Quotulatiousness

December 10, 2011

“It was not, all in all, Canada’s finest hour. Perhaps that’s why we still don’t talk about it much.”

Filed under: Books, Cancon, History, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:48

Robert Fulford on the event in Ottawa that started the Cold War:

For just one moment in history, Canada found itself at the dangerous centre of global politics. That was in 1945, when Igor Gouzenko left the Russian embassy in Ottawa with documents proving the Soviet Union was spying on Canada with the help of Canadian communists.

Gouzenko’s revelations were the opening shot in the Cold War. A new book, Stalin’s Man in Canada: Fred Rose and Soviet Espionage by David Levy, takes a rambling, anecdotal approach to a major figure in the story, the only Canadian member of Parliament ever convicted of conducting espionage for a foreign state.

Official Ottawa reacted badly to the news that there were spies in its midst. The government arrested the suspects and locked them up for weeks, without access to lawyers or families. They were paraded before a secret royal commission and persuaded to incriminate themselves. Gouzenko was given a new identity to protect him from Soviet assassins but the Mounties leaked nasty stories about him. For decades journalists treated him as a money-grubbing clown rather than the hero that he was.

Today the case remains largely unexplored and poorly remembered. Among those involved, only Gouzenko described his experience in a book, This Was My Choice, a rather thin and hasty account. Twentieth Century Fox produced a forgettable adaptation, The Iron Curtain, with Dana Andrews as Gouzenko.

“Green is the easiest virtue”

Filed under: Cancon, Environment, Government, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:00

Rex Murphy looks at how what he calls Dalton McGuinty’s “reasonably competent government” could fall for the snake oil salesmen of every shabby Green initiative going:

The Ontario government, and Premier McGuinty in particular, gave themselves over to this madness, becoming overzealous crusaders, because the cause was green. And, sadly, there seems to be no other area of public policy in which fitful enthusiasms, pie-in-the-sky thinking, under-researched proposals and the mere hint of possible benefit get so respectful a response and are shielded — almost as if by magic — from the criticisms and analysis that would greet proposals from any other policy area whatsoever. Call it green and every other consideration goes out the window. Start phantom carbon markets, subsidize a Solyndra, put gardens on roofs . . . green will rationalize every cost and subdue every sane objection.

For example: During the early day’s of McGuinty’s determination to “make Ontario a world leader in green technology,” it was interesting to watch him and his government studiously ignore the articulate criticisms and protests from some Ontario landowners. Now any other project inspiring such protests would naturally instigate the usual relentless series of environmental studies that have become so common in our time. But — windmills being “green initiatives” — naturally it was the reverse. The landowners who protested were pilloried as being the worst of the NIMBY crowd, just selfish types safeguarding their little nooks against the common green future.

Green is the easiest virtue. All it takes in most cases for politicians is simply to say the word often enough and whatever they propose — for a time — gets a pass. Who would question McGuinty against those “selfish” landowners. Wasn’t Dalton moving towards a greener world? Enough then. No studies required. No review of the windmills (until election time, that is, when suddenly Ontario voters were told, in effect, the science “wasn’t in” on what secondary effects windmills might have). Question the contracts for solar power? Impossible. Solar power is “clean.”

December 6, 2011

The Battle of Ortona

Filed under: Cancon, Germany, History, Italy, Military, WW2 — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:16

The Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies is marking the anniversary of the Battle of Ortona in 1943 by sending Twitter updates from @BattleOfOrtona to outline the historical events of the 1st Canadian Division and the 1st Canadian Armoured Brigade in this key battle of the Italian Campaign. Here is the situation just before the battle opened, from Terry Copp:

The Canadians were involved in a series of isolated battles in the mountains of Central Italy in November 1943 when General Bernard Law Montgomery issued orders for an advance up the Adriatic Coast to seize control of the east-west road Pescara to Rome. The American 5th Army was to launch a direct advance towards Rome at the same time.

The Canadians were still in the mountains when British, Indian, and New Zealand troops fought their way across the Sangro River, forcing a German withdrawal to the Moro River. The 78th British “Battleaxe” Division had shot its bolt at the Sangro and Montgomery ordered the fresh, full strength Canadian Division to take over the advance on the coastal flank. The move was to be completed by the night of 5 December.

The German 10th Army, responsible for the defence of Italy east of the Appenine Mountains, contained 12 divisions — 10 infantry and 2 armoured. The 76 Panzer Corps held the river lines south of Pescara with 1st Parachute, 90th Panzer Grenadier, 26th Panzer and 65th Infantry divisions. Normally an attacker needs to outnumber the defender by at least 3:1. This ratio could not be achieved in December 1944 and with the beginning of heavy winter rains air power could only play a small role. Everyone but the infantry was optimistic.

December 4, 2011

Lowering allowable blood alcohol limits will not make our roads safer

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:38

Jesse Kline on the sounds-good-to-nanny-state-fans legal situation on Ontario roads:

My colleague Matt Gurney argues that creating a legal grey area between federal and provincial laws relating to drunk driving helps no one, and it’s better to have a lower overall limit than two conflicting ones. But lowering the legal limit to .05 is only going to distract police from going after the people who are actually making our roads less safe: dangerous drivers. By lowering the legal limit, we end up punishing motorists who are not driving dangerously, while diverting resources away from catching those who are.

The U.S. embarked on a similar push to reduce the legal limit from .10 to .08 in the 1990s and the results were less than stellar. A 1995 study conducted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found 21 of the 30 states that had adopted the new rule experienced no improvement, or had less safe roads than the rest of the country.

In 2000, the federal government mandated that all states adopt the new standard. In the four years following this change, alcohol-related fatalities actually increased. Part of the reason was that drivers with a blood alcohol content (BAC) between .08 and .10 are generally not the ones swerving all over the road, so police set up checkpoints in order to catch them. This took officers off patrol.

According to Transport Canada’s own data, a person over 19 years of age with a BAC of .015 is statistically just as likely to get into an accident as someone with a blood alcohol level of .099. A majority (80%) of all alcohol-related crashes causing death are caused by drivers with a BAC over .08, while only 5% involve drivers in the grey area between .05 and .08.

December 3, 2011

Remembering the “Italian Stalingrad”

Filed under: Cancon, Europe, History, Italy, Military, WW2 — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 14:04

The Laurier Centre for Military Strategic and Disarmament Studies will be starting a series of “live tweets” to remember the 1943 Battle of Ortona. Follow @BattleOfOrtona to get the full story, as narrated by Terry Copp.

December 2, 2011

QotD: “Pretty sure we, as a country, were drunk”

Filed under: Cancon, Football, Humour, Media, Quotations, Sports — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:13

I was at the urinal next to Bob Costas once. It was at the 2010 Winter Olympics, just before the Closing Ceremony, during which Canada said goodbye to the world with a nightmarish glowing dreamscape of giant beavers and plaid-wearing lumberjacks and dancing Mounties and flying moose and looming table hockey players and William Shatner, among others. Pretty sure we, as a country, were drunk.

But Bob Costas was not drunk, because Costas is a sober and professional man who disapproves of you and your shenanigans, probably. Costas is among the great broadcasters of his generation, as witnessed most recently by his stellar on-camera interview with accused Penn State pedophile Jerry Sandusky. And despite some creases in his face, and perhaps a whisper of greying hair, Costas remains youthful, even boyish.

Like just about everything in television, however, that is at least partly a facade, as Costas’ monologue on Football Night in America on Sunday last week demonstrated. As if channeling Andy Rooney in 1978, Costas inferred that touchdown celebrations are basically ruining the minds of our children, with their iPhones and their pornography and their touchdown dances. If life is a football field, it is time to leave Bob Costas’s lawn.

Bruce Arthur, “NFL Picks, Week 13: NFL players can dance if they want to”, National Post, 2011-12-02

December 1, 2011

Nanny LCBO doesn’t think you can handle this label cartoon

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:53

Michael Pinkus writes about the LCBO‘s latest nanny twitch:

Stunningly Stupid … and if you happened into the LCBO this past weekend you might have noticed a cartoon-style label on a bottle of Bombing Range Red with a red sticker adorning a certain part of the label. For those who were curious and intrepid enough to remove the sticker, expecting to find profanity or nudity you were disappointed to find a glass of red wine that (with the right amount of imagination) might have resembled a bomb — or at least a glass with a bomb-style fuse. Is this a case of political correctness gone amok? Or is the LCBO afraid we’ll get bombed upon seeing the sight? Personally I am stunned at what the higher ups at the LCBO find offensive or what they think we are too … I don’t know … childish, immature, delicate (you pick your word) to see? As it turns out the truth is even more stunningly stupid then I originally thought. It was ordered to be applied by the LCBO Quality Assurance Department, because the pilot is holding a glass of wine and as part of the LCBO’s social responsibility function they don’t want to give you the impression that it is a responsible action to drink and fly … So instead of taking it as the cartoonish fun that it is, the LCBO has to go and ruin it; but the last laugh is on the Board, because anyone worth their salt will be peeling that sticker off post-haste with a “why the f**k did they cover that” question on their face and on their lips. Thanks for being there to save me LCBO, from the evils that men do.

Image of the “hidden” label from TonyAspler.com.

November 30, 2011

George Jonas: “All governments are communist”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:52

George Jonas looks at how the government of Ontario managed to go a quarter of a trillion dollars into debt:

All governments are communist. Please, relax. What I mean is that all governments expect to be recompensed, not according to the value of their contributions to society, but according to their needs.

Marxist mythology defines progress as capitalism changing into socialism and socialism into communism. Under socialism, everyone contributes according to his abilities, and is compensated according to his contribution. This is an improvement over the vagaries of the market, but communist society goes further. While citizens still contribute according to their abilities, they’re compensated according to their needs.

[. . .]

In a free-market-cum-welfare-state such as Canada, people contribute to society according to their abilities, and are compensated for it at the whim of the market, minus the whim of the government, a.k.a. the taxman. Governments also contribute according to their abilities, but then compensate themselves according to their needs. Their needs vary as they aren’t equally corrupt or ambitious, though they seem equally insatiable. Premier Dalton McGuinty isn’t a communist but Ontario’s debt increased by $110-billion since his party came to power in 2003. We could have had Fidel Castro for less — well, Raoul, anyway.

A gentleman has his hand up. Yes? “Didn’t the debt go up because McGuinty kept his promise and didn’t raise taxes?” Nice try, sir, but no. He did.

November 29, 2011

Stephen Gordon: Governments should favour consumers over producers

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:40

In his latest post at the Globe & Mail‘s Economy Lab, Stephen Gordon points out that governments get the entire prosperity thing wrong:

The next time a political party vows to defend the interests of the producers in a certain industry, you should ask why it isn’t choosing to defend the interests of consumers instead. Because the contribution of an industry to the public good is not its ability to provide large incomes to those who work there; it is its ability to produce things that people want to buy.

Business groups may give lip-service to the benefits of competitive markets, but their heart isn’t in it; they know that their real interests are best served by providing reduced output at high prices. And that’s exactly what we get whenever governments set policy in order to benefit producers: see, for example, our dairy industry.

The motives of producers who call for special treatment in the name of consumer protection are equally suspect. Producers are not in business for their health, and they definitely are not in it for your health. So when producers call for regulations in the name of protecting consumers, you can generally assume that the real and intended effect is to exclude potential competitors: see, for example, our dairy industry.

November 28, 2011

Who won the War of 1812?

Filed under: Cancon, History, Military, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:09

According to an American historian quoted in the National Post, Canada won:

In a relatively rare admission for an American scholar, a leading U.S. historian who authored a provocative new tome about North American military conflicts states bluntly that Canada won the War of 1812.

Johns Hopkins University professor Eliot Cohen, a senior adviser to former U.S. secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, writes in his just-published book Conquered Into Liberty that, “ultimately, Canada and Canadians won the War of 1812.”

And Cohen acknowledges that, “Americans at the time, and, by and large, since, did not see matters that way.”

The book also echoes a key message trumpeted by the federal Conservative government in recent weeks as it unveiled ambitious plans to commemorate the bicentennial of the War of 1812 over the next three years: that the successful fight by British, English- and French-Canadian and First Nations allies to resist would-be American conquerors — at battles such as Queenston Heights in Upper Canada and Chateauguay in Lower Canada — set the stage for the creation of a unified and independent Canada a half-century later.

“If the conquest of (Canada) had not been an American objective when the war began, it surely had become such shortly after it opened,” Cohen argues in the book. “Not only did the colony remain intact: It had acquired heroes, British and French, and a narrative of plucky defense against foreign invasion, that helped carry it to nationhood.”

November 23, 2011

BC Supreme Court upholds law against polygamy

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty, Religion — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:34

I’m somewhat surprised that the court upheld the existing law: I’d expected them to strike it down as overbroad.

Polygamy remains a crime in Canada, B.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Robert Bauman ruled Wednesday. In his ruling, Bauman said the law violates the religious freedom of fundamentalist Mormons, but the harm against women and children outweighs that concern.

Bauman reserved judgment on the landmark case in April, after hearing 42 days of legal arguments during the unusual reference case, with opposing parties arguing the right to religious freedom and the risk of harm polygamy poses to women and children.

The constitutional issue was referred to the B.C. Supreme Court by the provincial government after polygamy charges laid against Bountiful, B.C., Mormon leaders Winston Blackmore and James Oler were stayed in 2009.

While this particular case involved Mormons, the majority of people whose marital arrangements would be affected are Muslims: there are an unknown (but growing) number of polygamous marriages among recent Muslim immigrants to Canada. If the existing law had been struck down, there would have been a scramble among regional and local government agencies to cope with the expected increase in demands for appropriate housing and support from newly legal multi-spouse families.

November 22, 2011

QotD: Our Charter of “rights” and “freedoms”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:14

On the evening of January 12, 1981, justice minister Jean Chrétien sat in front of the special parliamentary committee on the Constitution. “I am proposing that Section 1 read as follows: The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society,” he said.

“This will ensure that any limit on a right must be not only reasonable and prescribed by law, but must also be shown to be demonstrably justified.” Translation: “This will ensure that even though we pretend the public has rights that are fundamental to any free and democratic society, we can take them away at will, so long as we can convince a judge that such measures are justified.”

The language used by Mr. Chrétien would eventually become Section 1 of the Charter, which gives government the constitutional cover to infringe the supposedly “fundamental freedoms” that follow it. In order to figure out when such infringements are in fact justified, the Supreme Court came up with the Oakes test.

Using this two-step process, laws that violate our Charter rights must have a “pressing and substantial” objective, and the means of effecting the limit must be reasonable and proportional. The infringement has to be connected to the law’s objective; it has to be as minimal as possible; and it must balance the consequences of such a limitation, with the objective that is being sought.

Jesse Kline, “Freedom shouldn’t come with caveats, but it does”, National Post, 2011-11-22

November 21, 2011

Michael Geist on the CRTC’s usage-based billing decision

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:56

It’s not quite what it seems like:

My weekly technology law column [. . .] notes the resulting decision seemed to cause considerable confusion as some headlines trumpeted a “Canadian compromise,” while others insisted that the CRTC had renewed support for UBB. Those headlines were wrong. The decision does not support UBB at the wholesale level (the retail market is another story) and the CRTC did not strike a compromise. Rather, it sided with the independent Internet providers by developing the framework the independents had long claimed was absent — one based on the freedom to compete.

For many years, Canada has maintained policies theoretically designed to foster an independent ISP market. Those policies required the large Internet providers such as Bell and Rogers to make part of their network available to independent competitors. Since the large providers were not supportive of increased competition, the CRTC established mandatory rules on access, pricing, and speed matching.

Yet despite years of tinkering with the rules, the independents only garnered a tiny percentage of the marketplace (approximately six percent). The UBB issue illustrates why the independent providers have struggled since the original proposal would have allowed Bell to charge independent ISPs based on the amount of data used.

While that sounds reasonable, the cost of running a network has little to do with the amount of data consumed. Rather, it is linked to the capacity of the network — the fatter the pipe, the greater the cost, irrespective of how much data is actually consumed.

November 20, 2011

In praise of Sir Wilfrid Laurier

Filed under: Cancon, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:22

A conservative senator writes of the greatest Liberal prime minister in Canadian history:

Today, almost 100 years after Laurier’s death, I believe as strongly as my grandfather did that great figures from our history like Sir Wilfrid and Sir John A. should be celebrated and honoured, regardless of party.

Like John A., Laurier had that special touch and talent that makes nation-building possible. He was a visionary leader who built upon the foundations laid by Macdonald and brought Canada into the 20th century with success and a healthy confidence. In a country so divided in the early days — divided by race, religion and geography — the guiding principle and mission of his life was the unity of our nation.

Some have said he was the perfect prime minister — too French sometimes for the English, and too English sometimes for the French. He challenged both main language groups in Canada, while simultaneously opening the door to the settlement of Western Canada by immigrants from Eastern Europe.

Shortly before his death, Laurier addressed a group of youth in Ontario. His words are as inspiring in 2011, 92-years-later, as they were when he first spoke them. Canadians, particularly our youth, would do well recall his advice.

“I shall remind you that already many problems rise before you: Problems of race division, problems of creed differences, problems of economic conflict, problems of national duty and national aspiration,” Laurier said. “Let me tell you that for the solution of these problems you have a safe guide, an unfailing light if you remember that faith is better than doubt and love is better than hate. Let your aim and purpose, in good report or ill, in victory or defeat, be so to live, so to strive, so to serve as to do your part to raise even higher the standard of life and living.”

November 19, 2011

Conrad Black sneers at your various eagles and praises the Canadian beaver

Filed under: Cancon, History, Humour — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:42

There’s been a crack-brained effort in recent weeks to dispense with the beaver as Canada’s emblem animal and replace it with some frozen-footed albino bear. Conrad Black objects:

It is with regret that I take issue, and square off, with my esteemed friend of many years, Senator Nicole Eaton. But I am scandalized by her rude and almost unpatriotic attack on the noble and distinguished national animal of Canada.

The beaver is an almost incomparably exemplary and original national animal. Eagles abound; Germany’s scrawny black eagle, a panoply of other Alpine, Andean, and Central American eagles, including Mexico’s rampant and belligerent version, Egypt’s somewhat pudgy and suspiciously vulture-like eagle; all compete with the grossly overworked American bald eagle. The official American eagle has been press-ganged into every task from proclaiming a missive from the president to warning the non-paying guests of the Bureau of Prisons of the evils of suicidal thoughts.

No one would take issue with the British lion as a great beast, except that the United Kingdom no longer governs anywhere where the lion is indigenous. The king of beasts (or as the Toronto Zoo calls the lion, the “prime minister of beasts”) is even more majestic when set off against the foil of the unicorn.

[. . .]

If the beaver were a contemptible animal, it would never have been adopted and would certainly be disposable now. But it is a remarkably commendable animal, possessed of a formidable work ethic. (I can’t abide rhetorical questions but am sufficiently overcome by inter-species moral outrage to ask if anyone has ever been described as “working like an eagle” or “busy as a lion,” unless they were preying on the defenseless, or, respectively, overcome by lust or narcolepsy?)

More impressive, the beaver is a natural engineer, who not only grasps but by his own adaptive ingenuity, implements the basic principles of irrigation, flood and drought control, and in most of its elements, power generated from water courses. Apart from the honey bee, which was part of the national symbolism of France under the Bonapartes, in deference to the 500,000 Frenchmen who dutifully gave their lives in the great campaigns of Napoleon, the only other national animal that has made a direct constructive contribution to a country apart from the beaver is the elephant of India, often useful in construction and both civilian and military transport.

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