Quotulatiousness

November 29, 2010

Blatchford: “Fantino wasn’t ‘there for the little guy’ in Caledonia”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:45

It’s probably safe to say that Christie Blatchford isn’t a fan of Julian Fantino, the Conservative candidate in the Vaughan by-election:

Now when Gary McHale, then of Richmond Hill, first poked his nose into the occupation that was going on in the town of Caledonia south of Hamilton, and began in late December, 2006, organizing rallies for those who objected to the way the Ontario government and the OPP were handling the occupation, Mr. Fantino had just taken over as the OPP boss.

He immediately demonized Mr. McHale, not a Caledonia resident, as “an outsider” with “an agenda.”

In a flood of internal e-mails to the officers who worked for him (these later were made public as a result of Mr. McHale’s various disclosure requests in court) and in his public statements, the then-commissioner went to remarkable lengths to characterize Mr. McHale and his supporters, to borrow from one of the e-mails Mr. Fantino sent, as “interlopers who put their own personal agendas” ahead of the purportedly grand peace efforts at the negotiating table.

It was an astonishing use of the resources of the state against a private citizen who had done nothing but exercise the very freedoms guaranteed by the Charter.

Of course, what made Fantino such a “great cop” is exactly why the Conservatives want him on their team:

But the point is, for a man hailed as the Conservatives’ hot new law-and-order fellow, there are some real questions about his credentials, at least as they showed themselves in Caledonia where the rule of law was shattered, and a rather terrifying indication of his willingness to turn the full beam of his attention and power upon individuals whose only sin is to disagree with him.

In this regard, I’m afraid, Mr. Fantino seems a sadly good fit for a party whose approach to law-and-order strikes me increasingly as cartoonish.

It must be pointed out, however, that the Liberals also tried to recruit Fantino to run for them. That reflects just as badly on Michael Ignatieff’s party as it does on Stephen Harper’s party.

If he is elected by the voters of Vaughan, he’s rumoured to be a shoo-in for a cabinet position. That says it all for the federal Conservatives.

November 25, 2010

QotD: “The Traitors and the Spendthrifts”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 14:17

The Coalition horrors warned of by the Conservatives have come to pass, at the hands of the Conservatives themselves. They have spent like drunken Trudeau-era Grits. They have compromised their principles and told a key part of their base to stuff it. They have put patronage ahead of promise in their Senate appointments. Short of holding another referendum on national unity, they are as bad as what they claim to abhor.

It should then come as no surprise that Stephen the Spendthrift is rumoured to be in bed with Giles the Traitor. The deal at hand is classic pork-barrelling: Federal subsidies for an uneconomical Quebec City NHL arena. The region is the Tories only stronghold in La Belle Province, naturally a little electoral sweetener wouldn’t go amiss. Tis’ the season to be generous, with other people’s money. The Bloc serve no function except as a pressure group for the Quebecois. Their tautological platform has only one plank: What is Good for Quebec is Good for Quebec. It’s a deal made in political heaven, or hell for those who believe that principle should play a role in politics.

The much-abused Tory base remains loyal. The question is to what? To conservative values? Unlikely. Yes, the Tories have a minority government. That does limit what they can do. Lester Pearson also had two back to back minority governments, and he introduced sweeping changes to the country, albeit most of them bad.

Is the failure of the Harper Tories one of opportunity, or courage? And should the Conservatives at long last win their majority, what mandate will they have? They have governed from the center for so long, how can they justify governing from the RIght? Won’t the rationale then become we can’t take risks because we might lose the majority? So when will the Reform come? As time passes it becomes clear that many Conservatives’ loyalty lies with Team Blue, not conservative ideas or values.

Publius, “The Traitors and the Spendthrifts”, Gods of the Copybook Headings 2010-11-25

Publius argues against Julian Fantino’s candidacy in Vaughan

Filed under: Cancon, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:50

Publius thinks that Julian Fantino does not deserve the easy ride he’s getting in his attempt to win the Vaughan by-election:

The image of the crime-fighting crusader contrasts sharply with the OPP’s inaction during the occupation of the Douglas Creek Estate. Fantino’s status as a star candidate for the Conservative Party belies opposition from genuine conservatives.

In his four years in power Stephen Harper has played bait and switch with the Canadian electorate. He has talked of conservative values, and fear mongered on the dangers of a Liberal-NDP coalition government, while running a government which is fiscally to the Left of those of Paul Martin and Jean Chretien. In Julian Fantino he has again offered Canadians a false bill of goods, a law and order candidate who, as OPP commissioner, failed to uphold basic law and order.

What has allowed the Prime Minister to get away, so far, with the candidacy of Julian Fantino is the near silence the MSM has offered on the Caledonia tragedy. With the honourable exception of Christie Blatchford, the media has largely ignored the near anarchy which persisted for years in a Canadian small town, all within driving distance of Toronto. Canadian television journalists should long ago have stopped, if only for a moment, chasing down crooked used car salesmen, and paid attention to what should have been the biggest news story of the last five years. Placing the violence of Caledonia in Canadian living rooms, might have ended the tragedy and pain much sooner.

November 15, 2010

QotD: “Stop crediting the Tories with scruples they show no sign of possessing”

Filed under: Cancon, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:10

Someday, historians will write about those Tory ministers who, under pressure, had the courage to do the wrong thing. Still, after so many such examples, it might occur to someone that these are their principles: not the ones they are presumed to have, based on past statements, but the ones they actually practice.

[. . .]

I suppose it’s possible these other Conservatives exist in theory, as a kind of Platonic ideal form. And so the principles commonly ascribed to them may also be said to exist, as abstractions. But if they never actually act on them, of what real-world significance are they? How is it meaningful to talk about them?

Perhaps there may once have been this great tension between Harper In Reality and the Harper Who May Exist in Theory, wrestling with each other over every great decision. Probably it was a struggle, jettisoning long-held convictions for short-term political gain — the first couple of times. But after the 50th or 60th time I can’t imagine he even notices. So we should stop pretending he does: stop crediting the Tories with scruples they show no outward sign of possessing.

It’s not as if this is anything new, after all. The Tories have been signalling their disdain for principled politics for—well, since their founding, or indeed before. The lesson the party’s leadership drew from the Reform-Alliance experience was not that these parties had been undisciplined or ill-led, but that they had been too radical, too honest, too principled. And the lesson they had absorbed from the Liberals’ success was the corollary. So: make no promises, if you can, or if you must make some, do not be bound by them, or indeed by anything else. And now we have two such parties.

Andrew Coyne, “Politics all the way down: Stop crediting the Tories with scruples they show no sign of possessing”, Maclean’s, 2010-11-15

October 13, 2010

Bernier calls for an end to transfer payments

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, Politics — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 12:24

If there’s one member of the federal Conservatives that can be said to both have ideas and be willing to express them publicly, it would have to be Maxime Bernier:

Maxime Bernier is carving out a pronounced niche for himself as the one-man Libertarian wing of the Conservative Party.

He appears also to have made a conscious decision to say what he thinks, and risk the consequences. Having been kicked out of Cabinet and survived, he may have discovered a way to turn lemons into lemonade. The most that can happen to him now is that he gets ejected from caucus as well, but given his stature as a high-profile MP in a prized riding in Quebec, would the Tory high command risk anything so self-defeating?

So what does our one-man Libertarian wing call for now?

Mr. Bernier wants Ottawa to get out of the business of subsidizing provincial programs that aren’t federal responsibility. Rather than send $40 billion a year to the provinces to pay for health and social programs, Ottawa should just chop its taxes and let the provinces take up the slack, paying for their own programs.

Yeah, I somehow don’t see Messrs. Harper, Ignatieff, or Layton coming on board with this notion. Give up taxing power to the provinces who are constitutionally responsible for the services? What do you think we are, some sort of confederation?

Other interesting snippets from his speech to the Albany Club in Toronto:

Wilfrid Laurier was another of our greatest prime ministers. He was a classical liberal, not a liberal in the modern sense. He was a supporter of individual freedom, free trade and free markets. I think if he were alive today, he would probably be a Conservative!

Yes, except he’d be in the same outsider/pariah position as Mr. Bernier finds himself in the Harper version of Conservatism.

In a speech before the Quebec Legislative Assembly in 1871, Laurier said:

“If the federal system is to avoid becoming a hollow concept, if it is to produce the results called for, the legislatures must be independent, not just in the law, but also in fact. The local legislature must especially be completely sheltered from control by the federal legislature.

If in any way the federal legislature exercises the slightest control over the local legislature, then the reality is no longer a federal union, but rather a legislative union in federal form.”

Now, it’s obvious that what Laurier feared has unfortunately come true. Ottawa exercises a lot more than “the slightest control” over local legislatures. The federal government today intervenes massively in provincial jurisdictions, and in particular in health and education, two areas where it has no constitutional legitimacy whatsoever.

As I’ve said before, I don’t know how long Bernier will be tolerated in the tightly controlled and PMO-stage-managed Conservative party, but I do enjoy the spectacle of someone actually pushing these ideas. I hope he continues to do so.

Update: Don Martin also seems to think that “Mad Max” is a breath of fresh air:

They share a party label, but Deficit Jim and Mad Max sit in polar opposite corners of the big blue tent.

The day after Finance Minister Jim Flaherty released an update which would make a left-lurching Liberal blush at the historic high tide in a red fiscal sea, Maxime Bernier delivered a jolt of hard-right policy to remind true blue Conservatives they have at least one voice on the government’s backbenches.

Flaherty is my local MP. He ran for parliament with the Conservatives, but appears to be operating in office as a Liberal.

Maverick Max went rogue again in a Toronto speech on Wednesday by advocating Ottawa get out of transfer payments to provinces while giving legislatures more tax room to finance the health, social welfare and education services they are constitutionally obliged to deliver.

For Jim Flaherty, who rolled out a blueprint on Tuesday showing continued growth in the social transfer envelope well into the next government’s mandate, the notion of surrendering $40 billion worth of fiscal clout over the provinces is a severely alien concept.

Martin has a nice article here, even if he incorrectly refers to Laurier as our first Liberal PM . . . unless he means our first (and only) “classic liberal” PM. Perhaps Bernier will be our second?

September 10, 2010

Maxime Bernier for PM!

Filed under: Cancon, Liberty, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 13:12

Now that most of us have given up on any actual free market policies coming out of the PMO, perhaps it’s time to look to someone who still appears to have libertarian tendencies:

It seems the libertarian Conservative MP is offside with the rest of his Quebec caucus colleagues over the issue of funding a multi-million-dollar hockey rink. He was conspicuously absent from a photo-op this week, in which Quebec MPs donned Nordiques jerseys to show their support for the arena and the possibility of bringing an NHL team back to the provincial capital.

“It was instructive that Quebec MP Maxime Bernier, who opposes public handouts for private enterprise, was missing from the photograph and e-mailed me a curt ‘no comment’ when asked about the merits of federal support for the arena,” National Post columnist Don Martin wrote at the time.

Mr. Bernier has since taken to the local airwaves in his Beauce riding to pour cold water on the idea of the Tories showering taxpayer dollars on sports facilities while battling a $56-billion deficfit.

Corporate give-aways of millions of dollars to billionaire sports team owners shouldn’t be merely controversial: they should be anathema. It’s that much worse when the government is deeply in debt.

Update: Maxime Bernier in his own words:

The hard reality is that we have just been through a global economic crisis — which remains very preoccupying and is likely not over — and governments in both Quebec City and Ottawa are heavily indebted. Our government has just posted a huge $56-billion deficit and the priority is to get back to a balanced budget through reductions in our own programs, and avoid by all means getting involved in risky financial ventures.

I was not at all impressed by the Ernst & Young study, which concluded that the project would be “profitable” — but only on the assumption that governments provide full funding for the construction as well as the repairs and renovations that will be necessary over the next 40 years. That’s a deceptive way of putting it. The conclusion should rather be that the project is simply not profitable and will constitute a financial burden for taxpayers for decades to come, even in the best scenario. That’s why not a single private player has been found to invest in it.

Just about any business would be “profitable” if they never had to pay rent for their business premises or buy, build, and maintain their own buildings. That isn’t the way ordinary businesses operate, and professional sports teams shouldn’t be any different. We don’t elect governments to be the primary supporters of sports team owners . . . no matter how many “complimentary” premium seats at the stadium may be offered to individual politicians.

As the great French economic Frédéric Bastiat wrote, “Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavours to live at the expense of everybody else.” When such large amounts are in play, it is impossible to calculate exactly who has received how much. We would need to go beyond a single file and take into account all public spending items, going as far back as possible.

That’s what Quebec separatists like to do. They keep telling us that Quebec has been on the losing side of the financial equation and that Ottawa has systematically been favouring Ontario for more than a century. Meanwhile, people in the rest of the country believe that Quebec is the spoiled child of the federation. Each region can point towards many examples to nurture its frustrations. It is a pointless debate which can only divide our country.

Oh, swoon!

August 7, 2010

Mr. Harper: Tell the Americans to bugger off!

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Liberty, Politics, USA — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 20:31

If you’ve been reading Quotulatiousness for a while, you’ll rarely detect serious amounts of anti-Americanism. I’m not reflexively anti-American, and have little time for those folks who think that being Canadian requires an anti-American attitude. That being said, it’s time for the Canadian government to tell the American government (and Canadian “tough on crime” types) to go to hell:

The Canadian government’s effort to give the United States the authority to veto any Canadian-origin airplane passenger who is unwelcome in the United States — even on flights merely overflying the United States, without a scheduled stop in that country — is unacceptable. It is another worrisome indication that the Conservatives are posturing over-manfully over the tired hagus of law and order, at the expense of the sovereignty of Canada and the rights of its citizens and welcome visitors.

Certainly, the requirements of continental security must be emphasized to give the United States an adequate comfort level that Canada is not a conduit of terrorists. But plausibly suspected terrorists already are subject to detention in, and extradition from Canada. So the main effect of the proposed legal changes would be to extend the rules governing terrorism and other extreme criminal activity to people who are alleged wrongdoers or undesirables on much less grave and certain grounds.

It should be perfectly adequate to advise the United States of the identity of overflying passengers; and to warn all passengers that if they are sought in the United States, or persona non grata in that country for any reason, in the unlikely event of an unscheduled stateside landing, they could be at risk of inconvenience and even detention.

Canada is, despite recent attempts to emulate a doormat, an independent country. We’ve been “offered” chances to join the union and have seen off those offers with fixed bayonets (our own and our British allies). We share with the United States what used to be the world’s longest undefended border, and both countries have benefitted from this arrangement for more than a century. Since 9/11, the “undefended” status has become less and less accurate.

It is in our interests to keep that border as open as possible: most Canadian businesses depend on having access to the 300+ million American market, and our economy would suffer greatly if the border was closed. What would be a minor economic inconvenience to the Americans would be a devastating government-induced depression to Canada. But keeping the border open is not worth allowing Washington to dictate Canada’s foreign and domestic policies.

Though not identical, it smacks of the British practice in the early 18th century of seizing American seamen and forcing them into servitude on British ships. That practice led to the War of 1812, a slightly farcical conflict in which a British-Canadian shore party burned down the White House and the U.S. Capitol, and chased President Madison out of Washington with a painting of the first president under his arm, (one of the less publicized but more picturesque episodes in the eventful history of the U.S. presidency).

It’s unlikely that a war of any kind would break out between Canada and the United States, thank goodness, but Canada should not kowtow to American pressure. Tell Mr. Obama to go to hell, Stephen!

August 4, 2010

Canada’s (lack of) abortion rules

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Health, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:31

Apparently lots of Canadians think that the country’s laws are far more restrictive of abortion than they really are:

Two-thirds of Canadians do not know that Canada has no abortion law, according to a new poll that indicates Canadians are woefully misinformed about a landmark ruling in the country’s history.

The poll, which asked 1,022 Canadian adults about their understanding of the country’s abortion regulations, found that just 22% of Canadians correctly identified a woman’s right to an abortion with no governmental restrictions. Canada has not had legislated abortion rules since 1988, making the country an “absolute outlier” on the issue, according to a medical ethicist.

“There’s really only a very small number of Canadians that correctly identify the current situation in Canada,” says pollster Jaideep Mukerji, who worked on the Angus-Reid poll, which was released on Tuesday. “That could be problematic.”

This was highlighted over the last couple of months, with the government and opposition wrangling over Stephen Harper’s initiative to increase funding for maternal health in the developing world. Because opinions widely differ over what the law covers in Canada, it was easy for the opposition to portray Harper’s plan as being ideological rather than humanitarian due to the exclusion of abortion.

Canadians don’t want to re-open the debate, although most appear to want more restrictions in place.

July 29, 2010

QotD: You can’t beat the media

Filed under: Cancon, Government, Media, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 17:16

Stephen Harper is feeling some of that effect from the millions he put into “infrastructure” projects as part of Canada’s own stimulus plan. You will recall that Ottawa solicited proposals from local governments before handing over the money. Inevitably, a goodly number turned out to be . . . shall we say . . . not entirely crucial, leading to articles like this, pointing out that — oh dear — taxpayers were financing bocce courts via deficit spending. Not to mention sending money to rich people in good neighbourhoods! Even funding for the arts — which Harper was previously criticized for providing too little of — was thrown back in his face as a cheap attempt to correct his earlier gaffe. (If he hadn’t corrected the gaffe, of course, it could have been portrayed as a “continuing snub.” Don’t try to beat the media folks, you can’t win.)

So what’s the lesson here? Politicians should ignore the experts and do what makes people happy, even if it’s unlikely to have much long-term benefit? Politicians should never expect the public to appreciate their efforts unless there’s some kind of individual payoff? Politicians should stay out of the economy, because no one is ever satisfied anyway?

Pick any one of those. Just don’t run for president or prime minister if you want to be popular.

Kelly McParland, “Obama could save America and lose the election”, National Post, 2010-07-29

July 12, 2010

QotD: Silly census fuss

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, Liberty, Quotations — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:20

[. . .] isn’t it just the slightest bit embarrassing for a government whose leader has trashed libertarians for their ethical myopia to have minions and media partisans present a libertarian pretext for an action that is not literally among the first 200 policy changes that would be implemented by an intelligent libertarian given plenary power?

Colby Cosh, “Census squabble: weak arguments shouldn’t have even worse foundations”, Maclean’s, 2010-07-12

July 1, 2010

Happy Dominion Canada Day

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government, History — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:53

It’s the 143rd anniversary of Confederation. The prime minister’s Canada Day message is here.

Oh, and remember, if you live in Ontario or British Columbia, you’ll find lots of things are more expensive now that Harmonized Sales Tax is being added to what you buy. Even if (as the Fraser Institute says) the HST is more efficient than the Provincial Sales Tax, it will still mean higher prices at the point of sale for most of us. Thank your respective provincial governments for the sneaky way it was implemented.

June 22, 2010

QotD: He bestrides the G8 like a Colossus

Filed under: Cancon, France, Germany, Italy, Politics, Quotations — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 00:07

. . . things are pretty bad in the mother country when a self-described “Whig” calls Stephen Harper “a magnificent fiscal conservative.” It’s like calling Gordon Brown “a brilliant and charismatic leader,” or Jean Chretien “a visionary and articulate statesman.” In politics, at least practical politics, all truth is relative.

Compared to most G8 leaders Stephen Harper does look like a genius. This is, as you’ve guessed, damning by the faintest of praise. Barack Obama is an avowed socialist, who described his one real job in the private sector as working “behind enemy lines.” Japan has been governed by a series of interchangeable non-entities for the better part of the last decade. In most of Europe, and certainly the English speaking world, Silvio Berlusconi would be awaiting sentencing. Angela Merkel rivals Helmut Schmidt in the visionary department. Sarko is a living embodiment of every mistake the French have made since Diem Bien Phu: A domestic policy summed up by the quintessentially French term “dirigiste,” and a foreign policy consisting of German guilty tripping and sophomore anti-Americanism. If Stephen Harper looks taller than others, it is because he is standing on the shoulders of midgets.

Publius, “Well, at least someone likes him…”, Gods of the Copybook Headings, 2010-06-21

June 18, 2010

The final word on the Air India atrocity?

Filed under: Bureaucracy, Cancon, India, Law, Religion — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 12:23

This National Post editorial summarizes the report on the bombing of Air India flight 182 twenty-five years ago:

Yesterday, former Supreme Court justice John Major delivered his report into the attack, and the bungled investigation that followed. It is a damning indictment of the performance of the police and the government which does not mince words in portraying officials as slow, disorganzied and curiously detached from the enormity of the attack, which killed all 329 passengers, most of them Canadians. The government was simply not prepared to deal with terrorism, he said, and the two major investigating forces — the RCMP and CSIS — became bogged down in turf wars, bureaucratic battles and alarming displays of investigative ineptitude.

It has long been argued that Canadians’ seeming indifference to the bombing derived from the fact most of the dead were of Indian background, a suspicion Mr. Major addressed directly. “I stress this is a Canadian atrocity,” he said. “For too long the greatest loss of Canadian lives at the hands of terrorists has somehow been relegated outside the Canadian consciousness.”

Prime Minister Stephen Harper met with relatives of some of the victims, calling the report a “damning indictment” and pledging to respond to Mr. Major’s call for compensation and an apology to the victims’ families.

Though it has been apparent for years that the police response to the tragedy was riddled with errors, the extent of the blundering as detailed in Mr. Major’s report is no less startling. While victims’ families clamoured for information and some form of justice against the killers, CSIS and the RCMP lost themselves in bureaucratic battles, treating one another more as rivals than as co-operative forces engaged in the same search for answers. Between them, he noted, there was ample intelligence to signal that Flight 182 was at high risk of being bombed by Sikh terrorists. Yet taken together, their performance at gathering, analysing and communicating information was “wholly deficient.

As I mentioned the other day, the RCMP has largely squandered their once sterling reputation, and Mr. Major’s report makes it clear that the rot has been long-established and festering. It’s up to the federal government to make some serious changes to save that organization — or to disband it and start over fresh. For historical reasons, I hope reform is possible, but I’m not betting on it.

The point that most Canadians didn’t see this atrocity clearly because the vast majority of the victims were of Indian origin is well made: Canadians, for all of our vaunted “multicultural values”, didn’t see all those innocent people as part of our nation. Racism isn’t pretty, especially for a country that pretends to be beyond such historical problems.

June 8, 2010

Are we ready for “a serious debate about returning to the gold standard”?

Filed under: Cancon, Economics, Government — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 13:02

The more I read of Maxime Bernier’s thoughts, the more I wonder how long it’ll be before he’s drummed out of Stephen Harper’s party: he’s far too sensible. Here, for example, he outlines what it is that central banks do to your money, and why it’s a bad deal for ordinary Canadians:

All this guessing about setting rates has nothing to do with capitalism and free markets; it has more to do with central planning and government control of the money supply. In a monetary free market, the interest rate would be determined by the demand for credit and the supply of savings, just like any other price in the economy.

Government control over money has serious consequences that few people seem to be aware of.

One of them is that central banks are continually increasing the quantity of money that is circulating in the economy. In Canada for example, if we use the strictest definition of money supply, it has increased by 6 to 14% annually during the past dozen years. The situation is about the same everywhere.

The effects of constantly creating new money out of thin air have been a debasement of our money and a dramatic increase in prices. The reason why overall prices go up is not because businesses are greedy, or because wages go up, or because the price of oil goes up. Ultimately, only the central bank is responsible for creating the conditions for prices to rise by printing more and more money.

With all this, it’s surprising that he has (so far) managed to stay in the Conservative party, which doesn’t appear to actually believe in anything much anymore . . . other than the need to stay in power.

Update, 9 June: His speech (from which the article linked above was drawn) gets positive reviews.

June 3, 2010

US & Canadian funding for War of 1812 bicentennial events

Filed under: Cancon, Government, History, USA — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 12:33

Colby Cosh floats the notion that one of the reasons for the huge disparity in funding for 1812 bicentennial events between the Canadian and American governments is “Maybe they’re still mad they lost”.

In the eyes of the world, the War of 1812 may always appear insignificant against its Napoleonic backdrop. But it did decide the destiny of a continent, persuading Empire and Union that it was better to have trade crossing the border than troops.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper was in Niagara Falls, Ont., on May 21, opening a new federally funded expansion to the city’s History Museum, which stands on the site of the ferocious July 1814 Battle of Lundy’s Lane. The federal and provincial governments are each giving the museum up to $3.2 million; for the feds, the money is part of a Throne Speech promise to commemorate the bicentennial of the war, “an event that was key to shaping our identity as Canadians and ultimately our existence as a country.”

Another $9 million in 50-50 federal-provincial cash is going to three Niagara Parks Commission sites: Old Fort Erie, McFarland House, and the Laura Secord Homestead. Ottawa has also set aside $12 million for improvements to 1812-related National Historic Sites along the frontier, including Gen. Brock’s monument at Queenston Heights. And Toronto is putting at least $5 million into a new visitors’ centre at Fort York.

But the only corresponding public funding on the other side of the border, as noted by the Buffalo News in April, has been a measly US$5,000 donation from the Niagara County legislature. Why isn’t Uncle Sam pulling his weight?

It’s more likely that the various levels of government are afraid of being seen to spend money on frivolous activities.

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