Quotulatiousness

April 9, 2012

The Royal Canadian Mint: now they’re just poking fun at US espionage agencies

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Randomness — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 13:44

Remember the last time that a Canadian coin was the subject of an espionage warning from the US Department of Defence because the poppy appeared to be “filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology”? The Royal Canadian Mint may get a radiation warning for their newest coin:

The image of a dinosaur whose remains were discovered in Alberta’s Peace Country will be featured on our newest quarter — the first Canadian coin with a glow-in-the dark picture.

The quarter, being released by the Royal Canadian Mint April 16, features Pachyrhinosaurus lakustai, a large herbivore whose bone fragments were discovered by Grande Prairie, Alta., science teacher Al Lakusta in 1974.

He plans to pick up one of the new coins for his 10-year-old grandson.

“I think almost anybody who reads about it thinks, ‘We can’t wait to try this,’ ” he said Sunday from his Grande Prairie home.

April 8, 2012

The F-35 program is “Military Keynesianism”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 11:25

Wayne K. Spear explains the ordinary and the extraordinary parts of a military procurement process, as illustrated by the F-35 project:

A straight-shooting bureaucrat will admit that procurement processes are often initiated with the final selection a foregone conclusion. If you know in advance what you need, and you furthermore know who’s most qualified to deliver, then formalities intended to promote transparency and accountability are at best inconveniences to circumnavigate — and every public servant knows well how to steer that ship. That this occurs regularly within the bureaucracy is an open secret.

The Joint Strike Force program, at the centre of which is a proposed purchase of F-35 fighters, introduces disturbing wrinkles to an otherwise unremarkable bureaucratic occurrence. On military matters I refer to the self-described “prolific Ottawa blogger” Mark Collins , who has been training his keen eye on this fiasco for years. At his site you’ll find links to a range of useful resources, for example a DND PowerPoint which makes it clear that military leaders chose the F-35 and only later manufactured the selection criteria. Again, not unusual in procurement. The department however did so on grounds no one has yet admitted, never mind defended. That’s only one of many problems.

Reviewing the Auditor General’s report and the media coverage of this issue, I infer that the F-35 achieved the status of a foregone conclusion for the following reasons. 1) Canada had invested millions of dollars into the F-35 program as early as the 1990s; 2) Lockheed Martin Aeronautics lobbied aggressively, and more effectively, than its rivals (and employed Prospectus Associates, a consultancy firm with the inner track to Defence Minister Peter MacKay); and 3) the F-35 series of fighters — although years from completion and with many important details unclear and ever-changing (including year of completion, engine cost, cost to maintain) — were the only “fifth generation” fighters on the table. As the Auditor General points out, fifth generation “is not a description of an operational requirement.” My own research suggests this phrase means something like ”Ooo!” — which is what I often say when I see a jet fighter in action.

It’s a given that the Royal Canadian Air Force needs to address the rapidly aging CF-18 fleet before 2020 (the estimated end-of-life for the current fighters). The choice had appeared to be simple: follow on our pre-existing development deal with a purchase of F-35 fighters. The problems were that the development schedule had slipped multiple times, the estimated costs had climbed and climbed again, and the technical “teething” issues were still promising longer delays and higher costs. Canada had intended to buy 65 aircraft — in my opinion at least 33% less than the RCAF actually needed — at a “fixed” cost.

The F-35 is still years away from being in service in any air force, there’s no way to be sure that the government’s budget will be enough to buy the minimum number of aircraft, and the CF-18 isn’t getting any younger.

We need (some) new fighter aircraft in the next eight years, but the F-35 is no longer the automatic choice to fill that role.

There’s another root problem, and it’s also to be found in the 2012 federal budget. This document superstitiously relies on the notion that everything the feds do creates jobs. Every spending initiative in the budget creates jobs. Every departmental trim, and every restraint, ditto. Having gone through the budget, I wonder if Mr. Flaherty thinks a job is created when he sneezes. At the same time I was reading the budget, I was reviewing the federal government’s 2010 F-35 sales pitch — which, coincidentally, was the DND’s and Lockheed Martin’s sales pitch. Again, it’s all about “industrial benefits.” Lo and behold: the F-35 program creates jobs!

One name for this line of argument is “Military Keynesianism,” the idea that a brilliant and effective way to create jobs and boost the economy is to give folks like Lockheed Martin billions of dollars of public money. In the 1980s, the American public heard many Pentagon procurement stories concerning $40 staplers and $200 hammers, all part of a federal stimulus effort which by 1988 had tripled the nation’s deficit. There are distinctions to be made between this and the present case. Nonetheless, these staplers and hammers came to my mind as I dug down into the bogus F-35 procurement process and my shovel chipped the Reagan-era bedrock.

April 7, 2012

“[Dalton] McGuinty … has led Ontario from the commanding heights almost to the low-rent district of the Canadian economy”

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

Conrad Black, on the dangers of regional politics played out at the national and international level:

One of the points I was trying to make in last week’s column, in general support of Pierre Trudeau’s efforts to make both official languages present in all parts of the country, was that in any federal state, some concessions to particular regional concerns are necessary or the country will fall apart, or even atomize. In a little over a century, this fate has split Norway from Sweden, Singapore from Malaysia, Bangladesh from Pakistan, the Czechs from the Slovaks and, most painfully, the Sudanese and South Sudanese.

This was what made the Quebec separatist threat so dangerous; though there was never much prospect of heavy violence, there was a danger of the permanent diminution of the country after a prolonged and immobilizing constitutional crisis. Of course, the separatist leaders greatly and treacherously underestimated the complexities and problems of any such step, and aggravated the problem with trick referendum questions about seeking authority to negotiate sovereignty and association with Canada: Simultaneously to eat and retain the same rich cake.

[. . .]

The Copenhagen Environmental Conference of 2009 was probably the most inane and redundant international conference in all history, as every climate alarmist capable of crawling to a television studio or buttonholing a journalist (except perhaps for Canada’s inimitable Gwyn Dyer), competed in foreseeing the imminence, almost literally, of the fall of the sky. But more demeaning by far at Copenhagen was the spectacle of the premiers of Canada’s two most populous provinces, Dalton McGuinty and Jean Charest, attacking Alberta’s oil sands in that over-suggestible ideological environment infested by kooks and charlatans.

The oil sands must be developed, and a pipeline built either into the U.S. or to the West Coast to transport the oil to market. These projects must be managed with great care for the environment. But Canada’s manifest destiny as an energy exporter cannot be held hostage by eco-terrorists, nor by the economic growth of one Canadian region being stunted by the slovenly dependence of other regions on an artificially depreciated Canadian dollar. Intra-Canadian partisanship and regional rivalries must end at the border and the water’s edge.

The antics of McGuinty, who has led Ontario from the commanding heights almost to the low-rent district of the Canadian economy, blaming the prosperity of Alberta for raising the value of the Canadian dollar and inconveniencing Ontario, is an outrage. The new federal NDP leader, Thomas Mulcair, has been uttering something perilously close to the same inexcusable flimflam. Alberta, per capita, has done more than any other province to carry the cost of federalism, including oceanic largesse to Quebec. And all Canadians should rejoice at the prospect of Canada becoming a world energy giant, especially as it entails the prosperity of Newfoundland after centuries of economic struggle, and also the flowering of the hydroelectric wealth and technical sophistication of Quebec.

April 5, 2012

Why government stimulus is usually a bad idea

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

Mike Milke of the Fraser Institute:

Frum’s praise for Ottawa’s go-slow approach on balanced books is premised on the perception that if Ottawa actually cut spending (as opposed to slowing the rate of growth) such actions would endanger our prosperity: “If you reduce spending too fast, you crimp your economy,” wrote Frum.

But that’s a mistaken notion.

To use just one example from a large body of research, in 2009, leading fiscal policy expert and Harvard University professor Alberto Alesina and his colleague Silvia Ardagna reviewed stimulus initiatives in Canada and 20 other industrialized countries from 1970 to 2007. In the 91 instances where governments tried to stimulate the economy, it turned out the unsuccessful attempts generally were the ones based on increased government spending. Alesina noted that “a one percentage point higher increase in the current [government] spending-to-GDP ratio is associated with a 0.75 percentage point lower growth.”

In other words, stimulus spending doesn’t increase economic growth; it harms it.

To see how Ottawa’s own stimulus spending was unnecessary, consider how Canada emerged from the last recession and how government stimulus spending had nothing to do with it. Our recession ended in mid-2009; it was only about then that federal and provincial governments started spending extra (borrowed) stimulus cash.

To credit stimulus spending for the end to Canada’s recession, one must argue that extra (borrowed) dollars mostly spent after June 2009 somehow magically rescued the Canadian economy before June 2009.

All the borrowing did have one effect: It added to the existing large federal debt mountain, forecast to hit $614-billion in 2015, up from $457-billion in 2008.

The government’s stimulus spending was demanded by the opposition, but evidence since then indicates that the minority Tories would probably have passed a stimulus budget even if the opposition didn’t give them political cover.

April 4, 2012

The “Three Amigos” are not all that friendly at the moment

Filed under: Americas, Cancon, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:56

A report on the “Three Amigos” meeting where President Barack Obama hosted President Felipe Calderon, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper at the White House:

Obama’s neglect of our nearest neighbors and biggest trade partners has created deteriorating relations, a sign of a president who’s out of touch with reality. Problems are emerging that aren’t being reported.

Fortunately, the Canadian and Mexican press told the real story. Canada’s National Post quoted former Canadian diplomat Colin Robertson as saying the North American Free Trade Agreement and the three-nation alliance it has fostered since 1994 have been so neglected they’re “on life support.”

Energy has become a searing rift between the U.S. and Canada and threatens to leave the U.S. without its top energy supplier.

The Winnipeg Free Press reported that Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper warned Obama the U.S. will have to pay market prices for its Canadian oil after Obama’s de facto veto of the Keystone XL pipeline. Canada is preparing to sell its oil to China.

Until now, NAFTA had shielded the U.S. from having to pay global prices for Canadian oil. That’s about to change.

Canada has also all but gone public about something trade watchers have known for a long time: that the U.S. has blocked Canada’s entry to the eight-way free trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an alliance of the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Peru, Chile, and Singapore. Both Canada and Mexico want to join and would benefit immensely.

So much for Canadian whingeing, right? Those snowback hosers are never happy. Relations with Mexico must be in better shape, yes? Uh, no:

Things were even worse, if you read the Mexican press accounts of the meeting.

Excelsior of Mexico City reported that President Felipe Calderon bitterly brought up Operation Fast and Furious, a U.S. government operation that permitted Mexican drug cartels to smuggle thousands of weapons into drug-war-torn Mexico. This blunder has wrought mayhem on Mexico and cost thousands of lives.

It’s fortunate for President Obama that the press is generally careful in their reporting … careful, that is, to avoid blaming Obama wherever possible.

Update: Ace has more on the unusually assertive Canadian position.

David Akin: The F-35 fiasco is now a boondoggle

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Government, Military — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:21

Nobody in the government or the Department of National Defence comes off well in this politico-techno-bureaucratic mess:

The acquisition process to replace our aging CF-18 fighter jets can now officially be proclaimed as the F-35 boondoggle.

In a damning report Tuesday, Auditor General Michael Ferguson said the whole process in which the Harper Conservatives decided to allocate at least $25 billion over the next 20 years to buy 65 F-35 Lightning II “fifth generation” fighter jets was gummed up by Department of National Defence bureaucrats — and possibly air force officers — who flat out lied to their political masters and to Parliament about the costs and risks associated with the program.

The only good news is we have not yet spent that $25 billion or signed any contracts.

Canada has generally been well served by the civil service (I grit my teeth to say that, as I’m not at all fond of big government), if only in comparison to other countries. One of the better inheritances from Britain is the (relatively) non-political, impartial bureaucracy. In this case, however, the bureaucracy has failed, and failed spectacularly:

But the politicians, like any prime minister or cabinet minister before them, has to be able to rely on the bureaucracy to give them the straight goods.

That did not happen.

Here’s Ferguson in his report: “National Defence told parliamentarians (last year) that cost data provided by U.S. authorities had been validated by U.S. experts and partner countries which was not accurate at the time. At the time of its response, National Defence knew the costs were likely to increase but did not so inform parliamentarians.”

In other words, DND bureaucrats lied. Full stop. Period.

Here’s another paragraph from Ferguson: “Briefing materials did not inform senior decision-makers, central agencies, and the Minister [of National Defence] of the problems and associated risks of relying on the F-35 to replace the CF-18.”

And another: “We found that the ministers of National Defence and Industry Canada and those ministers on the Treasury Board were not fully informed (in 2006) about the procurement implications.”

I’ve been less-than-fully-supportive of the F-35 acquisition, as a quick perusal of F-35 related posts will show, but this is now much more important than the question of what aircraft (if any) the RCAF will be purchasing. It’s now a case of finding out how deep the rot is in the DND and whether the RCAF actively aided the deception. If so, heads must roll.

Update: MILNEWS.ca has a round-up of reporting on the Auditor General’s report, focusing on the F-35 program.

April 3, 2012

Eliminating inter-provincial barriers to trade

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Law, Liberty, Wine — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:43

Confederation in 1867 was supposed to create a single nation out of a group of separate British colonies in North America. In spite of that, in some areas, individual provinces treat one another as foreign entities for trading purposes. Alcohol, for example, is one product that gets special treatment for inter-provincial sales — almost always to interfere with or even prevent the purchase of alcohol in one province for consumption in another. 680News reports on the latest effort to harmonize the rules regarding alcohol sales across provincial borders:

Free my grapes will be the rallying cry on Parliament Hill on Tuesday as a committee hears from supporters of a private member’s bill seeking to erase a 1928 rule that restricts individuals from bringing wine across provincial borders.

Shirley-Ann George ran into that problem when she was visiting B.C. and then tried to join a wine club through a vineyard there, only to be told the vineyard couldn’t ship to her home in Ontario.

She decided to start up the Alliance of Canadian Wine Consumers to try to change it.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” is the most common refrain from people first learning about the rule, George said.

“Most Canadians don’t even know it is illegal. They think it’s silly, archaic and it’s time that the government started to think in the 21st century.”

Of course, the provinces are not keen to allow individuals to buy wine directly — that might threaten their respective monopolies (and the juicy profits they derive from being “the only game in town”). One of their current arguments against the bill is that it will somehow give Canadian wines an unfair advantage and that could cause issues with our international trade partners. I’m not sure how it benefits Canadian wineries to be shut out of selling to Canadian wine drinkers in other provinces, but I’m sure that they have some cockamamie statistical “proof” that they’ll trot out to bolster their argument.

April 2, 2012

Kelly McParland: Judge Harper not on what he says, but what he does

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:14

In the National Post, Kelly McParland scrutinizes the entrails of the federal budget to determine what Prime Minister Stephen Harper is really thinking:

It’s pretty self-evident that prime ministers reveal a lot of their own character in the content of their budgets, but it may be particularly so for Stephen Harper. The guy is an economist, after all. Messing around with graphs and figures was what he planned to do with his life, if seizing control of the country’s government didn’t work out. And since we know he’s a bit of a micro-manager, it’s probably safe to say there’s at least as much Harper as there is Jim Flaherty in the nitty gritty of the latest budget document. So let’s use it to figure out what Stephen Harper believes — really believes — when it comes to running the country.

We know what he says he believes in: smaller government, fewer bureaucrats, restrained spending, less intrusion, an end to taxpayer-financed welfare for businesses and governments. Accountability, prudence, fairness. Individual responsibility rather than the smothering embrace of the nanny state. No more currying favour with every special-interest advocacy group that captures the attention of congenitally correct.

Maybe on some plane he does honestly hold those values dear to his heart. But we all profess to believe in ideals we never quite get around to displaying. Mr. Harper has been Prime Minister for six years, and since last May has had the majority needed to have his way with legislation. Yet, as Andrew Coyne has so clearly demonstrated on more than one occasion, Mr. Harper’s actions habitually belie his words. If he were applying for membership in the True Conservative Believers Club of Canada, they’d turn him away as unqualified.

April 1, 2012

WestJet innovates!

Filed under: Cancon, Humour — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:14

H/T to 680News for the link.

Scott Feschuk: “Thomas Mulcair didn’t say much at the convention. But at least he said it fast.”

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

For those of you who don’t follow Canadian politics, Thomas Mulcair is the new leader of the Official Opposition, the NDP (New Democratic Party). His performance at the convention inspired Scott Feschuk:

Most New Democrats who’d be choosing the party’s next leader had voted before the convention even began. Thomas Mulcair could have used his 20 minutes of stage time before the first ballot to repeatedly punch a cat in the face — and still he would have won the leadership. As a bonus, smacking around a kitty would have earned him less hostility and criticism than he took for his speeches.

Mulcair’s performance during the candidates’ showcase began with a line of drummers snaking its way through the hall. This was meant to go on for three minutes. It went on for 10 because, hey, who doesn’t love an interminable drum solo, right? Suddenly up against the clock, Mulcair could have chosen to pare his remarks — but clearly the man didn’t want to deprive us of a single syllable of genius. And so out came the words, fast and then faster. Sweat formed along his brow and down his nose. By the end, Mulcair sounded like a guy reciting a legal disclaimer at the end of a radio commercial. No one remembered a word of it.

After the vote, the winner’s speech to the party faithful:

The first five minutes of Mulcair’s acceptance speech were devoted to thank yous. In any campaign, many are owed a debt — and public gestures of appreciation are a key currency of politics. But even here, the address had its odd moments. Mulcair gently ridiculed the labour-inspired NDP tradition of referring to one another as “brothers and sisters.” He carefully followed a written text in issuing words of thanks to his relatives. And then came this line, delivered in French but translated on TV: “To my mother — my Mom, who with her brothers and sisters is up north watching us: Hello.”

Should Mulcair fail over the course of his leadership to develop a common touch and connect with Canadians, these four words may serve as his political epitaph: “To my Mom: Hello.”

Mulcair then got to the meat of his speech. It made for tough chewing. He said things like “Young people are active in their community groups.” He said things like “Leadership comes in many forms.” Mulcair spoke with all the dynamism and charm of an economics professor, his face buried in his text. Voters of Canada, the NDP would like to introduce you to its new leader: the top of this guy’s head!

March 31, 2012

Ross McKitrick: Earth Hour, a dissent

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Environment, History — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:26

I don’t observe Earth Hour, and Ross McKitrick explains some of the reasons far more eloquently than I can:

In 2009 I was asked by a journalist for my thoughts on the importance of Earth Hour.

Here is my response.

I abhor Earth Hour. Abundant, cheap electricity has been the greatest source of human liberation in the 20th century. Every material social advance in the 20th century depended on the proliferation of inexpensive and reliable electricity.

Giving women the freedom to work outside the home depended on the availability of electrical appliances that free up time from domestic chores. Getting children out of menial labour and into schools depended on the same thing, as well as the ability to provide safe indoor lighting for reading.

Development and provision of modern health care without electricity is absolutely impossible. The expansion of our food supply, and the promotion of hygiene and nutrition, depended on being able to irrigate fields, cook and refrigerate foods, and have a steady indoor supply of hot water.

Many of the world’s poor suffer brutal environmental conditions in their own homes because of the necessity of cooking over indoor fires that burn twigs and dung. This causes local deforestation and the proliferation of smoke- and parasite-related lung diseases.

Anyone who wants to see local conditions improve in the third world should realize the importance of access to cheap electricity from fossil-fuel based power generating stations. After all, that’s how the west developed.

The whole mentality around Earth Hour demonizes electricity. I cannot do that, instead I celebrate it and all that it has provided for humanity.

Earth Hour celebrates ignorance, poverty and backwardness. By repudiating the greatest engine of liberation it becomes an hour devoted to anti-humanism. It encourages the sanctimonious gesture of turning off trivial appliances for a trivial amount of time, in deference to some ill-defined abstraction called “the Earth,” all the while hypocritically retaining the real benefits of continuous, reliable electricity.

People who see virtue in doing without electricity should shut off their fridge, stove, microwave, computer, water heater, lights, TV and all other appliances for a month, not an hour. And pop down to the cardiac unit at the hospital and shut the power off there too.

I don’t want to go back to nature. Travel to a zone hit by earthquakes, floods and hurricanes to see what it’s like to go back to nature. For humans, living in “nature” meant a short life span marked by violence, disease and ignorance. People who work for the end of poverty and relief from disease are fighting against nature. I hope they leave their lights on.

Here in Ontario, through the use of pollution control technology and advanced engineering, our air quality has dramatically improved since the 1960s, despite the expansion of industry and the power supply.

If, after all this, we are going to take the view that the remaining air emissions outweigh all the benefits of electricity, and that we ought to be shamed into sitting in darkness for an hour, like naughty children who have been caught doing something bad, then we are setting up unspoiled nature as an absolute, transcendent ideal that obliterates all other ethical and humane obligations.

No thanks.

I like visiting nature but I don’t want to live there, and I refuse to accept the idea that civilization with all its tradeoffs is something to be ashamed of.

Ross McKitrick
Professor of Economics
University of Guelph

March 30, 2012

Looking ahead to the next federal budget

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:29

In the Globe and Mail Economy Lab, Stephen Gordon thinks he can accurately predict the overall shape and content of the next budget:

The main features of the expenditure side of next year’s 2013-14 federal budget should be fairly easy to predict:

  • Transfers to persons will be about 4 per cent of GDP, and future projections will be consistent with this share.
  • Transfers to other levels of government will be about 3.2 per cent of GDP, and future projections will also be consistent with this share.
  • Direct program spending will be at or just above 6 per cent of GDP, and this share will be projected to decline throughout the forecast horizon.

The reason we can make these predictions with a certain amount of confidence is that these paths were set out by the Conservative government several years ago, and they have shown little sign of wanting to deviate from them.

Even if they wanted to — and it can be fairly imagined that they do — cutting transfer programs would generate a certain amount of political blowback from the people and provinces that are on the receiving end. The Conservatives have doubtlessly concluded that limiting the rate of growth of transfer payments to that of the economy — which is the same as keeping them at a constant share of GDP — is probably the most restraint they can impose without incurring lasting political damage.

March 29, 2012

Federal budget highlights (and lowlights)

Filed under: Cancon, Economics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 15:26

My local MP also happens to be the federal Minister of Finance, who got his moment in the spotlight today as he unveiled the government’s 2012 budget. The media folks who were in the budget lock-up are just starting to publish their reports on the “wins” and “losses” as they see them in the new budget.

Initial Tweets concentrated on these headline-friendly moves:

  • Old age pension eligibility will rise to 67
  • Civil service will shrink by 19,000 positions
  • Coinage change: we’re abandoning the penny (they cost 50% more to make than they’re worth, and we didn’t make it up in volume)
  • Return the budget to balance by 2015-2016 and begin running a surplus after that
  • Pravda The CBC, our government-owned TV/radio network, will see a 10% cut in funding

I’ll update this post as new information gets published.

Update: John Ivison at the National Post calls it “A grand vision of still-big government”:

For a government that has forsworn the vision thing to this point, Budget 2012 is Obama-esque in the audacity of its hope for the future.

“We see Canada for what it is and what it can be… Today we step forward boldly, to realize it fully — hope for our children and grandchildren; opportunity for all Canadians; a prosperous future for our beloved country,” said Jim Flaherty in his speech to the House of Commons, boldly going where no Conservative Finance Minister has gone before — save perhaps Sir George Foster, who served Sir John A. Macdonald.

Mr Flaherty summoned up Sir George in his speech, quoting the need “for long vision, the fine courage of statesmanship and the warm fires of national imagination….Let us climb the heights and take a look forward.”

If the rest of the contents fail to live up to that level of rhetoric, they do at least amount to a serious attempt to move beyond the naked bribery of budgets past.

Paul “Inkless” Wells calls it “Harper’s very political budget”:

Revolution, ladies and gents! Light the torches! In his December year-end interviews, Stephen Harper used the term “major transformations” a half-dozen times. He made fun of earlier majority prime ministers. They let the bureaucrats put them to sleep! For years! No chance of that happening to Harper. Major transformations, coming right up.

Fast forward to this afternoon. “We will eliminate the penny,” Jim Flaherty told the Commons. It was literally the first new policy measure he announced. “Pennies take up too much space on our dressers at home.”

Now you know why Trudeau and Mulroney and Chrétien were such snoozers. It was the pennies. Weighing them down all day. Cluttering their dressers at night. Pennies wear a guy down. Harper, the Interac Prime Minister, will be fleet of foot, full of vim, and ready for —

— major transformations? No. I don’t have a searchable electronic text of Flaherty’s speech, but I do not see the word “transformation” anywhere in it. The rhetoric is altogether more reassuring. “The reforms we present today are substantial, responsible, and necessary,” he said, and “We will stay on course,” and “We will maintain our consistent, pragmatic, and responsible approach to the economy,” and “We will implement moderate restraint in government spending.”

From the Budget overview itself, a welcome change to Canadians who shop in the United States:

Every year, Canadians take some 30 million overnight trips outside of Canada, often returning with goods purchased abroad. Modernization of the rules applied to these purchases is long overdue. Economic Action Plan 2012 proposes the most significant increase in the duty- and tax-free travellers’ exemptions in decades. The travellers’ exemption allows Canadians to bring back goods up to a specified dollar limit without having to pay duties or taxes, including customs duty, Goods and Services Tax/Harmonized Sales Tax, federal excise levies and provincial sales and product taxes.

The Government proposes to increase the value of goods that may be imported duty- and tax-free by Canadian residents returning from abroad after a 24-hour and 48-hour absence to $200 and $800, harmonizing them with U.S. levels. This measure will facilitate cross-border travel by streamlining the processing of returning Canadian travellers who have made purchases while outside Canada. This change will be effective beginning on June 1, 2012. It is estimated that this measure will reduce federal revenues by $13 million in 2012–13 and by $17 million in 2013–14.

Campbell Clark at the Globe and Mail says the budget marks a strong change in the government’s formerly pro-military stance:

The Harper government is slashing spending on Canada’s international presence, with deep cuts to the military, aid and diplomacy.

It marks a reversal to the Conservatives long-ballyhooed policy of beefing up the military: It’s no longer just slowing the growth of Defence spending, but cutting it back, and delaying billions of dollars in capital spending on military hardware for seven years.

[. . .]

In fact, neither the budget nor the host of government officials attending a lockup to explain it provided a figure for the Defence budget for the coming year, and in the years affected by the cuts. Officials said that information was not being presented on budget day.

Still, it was clear that the impact will be deep. Since 2006, the Harper government has touted year-over-year increases for military spending, even when it announced two years ago the growth would be slowed. Now it’s cutting.

By 2014-15, more than $1.1-billion a year will be lopped off the regular Defence budget. But that’s not all. In addition, $3.5-billion in capital spending — the sums the military uses to buy equipment like planes, ships, trucks, tanks and weapons — will be put off until seven years from now, so that the government can save an average of $500-million a year.

Hmmmm. Slowdowns in major equipment purchases? I wonder if we’re about to get a Defence White Paper. We’re probably overdue for one of those…

F-35 and the “bubbling skin” problem

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:25

Michael Byers and Stewart Webb report on the latest technical glitch to be reported in the F-35 development:

The ability of F-35s to avoid radar detection depends on a “fibre mat,” which is cured into the composite surfaces of the aircraft.

In December 2011, a test version of the F-35 for the first time achieved the design speed of Mach 1.6. According to Bill Sweetman of Aviation Week, the flight caused “peeling and bubbling” of the stealth coating on the horizontal tails and damage to the engine’s thermal panels, and the entire test fleet was subsequently limited to Mach 1.0.

Repairing and replacing stealth materials is a time- and technology-intensive process that reduces the “mission capable rate” of aircraft. Indeed, it has been reported by the U.S. Congressional Research Service that after five years of service the F-35’s sister plane, the F-22, has a mission capable rate of just 60%.

And then they touch on the issue that has been lurking below the surface for a while, regarding the small number of aircraft the RCAF will be able to afford (assuming the government goes through with the F-35 purchase):

If the F-35 has a similar mission capable rate, Canada will, at any given time, only be able to deploy approximately 44 of its planned 65 planes. When attrition through accidents is factored in — and Canada has lost 18 of its CF-18s since 1982 — we could soon have an available fleet of just 30-35 planes, or roughly half of what the Department of National Defence says we need.

That might be the crucial point on which the F-35 acquisition fails: no matter how good the aircraft are (and I believe they will eventually work through and fix all the major issues), we can’t afford enough of them. Even without taking on new missions, we need a certain minimum number of aircraft, and I thought 65 was low-balling that number. The alternatives are to buy some F-35’s and a larger number of less expensive planes like the Super Hornet, or skip the F-35 altogether and just buy a different aircraft. The problem with splitting the order is that what we’d save on reduced F-35 acquisition costs, we’d more than lose because the RCAF would have to maintain duplicate maintenance and training programs. Unlike the RAF or the USAF, the RCAF isn’t big enough to fly multiple models on an ongoing basis (and you know that the government can’t and won’t fund a larger air force budget).

Ontario grape growers’ current worry

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Wine — Tags: — Nicholas @ 09:01

Michael Pinkus summarizes the situation for the grape growers in Ontario who supply our wineries with much of their fruit:

Just this past Monday grape growers and winery owners lost a few hours of sleep … and that condition will continue until at least May. What pray-tell has our wine industry shaking in its collective boots so badly that they are willing to forego their already mutilated sleep pattern. Well I can tell you it’s not the usual stuff like taxation, health care and wild cat airline strikes. It’s also not the more specific things that haunt the wine industry like the price of grapes, LCBO involvement and VQA regulations … nope the winery owners and grape growers are once again in fear of Mother Nature — more specifically her henchman: Jack Frost.

[. . .]

The latest recorded frost in Niagara-on-the-Lake — according to one growers records — is May 15 … frost would essentially kill off a large number of buds, thus killing the potential of a long growing season with lots of grapes to choose from. “It’s either going to be a beautiful full crop with lots of options, or if we get frost, we’re looking at a very short crop season,” one winery principal told me. For Ontario wine lovers we’d better hope Jack doesn’t decide to make a last appearance, or we’ll all be drinking Chilean and Australian for our 2012. It’s gonna be a scary couple of months … Welcome to Ontario grape growing.

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