There are lessons in this history for the leftist protester. The Occupy movement is bristling with changes it wants made (I’m told we’re not supposed to call them “demands”); these changes won’t, and shouldn’t, happen outside the ballot box. The goal of protest in a liberal-democratic society must therefore be to advance one’s pet issue further ahead on the agenda of the sympathetic, for when they do attain power, and to weaken the morale of moderates on the other side. One must locate specific injustices rather than nebulous cosmic ones, confronting them and defying their perpetrators directly. Deeds will accomplish more than any amount of eloquence. And it should not be necessary to claim to be a majority (let alone a majority of 99-to-one); one individual suffices, where he has a true claim to our attention.
It’s not really clear, anyway, how an “Occupation” that is meeting no serious resistance from authorities anywhere is supposed to elicit sympathy. The main effect of the movement so far seems to have been an elaborate proof-by-demonstration that Canadian municipalities are incredibly respectful of political protest and fawningly deferential to the Charter of Rights. So . . . hooray?
Colby Cosh, “Want political change? Talk to a farmer”, Maclean’s, 2011-11-06
November 6, 2011
QotD: The Occupy movement
The “shale gale” blows away Canada’s illusions of being an “energy superpower”
Terence Corcoran pours cold water on the notion that this is the moment for Canada to become a major player in the world energy markets:
In recent weeks, Canada — a self-proclaimed global energy superpower — has been trying to throw its weight around over the Keystone XL pipeline, TransCanada Corp.’s $7-billion project to ship oil sands production from Alberta to Texas. In Houston on Tuesday, Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver let the Americans know that Canada had other options. “What will happen if there wasn’t approval [of Keystone] — and we think there will be — is that we’ll simply have to intensify our efforts to sell the oil elsewhere.”
Canadian oil executives, who have a lot invested in the superpower notion, are also issuing aggressive-sounding statements aimed at the United States. A headline in The Globe and Mail Friday sounded like a threat: “Oil patch to U.S.: OK pipe or lose our oil.” The story didn’t quite back up the headline, but the sense was that Canada was developing alternatives and that China is the big alternative.
[. . .]
While Canadian government and industry officials have a lot invested in the idea of energy superpowerdom, few outside observers share the vision. Canada barely rates a mention in The Quest: Energy, Security and the Remaking of the Modern World, Daniel Yergin’s new book on the world energy market. A few pages are devoted to the oil sands, mostly to review the high costs and technical difficulties. “As the industry grows in scale, it will require wider collaboration on the R&D challenges, not only among oil companies and the province of Alberta, but also with Canada’s federal government.”
Far more impressive for the world’s energy future will be the impact of shale gas and shale oil. The “shale gale,” as Mr. Yergin calls it, has already transformed the U.S. gas market and shale oil could be next. Since Mr. Yergin’s book was written, the shale revolution has swept Europe and is about to transform China’s energy market.
November 3, 2011
“It’s easy to give up a liberty that is unimportant to you”
Lorne Gunter explains why giving government the power to limit one liberty inevitably leads to the government limiting other liberties:
My interest in guns is purely philosophical: I can’t trust any government that doesn’t trust my law-abiding fellow citizens to own whatever guns they want. It’s the instinct to ban — rooted in the notion that governments or “experts” know better than we ourselves what is best or safest for us — that scares me far more than the thought of my neighbour owning a sniper rifle. The banning instinct is never slaked. Once it has succeeded in prohibiting guns, it will turn itself to offensive speech or unhealthy food.
[. . .]
But above all, it always worries me when the concept of “need” enters the debate, as in (to quote one of my colleagues): “Why do farmers and hunters need sniper rifles?”
The concept of “need” is antithetic to freedom in a democracy where the citizens are sovereign. No one needs a car that goes more than 110 km/ hr, because that is the highest speed limit in the country. So should any of us who want to drive more than a Smart Car or Fiat have to go cap in hand to a government official and explain our “need” for, say, a sports car, before we are granted the right to buy one? Many more Canadians — thousands more — are killed by speeding automobiles each year than by high-powered rifles that are beyond what ranchers “need” to kill coyotes.
If you are guilty of no crime, what you “need” is none of my business, or the government’s. In fact, it is the reverse. Any government that seeks to restrict the liberties of law-abiding citizens should have to prove it needs to do so, and that it is not just pandering to popular emotions and political sentimentality.
November 2, 2011
Universities are far from being bastions of free speech
George Jonas on the sorry state of free speech in Canadian universities:
Are Canadian universities a threat to free speech? If you ask me, yes, and if you ask civil rights lawyer John Carpay, he’ll go even further. Carpay has ranked universities so that you can see which one is a bigger threat than the other. He demonstrated it last week at a breakfast organized by the Frontier Centre for Public Policy for Calgary’s Chamber of Commerce, where guests in the Fireside Parlor were treated to a preview of Carpay’s “Campus Freedom Index.”
[. . .]
Saying that universities reflect the Zeitgeist is an understatement. Universities are more fashion conscious than Women’s Wear Daily. Academics go sashaying and flouncing like so many models on a catwalk in their ivory towers as they display the latest whim of the great designer, Intellectual Currency. Philosophers have better centuries and worse centuries, as the spirit of the times changes. The 18th century was good; the 19th century mixed, the 20th century baneful. Universities incubated both fascism and communism, along with their many sub-versions (pun intended). Although the great democracies defeated those two particular monstrosities in the end, it was a close-run thing and no thanks to their academic elites. As for the 21st century, with jihadists infesting campuses all over the world, we’re off to a rocky start.
[. . .]
When some brave souls associated with universities speak out against censorship, as they do on occasion, they’re the inspirational exception. The rule is an obedient dissemination of the dogma of the day, including terrorist chic, with Hamas apologists shouting: “No freedom of speech for racists.” I heard them do it at the Alma Mater of a noxious doctrine called “Israeli Apartheid,” a.k.a. University of Toronto.
A Canadian institution of higher learning is the least likely place, I’d say, to encourage a clash of ideas to discover the truth. Greasing the squeakiest wheel of an intellectual bandwagon, then handing out honorary doctorates to those who hitch a ride on it, would be more of its speed.
November 1, 2011
Beaver versus Polar Bear
Lester Haines conjures up exactly the right image to illustrate the absurdity of the “Canadian national symbol” argument:
A Canadian politician has rather deliciously insisted that vast tracts of his nation were opened by “the relentless pursuit of beaver”, an agreeable concept that for some reason conjures an image of Silvio Berlusconi furiously paddling a kayak through white water rapids in pursuit of a fleeing supermodel.
The description of Canada’s beaver-hunting past comes from New Democratic Party MP Pat Martin, who isn’t too impressed with Ontario senator Nicole Eaton’s proposal to replace the beaver with the polar bear as the country’s national emblem.
Eaton reckons the polar bear, with its “strength, courage, resourcefulness and dignity” is a more appropriate emblem for the 21st century than the “dentally defective rat” that has symbolised the nation since 1975.
While I don’t think the symbol needs to be changed, it might be best if our politicians are busy in this sort of snark hunt rather than inflicting further intrusive regulations and distortions into the economy.
Alberta’s policy to help small breweries has unintended consquences
When governments try to rig markets to achieve certain goals, they often end up getting results they didn’t foresee:
The Alberta Gaming and Liquor Commission presumably had good intentions in mind when it brewed up a policy to lend a helping hand to small breweries. Namely, beer companies qualify for substantially reduced beer tax rates on the first 200,000 hectolitres sold in Alberta. The explicit aim was to help small players compete against industry leviathans such as Molson and Labatt. And, implicitly, the tax break would entice craft breweries to set up shop in the province.
However, eight years after the reduced beer tax rates—estimated by one analyst to total about $200 million in savings—were first implemented, little in the Alberta beer business has worked out the way the AGLC envisioned. Only five small breweries have opened for business in Alberta since the policy was implemented. And in that time Alberta has, in fact, become a market characterized by discount beer. And at least one of the breweries taking advantage of the AGLC policy doesn’t even brew in the province, let alone Canada.
[. . .]
Alberta’s small brewer system would appear to be yet another case of the law of unintended consequences—especially when a government agency tinkers with the free market economy. From a dearth of craft brewers to a helping hand for American jobs, the AGLC’s beer tax policy is enough to drive a teetotalling Albertan to drink.
October 30, 2011
“That will be the Age of Great Confusion”
Let’s get this out of the way right up front: the American habit of date notation is wrong, wrong, wrong:
An American, a Brit, and a Canadian schedule a business meeting for 02/04/12.
It sounds like the beginning of a joke, but here is how it plays out: The American plans for February 4, 2012. The Brit circles April 2, 2012 in his calendar. And the Canadian? Depends on who you ask.
Written in myriad sequences between slashes or dashes, dates cause what one mathematician calls “maximum confusion.” They cause us to miss meetings and unwittingly eat sour yogurt. They are so prone to mix-ups, in fact, that the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) made a declaration on the subject in 1988.
[. . .]
‘ISO 8601: Data Elements and Interchange Formats’ espouses year/month/day, abiding by the so-called big endian format, which orders the date from the largest element to the smallest (YYYY/MM/DD). Mr. Kramp chose this format for his bill. The ISO directive, embraced by the UN in its international trade protocols and by the European Union (although not by the individual countries), runs 33 pages.
[. . .]
And Canada, as Canadians will attest, is one of the worst culprits. Even the Canadian Payments Association, which regulates personal and business cheques, says it accepts day/month/year, month/day/year, and year/month/day, although it requires cheque producers to print guidance letters to clarify the sequencing.
[. . .]
Some measure of reprieve is around the corner: The year 2013 marks the end of what American mathematician Jim Blowers calls the “Age of Maximum Confusion.”
“After the year 2012, the year can no longer be confused with the month,” he noted on his blog. “But it can be confused with the day. That will be the Age of Great Confusion. For example, 07/11/13 could be 2007 November 13 or 2013 November 7, but not 2007 13-ember the 11th.”
This will go on, he wrote, until 2031, when the day cannot be confused with the month, although the month can still be confused with the day.
It makes sense to use big endian notation (biggest-to-smallest) or even little endian (smallest-to-biggest) but it makes no sense at all to mix up the sequence!
October 29, 2011
Canadian Air and Space Museum to be evicted in favour of ice rinks
A sad tale at the CBC website about the impending eviction of the museum and other tenants of the historic (but not historically designated) DeHavilland plant in Downsview:
A building that played a major role in the production of aircraft for the Allies in their fight against Hitler during the Second World War is facing the wrecking ball.
It’s located in Toronto’s Downsview Park and is described in federal heritage documents simply as “CFB Plant .1, Building .1.”
Just one month after the federal government celebrated Canada’s aviation history by reintroducing the name, “Royal Canadian Air Force,” it was sending an eviction notice to a building where RCAF planes were assembled.
Built in 1929, the plant housed the operations of the de Havilland Aircraft company which provided 17 per cent of Canada’s planes during the war years.
[. . .]
David Soknacki, the chairman of Parc Downsview Park, says the building at 65 Carl Hall Road is not currently classified as a heritage building.
Up until Oct. 26., the Canada’s Historic Places website listed the facility as “a recognized Federal Heritage Building because of its historical associations and its architectural and environmental value.”
Then the listing disappeared.
H/T to Michael O’Connor Clarke for the link.
October 28, 2011
RCN may get nuclear submarines
A report by the CBC on what may or may not have been a casual remark by Defence Minister Peter MacKay:
CBC News has learned the Harper government is considering buying nuclear submarines to replace its problem-plagued fleet of diesel-powered subs, all of which are currently awash in red ink and out of service for major repairs.
The four second-hand subs Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government bought from the British navy in 1998 for $750 million were portrayed at the time as the military bargain of the century.
Instead, they have spent almost all of their time in naval repair yards, submerging Canadian taxpayers in an ocean of bills now totalling more than $1 billion and counting.
[. . .]
High-ranking sources tell CBC News the government is actively considering cutting its losses on the dud subs, and mothballing some if not all of them.
Defence Minister Peter MacKay is hinting they might be replaced with nuclear submarines that could patrol under the Arctic ice, something the existing diesel-electric subs cannot do.
The deal of the century turned out pretty badly for the Royal Canadian Navy. Let’s hope that the next submarine deal won’t be quite as bad.
Update: At least Lorne Gunter can get some cheap laffs from our dehydrated subs:
Boy did the Brits ever see us coming in 1998 when the Chretien Liberals pulled up to Honest Nigel’s Used Submarine Shop looking to buy four underwater patrol boats. The quartet they sold us for the unbelievably low price of just $750 million have been up on blocks in our front yard almost ever since, with weeds growing out the portholes. I expect Canadian Pickers to come along anytime now and offer us $2,000 for the set, take it or leave it.
[. . .]
Let’s face it, the Limeys sold us lemons. If the Liberals had just agreed from the start to buy new nuclear subs, Canada would have spent about the same money ($3 billion), but we would have had subs we could have been using for the past 10 years already, with another 30 years to go. Now by the time we get our British diesel subs fixed, they will be 30 years old and have only about 10 years of serviceable life remaining. Moreover, they still won’t be able to sail under the North Pole and patrol the Arctic because they need air to feed their engines and no aspirated sub can stay underwater for the 14-21 days it takes to sail under the Polar icepack.
This is not unlike the Liberals decision in the same era to cancel the EH-101 helicopter contract. Breaking the deal signed by the Mulroney Tories in the early 1990s cost taxpayers $500 million, on top of which we had to buy new helicopters anyway. Pretty much the same helicopter at pretty much the same price.
“The ultimate measure of this institution’s value [is] the elevation of human dignity and liberty for all their citizens”
Stephen Harper made a speech yesterday that expressed a lovely sentiment. It’s not clear if the other heads of government attending the meeting will be quite as taken with it:
If the Commonwealth continues to ignore member countries that violate human rights and ignore the rule of law and democratic principles, the 60-year-old organization will fade into irrelevance, Commonwealth leaders meeting here are being told.
It¹s a message Canada and Prime Minister Stephen Harper strongly endorses but one which is expected to produce divisions at the biennial summit of Commonwealth Heads of Government. The summit got underway Friday morning in a ceremony presided over by Queen Elizabeth II.
“The ultimate measure of this institution’s value going forward will remain the commitment asked of member governments to the elevation of human dignity and liberty for all their citizens,” Harper said in a speech here Thursday after arriving from Ottawa. “In the next few days, it is my strong hope, that the Commonwealth shall reaffirm, and reinvigorate, this great purpose.”
Member countries are typically loathe to point fingers at the laggards in the 54-country Commonwealth when it comes to human rights and democracy but not Harper.
He has already singled out Sri Lanka’s government for sharp criticism over Sri Lanka¹s failure to investigate what a United Nations panel called “credible allegations” that the Sri Lankan army committed war crimes as that country’s 25-year-old civil war was drawing to a close in 2009.
Royal succession rule change
Dedicated republicans, feel free to skip this item. Thanks to an agreement among the heads of government meeting at the Commonwealth meeting in Australia, the line of succession to the throne will now treat women equally:
Sons and daughters of any future UK monarch will have equal right to the throne, after Commonwealth leaders agreed to change succession laws.
The leaders of the 16 Commonwealth countries where the Queen is head of state unanimously approved the changes at a summit in Perth, Australia.
It means a first-born daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge would take precedence over younger brothers.
The ban on the monarch being married to a Roman Catholic was also lifted.
Under the old succession laws, dating back more than 300 years, the heir to the throne is the first-born son of the monarch. Only when there are no sons, as in the case of the Queen’s father George VI, does the crown pass to the eldest daughter.
The F-35 project “just seems like it’s slowly unravelling”
The latest in a long series of warnings about the spendy-and-getting-spendier-every-day F-35 Joint Strike Fighter project:
The Conservative government’s controversial F-35 jet fighter project, plagued by delays, cost overruns and now economic turmoil in Europe, is at growing risk of being sharply curtailed or shelved — the defence minister’s protestations notwithstanding.
“It just seems like it’s slowly unravelling,” said an industry insider who specializes in aircraft procurement. “It’s a mess.”
Peter MacKay has doggedly championed the Royal Canadian Air Force plan to purchase 65 “fifth-generation” Lockheed Martin Lightning stealth fighters to replace Canada’s aging fleet of CF-18s. Last week MacKay sought, with only limited success, to deflect reports that the first batch of planes built by Lockheed will be incapable of communicating in Canada’s far North.
This minister has a knack for projecting blithe confidence. But in this instance he is increasingly offside with other members of the cabinet and with the Prime Minister’s Office, sources familiar with the situation say.
“They expected a whole bunch of kudos for doing (the F-35),” said one. “They believed this was win-win, industrially, that everybody would be happy it has kind of crept in that it just ain’t so.”
October 27, 2011
Postponing retirement: late Boomers and Gen X’ers face reality
Jonathan Chevreau shows that those of us getting a bit closer to retirement will have to wait longer than the previous generation before retiring:
The “double whammy” of falling stock prices and low interest rates has impacted members of DC pensions and RRSPs, who must cover the deficit through reduced personal spending and/or deferred retirement.
Towers Watson has issued its first quarterly DC Retirement Age Index, which it describes as a pension freedom tracker. It tracks the performance of a balanced portfolio of a DC plan member who has contributed to the plan from age 40 to 60. At that point, an annuity would be purchased but its value and monthly payout would depend on the performance of the plan over those 20 years.
[. . .]
With recession threatening, ongoing market volatility and falling interest rates, Towers Watson expects the Pension Freedom Age could move up to 67, or two years after the traditional retirement age (when Old Age Security and full Canada Pension Plan benefits commence).
October 26, 2011
Frank Klees demonstrates how to cross the floor without leaving your seat
Frank Klees lost the leadership race to current Ontario Progressive Conservative leader Tim Hudak. One can only assume that this ploy is his Parthian shot against Hudak and the party that failed to embrace him as leader (you can understand why they didn’t if this is his response):
In politics, there are the publicly stated reasons for doing something, and then there are the real reasons. So, when Ontario PC MPP Frank Klees says that “I felt the best way I could make my experience available to the legislature is in the role of Speaker,” the immediate response is: OK, but what is he really up to?
Problem is, that’s tough to figure. Because Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals are tied with the opposition in the number of seats held in the provincial legislature, a PC speaker would shift the balance of power and make it much harder for the government to be toppled by the Tories and NDP.
[. . .]
All of which makes Mr. Klees’ ploy even harder to understand. He has turned his back on his leader, Tim Hudak, and his party, and if you don’t believe he has done that then have a look at what his colleagues are saying, which suggests his future in the Ontario PCs is doomed. He was runner-up to Mr. Hudak in the last leadership race and a likely contender to succeed him should the Tory leader fail to win the next vote — a distinct possibility — but now he’ll always be the guy who thumbed his nose at the party when it asked him to take one for the team. Thumbed his nose, raised his finger, take your pick. Career-wise, Mr. Klees might as well have lit himself on fire. He better hope he manages, against seemingly stacked odds, to win the Speaker race.
As the last election unfolded, Tim Hudak seemed to be trying to be a carbon copy of Dalton McGuinty (the voters decided they’d prefer the genuine article to the ersatz Tory copy), which seems to have turned what looked like a certain Tory victory into a Liberal minority. I joked after the election that Hudak would certainly be the one to cross the floor to join the Liberals, because he’d effectively run as a Liberal during the campaign. I guess Klees wants to screw over the party that rejected him by getting there first.
October 25, 2011
Another example of a manual transmission being a good anti-theft device
This is one of those crime stories that tends to provoke laughter:
RCMP Cpl. Craig Douglass said Monday that Morgan allegedly jumped into the idling Corvette just as the owner was putting away a charger used to revive the sports car’s dead battery.
The owner watched in disbelief as the suspect rolled up the power windows, locked the power doors and promptly stalled the vehicle.
“Unfortunately for the (suspect), he was not good with a standard transmission and stalled the Corvette when he attempted to reverse out of the driveway,” Douglass said.
[. . .]
As police arrived, Morgan was attempting to exit the vehicle after allegedly smashing the driver side window with his screw driver — apparently for no good reason.
“As it turns out, all the suspect would have had to do was manually slide the door lock to the side and the door would have opened,” Douglass said.
