Quotulatiousness

July 14, 2012

Discovering old favourites

Filed under: Cancon, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:20

I was delighted to discover last night that my favourite Quebec folk group has finally appeared in digital form on iTunes. I first heard the music of Barde in about 1978 and was immediately captivated by it. It’s a blend of Celtic music with a Quebec twist. Here’s their entry in the Canadian Pop Encyclopedia:

Richard Chapman (vocals, mandolin, banjo, dulcimer, guitar)
Toby Cinnsealac (aka Kinsella) (tin flute, tin whistle, recorders, clarinet, tambourine)
Pierre Guerin (vocals, acoustic guitar, accordion, concertina, flute, recorder)
Chris (aka Crilly) MacRaghallaigh (vocals, violin, keyboards, bodhran, tambourine)
Elliot Selick (violin, tin flute, tin whistle, banjo)
Ed Moore (bodhran, tambourine, concertina, tin flute, tin whistle, glockenspiel)
Jacques Joubert (violin; 1983)
Richard Paquette (keyboards; 1983)
Jocelyn Therrien (bass; 1983)

This sextet from Montreal was formed in 1973 and found their brand of Acadian & Celtic reels and jigs popular around the Maritimes, Quebec and overseas in Europe. The group was known for its utilization of a twin Celtic fiddle sound courtesy of Crilly and Selick.

They signed to Polygram then to Direction Records, then to Flying Fish, and finally to Porte Parole. Their eponymous debut, Barde, was released in 1977. By their the second album, Images, in 1978 Chris Crilly had introduced keyboards in the form of synths and pianos. By 1983’s Voyage Selick had also left and the remaining members changed musical direction by incorporating keyboards bass and violin courtesy of studio musicians Jacques Joubert, Richard Paquette, and Jocelyn Therrien.

Pierre Guerin led a revamped Barde at the 10th Annual Winnipeg Folk Festival. The band finally disbanded for good shortly thereafter with Guerin marrying and settling in the St. Boniface region of Winnipeg. He became a disc jockey before becoming Artistic Director of The Winnipeg Folk Festival.

July 13, 2012

Nice little racket some Toronto stores have set up

Filed under: Business, Cancon — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:13

Charge your customers 5 cents per bag, beat them over the head with the message that the money goes to “charity”, then pocket the profits:

Another customer, who requested anonymity, said she now boycotts Loblaws, Shoppers and PharmaPlus. When Loblaws started selling plastic bags, she said it led to poorer customer service like cashiers refusing to pack her groceries.

“A bag was a courtesy given for shopping in the store and also a way for the store to advertise by putting their logo on the side of the bag,” she said in an email.

She also detests the World Wildlife Fund, which Loblaws funds with bag sales.

Metro spokeswoman Marie-Claude Bacon said Metro buys each bag for about 2.5¢. Most retailers won’t say how much plastic bag revenue flows to charities. Even when they do give, they recoup 33¢ of every donated dollar, Al Rosen, a forensic accountant, points out.

And he adds: “Overall, there are some who are being honest about increasing their donations and there are others who are just taking advantage of plastic bag thing to find another way of making the same donations as they previously made.”

The only long-term answer to road congestion: real-time tolls

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Politics, Technology, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 00:04

I know, I know … I hate paying road tolls as much as the next driver. But the current road pricing scheme is broken and getting broken-er. Andrew Coyne points out the unpleasant realities:

… the demand for road use — traffic — is not a fixed quantity. Like anything else, it fluctuates with the price. And the price to use the roads, under present policies, is denominated in time: that is, by how long people are prepared to stew in traffic. This is, when you think about it, perverse. The people who get first claim on the roads are the ones who put the lowest value on their time. Or in other words, the people who need them the least.

That’s why analysts have long recommended pricing roads in more conventional terms, i.e. dollars and cents. But there are lots of ways of getting even this wrong, so we need to eliminate a couple more alternatives, such as:

More taxes. Many people’s first response to the notion of pricing roads is to say “but I already pay a gas tax.” The more knowledgeable will point to statistics showing that revenues from gas taxes more than pay for the cost of building and maintaining the roads.

But these are far from the only costs at issue, or even the most important. As far as congestion is concerned the cost that matters is not the cost of building the road, but the cost of using it. Every time you use the road, you impose a cost on other drivers, so far as you make the roads that much more crowded — as they, of course, do you. Add up those costs over millions of drivers every day — costs measured not only in delays, but in more collisions, more wear and tear, more pollution, and so on — and we are well into the billions, according to several estimates.

[. . .]

What’s really needed, then, is a more comprehensive approach. With modern technology, there’s no reason to toll only some roads and not others. Using GPS-style in-car transponders and satellites, it’s now possible to charge drivers to use the roads generally, with the highest charges applying in downtown centres and at rush-hour — just as you pay a higher charge to use your cellphone depending on the location and time of day. You’d even get a monthly bill in the mail.

Far-fetched? Britain and the Netherlands have each been on the verge of adopting similar schemes in recent years. That each backed down in the end tells you something of the political sensitivities involved: It’s always hard to get people to pay for things they are used to getting for free. But the roads aren’t free. We’re paying more and more to use them every year.

Pay in congestion, in time and noise and aggravation — or pay by credit card. Once you think of it that way, the choice should be easy.

July 10, 2012

Does “Rule 34” have an exception after all?

Filed under: Cancon, Humour, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:58

Kathy Shaidle may have found the only known exception to Rule 34:

Since women (and not a few men) obviously love a man in uniform, where is all the porn featuring the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?

Dirty cops are an X-rated staple, and “the UPS guy” has almost driven the once-ubiquitous “mailman” out of the porn business.

Even Nazis get to go where Mounties fear to tread. Those sleek black (Hugo Boss-designed) SS getups can get under even the most surprising skins: During the Eichmann trial in Israel, “Stalag” porn became Über-popular sexual samizdat.

So this slightly put-out Canuck wonders: What’s wrong with the RCMP, eh? Their uniforms are pretty sharp, too. And Due South fandom was rabid.

Yet there’s a distinct Mountie-porn void, one that violates a law of the Internet — “Rule 34” to be exact, which declares, “If it exists, there is porn of it.”

July 8, 2012

Canada beats US at football. Really. Not a joke.

Filed under: Cancon, Football, USA — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:59

Okay, it was Under-19 football, but Canada did win:

… the U.S. team at the IFAF U-19 World Championship fell to Canada, 23-17, in the gold medal game. The American team was the defending champion in the event, and had won its first two games in the 2012 event by a combined 97-13 score.

An American team losing in a sport that theoretically only America is any good at? And to Canada? Never mind that gridiron football — the umbrella term for football played in the U.S. and Canada that encompasses both American football and the Canadian football that actually existed a few years before it — is about as much Canadian as American; do you expect most American fans to know that?

A bit of triumphalism is surely allowed, right?

https://twitter.com/DaveLozo/status/221816030463393793

July 7, 2012

Andrew Coyne on the high school relationship that is Canada and the USA

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

I have to admit that I never saw the diplomatic and trade relationship between the two countries in quite this way before:

As veteran diplomats and foreign policy specialists trade blows over who is to blame for the crisis in Canada-U.S. relations — How Obama Lost Canada; How Obama Won Canada; Obama Didn’t Lose Canada; Maybe Canada Lost Obama, Ever Think of That? — thoughtful observers on both sides of the border are concerned that important nuances in the debate are being overlooked.

While managing a bilateral relationship is never easy, especially one as complex and multi-faceted as that between Canada and the U.S., sources close to the Canadian government stress that America totally did not break up with Canada, Canada broke up with it first. They point to the Obama administration’s politically motivated decision to block approval of the Keystone XL pipeline extension as an important irritant in the relationship, adding that America has been avoiding Canada in the halls for weeks.

On the other hand, long-time State Department watchers suggest Canada may have erred in focusing its diplomatic efforts too intently on the administration, in a capital in which power is increasingly dispersed, and besides Canada didn’t even look at America in the library even though they were like studying at the same table.

Seeking to downplay tensions, they note that today’s disputes pale in comparison to the controversies that have sometimes roiled relations between the two countries in the past, such as over Vietnam or that thing at the party last year after grad.

Nonetheless, it is clear that on a number of issues there is a gathering sense of grievance on the Canadian side, a feeling that Canada’s concerns are not taken seriously in official Washington. Sources in the department of Foreign Affairs, who did not want to be named because they had English Lit with America right after lunch, cited a long list of perceived slights, from the Buy America provisions in the stimulus bill to the failure to support Canada’s bid for a seat on the Security Council to the lack of recognition of Canada’s contribution to the Afghanistan mission. Would it have killed America, these sources ask, just to call?

In response, Canada has moved to more aggressively assert its interests, for example warning it might cultivate China and other export markets for its crude oil, scaling back its commitment to Afghanistan and changing its Facebook status to “it’s complicated.”

He’s talked some sense into me: no longer will I deny that the bilateral relationship between Canada and the United States should be described in terms of “a sexual chemistry you could cut with a knife”.

July 6, 2012

If it’s being “rebuilt” to a different design, with different materials, it’s not the same Bluenose

Filed under: Cancon, History, Technology, Woodworking — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:43

Wooden sailing ships are subject to far more wear and tear than modern vessels: they’re like the old tale of the farmer’s axe (even though everything’s been replaced over time, it’s still the same axe). This means that heritage sailing ships need lots of careful maintenance throughout their lives, and major re-builds at long intervals. In the case of Nova Scotia’s iconic Bluenose II, however, it’s sometimes more than a “rebuild”:

She is a celebrity, immortalized on the back of our dime and presently parked beneath a big white tent in the Lunenburg Shipyard, awaiting finishing touches and the order to set sail.

Built in 1963, Bluenose II was effectively scrapped in the fall of 2010. A small percentage of the old boat, including the sails and masts and some of the mahogany and walnut from the hull, were saved for use in the rebuild. The bow-to-stern reconstruction had the legend at points looking more like a whale skeleton beached on the Lunenburg wharf, with her ribs exposed for all to see.

Some purists, including Ms. Roué, a great-granddaughter of William J. Roué — the naval architect responsible for designing the original Bluenose, which launched in 1921 and achieved lasting fame by hauling in massive catches on the Grand Banks and beating American schooners in ocean races — view the “restoration” tag as a semantic stretch.

They see it as a sham concealing the fact the boat being built and expected to launch this summer under the Bluenose II banner was not built according to Mr. Roué’s original designs. It is not the Bluenose II but a new boat altogether.

You could make the case that this is merely a look-alike, rather than a replica. In fact you’d pretty much have to say that:

The original Bluenose was made from Nova Scotia oak, while its second incarnation blended local and South American oaks.

The latest edition consists of laminated angelique, a bulletproof teak from South America. Meanwhile the engine bed, stern frame, floors and fasteners holding the whole shebang together are steel, where once they were wood.

Any boat, especially a boat named Bluenose, is more than the materials it is made of or the sum of its designs. It is a piece of living history and its identity derives from the stories attached to it and in the recollections of those that sailed aboard her, some accounted for, others lost at sea.

So, just to sum up: she’s being built to a different design (even though outward appearance is much the same), using different materials. In what way can you call her the same ship? The point made in the article, that the masts and sails were some of the “originals” being re-used is odd: those are among the parts that need replacing more often. And the mahogany and walnut saved from the last boat are almost certainly decorative elements, not structural ones.

July 4, 2012

Canada’s new Cyclone helicopters — already 4 years late — may not arrive for another 5 years

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:32

Greg Weston reports for CBC News:

Canada’s long-promised fleet of new Sikorsky naval helicopters, already four years late and $300 million over budget, likely won’t be delivered and ready for combat for up to another five years, informed industry sources tell CBC News.

Last month, Connecticut-based Sikorsky missed its latest contract deadline to finish delivering 28 sleek, state-of-the-art Cyclone maritime helicopters to replace Canada’s aged fleet of increasingly unreliable Sea Kings, now nearing 50 years old.

In fact, delivery of the new choppers hasn’t even started.

[. . .]

As of last month, Sikorsky had only provided a couple of prototypes that have no military mission systems, and aren’t certified to fly over water or at night.

The two helicopters apparently spend most of their time on the tarmac at Shearwater Heliport at CFB Halifax as “training aids” for ground mechanics.

The machines are so incomplete the Canadian government refuses to accept them as an official delivery of anything in the contract.

What is it about helicopters in particular that makes it so difficult and so expensive for the Canadian government to acquire? Here’s the sad chronology:

  • In 1963, the CH-124 Sea King helicopter (a variant of the US Navy S-61 model) entered service with the Royal Canadian Navy.
  • In 1983, the Trudeau government started a process to replace the Sea Kings. That process never got far enough for a replacement helicopter to be ordered.
  • In 1985, the Mulroney government started a new process to find a replacement for the Sea Kings.
  • In 1992, the Mulroney government placed an order for 50 EH-101 Cormorant helicopters (for both naval and search-and-rescue operations).
  • In 1993, the Campbell government reduced the order from 50 to 43, theoretically saving $1.4B.
  • In 1993, the new Chrétien government cancelled the “Cadillac” helicopters as being far too expensive and started a new process to identify the right helicopters to buy. The government had to pay nearly $500 million in cancellation penalties.
  • In 1998, having split the plan into separate orders for naval and SAR helicopters, the government ended up buying 15 Cormorant SAR helicopters anyway — and the per-unit prices had risen in the intervening time.
  • In 2004, the Martin government placed an order with Sikorsky for 28 CH-148 Cyclone helicopters to be delivered starting in 2008 (after very carefully arranging the specifications to exclude the Cormorant from the competition).
  • Now, in 2012, we may still have another five years to wait for the delivery of the Cyclones.

Update: In the National Post, Kelly McParland tries to draw some useful conclusions from the longest-running Canadian comedy act:

If there is a solution to this farce it’s not easily identified. Canada desperately needs the helicopters and it is far too late to return once again to the drawing board. The blame is so widespread that politicians barely bother to bestir themselves to try: if Jean Chretien’s government hadn’t maliciously cancelled Brian Mulroney’s original 1992 purchase, a full decade might have been cut from the script, but there is no guarantee other mishaps wouldn’t have occurred. Ottawa’s only option now is to hound Connecticut-based Sikorsky relentlessly and mercilessly, recover every cent possible for its repeated failure to live up to its promises, and accept nothing less than full compliance with its contracted responsibilities.

The greater lesson lies in the nether world that surrounds military procurement. It’s a world where no promise can be accepted as reliable, no cost guarantee assumed to be binding, no contract treated as worth the paper it’s written on. The federal Conservatives should think long and hard on the Sea King saga as they push ever deeper into their own purchase of new fighter jets, whether the F-35 or otherwise. Prime Minister Stephen Harper would be well-advised to abandon his usual aggressive approach and tread warily. The uncertain costs, the shifting due dates, the obdurate insistence of the military mandarins on having their way, the determined stonewalling of the politicians : it has all the identifying markings of a Sea King re-make.

Update the second: On Facebook, Damian Brooks suggests that Kelly McParland is only able to see the humour because he hasn’t been close enough to the situation: “I’d be curious to know if McParland’s ever flown in one of our Sea Kings, with tranny fluid dripping down the fuselage, practicing autorotations ad nauseum (literally). I suspect not. If he had, I have a feeling he’d find the situation much more disgraceful and much less funny.” He also posted a link to this:

July 3, 2012

Ontario government considering “streamlining” universities, reducing from four-year to three-year degree programs

Filed under: Cancon, Education, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

I rarely find anything interesting in Heather Mallick’s Toronto Star writings, but her Sunday article on possible Ontario government changes to the university system raises some valid concerns:

The Ontario government has run a hasty educational reform plan up a flagpole and is hoping you’ll salute it. Don’t.

The discussion paper, titled “Strengthening Ontario’s Centres of Creativity, Innovation and Knowledge,” is as mystifying as the gentlewomen’s pompous, verbose porn novel Fifty Shades of Grey, which reads to me as if it were written by a small weird girl-child, or perhaps Conrad Black.

Without Star education reporter Kristin Rushowy to translate the jargon — which curses the education sector more than any other — I would not have known that basically the McGuinty government wants to cut four-year university degrees to three and “support flexible degree structures that provide new learning options made possible by advancements in technology,” which means online degrees.

[. . .]

This report heralds bad things for Ontario students.

I opposed ending Grade 13 and was proved right, universities frantically offering catch-up courses for students who couldn’t spell or add. I opposed the “30% Off Ontario Tuition Grant for students from middle-income families” that the report boasts of, because the $160,000 cut-off is far too high. I opposed turning colleges into universities because a diploma is just as valuable as a degree, but they are not interchangeable.

And I oppose cutting degrees to three years, not just because other provinces and countries won’t accept this, but because fourth year is when you come into your own intellectually. The report refers repeatedly to the unfortunately titled Bologna Declaration aimed at harmonizing EU higher education — trans. “Yurp does it so we can too” — although I note that there has been talk in Britain of “accelerated” two-year degrees, at which point I despair.

H/T to the Phantom Observer for the link, who twittered:

https://twitter.com/PhantomObserver/statuses/220178327166648321

July 1, 2012

“Canada was born in debt”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, History, Railways — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:08

At the Worthwhile Canadian Initiative blog, Livio Di Matteo explains one of the less mentioned but urgent reasons behind confederation in 1867:

The trials and tribulations of the European Union, its debt crisis and the Euro and the suggestion that part of the solution lies in a stronger fiscal union reminds me of the forces behind the drive for Canadian confederation in the mid-nineteenth century. Canadians are usually taught in school that major forces driving Confederation were the potential threat of territorial aggrandizement by the United States in the wake of the Civil War or the need for a larger market given Britain’s move to free trade and the end of Reciprocity with the Americans or the desire to generate the economic resources to build a railway to the west so that it could serve as an investment frontier.

One factor that receives very little mention is the fact that the prior to 1867 the colonies of British North America were heavily in debt and faced a fiscal crisis of their own. The solution to the colonial debt crisis that Confederation allowed was the creation of the federal government that was given strong revenue raising powers and assumed provincial debts and thereby stabilized the public credit. Public debt charges in 1867 already accounted for 29 percent of federal budgetary expenditure and by 1880 had only been whittled down to about 24 percent. Canada was born in debt.

Canada was created with a large debt as the provincial and local levels of government had invested heavily in transportation infrastructure — canals and railways in particular. In 1850, there were only about 66 miles of track in operation but by 1860 about 2000 miles of track had been built in eastern Canada. The total cost of building these railways in British North America up to 1867 was 145.8 million dollars the bulk of which was for the Province of Canada — Ontario and Quebec. By way of comparison, Canada’s GDP in 1870 has been estimated at about 383 million dollars.

[. . .]

Confederation was designed to fix a massive debt problem. Creation of a new political entity — the dominion government — would allow for the current debt burden to be serviced and for more credit to be obtained on foreign markets to fund the railway projects of the late 19th century — the CPR, Canadian Northern, etc… Confederation was a solution to the debt crisis but required a form of government that reduced sovereignty for the member units in order to stabilize the public credit. In the Canadian case, as acrimonious as the discussions were, the process was facilitated by the fact that the member units were all British colonies with similar institutions.

“… except in Canada”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:25

The National Post editorial board celebrates Canada Day by making a case for Canadian exceptionalism:

The acronym “EIC” can refer to a newspaper’s editor-in-chief, the various forms of the storied East India Company, the Engineering Institute of Canada, and, in scientific circles, Electromagnetically-induced chirality. But in these odd times, they might also be deployed, for verbal economy, to denote “except in Canada.”

As in: Banks all over the Western world have suffered a series of shocks since the 2008 financial crisis – EIC. Economies have slowed — EIC. Real estate bubbles have popped — EIC. Deficits have ballooned to crisis proportions — EIC.

OK: Perhaps national pride leads us to exaggeration. A more truthful acronym might be EICAG — to include Canada “and Germany.” Various smaller European nations, as well as countries in Asia and Latin America, also have fared well. Yet it is hard to remember a time (if ever there was one) when Canada’s fortunes, taken as a whole, were so rosy compared to those of all other Western nations. This good fortune is something worth celebrating as we prepare to celebrate Canada’s 145th birthday this weekend.

They even have some praise to lavish on two former prime ministers who don’t normally get a kind word from the right:

Canada’s relative lack of red ink also is no accident. Two decades ago, Canada was what Greece was today: a bloated welfare state running up massive bills that it couldn’t pay. The unpopular job of fixing the balance sheet feel primarily to Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin — and they accomplished the task without any of the political chaos that has been gripping Athens and other southern European capitals in the last year. The prosperity and stability we enjoy today is in large part due to what those two men did with the fiscal mess bequeathed to them by Brian Mulroney and Pierre Trudeau.

Of course, not everything is going wonderfully well in the Dominion: we still have not emulated one of the notable successes of our European friends:

One of the few institutional factors holding Canada back is its healthcare system. As Shaun Francis writes elsewhere on these pages, our refusal to explicitly permit full-blown private alternatives to the current government-payer health monopoly is bad policy that is out of keeping with that of leading European jurisdictions.

Fortunately, this is a shortfall that can be cured easily. As the furor over Obamacare in the United States shows, building a universal public health system is difficult. But Canada has already done this heavy lifting over the last 50 years: All we lack now is a parallel private track — and that is something that will spring into being without any governmental action at all, save the legislative stroke of a pen needed to modify the Canada Health Act accordingly.

June 30, 2012

Writing the UN’s epitaph in advance

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:10

Conrad Black on the increasingly useless United Nations (although he urges reform instead of abandonment):

For the past 45 years the United Nations has become steadily over-populated by poor states, failed states, petty despotisms and militant Muslim counties chiefly preoccupied in diplomatic matters with the harassment and denigration of Israel. Most of the agencies have become sink-holes of patronage and corruption for poor countries paying themselves with the contributions of rich countries and polemically biting the hands that feed them.

It has become a source of payola windfalls for corrupt agency officials as well as a substitute for theatre and psychiatry for many of the world’s most disreputable regimes. Muammar Gadaffi’s Libya was elected to the chair of the Human Rights Commission (precursor of the present Human Rights Council), and the whole hierarchy of the UN was implicated in the scandalous misappropriation of many millions of oil dollars supposedly destined for humanitarian purposes in Iraq. The chief humanitarian beneficiaries were Saddam Hussein and crooked UN officials. Many of the peace-keeping missions are staffed by unqualified soldiers from very poor countries, which rent themselves out to the warring factions for cash; and thereby increase, rather than control, local violence.

Unfortunately, Canada was, for most of the UN’s history, far too indulgent of it. First, as a victorious ally and charter member, it was part of the Anglo-American governing consensus. Then, after Lodge gave Pearson the Suez peacekeeper idea (and Pearson forgot that it wasn’t his originally), the foreign policy establishment in Ottawa began to view the UN as a way for Canada to distinguish itself from the U.S. at little cost, and to allow itself, with a modest foreign aid budget, to pander to Third World countries without seriously annoying our traditional allies. This gradually developed into the Chrétien government’s endorsement of “soft power,” a phrase originated by former U.S. president Bill Clinton’s national security adviser Joe Nye, which was a soft alternative to the use of American military might. It is a concept that has any validity only when there is a hard power option, which Canada did not possess. As practised by this country, soft power was a fraud, it was just more softness.

[. . .]

Undoubtedly, there will be those in Canada who decry the Harper government’s comparative friendliness with Israel and call for appeasement of Pillay and her foaming claque. What we should do instead is lead agitation for a massive transformation of the United Nations — back to the defence of Eleanor Roosevelt’s Universal Declaration on Human Rights (which is not subject to Shariah law or any other such barbarities), jettison the antiquated Security Council and propose a variable system of voting in the General Assembly, where votes are accorded to countries and groupings of countries according to a combination of their population, economic strength and objectively assessed respect for human rights.

Canada is well placed to organize the support for such measures by the countries that pay most of the UN’s bills. This would be a much more appropriate stance for Canada, now that it has been so unjustly pilloried by the anthill of bigotry of a Human Rights Council, than continued reverence for this citadel of hypocrisy. The United Nations is both a mad cow and a sacred cow; it is in desperate need of radical reform.

The cruellest month in Newfoundland is July

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, History, Military, WW1 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 10:43

Rex Murphy in the National Post on the worst month in Newfoundland’s calendar:

T.S. Eliot did not write for Newfoundlanders. April is not the cruelest month. For us, it’s July. Both the first and second day of July are marked indelibly in the province’s common memory, the first perhaps the saddest day in the historic calendar, the second as the day of the most fundamental change in the essential makeup of the province.

The greatest tragedy in Newfoundland’s history occurred on July 1, 1916 the opening day of the Battle of the Somne, when nearly 800 men from the 1st Newfoundland Regiment went “over the top” at Beaumont Hammel, only to suffer close to 700 casualties within less than half an hour. It was a virtual annihilation of the entire Regiment. The shockwaves from Beaumont Hammel went through every town and village, city and outport of the time. There was not a place unmarked with grief. To this day, the memory of Beaumont Hammel commands deep respect and notice.

A different kind of event, one not drawn from conflict or war, marks the second day of the month. Just 20 years ago, for the very first time since the late 15th century and the arrival of the Europeans and John Cabot to the fish-crowded waters off Newfoundland, catching cod-fish was declared illegal. The fishery, that great and traditional fishery of Newfoundland, was shut down for the first time in nearly 500 years.

It’s been 20 years since the fishery was closed, and there’s still no sign that it will be re-opening any time soon.

June 28, 2012

What did Canada give up to get “2nd class seating” in the TPP negotiations?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Pacific, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:27

Michael Geist on the Canadian concessions to get a seat at the kiddy table for the Trans Pacific Partnership free trade negotiations:

…the benefits for Canada are hard to identify. The price of admission was very steep — Canada appears to have agreed to conditions that grant it second-tier status — and the economic benefits from improved access to TPP economies are likely to be relatively minor since we already have free trade agreements with four of the ten participants.

Given those conditions, why aggressively pursue entry into the negotiations?

[. . .]

Given Canada’s late entry into the TPP process, the U.S. was able to extract two onerous conditions that Prime Minister Stephen Harper downplayed as the “accession process.” First, Canada will not be able to reopen any chapters where agreement has already been reached among the current nine TPP partners. This means Canada has already agreed to be bound by TPP terms without having had any input. Since the TPP remains secret, the government can’t even tell us what has been agreed upon. [Scott Sinclair reports that the commitment is even broader, covering any chapter where provisions have been agreed upon]

Second, Canada has second-tier status in the negotiations as the U.S. has stipulated that Canada will not have “veto authority” over any chapter. This means that should the other nine countries agree on terms, Canada would be required to accept them.

This condition could be used to stop Canada from joining forces with another country on a tough issue during the late stages of the negotiation. For example, Canada and New Zealand both have copyright terms that last for the life of the author plus an additional 50 years. The U.S. has proposed that the TPP mandate a term of life plus 70 years. While Canada and New Zealand might be able to jointly block the extension, the U.S. could pressure New Zealand to cave on the issue and effectively force Canada to accept the change.

Getting rid of our government-mandated monopolies in the agricultural sector (a good thing) is not going to be worth the price of adopting American-style copyright legislation.

June 27, 2012

Questions on the Elliot Lake rescue efforts

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:22

Whether it was just a badly phrased moment in a press conference or not, Toronto’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team has not done itself any public relations favours in the aftermath to the partial collapse of the Algo Centre Mall in Elliot Lake:

The story of the collapsed mall in Elliot Lake, where the rescue mission is back on after being suspended on Monday because officials deemed the building too “unsafe,” has so far deviated from romantic tales of heroism and rescue, spiralling instead into talk of delays, strict mandates and “limited resources.”

A spokesman for Toronto’s Heavy Urban Search and Rescue team, Bill Neadles, said on Tuesday the group was still in its “infancy” — that aside from winning some industry competitions and running mock rescues, HUSAR, as it is known, had only participated in one operation: a gas explosion in 2003. He said when he initially told residents on Monday the team had “reached the end of its mandate” he did not mean they were abandoning the operation, he “just didn’t want to lead anybody to believe I was going to come back with a silver claw and walk on water.”

[. . .]

In Elliot Lake, no one has been spirited away alive, at least not yet. One person is thought dead and a dozen are feared missing. At least one is believed to have made a noise amid the rubble on Monday morning.

“One of the things that gives rescue a sort of romance is the idea that you go in and you get the job done … and that’s one of the reasons this Northern Ontario mall story is so 21st century,” said Bob Thompson, a pop culture expert at New York’s Syracuse University. “Here we’ve got this potentially romantic rescue story, and what do we see? Good ol’ fashioned bureaucracy.”

When most Canadians think of rescue, they do not think of government inner-workings: a Ministry of Labour structural engineer suspending a search; provincial officials having to explicitly give the Toronto team the authority to go back in; a premier intervening to make that happen.

“If you had put 100 miners in there, they would have been out by Saturday,” said Greg Dillavough, a retired miner who once worked in mine rescue in the Northwest Territories and Ontario. “You don’t walk away from a site when someone’s alive.”

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress