Quotulatiousness

October 28, 2011

The F-35 project “just seems like it’s slowly unravelling”

Filed under: Cancon, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:39

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

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

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

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:27

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

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:04

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.

October 24, 2011

Government to freeze Canadian Forces at current size and sell off surplus properties

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:38

David Pugliese reports on the federal government’s announced freeze-and-sell-off in the Department of National Defence:

The size of the regular Canadian Forces will be frozen at 68,000 people for the next several years and the military and Defence Department will look at selling off property and shutting down facilities as part of its belt-tightening, according to documents obtained by the Ottawa Citizen.

The new directive from Chief of the Defence Staff Gen. Walter Natynczyk and Deputy Minister Robert Fonberg outlines in broad terms how DND and the Canadian Forces plan to deal with a tighter fiscal situation between now and 2016.

A national plan will be developed for DND’s property holdings, putting emphasis on only keeping sites that support operations, the directive notes.

[. . .]

DND’s property holdings are massive, comprising of approximately half of all federally owned buildings. They include various bases across the country. In total DND has 21,000 buildings and 800 parcels of land covering 2.25 million hectares.

That portfolio also includes a large number of buildings with cultural and historical significance to local communities. There are 318 buildings that are considered as heritage structures, including the Cartier Drill Hall in Ottawa, La Citadelle in Quebec City and the Seaforth Armoury in Vancouver.

But the reference to dumping property has some wondering whether base closures could be coming.

October 20, 2011

Timer now started for how quickly Quebec forces Harper to override shipbuilding contract awards

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:08

The National Post editorial board has lots of nice things to say about the federal government’s attempt to take politics out of the huge shipbuilding contract process:

On Wednesday, the Tory government released its Solomonic decision regarding which shipyards will build $33-billion in new military and non-military vessels over the next two decades. The evaluation of bids for the largest government procurement contract since the Second World War was handled by senior bureaucrats, rather than cabinet ministers. Even the announcement of the winning contractors was made by Francois Guimont, the top civil servant from Public Works and Government Services, rather than his minister or the minister of National Defence, as would have been the case with past contracts of this magnitude.

Of course, that’s not to say there will be no political backlash from the decision. Irving Shipbuilding of Halifax will be given $25-billion to build new joint support ships, Canadian Surface Combatants — a sort of destroyer-frigate hybrid — and offshore patrol vessels capable of sailing off all three of Canada’s coasts — east, west and Arctic. Seaspan Marine of Vancouver will build science vessels for the Coast Guard and for the Fisheries department, plus icebreakers worth a total of $8-billion. That means Davie Shipyard in Levis, Que. was left without a major shipbuilding contract (though Davie is still eligible to bid on a further $2-billion contract to provide smaller government boats, such as Fisheries patrol vessels). It must have been tempting for the Tories to intervene in the contract-award process and toss Quebec a bigger bone. Their recent decision to expand the grasp of the official languages commissioner to several airlines, and their willingness to give new seats to Quebec in the House of Commons (despite the fact Quebec was not underrepresented there), just because Ontario, B.C. and Alberta were getting more, shows the Tories have become very concerned about their appeal to Quebec voters.

You can guarantee that many Quebec politicians will benefit for having yet another stick to beat the federal government with — this would be true in all scenarios except the one where the Quebec shipyard got both contracts. It would be an even better deal for the taxpayers (and perhaps even the Royal Canadian Navy) if the contracts hadn’t been restricted to Canadian shipyards: it wouldn’t fly politically, but it would almost certainly have been better bang for the billions of bucks.

This is why you don’t want to be a wine importer in Ontario

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:53

In the lastest issue of the Ontario Wine Review, Michael Pinkus explains the 16-point process that all independent wine and liquor importers have to follow in order to get their products into customers’ hands:

Recently I received an email from an agent giving a blow by blow account of the process of getting booze onto the shelf of our beloved Monopoly, including the hair pulling and gnashing of teeth that goes along with it.

[. . .]

“I can take samples to the Licensees — Restaurants & Hotels — and if they want to buy it this is the procedure:

1) They must purchase a minimum of one full case
2) They must pay the LCBO a 25% deposit
3) If I want to reduce the freight rate down from $100+ per case to a reasonable freight rate . . . more like $12/case then I need to gather a minimum of 20 cases in orders with specific Licensees names on them who have all paid the deposit.
4) The LCBO Private Ordering department then processes the paperwork
5) The producer would then ship the product to an LCBO pick-up location
6) We wait until the LCBO consolidates our small order into a large container with other suppliers
7) The product usually takes 4 months to arrive and then spends another month going through Lab Analysis at a cost to the supplier of $175 per product.
8) When the product finally gets released we have to hope that the original licensees that ordered it all take delivery
9) The producer gets paid 60 – 90 days after the order lands in Ontario (while the agent pays to get it out of the Private Ordering warehouse).
10) The agent then has to chase the customer for at least 90 days to get them to pay since they will likely have an excuse not to have a cheque ready upon delivery
11) We have to do this for a total a 300 cases sold within one year to EARN the privilege of getting into the Consignment warehouse.
12) Once granted consignment space . . . we can start to ship from the producer to the LCBO consignment warehouse by the pallet (~56 cases)
13) In consignment, the product can be shipped without an advanced licensee order . . . but still must sell by the case to customers.
14) The producer gets paid once ALL of the order is sold through: 120 – 240 days later.
15) If the product does not sell through within 120 days of arrival then the LCBO confiscates the remaining order, discounts it, and puts it into a sale warehouse.
16) This frees up more space back in the consignment warehouse so that they can trap more agents into over-shipping and then the LCBO can punish them for trying to treat Ontario like a free enterprise liquor system.

Oh, and if the LCBO decides to add your product to their regular merchandise, you’ll be out of luck as it’ll probably sell for less than you can (and your hotel and restaurant customers are paying for exclusivity in a lot of cases, so they’ll stop ordering through you if it’s available in the LCBO retail stores).

October 19, 2011

Selley: Milewski is right on Tories’ “tough on crime” policies

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

Chris Selley can’t be accused of being a Terry Milewski fan, but he does agree with Milewski’s message:

The CBC recently sent Terry Milewski to Texas, the blood and guts state, where he asked conservative politicians and various experts what they thought of building more prisons, and filling them up, as a means of driving down crime. “Don’t,” was the basic answer. “It doesn’t work. That’s why we’re doing the opposite.”

It was a nice piece on a serious policy issue. It reminded us that the federal government seems to consider crime legislation inside a hermetically sealed chamber. But for that very reason, nothing any journalist says is likely to make any difference. If contrary evidence carried any weight in Cabinet, the omnibus tough-on-crime bill, C-10, wouldn’t be before Parliament. The fact that elites recoil at its provisions and spew champagne out of their noses is a feature, not a bug.

And, if I may briefly adopt the voice of a partisan blogger, the mainstream media would denounce the law of gravity if it somehow helped the Liberals (or the NDP, depending what day it is). The CBC, in the memorable words of Citizenship and Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, “lies all the time.” And Mr. Milewski, as we all know, chairs the left-wing media conspiracy.

This is not an ideal policy-making environment. But I’m going to try to change minds on a single, narrow, easily fixable issue: Mandatory minimum sentences for non-serious crimes. I can’t see any level on which they are supportable.

Supreme Court rules that linking to defamatory material is not libel

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

The Supreme Court of Canada makes the common sense ruling:

Hyperlinking to defamatory material on the internet does not constitute publishing the defamatory material itself, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled Wednesday.

The ruling will alleviate fears that holding someone liable for how they use hyperlinks on websites, personal ones or others, could cast a chill on internet use.

The responsible use of the internet and how traditional defamation law applies to modern technologies were at issue in this case, which was watched closely by media organizations and civil liberties groups.

How someone can protect their reputation in the internet age when content is passed around with the quick click of a button was also considered in the case. On social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter, users often share links, and the court’s ruling could have dramatically disrupted that function had it gone the other way.

In its unanimous decision, the court said a hyperlink, by itself, should never be considered “publication” of the content to which it refers. But that doesn’t mean internet users shouldn’t be careful about how they present links. The court says that if someone presents content from the hyperlinked material in a way that repeats the defamatory content, they can be considered publishers and are therefore at risk of being sued for defamation.

October 18, 2011

Sable Island becomes Canada’s newest national park

Filed under: Cancon, Government — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:46

Canada’s newest national park is a tiny dot of sand out in the Atlantic:

It is just a long, slender, green-bean of a thing, but this dune off the cold coast of Nova Scotia is anything but a harmless strip of sand. Its swirling waters are known as the Graveyard of the Atlantic, for they have swallowed 350 ships since 1583. Its underwater Scotian Shelf hosts 18 shark species who feast on the island’s grey seals.

The island is tall and narrow — 40-km in length, and only 1.5-km in width — and its body is held together by a skeleton of beach grass that traps the sand granules and the pirate wreckage buried within. Hundreds of untamed horses run wild, their matted manes unruly in the blustering wind where the Labrador current collides with the warm gulf stream and breeds thick fog.

This is Sable Island, a crescent-shaped mass roughly 300 kilometres out to sea. On Monday, Sable Island was formally named a Canadian national park reserve to ensure, the environment minister said in a statement, that the “iconic” and “fabled” island will be protected for all time.

[. . .]

Now that Sable Island is a national park, rigs are prohibited within one nautical mile of its shores, and its surface will never again be drilled. Some fear the new distinction will spur tourism and threaten the island, but Ms. Hirtle said resources are so scarce that she does not foresee a “Sable Island Club Med.”

October 16, 2011

“We have reached a point where the average earnings of a two income family can barely support the spending of government”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 11:38

Canadians have an addiction problem. They’re addicted to government:

Consider the following:

  • The Government of Saskatchewan alone spent over $11 billion last year (April 2010 to March 2011) to provide services for its citizens. That works out to nearly $11,000 for every man, woman, and child in the province, or $44,000 for a family of four.
  • The average wage for a person in Saskatchewan is about $44,000/year.
  • If the provincial government relied solely on the income tax of its citizens, then a family of four would have no choice but to have both parents work . . . one to provide for the family and one to provide for the government.

Now consider what other levels of government spend.

  • At the municipal level, the City of Regina has an operating budget of about $2500/person. Federally, the Government of Canada spends about $8,000/person.
  • All together our three levels of Government spend over $21,000/person . . . or $84,000 for a family of four.

We have reached a point where the average earnings of a two income family can barely support the spending of government . . . let alone pay for food, clothing, and shelter for themselves and their children.

The reality is that “free” public services come with a cost . . . and these costs increase as we demand more “free” stuff.

One of the truths about addictions is that they require larger and larger “hits” . . . that provide ever smaller and smaller “highs”. This results in people either becoming so dependent on the substance that they cannot function without it . . . or they pursue the addiction to its ultimate conclusion, an overdose.

H/T to Katewerk for the link.

Rick Mercer on the (secret) border security negotiations

Filed under: Cancon, Government, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 10:42

The argument for value-added taxes

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:37

In an article about the Canadian copy-cat protests, Mike Moffatt addresses some of the demands to increase taxes on the wealthy and explains why value-added taxes (like the much-hated Harmonized Sales Tax) are more efficient:

The Occupy Canada protests which began Saturday took place in over a dozen cities with mostly modest turnouts. They also lacked a cohesive goal or message, as their critics in the media are fond of pointing out. The protests did, however, address a number of important societal issues, such as the growing gap between the rich and the poor. As has been acknowledged by both Bank of Canada governor Mark Carney and Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, rising income inequality in Canada is a real and legitimate concern.

Over the last 30 years, the income gap between the top 1 per cent (or more accurately, the top 0.1 per cent) and the rest of us has increased substantially. Furthermore, this inequality is growing faster in Canada than it is in most other countries, including the United States. The Conference Board of Canada has reported that Canada has fallen to 12th out of 17 countries in its peer group when it comes to income inequal-ity. Between 1980 and 2005, before tax earnings increased by 16 per cent for the top 20 per cent, but fell by over 20 per cent for the bottom 20 per cent. The Occupy Canada protests are the product of a rising tide only lifting a few boats.

[. . .]

So how do we reduce inequality? The obvious place to start would be to borrow solutions from countries where after-tax income inequality is relatively low. Three countries that consistently score well on income inequality measures are Denmark, Finland and Sweden. These three Nordic countries share very similar tax structures, featuring moderate-to-low marginal corporate tax rates, moderate-to-high income tax rates and very high value added sales tax rates (VATs, similar to Ontario’s HST). The average VAT in these three countries is 25 per cent, a rate nearly twice that of the average Canadian federal GST plus provincial sales tax or HST. A onepercentage-point increase in the HST alone would raise $5 billion to $6 billion per year for the federal government, so increases by a few percentage points could adequately fund programs designed to reduce inequality. No country on Earth has been able to find a way to fund the kind of social programs and redistribution needed for “reasonable” levels of inequality without VAT rates significantly higher than Ontario’s HST.

Why are high sales taxes needed to fund social programs rather than higher corporate taxes or higher income taxes? Put simply, VATs are the hardest taxes to avoid paying. Higher income taxes reduce labour effort by the taxed. Higher corporate tax rates reduce investment. Canada’s corporate income tax rate was, not so long ago, twice what it is today. Adjusted for the inflation and the size of the economy, however, the higher corporate tax rates brought in similar levels of revenue then as they do now. There are some ways to avoid the HST, of course, but these are far more limited than they are for other taxes. The HST, as with all VATs, is a cash cow that provides governments with the necessary resources to tackle important societal issues.

October 15, 2011

The secret way Supreme Court justices are appointed

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:07

Christie Blatchford isn’t a fan of the secret and convoluted way that our Supreme Court is staffed:

According to the latest serious rumour, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson are poised to make two appointments to the Supreme Court of Canada.

The two will be chosen from a secret short list of six names produced by an all-party selection committee which whittled down a bigger secret list (given to them by the Justice Minister after his officials mysteriously came up with what is believed to have been 12 names) and only after consultation with unnamed officials from provincial law societies and law schools and unnamed senior judges.

[. . .]

The lack of openness is a particular concern with the Supreme Court, which, as has been evident recently, and even in its current ostensibly non-activist form, is plenty activist about telling government when it is wrong.

I refer of course to the Insite decision, which effectively told the federal government, particularly the former health minister Tony Clement, that its policy against this particular supervised injection site was arbitrary, ill-conceived and violated drug users’ rights to “life, liberty and security of the person” as defined by the Charter of Rights.

As it happens, in the end I reluctantly concurred with the result (that Insite stays open), but there’s no getting away from the bottom line that a group of unelected judges over-ruled the elected government and effectively legislated policy, albeit in a specific case.

[. . .]

Canadians are comforted by the fact ours isn’t like the American system, where presidential appointments to the Supreme Court have to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate (such an unseemly business, such a circus) and where, o! the horror, some lower-court judges actually run for office.

How is it better to have kings emerge from a secretive inside-baseball process, for all we know involving a witches’ chants and eye of newt, than to vote for them?

October 14, 2011

Harper back-pedals promises to adjust number of seats in the Commons

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 11:53

Quebec once again demonstrates that you don’t have to have many of your MPs in the government benches to “wag the dog” about representation in the House of Commons:

Fears of a Quebec backlash have delayed the Harper government’s plan to give the growing parts of Canada a larger share of seats in the House of Commons.

As a result, the changes the Tories promised in the spring campaign may not be in place in time for the 2015 election, leaving millions of voters once again underrepresented in Parliament.

The bill to change the way seats are allocated, which would give Ontario an expected 18 additional MPs, British Columbia seven and Alberta five, aims to redress the severe shortage of seats in large and growing urban areas.

But the Conservatives are still grappling with the fact that the change would disadvantage Quebec, which it continues to court despite being virtually shut out there in May. The province has 23 per cent of Canada’s population and 24 per cent of the seats in the House, but its share would fall to 22 per cent under the new formula. The NDP, which achieved a breakthrough there in the election, and many Quebec politicians vehemently oppose the plan.

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