Quotulatiousness

March 11, 2020

Canadian National’s perfect storm

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Politics, Railways — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In Trains, Bill Stephens highlights the terrible time Canada’s largest railway has been having since the beginning of the year:

“DSC02285” by Bengt 1955 is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

It would be hard to imagine a worse start to the year for Canadian National, whose volume is down 16% due to a string of events that’s mostly odd, unrelated, and unrelenting. CN is taking it on the chin, as no other North American railroad has seen its volume fall by more than 10% this year and rival Canadian Pacific’s traffic is up 10%.

First, there was Mother Nature. Winter arrived in January with eight days of deep cold in Western Canada, forcing CN to restrict train length. Then powerful rainstorms lashed southern British Columbia starting Jan. 30, washing out CN’s main to Vancouver for six days.

The major washouts occurred in the rugged Fraser River canyon directional running zone where CN and CP share trackage, with CN hosting westbounds and CP carrying eastbounds. The railways had to resort to running directional fleets of 15 to 20 trains at a time over CP’s line. The single-track bottleneck caused eastbound traffic to stack up at the Port of Vancouver and westbounds to be staged as far away as the Prairies. The directional running zone ranks among the top three freight mains by tonnage in North America, alongside BNSF Railway’s Southern Transcon in the Southwest and Union Pacific’s triple track across Nebraska. So this blockage was, by itself, a big deal.

Then came nearly a month of civil protests. On Feb. 6, as CN began digging out from the washout backlog, the first of several First Nations blockades set up camp on CN’s tracks. The blockades, protesting a proposed natural gas pipeline in British Columbia, halted traffic on CN’s Montreal-Toronto mainline in the East. Also ultimately affected: CN’s line to Prince Rupert, British Columbia, which was blocked by protests for six days. Other protests came and went in Edmonton, Alberta; Winnipeg, Manitoba; Quebec; and British Columbia. CP was affected, too, but to a much lesser extent. CP even hosted detour traffic for CN between Montreal and Toronto.

As if that wasn’t enough, then came regulatory woes. The same day the protests began, a CP crude oil train derailed and caught fire in Guernsey, Sask., the second such wreck in the area since December. Hours later Transport Canada issued a ministerial order that restricted key trains – those with 20 or more cars of hazardous materials – to 20 mph in metropolitan areas and 25 mph elsewhere. With the stroke of a pen, Transport Minister Marc Garneau’s knee-jerk reaction effectively reduced CN’s overall capacity by a third. You could call this slowdown “Whoa Canada!”

February 25, 2020

QotD: Canadian content rules

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

[Stargate: Atlantis] is a Sci-Fi channel show produced in Canada, starring Canadians and featuring a cranky, sympathetic Canadian character in a lead role. But thanks to Canadian trade-barriers it has yet to air on Canadian television. Remind me again what original programming Canada’s CRTC sheltered Space: the Imagination Station has produced? How many times can we be expected to watch decade old repeats of Seaquest DSV in defense of “Canadian culture”? If they had the wisdom to rebroadcast Starlost or some such epic crap I could almost see the point but as it stands CanCon rules, and the businesses they shelter, are a joke.

I tried making this case to a left-leaning friend. She said, half-joking, “I know you are speaking Canadian but I can’t understand any of the words.” I am reminded every day of my former communication studies undergrads who would argue for Canadian content rules (I am told these represent “regulation” and not “censorship”) and, with no change of expression, cheerfully explain they never watch Canadian television because it is uniformly awful. Such is the naked truth of ideology.

Ghost of a Flea, “Poisoning the Well”, Ghost of a Flea, 2005-08-12.

February 20, 2020

QotD: Preventing bureaucratic mission creep

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government, Humour, Quotations — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

The mission creep that is the effect of those not slumbering in meetings and thus adding another bright idea to the tasks the organization attempts is not restricted to the public sector.

Private companies are just as vulnerable. However in that private sector we have a mechanism by which the seemingly inevitable bureaucratization is dealt with. Once it happens, the organization goes bankrupt and is removed from the scene. What we need is a similar system to deal with this process in the public sphere.

I don’t, given the above, find it at all remarkable that the WTO is regarded as succumbing to these forces, nor the UN, Amnesty, the European Union or even our own domestic governments (just how did the interstate commerce clause become a justification for Congress to restrict something that is not interstate and is not commerce?). I think it inevitable.

Various solutions appear to be available, the French one might be an example. Put up with it for 50 years then have a revolution and start again. Perhaps the answer is never to allow the public bodies to have much power in the first place, a solution that hasn’t really been tried anywhere. The Italian one? Let the system carry on adding ever more layers but ignore it? Stalin’s? Every 15 years or so shoot the bureaucrats?

All such methods have their attractions and their faults but a solution we do need to find. For one of the lessons I take from the history of the 20th century is that we don’t actually want to be ruled by those who stay awake in committee meetings.

Tim Worstall, “‘Any Organization Will, In the End, Be Run By Those Who Stay Awake in Committee'”, Ideas in Action, 2005-06-23.

February 18, 2020

“The real battle for the immortal soul of France is about something far more important — cheese”

Filed under: Europe, Food, France — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

John Lichfield on the plight of the cheesemakers (get your MPATHG jokes out of the way now):

French cheese seller, offering Villefranche de Rouergue and other artisanal cheeses.
Photo by Sybren via Wikimedia Commons.

In his small fromagerie at Saint Point Lac in the Jura, Fabrice Michelin produces authentic, hand-made, raw-milk Mont d’Or cheeses. He is the last person in France to do so — the last in a line of local cheese-makers which goes back for centuries.

“I get up at 5am. I collect the milk myself from the farms in the village. I warm the milk,” Mr Michelin told me. “I scoop it carefully into cylinders. I pay attention to the varying consistency and taste of the curd. It alters subtly with the seasons, depending on the qualities of the grass. I mold the cheeses by hand. Every cheese is a little different.”

Individual, artisanal cheeses? Wonderful.

Not any more, it seems.

“That’s what gets me into trouble these days,” M. Michelin said. “Brussels and Paris say that the cheeses must all be the same. There seem to be new rules every month. How can I carry on if all my cheeses have to be identical?”

Forget the yellow vests. Forget the strikes against pension reform. The real battle for the immortal soul of France is about something far more important — cheese.

The infinite variety of French cheeses — one of the finest achievements of French culture — is gradually being eroded and dumbed down. Only one in ten of the cheeses now consumed in France is made with raw milk or “lait cru” in the authentic manner.

Search where you like in the finest cheese shops in France, you will no longer find a Bleu de Termignon or a Galette des Monts-d’Or. They are among 50 species of French cheese that have vanished, like rare flowers or butterflies, in the last 40 years. Other varieties, like Vacherin d’Abondance and M. Michelin’s hand-made Mont d’Or have been reduced to a single producer.

Many of the best-known French cheeses — Brie or Pont L’Evêque or Camembert — thrive at home and abroad, but they are overwhelmingly made in large factories with pasteurised or sterilised milk. To purists, that is a betrayal of the French tradition of “living cheese”.

Major French AOC cheese designations: the size of the symbol indicates the relative production of that variety. Many smaller cheese varieties not shown.
Graphic by FrancoisFC – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3640022

February 12, 2020

“… perhaps the biggest Internet cash grab in the OECD with mandated payments and levies on thousands of Internet services with Canadian users”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Michael Geist refutes the claim that the recent Broadcast and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel report does not recommend a “Netflix tax”:

The reference to a Netflix tax in the overview is the only such reference in the 235 page report. It was likely included in the overview in the hope that media coverage would jump on the claim and seek to re-assure Canadians that there was no Netflix tax or higher prices likely for consumers as a result of the report’s recommendations.

Yet the reality for anyone that reads beyond the overview is that the panel’s report not only recommends what would widely be considered a Netflix tax but proposes perhaps the biggest Internet cash grab in the OECD with mandated payments and levies on thousands of Internet services with Canadian users. This includes online streaming services, social media companies, news aggregators, and online communications services such as Skype, WhatApp, and Viber. In the view of the panel, any service or site with Canadian users is part of the “Canadian system” and should be expected to contribute to the development of Canadian content, Canadian news organizations, or building broadband connectivity. Note that all of this is above and beyond sales taxes, which the panel also recommends should be implemented with respect to foreign services.

Some of the panel’s plans are admittedly somewhat confusing. For example, the panel states:

Media curation undertakings brought under the regime – including Netflix and other online streaming services – would be required to devote a portion of their program budgets to Canadian programs.

That statement, along with chair Janet Yale’s comment at the opening press conference that there was no need for Netflix to spend additional money on Cancon but rather merely divert existing on foreign location and service production spending in Canada, has been interpreted by some to mean that Netflix would not have to increase its Canadian programming budget. But that is apparently not what the panel means. I spoke with Yale who confirmed that the panel expects the CRTC to establish a minimum Cancon spend requirement on Netflix based on its Canadian revenues. In other words, the requirement has nothing to do with its existing spending on production in Canada. For Netflix, that could certainly represent an increase in spending costs in Canada with those costs likely passed along to consumers.

Yet the panel’s plan extends far beyond just online streaming services such as Netflix. It also envisions mandatory levies against social media services and news aggregators that would be used to fund Canadian news services. It similarly targets a myriad of communications services that would pay into funds to support broadband development.

February 9, 2020

The lightbulb conspiracy again

Filed under: Business, China, Economics, Environment, Government — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

I’ve banged on a few times over the years about lightbulbs, specifically about our government’s passionate desire for us to abandon the tried-and-tested (and cheap) incandescent bulbs to move first to (ultra-expensive, dim, and potentially dangerous) compact fluorescent bulbs and now to (cheaper, but still not living up to longevity promises) LED bulbs instead. Tim Worstall explains how governments were persuaded to enforce this crony capitalist plot over the years (he’s discussing the European market, but Canadian regulators were doing exactly the same thing):

We all recall when we used to use incandescent light bulbs. Simple, cheap, the result of a century’s worth of fiddling with the basic technology to make it around and about right for the use to which it was put.

A spiral compact fluorescent bulb (CFL).
Image by Sun Ladder via Wikimedia Commons.

Then they were banned. Sure, there was that energy and thus planet saving argument but that was always very weak indeed. It was an excuse, not the actual reason itself. The reason was that the big three manufacturers, Phillips, Osram and GE, had invested heavily in the next generation of technology, compact fluorescents. These cost not pennies per bulb but pounds. Rather better profit margins that is. Oh, and also, not subject to that crippling competition from China.

So, we get the EU ban on incandescents, driven entirely by the manufacturers. There’s a lot of the Baptist and Bootlegger in here given the environmentalist support for it.

The problem with the technology being the use of mercury in those bulbs.

An aside, I made my living for a number of years selling weird metals that are added to that mercury. I do actually know quite a bit about the nuts and bolts here. I’m also out of the business and have been for a decade and more. So it’s knowledge driving this, not knife sharpening.

Mercury’s not good stuff to have floating around. So, what happens next? Yep, a decade or a bit more after the incandescents were banned so now they’re coming for the CFLs.

The mercury issue was not as well publicized here in Canada as it was in Australia, for example:

How many of them have looked up the Environment Department’s website to find what its bureaucrats falsely describe as the “simple and straightforward” precautions to take against poisoning should one of these lamps smash:

  • Open nearby windows and doors to allow the room to ventilate for 15 minutes before cleaning up the broken lamp. Do not leave on any air conditioning or heating equipment which could recirculate mercury vapours back into the room.
  • Do not use a vacuum cleaner or broom on hard surfaces because this can spread the contents of the lamp and contaminate the cleaner. Instead scoop up broken material (e.g. using stiff paper or cardboard), if possible into a glass container which can be sealed with a metal lid.
  • Use disposable rubber gloves rather than bare hands.
  • Use a disposable brush to carefully sweep up the pieces.
  • Use sticky tape and/or a damp cloth to wipe up any remaining glass fragments and/or powders.
  • On carpets or fabrics, carefully remove as much glass and/or powdered material using a scoop and sticky tape; if vacuuming of the surface is needed to remove residual material, ensure that the vacuum bag is discarded or the canister is wiped thoroughly clean.
  • Dispose of cleanup equipment (i.e. gloves, brush, damp paper) and sealed containers containing pieces of the broken lamp in your outside rubbish bin – never in your recycling bin.
  • While not all of the recommended cleanup and disposal equipment described above may be available (particularly a suitably sealed glass container), it is important to emphasise that the transfer of the broken CFL and clean-up materials to an outside rubbish bin (preferably sealed) as soon as possible is the most effective way of reducing potential contamination of the indoor environment.

February 8, 2020

Switching over from internal combustion vehicles to electric won’t be cheap … it really won’t be cheap!

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Environment, Government, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

At Spiked, Rob Lyons looks at the British government’s recent decision to ban sales of internal-combustion cars in 2035 rather than the earlier target date of 2040:

Nissan Leaf electric vehicle charging.
Photo by Nissan UK

First, at present, electric vehicles cost a lot more than those with internal-combustion engines. For example, one car-buying advice website notes that the Peugeot e-208 is as much as £6,200 more than the standard 208 model. There are government subsidies to help with the cost of electric cars (currently £3,500), but can this be sustained if we all switch? It has already been cut from £4,500 in 2018.

That said, while the purchase price of an electric car may be higher, charging is a lot cheaper than fuelling a regular car. Electric vehicles cost between £4 to £6 per 100 miles to charge at home and £8 to £10 using public charge points, while petrol and diesel cars cost £13 to £16 per 100 miles in fuel (although 60 per cent of the fuel cost is tax).

In theory, maintenance should be cheaper, too, given that electric motors have fewer moving parts than petrol or diesel engines. But to further complicate matters, batteries gradually lose their capacity to hold charge over time. They have to be replaced at the cost of thousands of pounds every few years. (The warranties covering battery replacement varies by manufacturer: Tesla, for instance, offers an eight-year warranty, but the Renault Zoe is covered for just three years.)

Electric cars may be cheaper to own overall, but this is largely down to subsidies and tax breaks, including lower vehicle duties and not having to pay charges in low-emission zones. Still, with the entire car industry throwing its efforts into making electric cars cheaper and increasing battery capacity, costs may well come down somewhat, reducing the need for such breaks. Fingers crossed.

The cost to individual owners will be higher, but the costs to build up the electric charging infrastructure will be distributed among all consumers, not just the owners of vehicles:

This brings us to perhaps the biggest problem: where will the power come from and how will it reach us? Eventually shifting all the energy for cars from oil to electricity means producing much more electricity. Greens are pleased that electricity use is currently decreasing, and a greater proportion of electricity is coming from renewable sources. But the arrival of electric cars en masse would demand a whole lot more electricity, mostly to be used at night.

Unless we want to coat the landscape in wind turbines, which are unreliable in any event, we’ll need other sources of power. More nuclear? Fine by me. But will eco-warriors stand for that? Even if we can produce the juice, having lots of cars charging in the same area may overwhelm the local electricity networks. Who is going to pay for the upgrade?

When all of these factors are considered we have to ask if all this effort will really reduce greenhouse-gas emissions anyway. Digging up the resources required to create all those batteries will be hugely carbon-intensive. Perhaps the most likely outcome of banning sales of new petrol and diesel vehicles is that demand for second-hand vehicles will go up. We could end up like Cubans, nursing venerable old cars for years, way beyond their intended lifespans.

February 5, 2020

“On this issue, Canada’s two solitudes could hardly be more starkly apparent”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Chris Selley on the vastly different reaction from Quebec media to the Trudeau government’s notion to turn the country’s news organizations into a modern version of Joseph Goebbels’ propaganda apparatus, pumping out approved-by-the-Liberals story lines:

On Sunday, when CTV’s Evan Solomon pushed Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault on the issue of issuing journalism licences to foreign media outlets, Guilbeault eventually just shrugged: “I’m not sure I see what the big deal is.”

Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault, 3 February 2020.
Screencapture from CPAC video.

The minister tried to walk it back on Monday, but the fact is many of his fellow Quebecers will also struggle to discern a big deal. There is simply much more tolerance of this sort of cultural gatekeeping among francophone Quebecers than in the Rest of Canada, and the tolerance extends well into the realm of journalism.

“In reading the (report’s) 260 pages and 97 recommendations, one word comes to mind” Sunday’s editorial in La Presse gushed: “Finally!”

Opposition to government regulation of journalism is firmly entrenched not just in anglophone Canada, but across the anglosphere. When the 2011 Leveson Inquiry proposed the British government create a powerful new press regulator, nearly every major outlet rejected the idea. Fraser Nelson, editor of The Spectator, famously vowed the magazine “will not attend its meetings, pay its fines nor heed its menaces.”

The same year, Laval University professor Dominique Payette’s report into Quebec’s struggling news media recommended the government legislate a “professional journalist” designation. The province’s largest journalists’ trade organization and the Quebec Press Council happily sat down with the government to bash out a power-sharing agreement on deciding who’s a proper journalist and who isn’t.

The English-language Montreal Gazette was dead-set against the idea, but Le Devoir called it a “logical outcome.” (The power-sharing discussions eventually fell apart, and the idea died a merciful death.)

February 4, 2020

“Who could oppose such an obviously sound idea?”

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Politics, Technology — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 06:00

A few pithy comments from Twitter on the Trudeau government’s apparent surprise that a few Canadians don’t think their regulate-the-internet plan is brilliant:

Fellow Rush fan Matt Gurney finds the perfect lyrics for the occasion:

Rush in concert, Milan 2004.
Photo by Enrico Frangi, via Wikimedia Commons

February 2, 2020

Israeli M1919 Brownings and the US Semiauto Market

Filed under: History, Middle East, Military, USA, Weapons, WW2 — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 02:00

Forgotten Weapons
Published 28 Mar 2018

Sold for $4,888.

In the world of converted semiautomatic “machine guns,” the Browning 1919 is a happy example of one of the most iconic and historically important US machine guns and also one of the cheapest semiautomatic belt fed guns available. This stems from two factors, primarily. One is that the Browning 1919, being developed from the water-cooled M1917 Browning, is a closed bolt system. Open bolt semiautomatic designs are not allowed by ATF, and so most semiauto machine gun conversions require substantial alteration to convert from open bolt to closed bolt — which the M1919 does not need. Second, the IDF used the Browning M1919 for many years and in large numbers, and surplussed many of them in the late 1990s. These guns came into the United States as parts kits in large numbers. This meant a glut of cheap guns, easily built as semi autos, and in an easily shootable caliber — 7.62mm NATO (as converted by Israel from their original .30-06 chambering).

Today, we are looking at an example of a semiautomatic converted M1919, and specifically at the various changes made by Israel to both improve the design and convert it successfully to the NATO cartridge.

http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons

Cool Forgotten Weapons merch! http://shop.bbtv.com/collections/forg…

If you enjoy Forgotten Weapons, check out its sister channel, InRangeTV! http://www.youtube.com/InRangeTVShow

January 31, 2020

“… the report envisions unprecedented government and regulatory intervention into the delivery of news services”

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Cancon, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Michael Geist heaps scorn on the recommendations of a panel that would empower the CRTC to regulate the internet in Canada to a very high degree:

The Broadcast and Telecommunications Legislative Review Panel released its much anticipated report yesterday with a vision of a highly regulated Internet in which an expanded CRTC (or a renamed Canadian Communications Commission) would aggressively assert its jurisdictional power over Internet sites and services worldwide with the power to levy massive penalties for failure to comply with its regulatory edicts. The recommendations should be rejected by Innovation, Science and Industry Minister Navdeep Bains and Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault as both unnecessary to support a thriving cultural sector and inconsistent with a government committed to innovation and freedom of expression.

[…]

Yet the strengths of the telecommunications and consumer rights portions of the report are overshadowed by a stunning set of recommendations related to Internet content, some of which are unlikely to survive constitutional scrutiny, likely violate Canada’s emerging trade commitments, and rest of shaky policy grounds. If enacted, the Canadian Internet would be virtually unrecognizable with the CRTC empowered to licence or require registration from a myriad of Internet services, mandate what Canadians see on those services, and intervene in commercial negotiations. The 235 page report will require several posts to address all of its aspects and implications (including notable CBC and copyright reforms), but this post seeks to set out its broad-based content regulatory vision and make the case that the panel’s plan should be firmly rejected by the government.

The foundation of the content section of the report is the decision to regulate all media content, which includes audio, audiovisual, and news content delivered by telecom. In doing so, the report envisions unprecedented government and regulatory intervention into the delivery of news services. It argues that there are three types of services that provide this content that require regulation where they access the Canadian market:

  • Curators – services that disseminate media content with editorial control (broadcasters and streaming services such as Netflix, Spotify, and Amazon Prime)
  • Aggregators – cable companies, news aggregators such as Yahoo News
  • Platforms for Sharing – services that allow users to share amateur and professional content such as YouTube, Facebook and other platforms

The panel recommends that all of these kinds of companies be regulated (either by way of licence or registration), be required to contribute to Canadian content through spending percentages or levies, and comply with CRTC regulations on discoverability that would include regulatory rules on how prominently Canadian content is displayed within the service. The CRTC would be empowered to decide whether to exempt services from regulation with the power to levy huge penalties for failure to comply with its decisions (described as “high enough to create a deterrent foreign undertakings”).

January 29, 2020

“CanCon” rules for internet streaming services will be “inevitable”

Filed under: Business, Cancon, Government, Media — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Yes, the federal government is serious about extending the moronic “Canadian content” regime to internet streaming companies (like Netflix). Canadians are too blind to be allowed to select all of their own viewing without the paternal hand of government jiggling those choices in a politically desired direction, as Michael Geist explains:

Later this week, a government appointed panel tasked with reviewing Canada’s broadcast and telecommunications laws is likely to recommend new regulations for internet streaming companies such as Netflix, Disney, and Amazon that will include mandated contributions to support Canadian film and television production. In fact, even if the panel stops short of that approach, Canadian Heritage Minister Steven Guilbeault and Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission chair Ian Scott have both signalled their support for new rules with Mr. Guilbeault recently promising legislation by year-end and Mr. Scott calling it inevitable.

My Globe and Mail op-ed notes that the new internet regulations are popular among cultural lobby groups, but their need rests on a shaky policy foundation as many concerns with the fast-evolving sector have proved unfounded.

[…]

Third, the not-so-secret reality of the Canadian system is that foreign location and service production and Canadian content are frequently indistinguishable. Qualifying as Canadian requires having a Canadian producer along with meeting a strict point system that rewards granting roles such as the director, screenwriter, lead actors, and music composer to Canadians.

Yet this is a poor proxy for “telling our stories”. The rules mean foreign companies can never produce Canadian content leading to the absurd outcome that revivals of Canadian programs such as Trailer Park Boys and Degrassi will not meet the qualification requirements if Netflix is the sole funder and producer. Moreover, programs such as The Handmaid’s Tale may be based on a Margaret Atwood novel, but using one of Canada’s best known novelists as the source doesn’t count in the Canadian points system.

So what is Canadian? A quick scan of Canadian Audio-Visual Certification Office data turns up Blood and Fury: America’s Civil War, The Kennedys, Murder in Paradise, Natural Born Outlaws, Who Killed Ghandi?, and dozens of other programs that are Canadian in regulation-only. Further, there are also “co-productions”, in which treaty agreements deem predominantly foreign productions such as The Borgias or Vikings as Canadian.

January 28, 2020

QotD: Drinking and driving

Filed under: Cancon, Law, Quotations — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 01:00

I have another brochure on my desk. Actually, I’ve got a lot of stuff on my desk, including possibly a cat or two, but it’s the brochure that’s at the top of the pile. It comes from the Ontario government and it’s called Break The Law Pay The Price. Personally, I’d have put a comma in there somewhere, but the Ontario government laid off the punctuation guy in a cost-cutting drive. (I gather he lasted longer than the water inspection guy.)

According to BTLPTP, “Drinking drivers are responsible for one-quarter of all people killed on Ontario roads.” In other words, only 75 percent of Ontario traffic fatalities are the work of sober people. Either we have more drunks in Ontario or our sober drivers are better drivers than Britain’s. [Where “one in seven of all deaths on the road involve drivers who are over the legal limit.”]

Now, despite the damning evidence in these brochures that sober people are causing carnage on our roads, the people who know what’s good for us are busy trying to lower the legal blood alcohol limit. Early in 2001 the Quebec government announced that it was lowering the limit from eighty milligrams to fifty, throwing in a complete drinking ban for professional drivers — cabbies, bus drivers, and the like. This last measure was a reaction to — well, nothing at all. Were drunk ambulance drivers creating havoc on the roads of Quebec? No. But it gave the government of Quebec the appearance of having taken a strong stand on something. Predictably, the Ontario government immediately made noises about following suit.

Nicholas Pashley, Notes on a Beermat: Drinking and Why It’s Necessary, 2001.

January 26, 2020

Trudeau’s illogical gun ban will do nothing to reduce violent crime

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Law, Liberty, Weapons — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

It will, on the other hand, infringe the rights of law-abiding Canadians and encourage otherwise law-abiding people to disobey the law. It won’t take a single lethal weapon out of the hands of criminals — because they’re already violating the laws that are in force today and won’t be deterred by yet another token rule they won’t obey. At the Post Millennial, D.J. Sumanik explains why the proposed ban is wrong:

Restricted and prohibited weapons seized by Toronto police in a 2012 operation. None of the people from whom these weapons were taken was legally allowed to possess them.
Screen capture from a CTV News report.

I chose the AR-15 for that video because it is the singular most demonized firearm on the planet. The rifle is used to scare uninformed citizens daily. Yet the same rifle has never been used for murder by a legal gun owner in Canada.

In fact, it’s only been used for murder one time in our country over the last 50 years by a gang. A far cry from the narrative that “assault weapons” are lurking in every corner of Canadian society waiting to murder our children.

Justin Trudeau is claiming this firearm and others like it are so deadly, so dangerous, and so extreme that they must be confiscated from every licensed Canadian gun owner across the country. But with only one murder in 50 years, and the gun almost certainly still being the murderer’s hand regardless if there was a ban, the numbers simply don’t add up. In fact they barely register. Semi-auto rifles are extremely rare for use in Canadian gun homicide […] handguns are the firearm of choice for most shootings. Semi-autos only make up a small percentage of rifles and shotguns in our country. So how does this add up to a federal ban costing $600 million in taxpayer money?

Short answer: It doesn’t.

Canada has roughly 2.2 million licensed gun owners who are monitored DAILY by RCMP for red flags. Most people don’t know that. It’s called continuous eligibility screening. If you step out of the line with the law, the cops show up and take your guns.

Some further thoughts.

If only 5 percent of Canadian gun owners were out there shooting up the streets, we’d have 110,000 deaths on our hands annually. According to StatsCan, 2018 left Canada with 249 tragic gun murders. The vast majority were by gangs fighting over drugs in urban centers. Even if you were to incorrectly assume every one of those shootings was a legal gun owner and not a gang member (yeah right) it means 99.9998868% of us pose no threat to society. Can you think of another demographic with that kind of track record? I certainly can’t.

Now, the lives lost in those incidents are valuable. 249 Canadian families are feeling daily pain. Something needs to change. Gang warfare can’t go unchecked. But to punish millions of innocent Canadians who hold such an excellent track record will not help. There’s a very simple truth in all of this: Taking my firearms away in the Yukon will not prevent gang homicide in Toronto.

Furthermore, we as Canadians don’t discriminate against entire groups of people based on the actions of a few bad eggs. For instance, we don’t blame all Muslims in Canada for the actions of 9/11. How is it acceptable for Justin Trudeau to punish gun owners across Canada for gang violence?

You, your new DeLorean, and the LVMVMA

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Business, Government, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Many people — not all of them rabid fans of the Back to the Future movies — would like to own a DeLorean and it is going to be possible … eventually:

Photo of a DeLorean by grayesun is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

Basically, the legislation [the Low Volume Motor Vehicle Manufacturers Act of 2015], which was signed into law by President Barack Obama in 2015, would allow companies to produce limited-run replica vehicles without being bound by certain safety and emissions standards. But after that administration ended, the law stalled because the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration didn’t follow through with implementation.

“One problem, Espey explains, was that NHTSA hasn’t had a permanent administrator since the previous presidential election, and the acting administrator would not sign off on the regulations,” writes Hagerty. Thankfully, the Specialty Equipment Market Association (SEMA) took matters into their own hands and filed a lawsuit, and now it looks like the law could take effect soon.

That means DMC is once again gearing up to sell new turnkey DeLoreans, and this time around they’ll have modern conveniences like power steering and cruise control (imagine that!) and potentially features like heated seats and smartphone integration (the future!).

While they’re not available to order just yet, interested buyers can fill out a non-binding pre-order form. Just don’t expect to hit 88 miles per hour in 2020; as Espey said, “There will be no cars produced under this legislation for at least a year, and that’s presuming the feds do their job this time and don’t drag it out for four more years.”

H/T to Colby Cosh for the link.

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