled out of the AG position.

This led to a massive public outcry from the Conservatives, NDP and the 10 or so Journalists left in the mainstream media. The original plan was for the new AG, David Lametti, to explain to the public why this story is overblown and there was no need to look any further into the allegations.

His plan: he went on TV and explained to the public that he had spoken to Justin Trudeau and he had denied the allegations, so no investigation was needed. Brilliant! If only Bruce MacArthur and Alexander Bissonnette had known of this expert legal strategy of denying what you were caught doing, they could have escaped justice.

It is also important to note that the Prime Minister admits to having “rigorous conversations” with Jody Wilson Raybould over the SNC-Lavalian case.

After the Shaggy “it wasn’t me” defence failed to convince anyone outside of the CBC editorial board of Justin Trudeau’s innocence, a new plan was formed.

Plan B seemed to be, have everyone smear Jody Wilson-Raybould and act like it was her scandal not the PMO’s.

While she was remaining silent due to attorney-client privilege (which is a debatable position), Trudeau continued to speak for her. Again, it should be pointed out that Trudeau could have waived this at anytime to let her tell her side of the story, he didn’t.

This all came to a head when Trudeau claimed that “her presence in the cabinet speaks for itself”. The next day she resigned.

Off to Plan C, which seems to have been concocted by new Liberal strategist, Kim Jong Un.

A committee will be constructed to investigate these accusations, which of course will have a majority of Liberals and be headed by Liberal MP, Anthony Housefather, who has already added his flare to the investigation suggesting the reason that Jody Wilson Raybould was shuffled out of the AG position was because she didn’t speak French.

Remember, he is the impartial leader of Liberals investigating an allegation of Liberal corruption. It is also important to point out that both of the ministers in charge of immigration matters, Ahmed Hussain and Bill Blair, can’t speak a word of French between them.

February 14, 2019

We’re all shocked, shocked to hear allegations of Liberal Party corruption (again)

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Blazing Cat Fur, surprise is expressed that anyone is surprised that corruption in the federal Liberal Party is again in the news. As I commented on Gab last week, “But this has been ‘business as usual’ for the Natural Governing Party for generations. Why is it suddenly not okay now?” It’s no wonder that veteran Liberal politicos are shocked that anyone even cares at this late stage.

Paul Wells of MacLean’s has written Canada, the show in which he professes surprise and disappointment at the back-room dealings exposed in the SNC-Lavalin affair, why he’s almost in shock! Shock I tell you! – “You thought this government was about family benefits and boil-water advisories? The Lavalin affair offers a glimpse of the real scene — maybe the real Canada.”

Seriously? Is anyone over age 8 shocked to learn that Canada is run for the benefit of the Liberal Party and its crony capitalist backers?

I mean besides the media cheerleaders who helped elect the cardboard cutout known as Justin Trudeau.

You shouldn’t be surprised at the antics of a Liberal party whose moral universe dictates no strings attached abortion on demand and the demonization of its opponents. Or whose “leader” experiences sexual assault differently than his victim.

A brokerage party that has weaponized “diversity and multiculturalism” to implement a divisive mass immigration policy that benefits – Surprise! Our corporate welfare class.

The antics of a party that labels citizens who object to their mass-immigration Ponzi-scheme as intolerant, racists, islamophobes & Nazis has surprised you with its shady dealings? Really?

February 12, 2019

History Summarized: Iroquois Native Americans

Filed under: Americas, Britain, Cancon, History, Humour, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Overly Sarcastic Productions
Published on 7 Aug 2017

There’s a fascinating history from just northwest of American history that is too often ignored. But that’s a damn shame, because it’s a damn cool history, and I’m going to talk about it dammit!

No, I didn’t accidentally misspell the title of this video when I sleepily uploaded this after I woke up. That’s absurd.

EXTRA CREDITS: HIAWATHA: https://youtu.be/79RApCgwZFw

This video was produced with assistance from the Boston University Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program.

PATREON: http://www.patreon.com/OSP

February 7, 2019

Cultural nationalism versus cultural imperialism at the CBC

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Andrew Coyne reflects on the odd musings of CBC president Catherine Tait:

“There was a time,” Catherine Tait was saying, “when cultural imperialism was absolutely accepted.”

The CBC president was musing, at an industry conference in Ottawa last week, about the heyday of the British and French Empires, when if “you were the viceroy of India you would feel that you were doing only good for the people of India.” Or, “if you were in French Africa, you would think ‘I’m educating them, I’m bringing their resources to the world, and I’m helping them.’ ”

The comments have since come back to bite her, not because many people have a kind word for imperialism these days but because she was comparing those colonial empires, which invaded and conquered territory by force of arms, to the “new empire” of Netflix. As more than one commentator has objected, none of the six million Canadians who subscribe to Netflix was made to do so at the point of a gun.

Neither is it evident what comparable “damage” is done by a service that gives willing viewers in this country access to well-made television programs from around the world. It was, in short, an altogether silly line of argument.

And yet it seems wrong to heap such particular scorn on Tait. For in truth she was only giving voice to the sort of thinking typical of her generation and class: middle-aged cultural bureaucrat/subsidized private producer, of a kind found in particular abundance in the Montreal-Toronto corridor. The same defensive attitudes, what is more, have for decades formed the foundation of much government policy on culture, even if they are largely incomprehensible to a generation raised on Netflix and YouTube.

There was a time, that is, when cultural nationalism was absolutely accepted — when it was taken as a given among the educated classes that it was the responsibility of government to protect and defend Canadian culture, if necessary from Canadians themselves. Hence the whole apparatus of CanCon, most of which is still with us today.

February 6, 2019

QotD: “Get off my lawn!”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The zeitgeist, of course, has also changed since 2002. Childhood obesity and screen addiction are now perceived as urgent matters of public health. A politician who wants those damn kids off his lawn is likely to be told “You’re a monster who is spreading diabetes and ruin, and, frankly, it’s amazing that there are kids on your lawn in 2017 and we would like to know how you accomplished this.”

Colby Cosh, “Hamilton finally ends its decades-old ban on street hockey, and it won’t actually change a thing”, National Post, 2017-03-06.

February 5, 2019

The looming threat of agents plotting to influence the next federal election

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Andrew Coyne has the details:

I have an urgent warning for the people of Canada. Even now, certain agents are plotting to influence the result of the next election campaign by means of stealth and deception.

Posing as ordinary Canadians, they plan to use social media to spread falsehoods designed to inflame public opinion, using the latest micro-targeting technologies to tailor their messages to the reader’s particular fears and prejudices.

These agents are better known as the political parties.

One of the problems with the Liberal government’s recently announced plan to “defend Canadian democracy” from foreign interference, notably in the form of “fake news,” is the basic premise: that the principal threat to the integrity of the Canadian electoral process is posed by outsiders, third parties and foreign agents, rather than the participants.

If there is something ominous about the government involving itself, however indirectly, in deciding what is and is not fake news, there is something quite ludicrous about a political party raising the alarm over the spreading of falsehoods during an election campaign. Indeed, a good short definition of an election campaign would be “a sustained, intense, all-party burst of falsehood, slander and misrepresentation.”

There isn’t a lot else. A modern campaign consists mostly in what is gently termed “defining” opposing party leaders, in a way calculated to make them unrecognizable to their own mothers. The rest is devoted to deliberately misrepresenting the other parties’ positions, while making false or exaggerated claims about their own.

There remains a gentlemanly expectation that these falsehoods should not be obviously detectable as such — that is, that the lie should itself be artfully concealed, disguised as an elision, half-truth or what a Liberal MP recently called “rhetorical advantage,” rather than rubbed in the public’s faces in the manner pioneered by Donald Trump.

February 4, 2019

A thumbnail sketch of Mad Max and the PPC

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Anthony Daoud, in an article examining the political loyalty implications of party defections, floor crossings, and resignations, provides a quick outline of Maxime Bernier and his new-but-growing party:

Does Bernier even need an introduction? It seems like everybody in Canada knows about him, and his popularity will undoubtedly grow after appearing on the Rubin Report, a libertarian Youtube show.

He left the Conservative Party and created the People’s Party of Canada, which advocates for smaller government, lower levels of immigration, and more free-markets (including abolishing supply management) according to the party’s website.

In a email to supporters, the PPC proudly proclaimed that it reached its first million dollars in total donations since the party’s founding in September.

Whether Bernier’s party will win any electoral district other than Beauce (his own) is incredibly unlikely, but he can definitely do some damage to the Conservatives’ prospect of victory, since he is already polling at nearly 3%.

What may be the most intense conflict in politics right now is not even taking place in parliament but between the CBC’s Wendy Mesley and the PPC leader. In an interview, she miserably failed at her attempt to link Bernier to a Koch brothers’ conspiracy.

Even more recently, the Quebec politician took the “beef” up a notch when he called for Mesley to be fired after she said Christians in Canada are attempting to sway political landscape, as if they were some sort of foreign interference in our democracy.

Truthfully, the PPC may never come establish themselves as a long-standing party, but more than anything, it could mean that politicians will begin to feel like they can simply leave the party they were elected to represent and literally “do their own thing” once in parliament.

February 3, 2019

The CBC, Netflix, and the questionable role of mandatory “CanCon”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley explains why the CBC’s own shows are appearing on Netflix and how this undermines the raison d’être for government-funded CBC television:

To the vast majority of Canadians, including those who support the CBC, the idea that Netflix represents any kind of threat — and should thus be taxed or forced to carry minimum amounts of Canadian content or otherwise regulated, as various groups urge — will just seem irretrievably bizarre. Whether or not it’s a good idea, CanCon only works in a restricted market where channels broadcast specific things at specific times. Back in the day you might just find yourself bored enough to watch or listen to something you didn’t really want to, and it might just be Canadian.

No one watches anything on Netflix that they don’t want to — no one single, anyway — so there’s no earthly reason to put stuff there if people don’t want it. The irony, though, is that there’s a ton of Canadian content on Netflix, precisely because people want to watch it. And as University of Ottawa professor Michael Geist explained in a blog post on Friday, Netflix makes it very easy to find: Not only are there direct links to Canadian TV shows and films, but it algorithmically detects a user’s preference for CanCon and recommends other titles.

Goodness, just look at all the Canuck shows: Baroness Von Sketch Show, Workin’ Moms, Mr. D, Kim’s Convenience, Schitt’s Creek, Intelligence … hang on a tic, those are all CBC shows! How did those imperialist Silicon Valley pigdogs get their filthy hands on it? Because as more and more Canadians cut the cord, Netflix is a perfectly logical place for CBC and the production companies it works with to showcase their work — not just to Canada but to the world. In short, there doesn’t seem to be any problem or threat here at all, to anyone — just success, and the opportunity for more.

We cut the cord about six months ago, and haven’t missed broadcast TV in the slightest (so I hear … I wasn’t watching much TV even before then). I watch Minnesota Vikings games on DAZN and The Grand Tour on Amazon Prime, and that’s just about all my screen time (YouTube and other online video sources more than compensate).

January 31, 2019

Coming soon for Canadians – mandatory maple-flavoured search results

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist relates the ongoing efforts of ACTRA to get the federal government to mandate high visibility for Canadian content in search engines:

The escalating battle being waged for new Internet taxes to fund Canadian content does not stop with proposals for new fees on Internet access and online video services. Cultural groups also want to increase the “discoverability” of Canadian content by mandating its inclusion in search results. According to the ACTRA submission to the broadcast and telecom legislative review panel, it has been calling for search engine regulation for the past 20 years:

    ACTRA stated during the 1999 CRTC process that Internet search engines would become the gateway for consumers to access the vast array of entertainment and information now available from around the world. We argued then the CRTC should regulate them.

It now argues for mandated inclusion of Canadian content in search results for cultural content under threat of economic sanction:

    Regulating search engines would be difficult, but ACTRA recommends the government approach search engines like Google, Bing and others, and request they ensure Canadians are offered some Canadian choices in their search results. While it is neither possible nor appropriate to interfere in the final selection made by individuals, Canadian consumers should have a real choice, including Canadian films, television programs and music. We expect companies would concur with the government’s reasonable request to be seen as good corporate citizens. If a particular search engine does not agree to this request, the government should impose an appropriate regulatory constraint or burden, such as amending the Income Tax Act to discourage Canadians from advertising on search engines that fail to comply.

January 30, 2019

The high cost Canadians pay to support our oligopolies

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In the National Post, Andrew Coyne compares the Liberal and Conservative parties’ respective claims to lower the cost of living for Canadians, and points out some examples that neither party is willing to address:

For example, there is the notorious system of agricultural quotas known as supply management — a price-fixing ring the government not only approves but organizes and enforces, whose effect is to double or even triple the prices of such basic food items as milk, cheese, eggs and chicken. For all their pretended concern for affordability, all parties and every MP, with the sole exception of Maxime Bernier, are publicly, nay fervently in favour of it.

But while the farm cartel gets a lot of ink, there are plenty of other examples. Canadians pay among the highest wireless telephone fees in the world, for starters — maybe even the highest — as study after study has found. The latest report from Tefficient, a European consultancy, found Canada’s carriers take in more revenue per gigabyte of data than their counterparts anywhere else in the world — 23 times more than in Finland.

Similarly, Canadians pay among the highest air fares in the world. The travel website Kiwi. com recently found flights from Canada on a full-service airline cost roughly five times as much per 100 kilometres as flights from the United States. The situation was a little better for domestic flights, where costs were only twice as high as in the U.S. The makers of Hopper, the travel app, note it is typically cheaper to fly from Vancouver to Hawaii than from Vancouver to Regina, though Regina is 3,000 km closer.

Finally, there are Canadian bank fees, also — you guessed it — among the highest in the world, particularly for mutual funds. What is the common thread among these three industries? All are highly concentrated oligopolies: three big wireless carriers, two big airlines and five big banks dominate their respective markets.

Rather than compete as vigorously as they might for Canadian consumers, these quasi-cartels are permitted, in effect, to harvest them. They do so, again, not only with the tolerance but the active participation of the government. Foreigners are effectively precluded from competing in any of them, whether by foreign-ownership restrictions or outright prohibitions on competition — foreign airlines may not fly from one Canadian city to another, for example.

None of the parties currently boasting of their desire to make life more affordable for Canadians proposes to change a line of this, either. Whatever else may be in (artificially) scarce supply, in Canadian politics there’s never any shortage of rank hypocrisy.

January 29, 2019

Bell Canada wants the feds to crack down on Virtual Private Networks

Filed under: Cancon — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist discusses some revelations from Bell’s communications with the federal government during the NAFTA negotiations:

Just days after Bell spoke directly with a CRTC commissioner in the summer of 2017 seeking to present on its site blocking proposal to the full commission, it asked Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland to target VPNs as Canada’s key copyright demand in the trade talks. Its submission to the government stated:

    The Canadian cultural industry has long been significantly harmed by the use of virtual-private-network (VPN) services, which facilitate the circumvention of technological protection measures put in place to respect copyright ownership in other jurisdictions such as Canada…When the ability to enforce rights in national markets breaks down it inevitably favours the largest markets (which become the de facto “global” market) at the expense of smaller open economies like Canada. This harms Canada both economically and culturally.

    Canada should seek rules in NAFTA that require each party to explicitly make it unlawful to offer a VPN service used for the purpose of circumventing copyright, to allow rightsholders from the other parties to enforce this rule, and to confirm that is a violation of copyright if a service effectively makes content widely available in territories in which it does not own the copyright due to an ineffective or insufficiently robust geo-gating system.

This is precisely the concern that was raised in the context of the Bell coalition blocking system given fears it would expand to multi-use services such as VPNs just as a growing number of Internet users are turning to the technology to better safeguard their privacy and prevent online tracking.

In fact, the Bell submission went even further than just VPNs, urging the government to consider additional legal requirements on ISPs to enforce copyright rules:

    Notice-and-notice has been a very incomplete solution to the problem of widespread digital piracy. While we do not believe it should be eliminated, the Government should explore other ways to secure the cooperation of service providers whose services are used for piracy (such as the site-blocking regimes required in Europe and also in place in many other countries throughout the world).

January 25, 2019

Putting the federal cabinet on a radical diet

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Earlier this week, Ted Campbell suggested that one (of many) problems Justin Trudeau faces is the sheer size of his cabinet: there are limits to the number of people who can be successfully managed to achieve an organization’s goals by a single person. This is the reason most armies limit the size of their smallest tactical units to at most ten soldiers … much more than that, and the average leader is unable to maintain direct control without delegating sub-groups to subordinates. Running a federal government is a much more complicated task than running an infantry section. He begins by praising what he feels was the best cabinet in federal history:

A friend and regular interlocutor, reacting to a comment I made about a week ago, suggesting that the Trudeau cabinet is still too large, challenged me to look at the “ideal” cabinet. Now, it is certainly no secret that I think the “best” government Canada ever had, in modern times, say during the past century, was a Liberal one, led by Louis St Laurent. It was firmly grounded in liberal political philosophy that was shared, and broadly accepted, by most Canadians; the St Laurent cabinet was determined to govern for the people, for each person, not just to govern the people; it was economically bold but, at the same time, fiscally prudent; it believed, firmly, in a principled foreign policy and a strong enough military to give it the muscle it would need, from time to time; it advanced increasingly progressive social policies, step-by-step, but always in moderation; it was about as competent and as honest as almost any government was ever going to be … bearing in mind that governments are composed of men and women much like us.

This was the St Laurent cabinet:

There is some doubt about the date of this picture; one Government of Canada source says 1948 and another says 1953; the few familiar faces around the table, Douglas Abbott, Brooke Claxton, Brigadier Milton Gregg VC, C.D. Howe and Lester B. Pearson all served throughout that entire period. What is not in doubt is that the cabinet was much smaller than what we see today: fewer than 20 members. Today’s cabinet has over 35 members.

The problems of large cabinets are grounded in two realities: more and more complex issues, especially social issues, and more choices. Louis St. Laurent had between 245 and 265 MPs in the whole House of Commons and he governed with between 118 and 191 Liberal MPs on the government side. Justin Trudeau has a bigger problem: any modern majority government has 170+ members and Canadians are much better informed (or at least aware) of what government might do for (and to) them. He, like every prime minister before him, responds to the challenge by giving every group a voice. The outcome is a larger and larger cabinet. It’s not Justin Trudeau’s fault, it wasn’t Pierre Trudeau’s fault, either.

The correct answer, in my opinion, is a two tier cabinet: senior and junior ministers or an “inner” and “full” cabinet.

The Royal Canadian Regiment and The Battle of Paardeberg

Filed under: Africa, Cancon, History, Military — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered
Published on 1 Jan 2019

The forgotten history of a storied regiment. This is the second episode of a special holiday series featuring the History Guy’s hat collection. It was originally made as exclusive content for the channel’s patrons on Patreon. You can get exclusive content too by giving as little as one dollar a month to The History Guy at https://www.patreon.com/TheHistoryGuy.

This is original content based on research by The History Guy. Images in the Public Domain are carefully selected and provide illustration. As images of actual events are sometimes not available, images of similar objects and events are used for illustration.

All events are portrayed in historical context and for educational purposes. Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

he History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered is the place to find short snippets of forgotten history from five to fifteen minutes long. If you like history too, this is the channel for you.

January 24, 2019

The latest incarnation of the Canada Food Guide

Filed under: Cancon, Food, Government — Nicholas @ 05:00

It’s … not as bad as it could have been, says Chris Selley:

The Canada Food Guide reliably gets a rise out of Canadians who would prefer the government get off our lawns and stop trying to tell us how to live. And the long-awaited update, released Tuesday fully 12 years after the past one, is something of a feast for curmudgeons. In addition to new guidance on what foods we should be consuming — in brief: more plants, fewer animals — it suggests we consider such novel concepts as cooking foods ourselves more often, and eating foods with other people.

Have you considered that if you cook a larger batch of food, you’ll have more food left over to eat at future meals — perhaps having frozen the food and then defrosted it? If you struggle to drink as much water as the guide thinks you should, have you considered that you can “drink it hot or cold”?

I try to keep my curmudgeonly instincts in check. An exercise like this is bound to produce a few silly, infantilizing recommendations. Most countries like Canada have a food guide of sorts. It makes sense that a health ministry would have basic nutritional guidelines on the books to inform institutional policies, not least what kids get fed at schools. Goodness knows you needn’t follow them at home — and indeed, it would surprise me if very many of us do. Modern Western human beings do seem to love being told what to eat, but it’s generally by people with a hell of a lot more charisma than the authors of “Eat well. Live well.” Food porn this ain’t. Protein choices suggested in accompanying photographs include a few tragic slices of skinless chicken, a mighty kebab of three (3) cubes of mystery meat and nothing else, and a portion of salmon to which something brown has happened.

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