Quotulatiousness

October 21, 2009

Canadian press freedoms slip a few notches

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:12

Reporters Without Borders (known by their French initials, RSF) show Canada’s press is less free this year, compared to other countries:

Canada fell to 19th place this year from 13th last year on Reporters Without Borders’ index of freedom of the press. The analysis covers print, broadcast and online journalism in 175 countries.

The Paris-based group, also known by its French acronym RSF, says court challenges to journalists’ rights to protect their sources precipitated Canada’s drop six spots from last year’s ranking.

Lawsuits intended to silence critics under the weight of the hefty cost of a legal defence — known as strategic lawsuits against public participation, or SLAPP suits — also factored into the drop, said Dennis Trudeau, a spokesman for Reporters Without Borders’ Canadian chapter.

“There are issues like real protection of sources,” he said.

“Where a reporter could theoretically face jail or a fine for not revealing his sources is in our view, especially when we’re dealing with public issues, a unreasonable restriction on freedom of the press.”

October 17, 2009

Niagara’s wines

Filed under: Cancon, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:10

Richard Best was at the last Cuvée event and had these observations (in his Frugal Oenophile Wine Newsletter) about the current and potential values coming from Ontario’s wineries in the Niagara peninsula:

Niagara has the perfect terroir for Gamay, and yet only one Gamay appeared at this tasting. Every Gamay I’ve had from Niagara has easily bettered its counterparts from Beaujolais, and at a much better price. Attention grape growers: Please plant more Gamay.

Despite the hype and rumours, Niagara is still a bit of a way from consistently producing world-class Pinot Noir. There are occasional stellar wines, but too often I find Ontario Pinot underpowered, almost skeletal, and disappointingly tasteless.

Cabernet is still hit-and-miss. Our climate may be too cold, and the growing season is definitely too short to always ripen this demanding grape. It can be done, but ripe Cab in Niagara is the exception, not the rule.

An interesting marker for Niagara Chardonnay is “skunk”. Like cat’s pee in Sauv Blanc, coal oil in Riesling and barnyard in Pinot, a bit of skunk in a high quality Chard is quite appealing.

Speaking of Chard, Niagara is a great Chardonnay region. Not good; not very good; GREAT. Our winemakers routinely turn out Chardonnay that rivals the best in the world, and they do it year after year.

I certainly agree with Richard on the Gamay: I’ve never had a Beaujolais that was better than Chateau des Charmes’ Gamay Droit (in any vintage). He’s also spot-on with the Pinot observations, as there have been some amazing Pinot Noir values, but it’s still not consistently great . . . Flat Rock and Cave Springs seem to be able to produce the most consistent quality at the moment.

Ontario Cabernet Franc, with the slightly earlier harvest time, is more likely to be fully ripe than the Cabernet Sauvignon, especially in a year like this, with only a brief hot spell at the end of the growing season. With Cabernet blends and Meritages, you do tend to get what you pay for, at least in the $15-$30 range . . . there’s not much available under that price that’s worth the money. Kacaba, Strewn, and Daniel Lenko have some excellent wine (although Lenko tends to be at the higher end of the price scale).

Even though it’s out of style, I still love well-oaked Chardonnay. There’s something magical about what oak does to good quality Chardonnay grapes. I’m not fond of unoaked Chardonnay, but put that same grape juice into oak barrels and I’m interested. Most of the wineries in Niagara and on the Beamsville Bench can produce excellent Chardonnay pretty much every year. You can’t go too far wrong . . . and perhaps because it’s common, the wineries don’t mark up the price as much as they sometimes do with their Cabernet-based wines.

To subscribe to Richard’s newsletter, send an email to “newsletter@frugal-wine.com” with the word “SUBSCRIBE” in the subject line.

October 15, 2009

Remember: “Cellared in Canada” means it’s not Canadian wine

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Wine — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:02

Michael Pinkus has a couple of anecdotes about the marketing sleight-of-hand that allows certain Canadian wineries to sell foreign-sourced wines as if they were Canadian:

Picture, if you will, a classroom of about 30 adult students. Teacher stands up at the front and writes the words “Cellared in Canada” on the blackboard, he then asks, “Who has heard this term?” Head nods of agreement, they have heard of this. The teacher then writes these three letters “V-Q-A” on the board, “Who’s heard this term?” he asks. Everyone again nods accession. “What’s the difference?” Silence ensues. There are then some attempts to explain the difference, but there always seems to be a little confusion in the definition. The words, “no, but thanks for playing,” escaped my lips on more than one occasion. Yes I was that teacher and this happened less than 2 weeks ago. With all the media hype surrounding Cellared in Canada the only thing anyone knows for sure is that somehow cellared wines are bad; but VQA, has somehow been lumped in there too, the term has gotten lost in all the hype. Truth is, these two terms should be as clear as night and day to Ontario wine drinkers.

Now picture this. A man driving down the road, his cell phone rings, he answers, pleasantries are exchanged, then the question is posed, “What’s up?” The person on the other end of the phone is a winery owner with a very real concern, “We’re getting hammered here by irate customers telling us that they are disappointed with us and angry about being duped over our use of foreign grapes and off shore wines.” He pauses for dramatic effect, “We don’t make cellared wines, we’re strictly VQA, always have been always will be. Mike is there anything you can do?” Oh how I wish I could. My worst fears are now being realized; all Ontario wine is being painted with the sloppy broad-brush strokes of Cellared in Canada.

The two stories above are true and have come about due to the continuing controversy surrounding Cellared in Canada wine. Let’s be crystal clear about these two products: Cellared in Canada and VQA. Cellared in Canada is the foreign blend with 30% Ontario content (0% in B.C.); it is a bastard child with no home, an orphan with no earthly parentage. VQA, on the other hand is a purebred, it is 100% from the province it states, Ontario or B.C., currently the only 2 provinces with VQA regulations in place. A VQA wine has the flavour of its origin, it has a home, it has that aspect of “Terroir” the French so rightly hype. Terroir means soil, but it means more than that when talking about wine, it’s a combination, a culmination if you will, of everything mother nature brings to the table in any given year that goes into making that wine — the soil, the climate, the environment. VQA is Ontario wine — 100% — always has been, always will be — if it says VQA, it’s A-OK.

October 9, 2009

Consciously “green” consumers more likely to cheat, says study

Filed under: Cancon, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:03

The Register has an interesting summary of a recent University of Toronto study:

Psychologists in Canada have revealed new research suggesting that people who become eco-conscious “green consumers” are “more likely to steal and lie” than others.

The new study comes from professor Nina Mazar of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and her colleague Chen-Bo Zhong.

“Those lyin’, cheatin’ green consumers,” begins the statement from the university. “Buying products that claim to be made with low environmental impact can set up ‘moral credentials’ in people’s minds that give license to selfish or questionable behavior.”

[. . .]

So there you have it: People who buy green — who offset their carbon, who purchase greened-up electricity, who put windmills on their roofs etc etc — are in the main thieving, lying, holier-than-thou scumbags. The old adage is right: You can never trust a hippy.

Much as we’d love to believe it, though, the whole study — like all of its News McNugget fast-food psychobabble kind — has caused the needle on our bullshit meter to flick far across into the brown zone. Green consumers, we’d suggest, are far more likely to be ripped off by unscrupulous charlatans than they are to be charlatans themselves.

October 8, 2009

A solid reason I wouldn’t want to move to Edmonton

Filed under: Cancon, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:28

Colby Cosh does the spreadsheet thing to prove that I, un-winterized Canadian that I am, would fare poorly in extra-early permanent snowfall Edmonton.

Toronto may not really be the centre of the universe, but at least it’s not like most of Canada, snow-and-winter-cold-wise.

QotD: Toronto as the centre of the universe

Filed under: Cancon, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:05

In the words of former Ontario Premier David Peterson, who hailed from London, Canadian unity work this way:

The thing that keeps this great country together is that everyone hates Ontario; and the thing that keeps Ontario together is that everyone hates Toronto; and the thing that keeps Toronto together is that everyone hates Bay Street.

Toronto hating is an established Canadian tradition. Even back in the day when Montreal was Canada’s commercial capital, it could never prudence Hogtown level bile. Montrealers were just too much fun. That unique Toronto combination of smugness and earnestness — we’re better than you, just watch us be better than you — only exacerbated the envy of Toronto’s astonishing economic pre-eminence. If you can’t see the CN Tower on a good day, well buddy, you’re nowhere that matters.

Publius, “Love Thy Torontonian As Thy Self”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2009-10-07

October 7, 2009

Jon writes to his Member of Parliament

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:01

I sent a link to Jon the other day, asking if he’d really voted for this guy. This prompted Jon to send this to his Member of Parliament:

Dear Mr. Van Loan —

Just wondering if you could comment on the Michael Geist article that appears at the following locations:

http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4424/135/
http://www.thestar.com/news/article/701824
http://www.ottawacitizen.com/news/curious+case+access+request+that+wasn/2045337/story.html

I am wondering if you could elaborate on why you are using the kidnapping case mentioned in the article as an example of why law enforcement agencies require increased access to internet service provider (ISP) information without oversight by the courts. Considering that ISP information seems to have played no role in this case, the case does not sound like a particularly good example of why such access is required.

Also, should the “lawful access” legislation pass, what guarantees are there that government agencies will not abuse such access for political purposes? I suspect that this sort of thing already happens in Canada, but such abuse is currently (in theory) illegal. Removing the requirement for a warrant and providing open access to an ISP’s customer records is something that seems to be wide open to abuse.

Please advise as time permits.

Thanks and best regards —

Jonathan [Redacted]

In a separate email, he also explained that he’d met Van Loan once before, with less-than-perfect meeting of the minds:

Ah yes. We knew however many years ago it was when we first voted for the guy what he would be doing. That whole telepathy and prescient seeing thing is working very well for us. Explains my success at Casino Rama.

Snark aside, though, I will admit that I put on the badge of shame years ago when I asked the guy at a local event about the child care tax credit — you know, the $100-per-month-per-kid-beer-and-popcorn fund. When I asked why they did not just reduce parents’ taxable income by $1200 per year rather than give us back our own money (less interest and opportunity cost, of course), he said that “But then people who have no income wouldn’t get anything.” My wife and I responded in unison: “Well, that’s their problem!”<flea-asterisk>**</flea-asterisk>

Van Loan and I looked at each other and I think we both regretted that I had voted for him.

<flea-asterisk>**</flea-asterisk><flea-snark>That sentence could also be emphasised as “”Well, that’s their problem, [right there]!”</flea-snark>

October 5, 2009

Challenging Canada’s prostitution laws

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:52

Canada’s archaic laws governing the sex trade are being challenged in court:

If she could do it herself, Terri-Jean Bedford would strike down Canada’s prostitution laws, perhaps using the riding crop she plans to bring to court.

Instead, the Toronto dominatrix and two other sex workers have launched a sweeping constitutional challenge to the legislation, arguing it perpetuates violence against women.

The landmark case gets underway Tuesday in a University Ave. courtroom where Bedford, in a nod to traditionalism, is promising to arrive conservatively attired, even if she is packing a tool of her trade.

Prostitution is legal in Canada: that fact always seems to be a surprise to most people. What isn’t legal are all the other activities surrounding the act: soliciting customers, having a safe place to conduct your business, and so on. This has always made prostitutes more liable to be injured or killed because they have to ply their trade in unsafe conditions, and they are rarely taken seriously when they attempt to get the police protection they should be entitled to.

The 49-year-old Toronto grandmother, along with prostitutes Valerie Scott, 51, and Amy Lebovitch, 30, is asking Ontario’s Superior Court of Justice to invalidate Criminal Code provisions that serve as Canada’s policy response to the world’s oldest profession.

They argue that prohibitions on keeping a common bawdy house, communicating for the purposes of prostitution and living on the avails of the trade force them from the safety of their homes to the insecurity of the street, where they are exposed to physical and psychological violence.

Publius reviews Fearful Symmetry by Brian Lee Crowley

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:36

I tend to avoid reading right-wing rants about Canada, having had a surfeit of them in my youth. Publius makes a case for Fearful Symmetry being, perhaps, an exception to my general rule:

Crowley, a founder and long-time head of the Atlantic Institute for Market Studies, has spent decades preaching the free market gospel in some of the most inhospitable climes in North America for such a message. The theme of the book is tradition, Canadian tradition. A mental framework that dominated the first century of Canada’s existence as a federal state. Thrift, family, economic individualism and small and limited governments were the hallmarks of Canada then. A confluence of two powerful forces, the first the entrance of the baby boomers into the workforce, and second the emergence of Quebec nationalism in the wake of the Quiet Revolution, provoked a dramatic – and detrimental change in public policy and cultural attitudes. Crowley does not dismiss the importance of ideas in the shift to bigger and more intrusive government. He notes that Canada’s volte face from its traditional approach was more dramatic than other nations with a similar history, notably the United States and Australia. Broad intellectual trends set the stage, but it was specific Canadian factors that gave us our current Canadian sized government.

Crowley begins with demography; the baby boom. A jump in the birth rate in the fifteen or so years after the end of the Second World War. This major blip in the demographic charts was more intense in Canada than elsewhere in the developed world.

[. . .]

Economists have blamed this liberalization for Canada’s higher structural unemployment over the last forty years. UI, over time, also acquired regional variations, being especially generous to underdeveloped parts of Canada. In tandem with liberalized UI, straight welfare was also expanded. Combined they produced a gigantic welfare trap. The end result can be seen in Margaret Wente’s notorious, though accurate, description of Newfoundland as “the most vast and scenic welfare ghetto in the world.” To finance this generosity the federal government expanded equalization, the transfer of wealth between the richer and poorer regions of Canada. Until the mid-1970s there were only two “have” provinces, Ontario and British Columbia. The main weight of equalization, however, fell upon the Dominion’s largest, richest and most industrialized province, Ontario. When the province’s premier in the 1960s, the charismatic John P Robarts, was questioned about the burdens of equalization, he justified it thusly: Ontario was in effect exporting purchasing power to the other regions of Canada.

October 2, 2009

Draft dodgers, yes. Deserters, no.

Filed under: Cancon, Law — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 00:08

There’s an article at the National Post which argues against a proposed amendment to Canadian law which would automatically grant asylum to military deserters:

Gerard Kennedy is a man of good intentions but a new law he has proposed should be judged on its potential for unintended consequences, rather than its intent.

The former Liberal leadership candidate has introduced a private members’ bill that seeks to amend the Immigration and Refugee Act, in order that people who want to avoid compulsory military service can stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds.

I’m adamantly opposed to conscription in any form (military or “civilian”), and I’m quite willing to see Canada offer a refuge for those who choose not to serve (the “draft dodgers”, for instance). I’m equally opposed to allowing military deserters to use Canada as a safe haven once they change their minds about volunteering for military service.

October 1, 2009

Canada as prescription drug “parasite”

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Health, USA — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 08:07

I guess the discussion on medical costs got boring without bringing international issues into play. Senator Bob Corker got into it with Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett:

An American legislator called Canada “parasitic” on Wednesday for siphoning U.S. dollars to Canada with low prescription drug prices while his country does “all the innovation.”

Canada benefits financially from America’s role as a world leader in medical advances, Republican Sen. Bob Corker charged in an exchange with a Liberal MP as she testified before a U.S. Senate committee.

“One of the things that has troubled me greatly about our system is the fact that we pay more for pharmaceuticals and devices than other countries, and yet it’s not really our country so much that’s the problem, it’s the parasitic relationship that Canada and France and other countries have towards us,” the Tennessee lawmaker told Carolyn Bennett.

Canadian provinces have a financial lever that is a direct result of the single-payer model: if you want to sell your drug in Canada, you have to sell to the government monopoly for each province. The market is small, and there are only a limited number of buyers, so the best price you can get for your product will end up being the price all of the geographical monopolies are willing to pay . . . or you don’t sell into that market at all. Under the circumstances, it’s rational for the companies to sell at close to cost: the bulk of their costs are already sunk in the R&D effort and the regulatory effort to get the drug on to the domestic market.

That doesn’t make the charge any more palatable, but there’s some justice to making it.

September 26, 2009

Those confusing/conflicting Arctic ice stories

Filed under: Cancon, Environment — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:13

How can it be that on one day, we’re told that the Arctic is thawing at an unprecedented rate, yet the next day we’re told that the ice is twice as thick as predicted? Lawrence Solomon tries to sort out the sensational from the prosaic:

If you’re confused by stats on Arctic melting, you have lots of company. Arctic stats are easy to misunderstand because the Arctic environment is unlike our own — the Arctic magnifies the changes we experience in the temperate regions. In summer, our days get longer and theirs get really, really long, just as in winter, when our days gets shorter, theirs all but disappear. By analogy, the Arctic also magnifies temperature variations, and resulting changes to its physical environment.

In the Arctic, the ice has indeed been contracting, as the global warming doomsayers have been telling us. But it has also been expanding. The riddle of how the Arctic ice can both be contracting and expanding is easily explained. After you read the next two paragraphs, you’ll be able to describe it easily to your friends to set them straight.

Rick Mercer explains voter apathy

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:44

Rick Mercer has diagnosed the real reason nobody really wants a fall election in Canada:

It may be a myth that the Inuit have 100 different words to describe snow; it is an absolute truth that people on Parliament Hill have twice as many words to describe Stephen Harper’s various levels of angry.

[. . .]

Voting Conservative is not a problem for a majority of Canadians; we’ve done it before. Voting for an angry guy who thinks we’re stupid and will believe anything? That takes some getting used to.

[. . .]

The Liberals should have a bit of an advantage this time around. Having been beaten badly in the last election, they quickly took Stéphane Dion out behind the barn and he hasn’t been seen since. Immediately afterward, there was a puff of white smoke and the Liberal party suddenly had a brand new leader in Michael Ignatieff. He is by all accounts highly qualified, having dazzled many people at dinner parties for decades.

Mr. Ignatieff is, as we speak, surrounded by a brigade of young people in pointy shoes and designer glasses who work for him, worship him and twitter about him. Why we should vote for him? I’ve read the tweets; I’ve yet to see an answer.

[. . .]

Canadians have never come close to electing a New Democrat government federally, and yet Jack dreams. This is fine, as dreams are important.

The problem with Jack is, we all saw how excited he got when he actually thought that he was going to be a part of a coalition government. It wasn’t a normal excitement; it was the kind of excitement that scares other passengers on a plane.

Three excellent reasons to stay away from the polls. If there’s an election this year, I’m hoping there’ll be a smaller party I can cast my ballot for (without needing to hold my nose).

September 25, 2009

QotD: CanLit

Filed under: Books, Cancon, Humour, Quotations — Tags: — Nicholas @ 17:26

Canadian literature (or CanLit, as some insist) has gradually become a genre of its own- one of books that are bleak, desperate, *meaningful*, and above all, dull.

Jesse Brown, “You and the Pirates”, Boing Boing, 2009-09-25

Operation Nanook

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

You wouldn’t say they go out of their way to glorify the military in this video . . .

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