Because we live under a monopoly regime that has no intention of loosening restrictive laws, we will never see “wine bar/stores” like this. Americans are jaded to these luxuries of free market access to wine and loads of selection. You read magazines where they tell you to talk with your retailer about finding the best wines from out of theway places and dedicated small producers, and the knowledgeable Ontarian’s reaction is “Yeah, right not in my lifetime will I see that.” While in the U.S. the ‘little guy’ whose passion for wine you can feel the moment you walk in the door and engage in a “which wine should I get” conversation. A recent discussion with an ex-pat American wine collector and drinker (just recently moved north of the 49th parallel) elicited disgust about the LCBO and its selection. “I’m from Chicago,” he tells me, “and I can’t find a decent bottle of wine up here and the selection is . . .” he trails off and shakes his head. Ontarians are used to it. We’ve grown up with Big Brother’s iron fist clamped firmly around our throat and his sweaty palm covering our eyes to what the world outside our borders is doing with booze (wine in particular).
I usually urge you to take a trip to wine country, but this year I want you to take a trip abroad, not to a wine country or region, but to a U.S. wine retailer or specialty shop, a grocery store will do in a pinch (yes I did say a grocery store). Check out, not only the selection but the price, what’s on sale and for how much, wines for under $4, 2 for 1, 3 for 1 or sometimes more for one low price. Discounts for multiple purchases, sale prices that actually seem like you are saving money and not just a dollar or two off. Pay attention to what you see, then ask yourself, “why don’t we have that here in Ontario?” You know the answer, it stares at you with big white letters on a big green background and they go by a four-letter acronym (do I really have to spell it out?) How about this, their first letters are L.C., although they should be K.G. If you are any kind of oenophile, be it novice or pro, you’ll realize that a trip across the border is enthralling and liberating — but then it’s back to the oppressive world of Ontario with Big Brother’s hands shielding you and stopping you and then you tell me honestly, which system would you like to live under?
Michael Pinkus, “Is it a Shop or is it a Bar? Whichever it is, I want one here”, Ontario Wine Review, 2010-04-01
April 2, 2010
QotD: The KGBO, er, I mean LCBO
April 1, 2010
Also, mandatory sobriety checks for judges, legislators
The Law Society of Upper Canada is planning to do mandatory random drug testing on law students starting this fall:
The move comes in response to requests made by faculty leaders, said Mahamad Accord, director of public relations at the regulatory body. “Why should we accept a lower standard for professional athletes than we do for society’s guardians of the truth?”
Although some professors of law view the move as intruding too far into the personal lives of lawyers and students, others applaud the measure.
“Lawyers play an essential role in society and the impact of drug-addicted lawyers is demonstrable and negative,” according to Professor Shubert at Osgoode Hall. “These changes are long overdue and will have a tangible benefit for legal aid recipients.”
But I’m exaggerating in the title to the post. The guidelines don’t go that far . . . but they probably should. I suspect there’s at least the same level of drug use and alcohol abuse in those selected groups as there is in the general population, even if their chances of detection (and judicial punishment) is demonstrably much lower than “ordinary people”.
March 30, 2010
I guess I can’t complain
According to the latest figures, my commute is only a bit longer than average for Toronto:
After more than six years of enlightened, environmentally-conscious left-wing government under a pro-transit mayor with a compliant anti-auto city council, Toronto has been told its gridlock is among ther worst in the world.
The Toronto Board of Trade surveyed 19 cities and found that commuting times in Toronto are the longest of the lot. Worse than London. Worse than New York. Worse than Los Angeles. Worse than Berlin or Milan. The average beleaguered Torontonian spends 80 minutes a day trying to get to and from work.
Imagine what it would be like without an enlightened, activist, pro-transit city government.
Well over half of my commuting time is spent inside the city boundaries, even though it constitutes a bit less than half the total distance. I’m fortunate that I don’t have to do my commute every day of the week . . .
March 29, 2010
Nanny state to prevent the Queen from using stairs
I find this hard to believe:
A row over a staircase has led to the Queen withdrawing from an appearance at the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo during her forthcoming visit to Canada.
The tattoo would seem to be an ideal event to be graced by Her Majesty. It was a favourite of the late Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother, who opened the original one in 1979, and gained its royal title in honour of the Queen’s 80th birthday in 2006.
However, the Canadians reckon that Her Majesty is too old to manage the stairs.
Insulting and idiotic. Nicely played, organizers! You get to look like right twits, you’ve managed to offend the Queen, and you still appear as blithering bureaucratic meddlers to the rest of us.
He added: “If it is a condition [to use the stairs] for her to turn up then we can’t accept it. Do people still get their heads chopped off for defying the Queen?”
If. Only.
H/T to Taylor Empire Airways for the link.
March 26, 2010
Confusion over Quebec’s anti-burkha moves
Even in the same newspaper, the conclusions are drawn based on the observer’s preferred worldview, rather than the facts of the case. In the National Post, here’s Barbara Kay’s ringing endorsement for a pro-equality outcome:
Chapeau, le Québec! That means, “Hats off to you, Quebec.”
With the announcement of Bill 94, barring the niqab in publicly funded spaces, Quebec has dared to tread where the other provinces, feet bolted to the floor in politically correct anguish, cannot bring themselves to go.
The new bill will proscribe face cover by anyone employed by the state, or anyone receiving services from the state. That covers all government departments and Crown corporations, and as well hospitals, schools, universities and daycares receiving provincial funding.
I can’t remember a time when Quebecers were more unified on a government initiative.
Also in the National Post, here’s Chris Selley doing his best Inigo Montoya imitation:
I’m not quite sure what Quebec’s new Bill 94 means, but I’m pretty sure it doesn’t mean what Premier Jean Charest and Immigration Minister Yolande James are saying it means.
Here’s Ms. James: “To work in the Quebec public service or to receive the services of the Quebec state, your face has to be uncovered.”
Here’s Mr. Charest: “Two words: Uncovered face. The principle is clear.”
And here’s Bill 94: “The general practice holds that a member of the staff of the administration of government . . . and a person to whom services are being rendered . . . will have their faces uncovered during the rendering of services.”
Huh? General practice? Oh: “When an accommodation involves a change to this practice, it must be refused if motives related to security, communication or identification justify it.”
So there will be accommodations, then? You sure wouldn’t have known it from Wednesday’s news conference.
All that being said, I can’t disagree with the sentiment later in Barbara Kay’s column:
Some of these women may, as in France, have adopted the niqab for ideological purposes (a serious problem in itself), but most niqab-wearing women are virtual prisoners, who have never known, and would be afraid (with reason) to exercise their “freedom of choice.”
For those confused liberals who instinctively hate the niqab but feel guilty about banning it, it will help them if they understand that the burka and niqab are not “worn,” but “borne.” The niqab is not an article of clothing; it is a tent-like piece of cloth supplemental to clothing. Full cover is worn as a reminder to the “bearer” that she is not free, and to remind the observer that the bearer is a possession, something less than a full human being.
Update: The National Post editorial board comes out against the Quebec bill:
Gender equality — a stated goal of Bill 94 — is a noble goal. But the law would go too far, using the state’s power to leverage a campaign of social engineering. As conservatives, we oppose such encroachments on individual liberties. But liberals, too, should understand the stakes at play here: The principle that government has no role in our wardrobes is the same one that excludes it from our bedrooms.
In the short term, the better approach is the one recently embarked upon by several Quebec schools, where administrators have common-sensically resolved the issue of what constitutes “reasonable accommodation” on a case-by-case basis. In the long term, moreover, we are convinced that legislation won’t be necessary at all: Muslim groups themselves increasingly are joining the chorus against the niqab, a welcome development that puts the lie to the notion that Canadian Muslims are uniformly backward in their attitudes toward women.
It would benefit women, Muslims, inter-faith relations and Canadian values alike if this unfortunate practice were extinguished voluntarily by the affected community itself rather than by heavy-handed state edict.
March 25, 2010
This is positive, but it’ll be more positive when it isn’t even news
The pursuit of equal opportunity for all has another minor milestone: the first black police officer to head Toronto’s homicide squad:
Inspector Mark Saunders became the first black head of Toronto’s Homicide Squad this week, replacing the division’s first female leader.
Staff Inspector Kathryn Martin was promoted after just one year as homicide’s top cop; she now heads the professional standards division, charged with integrity on the force and public confidence.
Insp. Saunders, a former homicide detective who most recently worked in professional standards, moved from that division back to homicide this week.
Police Chief Bill Blair has stressed the importance of diversity on the force and also promoting the best people. Since he became chief in 2005 year, he has named two black deputy chiefs, as well as women as heads of the sex crimes and fraud units.
This is a good sign that institutional racism and sexism is becoming less and less a factor (at least within the Toronto police force), although it’ll be a great day when this sort of announcement isn’t even remarkable. That would mean that the best candidate for a job is the one who’s offered the job, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, etc. Humanity being prey to frailties, it might never happen, but it’s still worth working towards.
March 24, 2010
QotD: The rules of Canadian politics
We now introduce Wells’s Rules of Politics. I have been working on them for years. So far I have only come up with two. If your goal is to understand Canadian politics, there is no obvious need for more than two rules. Here they are:
Rule 1: For any given situation, Canadian politics will tend toward the least exciting possible outcome.
Rule 2: If everyone in Ottawa knows something, it’s not true.
The rules are closely related. Usually when Everyone Knows what’s about to happen, they’re really only hoping it will happen so their boring lives (see Rule 1) will become more interesting.
Paul Wells, “My Rules of Politics”, Macleans, 2003-07-28
March 23, 2010
Stimulus did little, private sector did much more
Despite all the expensive ads (especially noticeable during the Vancouver Olympic coverage), it wasn’t the federal government’s stimulus package that has been creating jobs: it was the private sector:
Canada’s economic fortunes have seen a dramatic turnaround in the last year, but according to a new study by one of the country’s leading think-tanks, it had little to do with the federal government’s $47.2-billion Economic Action Plan.
The Fraser Institute released a study Tuesday that found that government stimulus packages contributed only 0.2 percentage points to the rise in GDP between the second and third quarter of 2009 and nothing between the third and fourth quarter.
The group found that it was private-sector investment and increased exports that were the driving forces behind the change in GDP growth.
“Although the federal government has repeatedly claimed credit for Canada’s improved economic performance in the second half of 2009, Statistics Canada data show that government spending and investment in infrastructure had a negligible effect on the country’s improved economic growth,” said the Fraser Institute’s senior economist, Niels Veldhuis.
Here is the news release from the Fraser Institute.
This shouldn’t be a surprise: the stimulus was, and continues to be, a media exercise much more than it was an economic plan. As with any outcry in the mass media, the government had to be seen to be doing something, regardless of the likely success. The illusion of positive motion was necessary, and the federal government knows it has little wiggle room as far as the mainstream media is concerned — doing nothing was not going to be an acceptable choice, even if doing nothing was the “correct” response.
The government can’t really “create” jobs — although it certainly can destroy ’em — most of the jobs “created” in response to government funding are going to go away as soon as that funding dries up. There’s no economic justification for them to exist, absent the stimulus money. If there was an economic justification, private employers would have created them (where not hindered by government action of one form or another, that is).
The increase in public sector employment is unsustainable: the money to pay salaries and benefits (ahem), training, equipment, and facilities all has to be taxed from individuals and companies. The more public sector jobs, the greater the drain on the private sector. The greater the burden placed on the private sector, the slower the growth of the economy. As you approach the “break even” point, where the private sector can no longer fund all the demands from the public sector, the economy gets more and more sluggish — no sane private employer is going to expand business if there’s no profit to be made. No expansion means no new jobs.
It might be possible for us all to live by “taking in one another’s laundry”, but it’s not possible for us all to live by approving permission forms, having meetings, and bureaucratic empire-building.
The Canadian “flavour” of free speech
Marni Soupcoff hits the nail on the head with this observation:
Do Canadians understand freedom of expression? For several years, I’ve been arguing that the majority of them don’t — that despite freedom of speech’s prominent place in the Charter, they think it means the ability to say critical things provided these things don’t offend or upset anybody. Protest away, as long as you don’t actually rock the boat.
It’s part of that notorious “Canadian nice” thing: we’re so terribly afraid of offending someone that we’ve empowered the state to monitor and “correct” our speech and behaviour. We like the idea of free speech, but we also undercut the spirit by carving out exceptions to ensure that free speech is not free to offend or insult or demean the listener (or bystanders, or people totally unconnected to the conversation).
This is the genesis of our “hate speech” legislation, which legally defines certain kinds of speech as being so harmful that the use must be proscribed. We appear to fear the use of certain words and phrases as much as if they were literal clubs or bludgeons or some other kind of blunt instrument. In other words, we think it worse to hear offensive speech than to be physically threatened with bodily harm.
This is why the University of Ottawa’s François Houle not only felt it necessary to warn Ann Coulter about our draconian speech laws, but almost certainly felt that without such a warning, those laws were likely to be put into motion. The unspoken but hardly concealed subtext is that we recognize that Americans are more mature than Canadians: they can hear those horrible, horrible words without taking damage or harm.
What initially sounds like another example of Canadian smugness turns out to be an example of Canadian inferiority. Again.
March 22, 2010
After MPAC?
Lorne Cutler looks at one of the proposals to replace the Municipal Property Tax Corporation (MPAC), which sets the property tax levels for Ontario towns and cities:
As the Ontario government grapples with ways of cutting their $25-billion deficit, they should note that there is one agency that that could be virtually eliminated overnight and few would shed a tear. It is the vast Orwellian bureaucracy known as the Municipal Property Tax Corporation (MPAC), which has the role of determining the value of Ontarians’ property every four years so that municipal taxes can either increase or decrease depending on how MPAC’s valuation of the property has changed relative to other properties in your municipality.
If MPAC determines that a property’s value went up less than the average for the community, the municipal taxes will drop (before any tax increases implemented by the municipality) and if the property went up more than the average, the taxes will increase. It is a capital gains tax without the capital gains!
Not content to actually use the market to determine property values, every few years, MPAC’s army of 1,500 civil servants assesses what they think each property is worth. Even if you just bought your house last year, MPAC can decide you really didn’t pay the true value. In order to determine the value of over 4 million properties and fight assessment challenges, the agency spent over $180-million in 2008, an 11% increase from 2007. This cost doesn’t even include the millions in subsidies that the government has to provide to seniors so they don’t lose their homes because of rising property taxes due to MPAC.
Elizabeth and I had our day in “court” with MPAC back in 2004, when we were handed an assessment claiming that our house was worth (for tax purposes) 25% more than we paid for it — in the same month we took it over from the builder:
Now it was our turn, and we already knew that our ace had been trumped: we couldn’t use the builder’s sale price as part of our evidence. We tried anyway, and to our astonishment, it was allowed. In fact, we seem to have unwittingly wrong-footed the representative from MPAC, because we mentioned that we’d received two separate assessment notices for different values (the first was about 5% more than we’d paid, the second nearly 25% more).
Because we’re in a pretty fast-moving market area, we could certainly believe that the house would be worth 5% more within a couple of months of buying it, but 25%? Come on. There was no way that we could have sold the house for 125% of list price that quickly. After a few years, sure, that’d be possible, but not that soon.
We were treated to a long-ish lecture about how our builder had owned the land for such a long time that they weren’t selling the houses for what they would really be worth on the open market, because they didn’t need to make a profit on the land . . . or something equally economically unlikely. I rather lost the thread at that point. Anyway, during our respective summations, it became clear that he didn’t think we had a leg to stand on (he wasn’t openly gloating, but it was edging in that direction).
The final act was a bit of a Scrooge-to-Bob-Cratchit moment, as the adjudicator turned to us and said “. . . and in summary, I will be lowering your assessment to $XXX,XXX” — about 5% less than the lowest assessment figure we’d got. I was so sure that I’d misheard him that it was only as the MPAC rep started whining that I believed what I’d heard. The observer from the town suddenly went into a huddle with the MPAC guy, because the lowered assessment for us might have a domino effect in our entire subdivision.
March 18, 2010
Compare and contrast
Andrew Coyne looks at what would have happened in the Watergate scandal (the original “-gate”) if President Nixon had the same scope of power that a Canadian Prime Minister enjoys:
As the Watergate scandal deepened, the U.S. Senate struck a committee to investigate. Headed by Sen. Sam Ervin, it had broad powers to subpoena documents and compel evidence, together with a staff of investigators and legal counsel.
On July 13, 1973, Alexander Butterfield, Richard Nixon’s deputy assistant, told committee staff that discussions in the Oval Office were routinely tape-recorded. Before long, judge John J. Sirica had launched proceedings to force the president to hand over the tapes. Nixon refused, citing executive privilege, but in the end complied with a Supreme Court ruling ordering their release, with consequences that are well known.
But suppose the U.S. Congress functioned like Canada’s Parliament, and Nixon had the powers, not of a president, but of a prime minister of Canada. The committee, uncertain of its jurisdiction and with little in the way of staff or resources, would very likely never have learned of the tapes’ existence. Had it persisted with its inquiries, Nixon could have shut down the committee, and the Congress with it. And, rather than defend his case in court, Nixon could have hired a former Supreme Court judge to “advise” him on whether to release the tapes. And that would more or less be that.
He does say that he’s not trying to draw a direct comparison between the two situations (Watergate versus the Afghan detainee issue), but to highlight the relative amount of power a “mere” prime minister wields.
March 16, 2010
Trudeau’s part in Cuba’s economic non-liberation
William Watson mentions, in a review of Just Watch Me, volume 2 of a Pierre Trudeau biography:
But to me the strangest and most alarming passage was this one, on page 617. Referring to the optimal speed of transition for countries exiting communism, English writes: “Trudeau’s concerns about making haste too quickly, with potentially disastrous results for the health of any society, were apparent in the mid-Nineties, when Castro’s Cuba, reeling from the impact of the abrupt end of financial support from the Soviet Union, considered opening up its rigid state socialist system. Because of its historic economic ties with Cuba, Canada became involved in discussions with the Cuban government. James Bartleman, then the chief foreign policy advisor to prime minister Jean Chrétien, later indicated that Castro abandoned his plan to loosen socialist restraints after a conversation with Trudeau, who cautioned him about its impact on the social health of his country. No record of Trudeau’s conversation is available, but Bartleman’s account rings true because of Trudeau’s friendship with Castro and his respect for the gains achieved by Cuba in the areas of health and education.”
Fidel must have been deeply grateful for Trudeau’s advice; the Cuban people, not so much.
It must be said that Castro probably welcomed Trudeau’s advice partly because it aligned closely with his preferences anyway . . .
March 15, 2010
PSAC president says public servants not paid as well as private sector workers
In direct opposition to common belief, John Gordon of the Public Service Alliance of Canada says that civil servants are worse-paid than private sector workers:
“Here we are again,” says John Gordon, the president of the Public Service Alliance of Canada that represents 165,000 workers.
“Every time the government gets into [trouble] they kind of ramp up the rhetoric and the Canadian public starts to believe them . . .” he said.
In general terms, he added, his members’ wages run behind those in comparable positions in the private sector.
His workers are an easy target, he said, because the government fails to explain what it means to get rid of public servants — that services provided to the public would be affected.
For example, Mr. Gordon points to the work done by federal public servants during the H1N1 crisis to get vaccines in place and deal with the pandemic.
“It’s easy to broad brush it and say they should be freezing wages, which they have already done and cutting public services, which they are already doing . . .” he said, but added that the public has to ask itself what services it would like to see gone.
You see, unlike in the bloated private sector, where jobs are for life, and pensions are awesome, civil servants are overworked and underpaid. Any hint of reducing the costs of the civil service will automatically produce the most painful cuts for the public — that’s how the game is played. Even a freeze would somehow, through the arcane alchemy of public service financing, result in cuts only in the services most visible to the public.
Update, 16 March: An interesting sidelight to this is reported in Hit and Run:
California citizens are now encountering “state and local government officials [who are] increasingly . . . blaming budget cuts and furloughs when they withhold or delay the release of information requested under the state Public Records Act.”
March 13, 2010
Privatization? Let’s not be ideological!
Robert Fulford on the problems with unions in the public service:
Unions hate the very word “privatization.” And no wonder. Their present system is close to perfect: Their workers can’t be fired but can strike, as they do from time to time, demonstrating their power. They win most of their struggles with politicians, who throw billions at them just to keep them quiet. (After all, it’s not as if the politicians were spending their own money.)
This arrangement became commonplace in Canada about half a century ago, turning public-sector employees into princes of the working class who make more money than other people doing the same jobs, and receive more generous benefits.
Union members passionately believe this is no more than their due. The unions and their friends believe public ownership is fundamentally good, private ownership at best dubious. In 1994, when it seemed possible that Ontario would privatize liquor sales, the Ontario Liquor Boards Employees’ Union commissioned a study by a York University economist, Nuri Jazairi. He found, no surprise, that this was a bad idea and that the provincial government should continue to control every ounce of liquor sold within provincial boundaries, presumably for eternity.
But his report was most revealing when he turned to the motives of those who favour privatization. He suggested the idea sprang from “purely political and ideological reasons,” among which he listed “the control of public expenditures” and “limiting the role of government in managing the economy.”
It’s no surprise that the folks who benefit disproportionally from the current arrangement are the most vocally opposed to any changes which would reduce their advantages. If the government did get enough political will to go ahead and privatize, there’s no way (unless the government tied their hands in advance) that private enterprise would give — or could afford to give — their employees the same pay and benefits they currently enjoy under public ownership.
Update: Speaking of situations which could only arise under public ownership, here’s a perfect example:
More than 1,250 Ontario Ministry of Revenue employees will soon be receiving severance packages of up to $45,000 each — but they won’t be out of work. Most of them aren’t even switching desks. They’re simply being transferred from the provincial payroll to the federal payroll when the province moves to a federal harmonized sales tax this summer.
