The Canadian policy stance vis-à-vis the recession is essentially standing impatiently while US and EU policy-makers get their sh*t together
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) June 21, 2012
June 21, 2012
Canada’s recession, in one Tweet
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Conservative government, but only in name
Andrew Coyne on the palpable absurdity of the “Harper government” stonewalling the very office it insisted on setting up for oversight of government spending:
The reality is that the PBO has been given anything but the “free and timely access” that Parliament demanded. Time and time again, rather, he has been given the back of the government’s hand — stonewalled by the bureaucrats, ridiculed by the politicians, and lied to by both.
When, for example, the Department of National Defence at last consented to share the cost of the F-35 fighter jet purchase with the PBO, it provided only the most rudimentary figures, without any indication of how they were arrived at. These figures, on which the last election was fought, were later shown to understate the true costs of the jets by at least 40% and probably 60%, in violation not only of Treasury Board rules but the department’s own stated policies. For the crime of having been right, the PBO was subjected to a volley of ministerial insults, while the department pretends to this day not to have understood the office’s clearly stated requests.
More recently, the PBO (Kevin Page is his name) has been trying to get government departments to explain how they plan to achieve the $5.2-billion in largely unspecified “efficiencies” pencilled into the 2012 budget. How much of these, Page wanted to know, would be achieved by reducing costs, and how much by reducing services? How would federal employment be affected in either event? In other words, what did the budget mean by “efficiencies”? This would seem useful information for Members of Parliament considering their vote, assuming — you’ll indulge me here — MPs do indeed consider their votes.
Power corrupts, as Lord Acton reminds us, and the discipline that Stephen Harper enforced over his unruly caucus on their way to winning a minority government is now extended to the majority he enjoys today. What affronted him about Jean Chretien’s imperial ways now seems quite normal and unexceptional. Power does indeed corrupt.
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June 19, 2012
EU’s Barroso spurns advice from Canadian “nobody”
The EU is not taking Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s advice gracefully. In fact, they’re not taking it at all:
Maybe it was the 35 C heat here on Mexico’s Baja Peninsula. Maybe it was the pressure of the crisis he faces back home.
Whatever it was, when I asked European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso here Monday why Canada should risk its financial good name to bail out European banks, Barroso blew a diplomatic gasket.
“We are extremely open and we are engaging our partners but we are certainly not coming here to receive lessons from nobody,” he harrumphed.
That “nobody” is apparently our PM. How dare a mere Canadian politician offer criticism of the European Union, the greatest political achievement of mankind?
In Barroso’s eyes, the fiscal crisis in Europe is not even Europe’s fault. It is the victim in all of this. For that reason, the rest of the world ought bail it out, even though, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper has noted, the so-called euro area of 27 countries is the single largest and wealthiest economic unit in the entire world.
Harper has told Barroso just that, saying that if Canada — or anyone else — is going to kick in to a US$430 billion pool administered by the International Monetary Fund, then Europe is going to have to release the chokehold it has had on the IMF.
And of course, no negotiation with the EU is complete without some hard-to-misunderstand threats from the Eurocrats:
But Barroso wasn’t finished. In the middle of his tirade, he trotted out a thinly veiled threat that a Canada-EU free-trade deal was at risk unless Harper comes to his senses and sends Canadian cash to the continent.
“We are trying to conclude an important agreement on trade with Canada. Why? Because all the other parts of the world look at Europe as a source of possible growth for them. And, in fact, they also have an interest. The sooner the situation is stabilized in Europe, the better for them,” he said.
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June 18, 2012
The wins and losses in the C-11 copyright reform bill
Michael Geist on the good and the bad aspects of bill C-11 which will probably pass third reading today in the House of Commons and be sent to the Senate for approval:
There is no sugar-coating the loss on digital locks. While other countries have been willing to stand up to U.S. pressure and adopt a more flexible approach, the government, led by Canadian Heritage Minister James Moore on the issue, was unwilling to compromise despite near-universal criticism of its approach. It appears that once Prime Minister Stephen Harper made the call for a DMCA-style approach in early May 2010, the digital lock issue was lost. The government heard that the bill will hurt IP enforcement, restrict access for the blind, disadvantage Canadian creators, and harm consumer rights. It received tens of thousands of comments from Canadians opposed to the approach and ran a full consultation in which digital locks were the leading concern. The NDP, Liberals, and Green Party proposed balanced amendments to the digital lock rules that were consistent with international requirements and would have maintained protection for companies that use them, but all were rejected. [. . .]
Since the Conservatives took power in 2006, there were effectively four bills: the Pre-Bill C-61 bill that was to have been introduced by Jim Prentice in December 2007 but was delayed following public pressure, Bill C-61 introduced in June 2008, and Bill C-32/C-11, which was introduced in June 2010 (and later reintroduced in September 2011). The contents of December 2007 bill was never released, but documents obtained under the Access to Information Act provide a good sense of what it contained (a call was even scheduled on the planned day of introduction between Prentice and U.S. Ambassador David Wilkins to assure the U.S. that digital locks were the key issue and would not be altered). This chart highlights many of the key issues and their progression over the years as the public became increasingly vocal on copyright:
Issue Pre-Bill
C-61 (2007)Bill C-61
(2008)Bill C-11
(2012)Fair Dealing Expansion No No Yes (education, parody, satire) Format Shifting No Limited (only photographs, book,
newspaper, periodical, or videocassette)Yes (technology neutral, no
limit on number of copies, includes network storage, and no reference
to contractual overrides)Time Shifting No Limited (no network PVRs,
Internet communications)Yes (C-61 limitations removed) Backup Copies No No Yes User Generated Content Exception No No Yes Statutory Damages Cap No Limited ($500 cap for
downloading)Yes (Max of $5000 for all
non-commercial infringement)Enabler enforcement provision No No Yes Internet Publicly Available
Materials Exception for EducationYes Yes Yes Public Performance in Schools No No Yes Technology Neutral Display
Exception in SchoolsNo No Yes Limited Distance Learning
ExceptionYes Yes Yes Limited Digital Inter-Library
LoansYes Yes Yes Notice-and-Notice Yes Yes Yes Notice-and-Takedown No No No Three Strikes//Website Blocking No No No Internet Location Tool Provider
Safe HarbourYes Yes Yes Broadcaster Ephemeral Change No No Yes Expanded Private Copying Levy No No No Commissioned Photograph Change Yes Yes Yes Alternate Format Reproduction No No Yes [. . .]
Public engagement on copyright continuously grew in strength – from the Bulte battle in 2006 to the Facebook activism in 2007 to the immediate response to the 2008 bill to the 2009 copyright consultation to the 2010 response to Bill C-32. While many dismissed the role of digital activism on copyright, the reality is that it had a huge impact on the shape of Canadian copyright. The public voice influenced not only the contents of the bill, but the debate as well with digital locks the dominant topic of House of Commons debate and media coverage until the very end. Bill C-11 remains a “flawed but fixable” bill that the government refused to fix, but that it is a significantly better bill than seemed possible a few years ago owes much to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians that spoke out on copyright.
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June 17, 2012
“For the weekend, I’ll have to be a turncoat”
For some obscure reason (hint: because they didn’t win) American re-enactors are much less fond of War of 1812 re-enactments than Canadians:
When the first big battle of the War of 1812 is re-enacted this fall, the U.S. 1st Artillery regiment will mount an ear-splitting barrage. The Yanks will point their cannons at British redcoats across the Niagara River in Canada. They will wear blue. They will curse King George.
Unlike 200 years ago, they will all be Canadians.
Many Americans aren’t that into the War of 1812 — not like Canadians, anyway — so the latter often play the former in re-enactments along the international border here.
“For the weekend, I’ll have to be a turncoat,” says John Sek, 60, an English-born Canadian who will play a U.S. Army gunnery captain in the Battle of Queenston Heights. “There isn’t the same interest in the war on your side.”
To grossly generalize: Canadians, whose forebears helped repulse several U.S. invasions in 1812, regard the war that began 200 years ago Monday as a crucible of national identity. For them, its bicentennial is a big deal.
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June 16, 2012
Explosion 1812: “one of the biggest explosions that had ever been witnessed in North America”
I may have to make some time to watch TV tomorrow:
This month’s 200th anniversary of the start of the War of 1812 will be marked with a colossal bang: the television premiere of Explosion 1812, a new documentary that argues the intentional detonation of Upper Canada’s main ammunition supply at present-day Toronto in April 1813 — described as “one of the biggest explosions that had ever been witnessed in North America” — is a greatly underappreciated moment in history that was key to thwarting the U.S. conquest of Canada.
The two-hour, Canadian-made film — to be aired by History Television on June 17, the eve of the bicentennial of the formal U.S. declaration of war on June 18, 1812 — recounts how retreating British-Canadian troops at Fort York blew up the colony’s “grand magazine” along the Lake Ontario shore as American forces closed in on Upper Canada’s capital on April 27, 1813.
[. . .]
U.S. soldiers outraged at what they considered an act of extreme treachery — even a war crime because of their comrades’ fatal proximity to the explosion — went on a vengeful rampage in the captured capital, terrorizing the civilian population and pillaging residents’ property.Ê
Those actions, in turn, prompted a similar assault on Washington, D.C., in 1814, when the U.S. capital was stormed by British and Canadian troops who set fire to the White House.
Among the U.S. casualties at York was the famed commander of the invasion force, Gen. Zebulon Pike, an early explorer of the American West whose death — his chest crushed by falling rock from the blasted armoury — would be exploited to rally patriotic sentiment in the U.S. for the duration of the war.
June 15, 2012
The horrific environmental scourge of the plastic bag
Terence Corcoran on Toronto City Council’s most recent brainfart — banning plastic bags — and the actual environmental impact of same:
Meantime, most Canadians, through the media, would be relying on green activists and demagogic politicians who have been promoting plastic bags as a local and national environmental scourge for more than a decade. There’s not enough space here to review the mindset of politicians, including the inhabitants of Toronto city council, who last week voted 27-17 to ban plastic bags by 2013. Most of the bylaw’s backers would be getting their information from professionals, including Dr. Rick Smith, head of Environmental Defense.
[. . .]
Canadians who answer polls should know that Mr. Smith holds a PhD in green bull. He said Canadians know at a “gut level” that plastic bags are a “not terribly complicated environmental issue.” Well, here are three complications:
Litter The last city of Toronto audit of litter across the city, in 2006, found six plastic bags out of 4,341 items. That’s 0.14% by item. By weight, the percentage would be less.
Waste The 450 million plastic bags Mr. Smith mentions is a 2008 number. The city says the current number of bags is now estimated at about 215 million (the science of calculating this is something else). But even the 450 million-bag total, at about six grams per bag, works out to 2,600 tonnes. As a percentage of the city’s estimated 800,000 tonnes of waste, plastic bags would account for 0.3%. If all plastic bags were eliminated — an impossibility given their necessity as garbage-bin liners and other uses — Toronto’s waste stream would be essentially unchanged. Not a penny will be saved, and costs would likely go up under complications brought on by the ban.
Environment Numerous comprehensive studies by people who are as green or greener than Mr. Smith suggest plastic bags are better than the alternatives — whether paper or cloth. Plastic is less polluting and toxic than paper and cotton, according to a 2011 U.K. Environment Agency report. As for global warming, a cloth bag would have to be reused 327 times, and a paper bag nine times, to match the low warming impact of a high-density polyethylene bag that’s reused as a garbage-bin liner.
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The Canadian War Museum’s 1812 exhibit
Maclean’s finds the Canadian War Museum’s War of 1812 exhibit lacking in the triumphal chest-beating one might expect:
“If you’re a Canadian, the Americans invaded, and we pushed them back, and we evolved into an independent country. So as far as we’re concerned, it’s hardly worth saying that Canada won,” says exhibition curator Peter MacLeod, the museum’s pre-Confederation historian. “But the Americans have their own take on it. They went to war with the British Empire, the most powerful empire in the world. And they fought them to a draw. They forced them to respect American independence and American sovereignty. So as far as the Americans are concerned, it’s just as obvious that they won.”
To the British, says MacLeod, the conflict in North America was a sideshow to the more important war against Napoleon in Europe. They invested the weapons and men they could spare, and the Royal Navy blockaded American ports, but defending Canada was of secondary importance.
For Native Americans, it was an existential fight. “Here is a chance presented to us,” the Shawnee leader Tecumseh said, “a chance such as will never occur again, for us Indians of North America to form ourselves into a great combination and cast our lot with the British in this war.”
Tecumseh’s coalition of Native American tribes believed that by aligning themselves with the British, they might stop American expansionism. “This is the last war where they have a serious chance to roll back the American frontier,” says MacLeod. “And it’s the last war where they have a European ally on their side. After this they’re facing the United States on their own, and the Americans basically roll straight to the Pacific.”
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June 14, 2012
The “victim” mindset among Quebec protestors
Dan Delmar on some of the long-standing grievances being channelled by Quebec’s most recent protestors:
“White Niggers of America:” That’s how author Pierre Vallières famously described the Québécois people in his 1968 book, which the former Quebec Liberation Front (FLQ) terrorist leader wrote from his prison cell.
Vallières argued that the struggles of French settlers in British North America were similar to those of pre-segregation era blacks in America, and the lingering effects of English repression were reason enough to issue a call to arms in the late 1960s. FLQ members then kidnapped and murdered Pierre Laporte, who was Quebec’s deputy premier, and sparked a national crisis that ended in martial law.
Vallières and the FLQ may be dead, but the notion that Quebecers are an oppressed people lives on.
[. . .]
Although the “N Word” hasn’t made a noticeable comeback just yet, it’s only a matter of time before fringe elements search for new and more shocking tactics to attract attention to their cause which, at least legislatively, has hit a dead end.
Upon seeing the salute images, many jumped to the conclusion that protesters were racists or that Neo-Nazism was on the rise in Montreal; neither is true. They aren’t racist – at least not intentionally. There is a genuine belief, as Vallière expressed, that Quebecers are in the midst of an epic battle to save democracy and break away from the shackles imposed on them by their Anglo overlords.
[. . .]
In many ways, he [Amir Khadir] embodies the Quebecois victim mentality. At a press conference last week, he compared his struggle with those of Martin Luther King Jr. and Gandhi. He turned to a CTV News reporter, a black woman, and said that “Law 78 is as unacceptable as segregation of blacks was in the 60s.” And he said that in all sincerity, with a straight face.
The culture of victimization runs deep. Some Quebec laws are based on the concept that Francophone culture is under attack, and restricting the use of other languages, as is the case with Bill 101, is an important weapon in the war against Americanization. And make no mistake: This is a war, ideologically speaking. Political elites, particularly within the separatist movement and the opposition Parti Québécois, believe the mere existence of the English language in this province is an assault on French.
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Winnipeg is not a hellhole
I’ve spent a few weeks in Winnipeg, and while it was a pleasant place to stay in June, others perhaps didn’t have as much fun:
The local affiliate is interrupting the 4th quarter of the #NBAFinals to show city council election results!!!#TrappedInAHellHole
— Rob Lowe (@RobLowe) June 13, 2012
And Scott Feschuk rounded up the reactions very well:
https://twitter.com/scottfeschuk/statuses/213209975537942529
Colby Cosh is late to the scene:
If you’re a journalist, sometimes it’s more interesting to come to a story later rather than sooner. (It’s also way easier!) When I first heard that Winnipeg was ablaze with mob fury about a Rob Lowe tweet that described the city as a “hellhole”, I sort of chuckled to myself and thought “Welp, right or wrong, he is definitely talking about the ‘Winnipeg’ that’s in Manitoba.” [. . .]
Lowe indicated later that he was referring to the bar, and not Winnipeg as a city, when he joked about being in a “hellhole”. And, in fact, if you look at what he wrote, he never did say that Winnipeg was a hellhole. (Parts of it are not remotely like hell at all during several months of the year!) But for some reason, an awful lot of Winnipeggers immediately assumed that that’s what he meant. Am I wrong, or does this say more about what they think of their city than it does about what Rob Lowe thinks of it?
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What is at stake in the amendment process to the omnibus bill
As Andrew Coyne points out, if nothing else the stack of amendments the opposition have proposed does accomplish something (even if none of the amendments are accepted):
The House of Commons was to begin voting Wednesday night on several hundred amendments to Bill C-38, the 425-page monster known as the omnibus budget implementation bill. The voting was expected to go on all night and all day Thursday.
Viewed one way, the whole thing is quite silly. Given the government’s majority, none of the amendments is likely to pass, nor is the bill itself in any danger of defeat. Viewed another way, however, this is an important moment. For the first time since the last election, the opposition is putting up a serious fight against the abuses this government has visited upon Parliament: not only the omnibus bill, which repeals, amends or introduces more than 60 different pieces of legislation, but the repeated, almost routine curtailing of debate by means of “time allocation”; the failures of oversight, misstating of costs, and abdication of responsibility in the F-35 purchase; and the refusal to provide basic information on spending to Parliament or the Parliamentary Budget Officer — to say nothing of the stonewalling, prorogations and other indignities of the minority years.
What’s the point? Once, as in the famous “bell-ringing” episode of 1982, the point would have been to hold up parliamentary business until the government relented: not on the substance of the bill, which a duly elected government is entitled to pass, but on the principle that the bill should be split, that Parliament is entitled to vote on each of its several major parts separately, and to give each the kind of informed scrutiny and debate it warrants. Again, that is not only in the opposition’s interests, or even Parliament’s, but the nation’s: it makes for better legislation.
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June 11, 2012
Why should we celebrate the War of 1812?
Wayne K. Spear has an answer in the National Post:
An honest and candid assessment of the period 1812-1814 will show that the war was started on false grounds, by American jingoists and super-patriots, as Simpson asserts. However, once started, the people of Upper and Lower Canada had good reason to fight. Also, while the war was lost by the inept and over-confident Americans as much as it was won by the British and the Canadians — and the Canadiens — the character and accomplishments of — for example — Major General Isaac Brock were what they were. The 1814 Treaty of Ghent confirmed the pre-war, and indeed post-Revolution, territories and borders of British North America and the United States, and while the Harper government will tell you that peace followed as a result and ever since, the fact may well be that the Americans would have accomplished at a later date what they could not accomplish in 1812-1814, had they not had vast western and southern frontiers to divert their apparent boundless attention and energy.
In other words, the legacy of the war was neither territorial nor geopolitical, but rather psychological. After 1814 the occupants of territories north of the 49th parallel were possessed of what is today termed “Canadian identity,” which may be summarized in the phrase “not American”. Although there has been peace between Canada and the United States ever since 1814, suspicion and a vague condescension toward the Americans was henceforth a permanent feature of the Canadian psyche. An early example of the Canadian apprehension of Uncle Sam — and of the Canadian habit of arriving at self-understanding by looking south — can be found in Thomas Haliburton’s acerbic 1836 novel The Clockmaker. In this work the satire cuts both ways, reflecting a deeper and uncomfortable awareness that Canada must either side with Britain or else be absorbed by America.
In the preceding paragraph I have stated that “after 1814 the occupants of territories north of the 49th parallel were possessed of what is today termed Canadian identity.” There is of course a large and important exception, the indigenous peoples of this land. One of the principal immediate causes of the war was the growing conflict between a brutal and expansionist settler population and its indigenous resistance, among whose most famous leaders in 1812 was Tecumseh. In the three decades leading up to 1812, the Haudenosaunee (like Tecumseh’s people, and indeed all indigenous groups) had been dispossessed of their land base at an alarming rate. The 1812 war offered an opportunity to extract concessions from Britain and Canada through military alliance, a strategy which had served the League in the past and might do so again. It was a military alliance with Britain, during the American Revolution, which yielded to the Six Nations the Haldimand Tract, in Ontario. Ninety-five percent of this land would eventually revert to Canada through a series of transfers, some of which are held by the Six Nations to have involved deception and outright theft. (The current-day Caledonia dispute is a direct legacy of this period.) Not a promising record, but in 1812 military alliances still counted for something, and then as now there were things for which it was worth fighting.
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June 8, 2012
Toronto City Council’s latest collective brain-fart
Terence Corcoran is too kind in his discussion of Toronto’s new ban on plastic bags:
In star-struck liberal green Los Angeles, it took a full-court press by environmental groups, major propaganda efforts, endorsement by the roll-over editorialists at the Los Angeles Times, and deployment of Hollywood stars, such as Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Peter Fonda, to work up the political steam needed to prompt L.A.’s city council to vote last month to ban plastic bags.
In starless Toronto, all it took was a bunch of dumb city councillors who suddenly decided — seemingly out of the blue — to stage a surprise vote.
“Ban the bags,” somebody said. “Good idea. Let’s vote!” Passed: 27 to 17.
No study, no research, no public review, no thought, no concept and no brains. What’s the environmental and fiscal impact of the ban? Nobody knows, although many people say the cost to both the city and the environment will be greater than the cost of using plastic bags.
As I think Adrian MacNair mentioned, one of the most likely outcomes is that people will end up buying less. It’s those little impulse buys that will be curtailed the most, as many folks — especially tourists — won’t have realized they need to bring their own carry bags.
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June 7, 2012
Reason.tv: Bath Salts, Naked Zombie Cannibals & Stupid Senators
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June 6, 2012
Colour footage of the D-Day landings
Reposted from last year.
Update: Jonathan Kay on the forgotten casualties of the Slapton Sands exercise:
In the dead of night, just over 68 years ago, 30,000 Allied soldiers stationed in British ports filed onto amphibious landing craft, and put out to sea. The flotilla sailed toward its objective, and all went according to plan — until a German naval squadron patrolling the English Channel spotted the Allied force and opened fire. The defenseless landing craft began burning and sinking, sending more than 600 men to their deaths.
The surviving ships sailed on to their assigned landing zone, disgorging the soldiers onto the beach. There, the killing continued: More than 300 troops died in the sand, blasted to bits by incoming shells. All told, 946 men from among the original 30,000 died that day — a fatality rate of about 3%.
That figure was hardly unusual for major Second World War offensive operations. And yet, amazingly, the tragedy described in the paragraphs above wasn’t actually an offensive operation at all. It was Exercise Tiger, an American training mission that took place in April, 1944 — a full five weeks before D-Day.
The beach that the men landed on wasn’t in Nazi-occupied Europe, but Slapton Sands on the Devon coast. And the shells that rained down on the dunes were fired not from German artillery positions, but by guns on the British cruiser HMS Hawkins. As British historian Giles Milton notes, “the Supreme Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, had ordered that real ammunition be used, so that men would experience actual battlefield conditions. It was a disastrous decision.”
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