eBay sellers hidden profit source?

Jon, my virtual landlord, has had a love-hate relationship with eBay for a while. This morning, the "love" phase seemed short and under-used:

Bought a magazine yesterday. Four bucks. Seemed like a good deal. Auction notes that out-of-USA losers should ask for an invoice to get their shipping rate. Thinking that shipping would be, oh, I don't know, another four bucks or so, I figured what the hell, and use the Get Reamed Up The Ass Now button to buy the thing.

Shipping?

Twelve bucks.

Frig.

Thinking that this was, perhaps, a one-time thing — just a spot of bad luck — I looked around today for another book that I would like to have. Found the book. Brand-new reprint of a rather old book for twenty bucks. Again, a decent deal. Shipping to Canada? Twenty. Two. Dollars. So, no book for me.

No wonder there's a recession, the dumb wankers.

Speaking of wankers: I took at look at the new Schwarz plane book and thought "what the hell." So I started the online ordering process. Shipping to Canada for the book and a set of DVDs (on a topic that shall remain nameless)? Thirty. Two. Dollars. Cap-and-trade this, wood-boy. I did not proceed with the order.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Humph.

I've found some eBay sellers like this: they seem to feel that the extra labour of filling in a customs sticker requires them to make a profit of 2-3 times the actual cost of shipping. After getting burned that way once, I've always been careful to check shipping costs before bidding.

When I requested Jon's permission to use his email on the blog, he replied with this:

I guess so. What I sent is not nearly as memorable as the first draft, though. I originally had something in there about how, after Obama nationalizes their health care, I hope the eBayers all get scrofula and schistosomiasis and itch for the rest of their lives; but then I looked up scrofula and schistosomiasis to confirm the spelling and decided that wishing those on anyone, no matter how much they distend my rectum with their take-it-up-the-ass shipping rates (Rectum?! Damn near killed him!), was just a bit over the top.

QotD: CanLit

To mark Dominion Day (as you’d expect a squaresville loser like me to call it), the New York Times asked 11 Canadian expatriates to write on “what they most miss about home.” The cutting-edge funnyman Rick Moranis riffed on toques and beavers and the lyrics of God Save the Queen, raising the suspicion he’d simply recycled his beloved Dominion Day column of 1954 — which is not just environmentally responsible but very shrewd given New York Times rates for freelance contributors.

But thereafter the expats got with the program. The musician Melissa Auf der Maur, after years in the “American melting pot,” pined for “the Canadian mosaic.” But the great thing about the Canadian mosaic is that it engages in “a national conversation about literature like a big book club,” so the bookseller Sarah McNally said she missed “the pride and simplicity of a national literature, which probably wouldn’t exist without government support. We even have a name, CanLit, that people use without fearing they’ll sound like nerds.”

Multiculturalism, government books, using phrases like “Canadian mosaic” with a straight face, hailing the ability to say “CanLit” with a straight face as a virtue in and of itself . . .

[. . .]

Canada has done everything David Rakoff, Sarah McNally and Melissa Auf der Maur want—not least in their own fields. It taxes convenience-store clerks to subsidize books and writing and publishing and that wonderful “national conversation about literature like a big book club” in which everyone’s membership dues are automatically deducted from your bank account whether you go to the meetings or not. And still Mr. Rakoff and Ms. McNally and Ms. Auf der Maur leave. They applaud the creation of a “just” and “equitable” society, and then, like almost all the members of the Order of Canada you’ve actually heard of, they move out. Despite commending the virtues of a social “safety net” for you and everyone else, they personally can only fulfill their potential somewhere else, without one. Usually in a country beginning with “Great” and ending in “Satan.”

Mark Steyn, "Why do you leave the one you love? Our ‘funny creative people’ adore our social safety net, not that they stick around to use it", Macleans, 2009-07-16

QotD: Canadian Sharia courts

An Iranian artist has been sentenced to a five year prison term for setting the Koran to music. I would express outrage and alarm but I am writing from Canada and am in no position to point fingers. In Canada, we call our sharia courts "human rights commissions".

Nick Packwood, "Provoking the faithful", Ghost of a Flea, 2009-07-14

Sunken 1812 vessel may be HMS Wolfe

An interesting article in the Ottawa Citizen about a recently discovered wreck near Kingston, which may be the remains of HMS Wolfe:

A team of divers is set to plunge into Lake Ontario near Kingston, Ont., next week in a bid to confirm the discovery of a legendary Canadian-built ship from the War of 1812, the HMS Wolfe.

In collaboration with marine archeologists from Parks Canada, the divers plan to take detailed measurements, drawings and photographs of a sunken wooden sailing vessel that appears to match the size and last known location of the famous 32-metre sloop: the flagship of British naval commander James Yeo and star of a dramatic 1813 battle west of Toronto that helped thwart the U.S. invasion of Canada.

The suspected discovery comes just three years before the 200th anniversary of the war, adding urgency to the efforts to identify a possible new showcase relic for bi-national commemoration activities.

Notes from Ontario's wine scene

Michael Pinkus has some brief items in this week's Ontario Wine Review that are worth passing along:

Hooray for Hudak . . . Niagara West-Glanbrook member of Provincial Parliament, Tim Hudak, took over the reigns of the Progressive Conservative party in late June. What does this mean for Ontario wine lovers? Well as with all things political time will tell, but Tim is a member of the Facebrook group Boycott Cellared in Canada Wine — could we see real change if he takes office . . . something to think about in 2011 when you cast your ballot.

And They Call it Democracy . . . The Cellared in Canada debate is heating up. It started as just a rumble but now it seems that everyone is getting into the act and putting their two cents worth in. Now it’s time for every Tom, Dick and Harry; Molly, Johnny and Billy to lend their voice to the fray . . . and trust me you want in on this topic. Environmental Defense Canada has started a website where you can sign the petition to “Put the ‘O’ Back in LCBO” — read it and put your name down, if we stir the pot enough we might just make some good broth. This is one case where too many cooks in the kitchen spoiling the concocted soup would be a good thing.

The Call to Go Local, Now it’s Wines Turn . . . You can’t turn around and sneeze these days without someone throwing the word “local” at you. “Go local”. “Buy Local”. “100-mile diet”. “Eat what’s in your own backyard”. It’s out there and they’re the buzz words of the 2009 (and for the future). Now it’s time for the restaurants to look at their wine lists and do the same thing says Adam Pesce of Taste T.O. in his article “Where’s the Local Wine? ” A very good question indeed Adam. It’s time to step it up Toronto, wine country is an hour to an hour-and-a-half away (depending on traffic on the QEW), how much more local does it get?

QotD: A missed opportunity for local wineries?

I wrote this article on Monday June 22, 2009, in preparation for a strike at the LCBO. I know it sounds funny that I would say 'I was hoping for a strike' (even if it was going to be a short one), but once again our province avoided a golden opportunity to discover the wines of Ontario first hand. While the LCBO reports huge sales on the day before the strike deadline (~$60-million), our wineries are struggling to stay afloat and our industry looks smack dab in the face of another record breaking (and I mean massive) fruit surplus. It would have been nice if the LCBO would have walked off the job and the wineries themselves would have been able to step in to fill that void. Alas, that did not happen. Our wineries will continue to struggle, the LCBO will continue to make record breaking profits while helping to break the collective backs of our wine industry. For all of you who ran out to grab cases of FuZion and Yellow Tail — you missed a special moment in time to try what's right in your own back yard, and wines that go much better with that Ontario raised BBQ'ed fare you had planned for the weekend or your Ontario grown summer salads. The article below might be a little dated now, but there are reasons why the LCBO didn't, or wasn't allowed to go on strike . . . and those points are not dated. One day it would be nice if a strike actually happened and Ontario wine stepped in to be the savior; one day . . . hopefully before it's too late.

Michael Pinkus, "What Could Have Been", Ontario Wine Review, 2009-06-25

Customer service really does matter

Loblaws has been our supermarket of choice for a number of years, since the Dave Nichol era, actually. They've often come up with new and interesting grocery products or packaging options that — even if they didn't pan out — kept up an unusual level of interest in the otherwise humdrum world of the food retailer. Lately, Loblaws has been changing many of their stores to "improve" the customer experience. One of the changes is in line with the current craze for eliminating plastic bags . . . encouraging shoppers to bring in their own bags.

I'm, at best, ambivalent about that notion¹. I don't mind carrying a bag or two for occasional purchases, but if I'm going to be spending a few hundred dollars for groceries (the weekly family grocery order), I'm not likely to carry anywhere near enough bags to package that kind of purchase.

The latest "innovation" is to expect shoppers to not only bring their own bags, but to pack their own bags, too. This, I'm sure, is seen as a great step forward for Loblaws, but is a severely retrograde step for individual shoppers. It's apparently also company policy that cashiers are not supposed to help shoppers to pack their grocery purchases, even if they're not otherwise busy. This may not be actual company policy, but it's what we've heard from cashiers themselves, as reason not to assist.

As Megan McArdle pointed out in a slightly different context, "This is why customer service matters. It's often the first thing to be cut by companies, because bad customer service doesn't show up anywhere on the bottom line. Not until much later, and not very clearly even then. But I'm willing to bet they'll lose substantial sales to people who see the first post, but not the second."

¹ I user the term "I", although Elizabeth does the vast majority of our grocery shopping.

Update, 24 June: Russ LeBlanc sent me this as a comment and (with his permission) I'm posting it as an addendum to the main entry instead:

The plastic bag scare is a classic example of PR corporate do-gooder spin that translates into increased profits. Plastic bags represent less than 1% of an average landfill. Not having to provide bags and getting praised to do it is a huge windfall for these companies. BTW, many of those re-usable bags are made in China and are comprised of "questionable" recycled material. Go figure.

Saving the environment is a good thing however much of the recycling movement is based on "junk" science that is right up there with mom's apple pie. If people only knew the real story they'd switch to cake.

While you can't blame a company for jumping on a bandwagon that will help increase corporate profits while improving the company's public profile, you'd prefer to see this being fact-based, not emotional-blackmail-based.

More from that "hatemongerer"

Mark Steyn looks at the recent speech by the embattled head of Canada's official inquisition:

I'm making a serious point there about the "human rights" enforcers' perversion of Canada's basic legal principles, and I stand by it. So just to up the ante: "Is Jennifer Lynch, QC a drunken pedophile serial killer? Maybe not. But no one has decided that."

About the rest of her plaint, one thing I've learned since 9/11 is that those who receive credible death threats do not brag about them in public. As for the unflattering descriptions of her commission, I was responsible for three of them: "human rights racket"; "a fetish club for servants of the Crown"; and "welcome to the wacky world of Canadian 'human rights'". I deeply resent Commissar Lynch lifting all my best lines without credit to perk up her turgid speech. I stand by all of them, and I see I've reprised the last up at the top. Must try to work the "fetish club" line in again.

So four of the six quotations Commissar Lynch is upset about are from what Pearl Eliadis would call the "hatemongerer" — or what proper legal systems would call "the accused". In other words, the Chief Commissar of Canada's "human rights" regime is complaining that the person she is investigating has had the impertinence to respond. Which gives you an interesting glimpse into Queen Jennifer's concept of justice.

It's distressing enough that Canada has a vast inquisitorial system both at the federal and provincial level, but it's even more upsetting to find that nothing from the Levant and Steyn "cases" has made any difference to the minions of those systems. They still clearly feel that they are above criticism — in fact, they feel that any such attempt to criticize should be punishable.

June 6th is Canadian Tax Freedom Day

Conference Board of Sleazy Reporting

Cory Doctorow has the latest hard-to-believe twist in the Conference Board of Canada's ludicrous "report" on copyrights:

The Conference Board of Canada's sellout on copyright just keeps on getting worse. To recap: the Conference Board is a supposedly neutral research outfit that was asked by the Canadian copyright industries to write a report on file-sharing and piracy in Canada. They hit up the Ontario government for $15,000 to fund an event where the findings of the report would be presented.

Then they hired an independent researcher who concluded that there wasn't anything particularly wrong with Canadian file-sharing. They threw away his research.

Then they plagiarized dodgy press-materials produced by the leading US copyright lobby group, quoting lengthy passages that were factually wrong.

Then they denied any wrongdoing.

Then they admitted they'd plagiarized, but insisted that the public money hadn't been spent "on the report" — it had been spent on the conference about the report, which is a Different Thing Altogether.

After all that, it still manages to get worse . . .

To dream the impossible dream . . .

The headline really caught my attention:

Canada considers selling Via Rail, CBC
As the nation grapples with a record deficit, two of Canada's most iconic companies may be up for grabs.

It's a summary of a report in the Globe and Mail, probably intentionally highlighting the things of most concern to their readership. I'd love to see the CBC privatized, but I doubt that the government will do that. VIA Rail wouldn't survive in the private sector — at least in its current form — as it's running too many uneconomical long-distance routes that don't come close to paying their way.

A different kind of Governor General

She's the Queen's representative in Canada, and she also has unusual duties now and again:

On the first day of her trip to the Arctic Michaelle Jean gutted a freshly slaughtered seal, pulled out its raw heart, and ate it.

Hundreds of Inuit at a community festival gathered around as the Governor General made a gesture of solidarity with the country's beleaguered seal hunters.

Jean knelt above a pair of carcasses and used a traditional blade to slice the meat off the skin.

After repeated, vigorous cuts through the flesh the Queen's representative turned to the woman beside her and asked enthusiastically: "Could I try the heart?"

Within seconds Jean was holding a crimson chuck of seal-ticker, she tucked it into her mouth, swallowed it, and turned to her daughter to say it tasted good.

A far cry from cucumber sandwiches on the veranda, what?

The Tamil protests in Toronto

Well, having been delayed from getting out of downtown yesterday for over an hour, thanks to illegal marches by Tamil Tiger supporters, I guess I've been converted . . . to supporting the Sri Lankan government. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has moved from relative indifference to active detestation of the protesting group, but I doubt that it will manifest itself in anything other than angry letters to the editor . . . and futile blog posts like this one.

Between the protests opposite the US consulate and yesterday's march, I've been prevented from visiting my client's office downtown for several days . . . and that takes money out of my pocket, as I can't bill them for time spent trying to get to their offices.

I still don't understand the logic behind the protests. Canada is not and never has been involved in political or military action in Sri Lanka. Anything the Canadian government might say on the matter will have precisely zero weight with either side in the conflict. It's not like we have a squadron of the Navy ready to swoop into action in the Indian Ocean, or any other form of power that could be projected into that area of the world. We are, literally, powerless to intervene.

Canada's diplomatic and humanitarian "voice" in that region is also non-existent, so just what is being achieved by the protest groups? Disrupting economic activity in large parts of downtown Toronto — during a period of economic hardship — garners media attention, but it's not making the Tamil cause more attractive to ordinary Canadians.

It's also, sadly, likely to create problems for Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi immigrants, as most Canadians have no idea who is or is not a Tamil (unless they're waving the banners of terrorist groups).

Update: Ottawa's chief of police is getting "racist e-mails" about the Tamil protests that blocked Wellington St. for several days.

Update, the second: Of course, we needed no further evidence of our deep unwillingness to confront terrorists and their supporters than the final sentence of this news report, "Police will be investigating the airplane message as a possible hate crime."

The possible hate crime message reportedly read "Protect Canada, stop the Tamil Tigers". Even under Canada's various anti-hate speech laws, I cannot comprehend how that message could be construed as hate speech. The Tamil Tigers were officially added to the Canadian government's list of terrorist organizations in 2006. How can it be illegal to advocate wanting to stop them?

Update, the third: Jon, my virtual landlord, sent along this rather depressing answer to my last question:

The banner mentions a protected group by name: Tamils

The phrase "Protect Canada" implies that Tamils pose a threat. The implication may lead people to distrust and possibly hate Tamils.

The fact that the Tamil Tigers organization is recognized as a terrorist group by several governments is irrelevant. Under the HRC rules, the truth is no defense.

So there you go: according to the OHRC and CHRC, the banner is a hate crime.

And you know what I am finding just a little disturbing here? The fact that I instantly came up with those points in my head as I read your question. I totally understand the logic behind this.

I do not remember drinking the KoolAid, but I am indeed full of it.

Humph.

I understand how, but I do not understand why.

Richard Best's open letter to Ontario's MPPs

Richard Best is hoping that common sense will prevail as Ontario's government considers a bill that would (slightly) liberalize Ontario's fruit wineries:

Parliament is now considering a bill (C-132 2008) that would allow farm wineries to sell their fruit wines at farmers markets in Ontario. The main reason given for a "no" vote to this bill is the fear of farm markets becoming drunken orgies. OK, that's overstating the issue, but this is a recurring theme that's brought up whenever there is a suggestion to expand the retail availability of locally-made alcohol products.

Let me say, emphatically, that this seriously outdated yet pervasive attitude shows a profound lack of respect for the citizens of Ontario. When I think of when and where alcohol is a problem, invariably the LCBO is involved, not wineries. Teens get their booze from the LCBO. Bars — often with large parking lots to accommodate their drink-and-drive customers — get their product mainly from the LCBO. Special Event permits do nothing to regulate consumption; they merely glean a few more "tax" dollars from consumers and recruit more sales for the LCBO. This list could go on.

When I think of farmers markets, I think of health-conscious people who are environmentally and socially responsible. To suggest that someone who, on a sunny Saturday morning, might buy a $15 bottle of strawberry wine at a farmers market and then be overcome by the need to consume it in the parking lot or on the way home is an insult to these people, to farmers and to society. It is society who is the watchdog on alcohol consumption, not the AGCO and certainly not the LCBO. The LCBO does little to educate people on the problems associated with misuse. Instead they put "Please drink responsibly" in small print on the expensive, glossy brochures they send out en masse at least monthly, where they boast about the pleasures of this bottle or that.

Ontario's wineries and micro-breweries are also watchdogs for responsibility. Staff are restricted in how much they can pour for any one person, and they are trained to recognize when someone's had too much. Probably more significantly, most winery shops close their doors at 5:00 or 5:30, as do micro-breweries. And farmers markets typically close at 2:00. It's also been shown that, of all beverage alcohol products, wine is the least likely to be abused.

So, to our decision makers, please show some respect and enlightenment when it comes to our wine industry and its customers, and let them show you that wine sold at farmers markets will not trigger the downfall of civilization, just as it hasn't in the many provinces and states that allow it.

Sincerely,
Richard Best

Ontario's alcohol control laws are still broadly similar to the immediate post-Prohibition era, and Ontario politicians clearly still think of Ontarians and other Canadians as being too weak to resist the call to over-indulge. This bill's tiny liberalization is a good example of how little the government trusts the common sense and responsible nature of the average citizen.

I'm afraid I wouldn't be at all surprised to see this bill defeated with little or no debate . . .

In other news, oui, c'est vrai!

A report in The National Post the other day goes directly to the point:

French immersion, touted as a way of uniting Canadians under the banner of official bilingualism, is increasingly seen as an elitist program that has instead created a de facto two-tiered public school system that caters to Canada's higher-achieving students.

Although some proponents of French immersion claim otherwise, studies show a side effect that favours students with higher learning abilities and fewer behavioural problems. Meanwhile, students with learning disabilities, those from low-income families, and newcomers to Canada are often counselled out of enrolling in French-immersion programs.

Is this actually news to anyone? Of course the French immersion program is elitist . . . it's the way the well-off have smuggled a quasi-separate school system into the public schools. Wasn't that exactly what the originators wanted?

According to a 2004 Statistics Canada report entitled French Immersion 30 Years Later, students in French-immersion programs tend to come from more affluent families than non-immersion students. They also perform significantly better on reading-assessment tests than non-immersion students, even when tested in English. The report also found that girls account for roughly 60% of students in French immersion in all provinces except Quebec.

Paul Hellyer's American student

Paul Kane has written a New York Times op-ed which sounds disturbingly like something cooked up by former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer. The modern Canadian Armed Forces were formed by amalgamating the formerly separate Canadian Army, Royal Canadian Navy, and the Royal Canadian Air Force. The arguments for this highly disruptive move were primarily economic and bureaucratic, not military in nature. It's to the credit of the members of the separate services that things worked out as well as they did, but many careers were cut short and much bitterness still exists from that re-organization so many years ago.

Hellyer claimed that "the amalgamation . . . will provide the flexibility to enable Canada to meet in the most effective manner the military requirements of the future. It will also establish Canada as an unquestionable leader in the field of military organization." In one sense this was true: Canada was the first nation to completely amalgamate the military services. But to be a "leader" requires that someone else "follow". That part never happened. The hoped-for cost savings may or may not have been achieved, but the economies all seemed to reduce the combat effectiveness, morale, and equipment inventories of the combat arms. A unified armed forces was no better able to resist militarily ignorant political moves than the separate services had been.

Kane doesn't go quite "full Hellyer" here, but you can see the same sort of thinking:

First, the Air Force should be eliminated, and its personnel and equipment integrated into the Army, Navy and Marine Corps. [. . .]

Yes, air power is a critical component of America’s arsenal. But the Army, Navy and Marines already maintain air wings within their expeditionary units. The Air Force is increasingly a redundancy in structure and spending.

It's quite possible that the current division of responsibilities between the USAF and the other branches of service need to be re-adjusted. The USAF is notoriously uninterested in ground-support missions, which is of very high importance to ground troops. Allowing the Army to run its own attack helicopters was the compromise arrived at — the Air Force still had to maintain some ground-attack aircraft, but the Army's helicopter forces took on most of the close-support duties.

The second part of Kane's proposal is actually pretty good:

Second, the archaic “up or out” military promotion system should be scrapped in favor of a plan that treats service members as real assets. [. . .]

Treating service members like so many widgets — in particular, the enlisted men and women who make up 85 percent of the ranks — is arbitrary and bad management. I have seen many fit, experienced officers and enlisted Marines arbitrarily forced out because there were only so many slots into which they could be promoted.

The military should develop a new accounting and personnel system that tracks the cost of developing its human capital and tallies each service member as an investment with a fixed value based on his education, training, experience and performance. This would reflect the departure of a valued service member as an asset lost, not a cost cut. Why are fit men and women who have served in combat, a human experience that a million dollars can’t buy, being pushed out instead of retained for 15, 20, 30 years?

But after the solid part of his proposal, he quickly dives into the worst solution available:

Third, the United States needs a national service program for all young men and women, without any deferments, to increase the quality and size of the pool from which troops are drawn.

Because, as we all know, a well-trained, loyal, and dependable armed service can be created by dragooning free individuals against their will. Calling it "conscription" does not make it any less repulsive. Forcing people to "serve" at gunpoint makes a mockery of the whole notion of being a free country.

The "denizens" at Castle Argghhh! also weigh in on Kane's proposals.

Are we evil for calling Inuit people "Eskimos"?

By way of a link from Lydia McGrew, we find John C. Wright's objections to political correct speech:

I am aware of that [the origin of the word "eskimo"], and I do not care. In fact, I regard with particular hatred attempts to change the language to sooth the imaginary hurt feelings of various mascots of the political Left. Unless you can tell me, off the top of your head and without looking it up, the name in any Eskimo dialect for a Virginian, I suggest your concern for their concern for our names for them is illegitimate, particularly where no English speaker knows the meaning of the insult. (None, that is, but I: it refers to them as eaters of raw fish, a slight against their relative poverty).

Besides, what could be more insulting to me that to have the Eskimos refer to themselves as ‘the People’? What does that make me? A non-people?

But it would be immature to the point of insanity for me to pretend I am insulted by the mere existence of a word in their language. Likewise, here. Insult requires intent.

I ask any and all reader please to not make corrections of this type again. They offend me. They deeply offend me. [. . .]

Let me explain that I regard political correctness as worse than a lie.

A lie is a straightforward attempt to deceive a victim. It almost honest by contrast. Political Correctness is a corrupt attempt to poison thought and speech, and to impose upon the nobility and courtesy of its victims to get them to deceive themselves. A frequent side effect of PC jargon is that it renders rational conversation difficult, indirect, or even impossible.

Innocent and well meaning people are actually fooled by this simple trick. Sad to say, most people think like magicians. They believe in the rule of true names. They think (or rather, they feel) that when they are calling one thing by another name, that the actual nature of reality changes. They put themselves in a position where they can no longer talk about real things. Words are severed from referents.

Words really do have power, but not in a magical sense. Words have power because we use words to describe our own versions of reality. Being forced to substitute other peoples' words to describe your own reality is to allow those other people to not only influence but in some ways to control your reality.

If you successfully substitute the word 'Inuit' for 'Eskimo' on the grounds that 'Eskimo' is an insult, you will have successfully convinced the next generation that all their forefathers who used the word 'Eskimo' deliberately meant and fully intended an insult, or were foolish or negligent enough to utter an insult by accident. That conviction will be false, a lie, and you (in a small way, one more straw on the camel's back) will have helped to perpetrate it.

Exactly. While I do not agree with everything Mr. Wright discusses in the rest of his post, I can't find fault with the sentiments quoted above.

Lydia also included a link to P.J. O'Rourke's wonderful review of Guidelines For Bias-Free Writing (PDF):

The book arrived with an I.U. press release stating that, I quote, Anyone who spends even a few minutes with the book will be a better writer. Well, I spent a few minutes with the book, and I feel a spate of better writing coming on.

The pharisaical, malefic, and incogitant Guidelines for Bias-Free Writing is a product of the pointy-headed wowsers at the Association of American University Presses who established a Task Force on Bias-Free Language filled with cranks, pokenoses, blowhards, four-flushers, and pettifogs. This foolish and contemptible product of years wasted in mining the shafts of indignation has been published by the cow-besieged, basketball-sotted sleep-away camp for hick bourgeois offspring, Indiana University, under the aegis of its University Press, a traditional dumping ground for academic deadwood so bereft of talent, intelligence, and endeavor as to be useless even in the dull precincts of midwestern state college classrooms.

But perhaps I’m biased. What, after all, is wrong with a project of this ilk? Academic language is supposed to be exact and neutral, a sort of mathematics of ideas, with information recorded in a complete and explicit manner, the record formulated into theories, and attempts made to prove those formulae valid or not. The preface to Guidelines says, “Our aim is simply to encourage sensitivity to usages that may be imprecise, misleading, and needlessly offensive.” And few scholars would care to have their usages so viewed, myself excluded.

Led Zep meets the Bassoon

My friend Jeff Burke plays Led Zepp's Kashmir on the bassoon, with a loop repeater (incomplete video . . . I guess Sean's cellphone has a maximum recording capacity).

Damian Penny hangs up the keyboard

I'm sorry to see this announcement (although, honestly, not as surprised as all that):

When I started up my old Blogspot site in late 2001 — one of many, many sites which proliferated in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — I had no idea I'd keep at it as long as I did. And I've enjoyed every minute of it.

With a child on the way, however — not to mention an ever-increasing workload at my firm — I think it's time to make a graceful exit. Or a hiatus, at least. This is something I've been mulling over for a while, as I've found it increasingly difficult to keep blogging at my usual pace, but I've never been able to pull the trigger. My dithering over the issue made Brett Favre look like the model of decisiveness. But today's as good a day as any.

I've been reading Damian's blog since shortly after he started it, and I know I'll miss it on my "regular round" of blogs. Of course, blogging is one of those itches that comes back . . . he may find himself sneaking back to the keyboard in spite of the family and work . . . once you've had a soapbox, it's hard to go cold turkey (to mix a few metaphors).

Making it even harder for Ontario's small wineries

If you've read more than one or two posts here, you'll know I'm not a fan of big government, especially when that government moves into areas far better served by private enterprise. Ontario's liquor laws are still just emerging from the Prohibition era, and are strongly tilted in favour of large conglomerates and against smaller producers (it's much easier for the government to oversee a few giants than to actively interfere with oversee dozens or hundreds of smaller firms).

In an ideal world, I'd prefer to see the government get out of the alcohol business altogether . . . but that's not likely to happen. In the real world, the Ontario government strictly limits how Ontario wineries are allowed to sell and market their wines. The vast majority of Ontario wine sold is through the LCBO/Vintages channel. The LCBO is the only way small wineries are allowed to sell their wines aside from direct sales at the winery itself (even the recent innovation allowing winery-to-home sales is tightly controlled).

Given all of this, you'd expect (if you don't live in Ontario, that is) that the LCBO would be actively assisting small wineries to increase their market share and to increase the LCBO's proportion of domestic sales. But that's not the way things are done. Michael Pinkus explains:

Early last week, a winemaker called me up to say that there was scuttlebutt in Niagara that the government "kickback" program, to help small wineries get their wines into the LCBO, is at risk of being axed. Known as the VQASP (VQA Support Program) it provided a 30% return to the wineries whose wines got into the LCBO and Vintages stores. This encouraged more wineries to submit wines to the LCBO (previously they were reluctant to put their wines into the provincial monopoly shops because there was no profit to be made, wineries realized more money by selling their wines out the cellar door, even if it was a slower process and to a smaller audience). This program subsidized the sale of these wines and allowed more Ontarians to see, and buy, a greater array of VQA Ontario wines from wineries they probably didn’t even know existed. (In the last three years of the program, the number of Ontario wineries in the LCBO rose from 15 to 50). It is because of this program that many small wineries saw light at the end of a long harsh tunnel; some wineries even increased production in the hopes of having enough wine to offer to the LCBO and get the exposure the shelves which they so desperately needed (in order to be listed the LCBO needs a minimum supply so that all their stores can get the required product). With the cancellation of the VQASP, those wineries are now at risk of being overstocked and putting themselves into a deeper financial hole then they were before. At a time when the government is ear-marking millions of dollars to bail out the car manufacturers, who are just trying to maintain the status quo — the government has decided to cancel help to an industry that is growing, creating jobs and brings tourism to this province. I have a colleague that calls Ontario "a have not province" and something we will not have is a wine industry if this continues to be the way wineries are treated. It seems that the current government is prepared to keep them down.

Yes ladies and gentlemen, this is your government hard at work. Do they not realize that the "O" in LCBO stands for Ontario? How quickly we forget that when we walk into the store and are faced with shelf after shelf of Chilean, Australian and South African wine. I have noticed that when I enter a US liquor store, I have to search high and low for the "foreign" wines, having to wade through row after row of California, Oregon and Washington State wine. In the LCBO it's the exact opposite — I wade through every other country before I find my country's/province's wines and who knows, maybe I'm still buying Chilean, Australian or South African afterall, if you don't examine the label with a magnifying glass, you could get stuck with a Cellared in Canada wine.

Again, I'd prefer the government got the heck out of the liquor retail/wholesale business altogether, but if they won't do that, they should at least try to make it a level playing field for both domestic and foreign products, and for both small wineries and large multinational conglomerates. I've written about this before.

Outsiders simply don't understand that "sorry" means "go screw yourself"

Stephen Marche gets to the point quickly:

It began with Jon Stewart on The Daily Show, which has recently run a couple of Canadian items, some of them long. That never used to happen. 30 Rock had that great line about Toronto: "It's New York without the stuff." And on the show How I Met Your Mother, one of the central characters, Robin Scherbatsky, is a Canadian expat trying to make it in New York; Canada is a running joke of the show. Unfortunately, none of the Canadian comedy is that funny or accurate. The jokes mostly involve maple syrup, the cold and/or the pronunciation of the word "about," which 97% of us don't actually mispronounce. The Great White North casts a long, ludicrous shadow - Canada in the American comic imagination corresponds roughly (very roughly) with the region of the country that stretches from Northern Ontario to Alberta and does not include cities, or the Maritimes, or the West Coast. The only other gag Americans seem to get is how polite Canadians are. ("How do you get 10 Canadians out of a swimming pool?" "Say, ‘Hey guys, can you get out of the pool?' ") Even this joke, complimentary to us, isn't mildly true. Canadians are one of the rudest peoples on Earth. Outsiders simply don't understand that "sorry" means "go screw yourself."

What explains this resurgence of Canada jokes on U.S. television? There are two possibilities. We are the last group that can be made fun of without risk. Political correctness has made almost every other ethnicity off-limits. Americans can't even make fun of the French anymore. The "cheese-eating surrender monkeys," as The Simpsons once called them, have turned out to be right in nearly every disagreement with their American cousins. It's quite easy to make fun of Canadians because Americans can't really distinguish us from themselves. So it's innocent. They're more or less making fun of people who are like them.

Ezra Levant on Michael Coren's TV show

In case you didn't catch in during broadcast, you can see Ezra Levant's appearance on the Michael Coren show here.

Here's part one

It must be true about all politics being local

I was amused to see this brief Canadian Press item, featuring both my local MPP and my federal MP in direct conflict. They're husband and wife, yet find themselves opposed on a current hot issue:

Federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty may have some animated conversations at his dinner table over the Ontario government's plan to merge the provincial sales tax with the GST.

Flaherty says he fully supports merging Ontario's provincial sales tax with its federal counterpart. But his wife Christine Elliott, a Progressive Conservative member of Ontario's legislature, says her party opposes the tax harmonization.

In a speech in Montreal Thursday night, Flaherty said Elliott was asked by a reporter if this will create awkward moments on the homefront.

He said Elliott replied, "I think we'll stay married, but I respectively disagree with him about this."

Flaherty, a former Ontario finance minister, joked, "I was glad to hear we're going to remain married."

Full disclosure: I've not only met both of them, but I coached two of their sons in soccer several years back.

Harper distances himself from libertarians

The prime minister has decided that the "libertarian" tag is a disadvantage, so he's made some explicit remarks to distance himself from the philosophy:

Harper vigorously defended his policies, arguing that compromises had to be made to face the economic reality.

"I'm talking about compromises that address the reality of the lives of real people."

He went on to deride the spendthrift culture in the United States and the recklessness of Wall Street. Harper, who has been described as a libertarian in the past, surprised some in the audience by critiquing those same ideals.

"The libertarian says, 'Let individuals exercise full freedom and take full responsibility for their actions.' The problem with this notion is that people who act irresponsibly in the name of freedom are almost never willing to take responsibility for their actions."

Mike Brock, a Conservative blogger who attended the conference, called the speech bewildering.

"The treatment to classical liberals and libertarians — of which I consider myself — was nothing short of stunning," he wrote.

"The condescension was literally dripping from his mouth. Was this his response to the disillusionment that libertarians across the country have had to his government and its policies of late?

"If it was, it did not build any bridges. Rather, it burnt them right down."

Of course, there have been so few libertarian moves on the part of the federal government that this isn't really that much of a surprise.

Anti-science versus anti-Christian, film at 11

Victor sent me a link to this CBC.ca article on a recent theoretical solution proposed by two Montreal researchers:

. . . a question that has long vexed evolutionary biologists: How did a mechanism thought to help build life self-assemble?

Sergey Steinberg, a biochemistry professor at the University of Montreal, found the answer in the ribosome, a relatively large mechanism within the cell that takes RNA instruction and builds proteins.

His discovery, made with student Konstantin Bokov, has been published in the scientific journal Nature.

Scientists have long wondered how chemicals spontaneously came together to create proteins before life itself began.

Steinberg and Bokov's theory fills in a critical step in how life got started four billion years ago, said Stephen Michnick, the Canada Research Chair in Integrative Genomics at the University of Montreal.

A key breakthrough came when Steinberg found that chemicals could spontaneously come together and form something as complex as a ribosome. Previous theories had suggested only simple proteins could form spontaneously.

While the article is certainly interesting in its own right, the comment thread is another Scopes Monkey Trial in the making (comments in reverse chronological order):

Squariel wrote:
Snowpooch :
Science is surely never perfect, nor can it answer everything at any one time. It evolves and refines itself, as time and experience continues, and as new ideas, evidence and methods come about.
There is a good likelihood that before too long, scientists WILL be able to turn a bunch of mixed molecules in a jar into a medium all-dressed - rising crust and with extra pepperoni - all at the press of a button ! They'll also be able to explain how it's done.

TheSnowpooch wrote:
As a favor, to the majority of Canadians, who are Lord Fearing and morel, please stop your antichrist-ian hatred, on these and all other forums, forever.

If your scientists are so great tell me this, can they take molecules ,in a jar and zap them with electricity, and turn them into a salami or a pizza. Nope, that takes God to make protenes, as was predicted in Hosea 13:16.

I will pray for you.

Melo Man wrote:
TheSnowpooch wrote: As a concerned mother of 6, I am blessed for to have been homeschooling my children from birth. This is all more antiChristian hooey, as was predicted in Joshua 14:12

-----

"As a concerned non-believer of a dead-beat sky-wizard, may your 6 children someday overcome the burden of the sins of their mother and find their own truth. "

Melo Man 12:54 (UTC-5:00)

Now that's "anti-christian". Sadly for 6 human beings it's more than hooey.

chjugq wrote:
Hah. The French knew this ten years ago (google ribosome site:.fr). What's really fascinating is what happens when two electrodes and direct current are added to a protein mix dissolved in water, such as the kind that athletes drink. You get hydrogen gas, the same kind as found in stars. If you don't believe me, try it at home using tin foil for the electrodes and a couple of d size batteries. This proves that stars are former planets that caught fire when their inhabitants misused electricity for strange genetic purposes. We must end these Frankenstein like experiments before our planet catches fire too.

QotD: Extending Freedom of Religion too far

Old-fashioned types might think that those Britons - okay, make that "Britons" - helping to manufacture bombs for the Taliban are engaged in an act of treason. But, as a current court case in Quebec helps clarify, giving support to the Queen's enemies in their attempts to kill your compatriots is now just another vibrant, colorful manifestation of cultural diversity.

As the International Free Press Society notes, Said Namouh is on trial up north for aiding and abetting terrorism. The Crown charges that Mr Namouh distributed jihadist snuff videos, offered advice on bomb-making, volunteered his expertise for a planned truck bombing, and threatened governnments (including Canada's) with troops in Afghanistan. Defense counsel René Duvall doesn't deny any of this, but says his client's enthusiasm for violent jihad is protected on grounds of freedom of religion and (mirthless chuckle from your humble typist) Canadians' cherished right to freedom of expression. As Maître Duvall put it outside the court, "Where do you draw the line?"

In fact, the line seems to be pretty clear: If a jihadist says he wants to kill Canadian troops, he's just exercising his right to freedom of religion. If I quote what he said in Canada's biggest-selling news weekly, we'll be charged with "flagrant Islamophobia" and hauled up in court.

Mark Steyn, "Which side of the war would you like to be on?", National Review, 2009-02-22

The trials of a military musician

A friend of mine, formerly in the Canadian Forces, recounted some of the fun and games of being a musician in the military:

There were a couple of times where the powers that be wanted us to play outside in the cold. Like -15 to -20 C. So we took all took our horns with us /in/ the bus and made sure they were very warm. As soon as you get out into the sub-sub temps, the warm air in the horn condenses and the horn the freezes solid instantly. No more playing outside.

At those temperatures (much colder than it was in Washington for the inauguration) brass mouth pieces will suck the warmth out of your lips very quickly. Lots of us had mouthpieces with plastic rims. Much easier to play in the winter. Small brass instruments weren't too much of a problem in the cold cause the players' hands would be warm enough to keep the valves from freezing. "Hot Shots" or some other such hand warmers as hunters use could be wrapped around the valves to keep them from freezing as well. Trombone slides were brutal, because they act just like the cooling tubes in a radiator. We used to use rubbing alcohol generously to aid in keeping slides moving.

In the military we couldn't keep our mouthpieces in our pockets because there was no prescribed movement for "pocketing mouthpieces". Fiddling with pockets wasn't one of the approved stances (such as "attention" or "at ease").

We were doing a Change of Command Parade for the Airborne Regiment. Outside, in January at -20C. Horns were all frozen solid before we even got to the parade square. Even split a drum head or two.

When we arrived at the parade, we all had our greatcoats on and were all bundled up as toasty as can be. Then the boss saw that the Airborne weren't wearing greatcoats, so he had us take ours off. Of course, none of us were wearing warmer clothes under our uniforms. The Airborne were prepared, and of course, had several layers of warmer clothes under their dress uniforms. So our boss, who was not the most confident guy in the world, had us move off the parade square into the lobby of a barracks facing the parade square, and had us play from in there with the doors propped open. Not professional, and very embarrassing for the band. We were standing behind a row of Cougars when they did a "feu de joie" where they basically do a 21-gun salute with their cannons. Very loud in the frigid air. Concussion from the guns made the doors to the lobby close. The boss was outside the doors trying desperately to get into the building, but he was wearing his leather oxfords and slipping and sliding all over the place while the guns kept going off...

Ok, well, perhaps you had to be there. But seriously think about it. Freezing cold. The boss was flapping wildly around on the ice outside of the building...

Well, you get the idea.

Not good enough for the Olympics?

The lead article in this edition of Ontario Wine Review is Michael Pinkus expressing his deep disgust with the decision to make the "official" Vancouver Olympic wines from imported grapes:

This past fall (2008) it was quietly announced that Jackson-Triggs (Vincor) would be selling their "Esprit" Olympic wine in the newly created "Olympic retail stores" in British Columbia. This raised a red flag just last week, when a colleague of mine found the announcement during a routine web search. He wondered if the wines available in these stores (2 red / 2 white) were to be the VQA or Cellared in Canada Esprit wines. As many of you know back in May 2008 (Newsletter #82) I called Vincor out on the carpet for putting the inferior non-VQA wines into the official Olympic Esprit wines. My comments caused quite some controversy for Vincor and made them into "damage-control" (aka. spin mode). They told us that a VQA wine was indeed on the horizon, and published an explanation on their website as to why they went the non-VQA route. Let's focus on the question at hand: will the wines in the Official Olympic Stores be real Canadian VQA wines, will Vincor honor their pledge of providing 100% VQA wine during the Olympics and for all Olympic events? Additional fuel was added to this controversial fire as Vincor ramped up their advertising for this product. One such ad appeared on the back cover of the latest issue of the LCBO’s popular Food & Drink magazine, touting Esprit (non-VQA) as the Olympic wine.

[. . .] the Olympics is an event on the world stage and has the potential of putting Canadian wine onto that stage. People from all over the world will be coming to the Olympics and will get a chance to try our wines at events, buy it in stores and take it back to their homelands . . . Wouldn't it be shameful if they get home and realize they have a bottle of Cellared in Canada wine. The use of Cellared wine to promote a Canadian event is deplorable, though I am ready to tip my hat to Vincor if by 2010 the Cellared in Canada CRAP is off the shelves and 100% VQA is on the tables at Olympic events and on the shelves of British Columbia wine stores . . . Nothing less would satisfy this writer or any other lover and supporter of the Canadian wine industry. We are competing on the world stage during the Olympics, 100% VQA wine should be given that same opportunity when the world comes to our door. If the Chinese could do it in Beijing (100% Chinese made wine was served at their events), then lord knows we Canadians can do it too. Keep your eyes open, once again, Vincor I remind you, a nation is watching.

The Budget, cartoon format

As the Flea used to say, the Conservatives are really small-c conservatives. The "c" is getting smaller and smaller:

Click the cartoon to go to the Economist overview of the budget.

There's one minor tweak to make to the article: where it says "Jettisoning his party’s ideological commitment to small government", replace with "Ignoring even token lip service to small government".

QotD: The end of Canadian Conservatism

Say what you like about the Tories: they don't do things by halves. When they spend, they spend. When they go into debt, they do it $100-billion at a time. And when they decide to put an end to conservatism in Canada — as a philosophy, as a movement — they go out with a bang.

We can safely say that the strategy of incrementalism, at least, has been put to bed. With this historic budget, the Conservatives' already headlong retreat from principle has become a rout: a great final leap into the void. For there will be no going back from this, for the party or for the country. Whatever the budget's soothing talk of "temporary" this and "extraordinary" that, and for all its well-mannered charts showing spending obediently returning to its pen, deficits meekly subsiding, "investments" repaid in full, we are in fact headed somewhere we have never been before. We are on course towards a massive and permanent increase in the size and scope of government: record spending, sky-high borrowing, and — ultimately, inevitably — higher taxes. And all this before the first of the Baby Boomers have had a chance to retire, and cough up a lung.

Andrew Coyne, "Budget ‘09: Tories take a final leap into the void" Macleans, 2009-01-27

Today's Budget Speech

Finance Minster Jim Flaherty is speaking in the house at the moment, but the National Post has already posted the highlights:

The measures in the budget appear designed to both address pressing economic concerns and ensure the support of the Liberal opposition in the House of Commons. Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff has said he will announce on Wednesday his party's intentions.

Most of the tax relief will go to individuals and families, amounting to $20-billion in personal tax cuts over this and the coming five years.

It will include a 7.5% increase in the amount Canadians can earn before paying any tax and in the ceiling on the two lowest tax brackets. It also raises the amount that can be earned before child tax benefits are phased out, doubles the tax relief for low income workers who find work, and gives seniors an extra $150 in tax savings and reduces the amounts they must pull each year out of their retirement savings plans.

The spending stimulus, most of which was announced over the past week by a variety of ministers, includes $12-billion in investments in new and existing infrastructure across the country, and $7.8-billion to stimulate housing construction, including temporary renovation tax credits and more financial help for first-time homebuyers.

As well as tax cuts for individuals, the budget offers $8.3-billion for skills training, including extra support through a more generous employment insurance program for people who lose their jobs.

That last item is of some interest here . . . even though I'm still waiting to find out if I'll be entitled to benefits from EI. The Bloc has already announced they're voting against the budget . . . nice to see that they're consistent.

Update: More details on the tax reductions: they're not as dramatic as the headline rates would indicate (seriously, is anyone surprised by this?).

Update the second: Whaddaya know? The NDP don't like the budget either. NDP press release headline: "BUDGET FAILS TO PROTECT MOST VULNERABLE, CREATE AND SAFEGUARD JOBS". Given that governments aren't in the business of creating jobs, this is also not much of a surprise.

Damian's patrol experience, part 2

Damian "Babbling" Brooks records the next stage of the patrol he's tagging along with:

The Centre was bigger than I had imagined it to be. A big plot of mud, enclosed by a high concrete wall topped with razor-wire and cornered by guard towers, with two decent-sized buildings in the middle. One was an ANP building, and one was the administrative building for the local government. Both were enclosed by a shrapnel-pockmarked wall that had served to protect a much smaller compound before the new perimeter had been constructed. Short months ago, a suicide bomber had somehow made it past the ANP guarding the outer wall, and detonated near the inner gate. I was told that the blast shattered windows in the admin building. Looking up at the distance from the gate to the windows, I got a sense of just how powerful the explosion must have been. The self-immolating zealot/idiot didn't have nuts and bolts or ball-bearings or any such shrapnel-enhancing paraphernalia in his vest, but as you can see in the photos below, he still made quite the impression on the surrounding infrastructure.

A reminder: Damian is out-of-pocket for this trip, not being sponsored by a media organization. If you can afford to help out, please do hit the ChipIn tip jar at the site.

Damian joins a patrol to "Double K"

Damian "Babbling" Brooks posts about a patrol he was able to join, visiting a village with an unpronounceable name:

The format was reassuringly familiar, but with wall-sized maps on the table and walls, and a huge whiteboard filled with information, it was far more detailed than the Field Message Pad scrawlings I remembered, huddled around a red light on one knee. Of course, my memories were of a bunch of Officer Cadets training in the woods on exercise. This was The Real Fucking Thing, with experienced, hardened, professional soldiers who knew all too well the reality that they were headed into, so the plan was the best they could devise.

I found it a bit odd that the Sergeant was going to be leading a patrol with three Warrant Officers and a Major on it, but it was explained to me that Maj Vance White the PAffO was just there to babysit us journos (spit), WO Barry Bastow was CIMIC (Civil-Military Cooperation), and WO Eric Dagenais was SET (Specialist Engineering Team). It seems the third Warrant, WO Keith Dubé from the Force Protection Company (mostly from Golf Coy of 2RCR, but with a healthy sprinkling of reservists) was giving the Sergeant a leadership opportunity. That was quite the reminder for me of just how professional our military is: the CF never stops developing leaders, even in he middle of a war zone.

The mission had two main objectives. The first was to do a village assessment at Double K, a collection of mud walls and muddier fields whose unpronounceable name was, as you might expect, made up of two words that started with a K. While other forces may have entered the tiny hamlet before the CF arrived in Kandahar, this would be the first visit by Canadian troops. The second part of the mission would be to attend the weekly shura at Dand District Centre, a fortified administrative compound that served as the seat of government for the district. And then, of course, to get home in one piece — that's a given.

Damian, should you not remember, is my friend who is visiting Afghanistan (details reported here) on his own resources as an embedded blogger. If you can afford to help out with his expenses, please do hit the ChipIn jar . . .

Belated link to his first post from Kandahar:

I've got stacks of stuff to talk to you about. What I don't have is the time to write about it right now. I've resigned myself to the fact that I'll run out of time here long before I run out of stories to tell.

But one more thing I must mention before I sign off and hit the rack: I need to thank each and every one of you who have hit that "Chip In" button in the sidebar. I took a financial leap of faith taking this on, and your help is most appreciated.

Many Albertans finally get their wish

The Eastern bastards really did freeze in the dark:

Lights Slowly Coming Back On, But Thousands Still In The Dark Following Major Blackout

In the midst of a bitter cold snap, thousands of people in the city's west end remain without power.

The massive blackout started at about 10pm in a mainly residential area west of the downtown core after a broken water main flooded a power station.

The excess water had to be cleared out before workers could safety enter the power station and begin making the necessary fixes to help get the lights back on, however it could be 18 to 24 hours from the time the outage began before the lights come back on to affected customers, so potentially as late as 10pm Friday.

The affected area stretches from St. Clair Ave to Queen St. and from Spadina Ave. to Jane St. Residents have been advised to find shelter with friends or family if possible, or attend one of the city's reception centres to warm up. They include Metro Hall and the York Civic Centre.

As of about 7am lights started to come back on in some areas including Bloor St. east of Jane.

The situation is having a major impact on transit, as subway service currently isn't running between Keele and St. George stations, although TTC is working to get full power restored as quickly as possible. About 40 shuttle buses have been dispatched to carry passengers through the morning rush. Also, streetcars are not running along College St. between Lansdowne and Bathurst. Shuttle buses are running there as well. The TTC was bringing in generators to some subway stations including Christie to provide some power.

Ontario's over-zealous AGCO

John Ivison reports on his surreal experience as a witness before the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario:

In the D'Arcy's case, the prosecuting lawyer cited the Post article, in which I had described members of our band as being "moist and garrulous" , if not quite "tired and emotional", as an admission that we were all intoxicated — which is an offence under the Liquor License Act. I conceded that we were in high spirits but rejected the notion of intoxication, which according to the Ministry of Government Services' own server training program means the customer is speaking too loudly, slurring, sweating and losing balance.

"You had to repeat yourself several times, did you not?" the lawyer asked.

"Yes but that happens all the time. You might have noticed I have the hint of an accent," I replied, in my strongest west Scotland brogue.

By this time things had proceeded from farce, as the lawyer flailed away in her attempts to make me admit we were all full of loudmouth soup, or something more sinister.

"As regards the subject of your conversation, is it possible the conversation was of a sexual nature?" the lawyer asked.

"Excuse me," I replied, taken aback.

"Is it possible the conversation was of a sexual nature?"

"I have no idea."

"Is it possible?"

"I have no idea. Is this relevant?" I asked.

"Your job here is to answer the questions. I will do the asking," she said, curtly.

So there you have it. It seems that not only was a public servant sitting in the shadows studying us, he was also eavesdropping on our conversation, so that he could include its contents in a report that could become a public document once the board members pronounce on whether D'Arcy's was in breach of its licence.

[. . .]

Bad enough that a public employee, who is apparently unaccountable to the people, can temporarily close down a wealth-creating private business like D'Arcy's, which employs 75 people, on the extremely subjective basis that a couple of 40-something suits "appeared to be intoxicated". Much worse that government is encroaching on the rights of the individual to the extent that a supposedly private conversation becomes a matter of public record. The Ministry of Truth would have approved.

Latest deployment to Afghanistan

Congratulations to my friend Damian "Babbling" Brooks, who will be the first embedded blogger with the Canadian Forces in Afghanistan:

This has been in the works for awhile. Years, in fact. Memos went up the chain of command, and back down again. Never any luck. And then, just recently, approval.

I'm going to Afghanistan.

I can't say when, but it will be shortly. I can't say exactly where, nor how long I'll be gone for. DND is understandably picky about that sort of thing. But if the creek don't rise, I'll be posting from over there at some point in the fairly near future, so watch this space.

This is a first for a Canadian blogger. A fairly narrow first, but a first nonetheless: bloggers have served, but not really written about it; American bloggers have embedded with Canadian troops; Canadian bloggers have gone over unilaterally. But to the best of my knowledge, a Canadian blogger has never before been invited on a CF-sponsored visit.

He'll be out-of-pocket a few thousand dollars (he doesn't work for a media firm that might pick up his expenses), so if you can afford it, please make a donation to help defray his costs.

Al's gift to Toronto

Steve McIntyre pulls out the old story of how Al Gore saved Christmas for Toronto back in 2006, when it looked like snow was a thing of the past:

Nobody knew what do. Except for one little girl. (Hey, it's a story.) She wrote to a famous ju-ju man in the South asking him to come north and cast a magic spell and make the snow return.

The ju-ju man heard the plea of the little girl. He quickly decided that the situation was far worse than even the little girl thought. This needed his most powerful magic and, so in 2007, he visited Toronto not just once, not just twice but three times.

The magic worked! Soon Toronto was covered up in winter snow. The ju-ju man could only save part of the 2007 winter, but by 2008, his magic was in full force. Yesterday's snow made 2008 snowfall the highest since 1883, with a few days still on the clock.

And we owe it all to Al, the southern weather wizard!

H/T to Tom Kelley for the link.

QotD: Conservative promises

I'd say Harper is governing like a Liberal — except that, the last time they were in power, the Liberals eliminated the deficit. (Sorry, folks, but the truth hurts.)

Damian Penny, "Fiscal Conservatism, R.I.P.", Daimnation!, 2008-12-19

The 1% rule: a bad idea that still causes damage

Michael Pinkus laments the incredibly boneheaded decision back in 2005 that continues to taint the Ontario wine industry:

I still get e-mails about the one-percent rule, which continues to be one of the biggest sticking points for the Canadian wine buying public. I'm not sure how many times I'll have to go through this but here goes again: the 99-1 rule was a one shot deal for the 2005 vintage and affected only "Cellared in Canada" wine. The issue of confusion really hit home when a fellow wine writer asked me if it was still practiced . . . for God’s sake, if my esteemed colleague, who should be informed on this matter, is confused how do we expect the wine buying public to get it straight? This crazy policy was never clearly explained, it was announced and then died as a news topic — sure it was a farcical policy, but then nobody did any follow up for the public. I say again: it was never fully explained that the 99-1 rule only applied to "Cellared in Canada" wines (those that have always used a blend of foreign and domestic grapes) for that single vintage (2005) and this ruling had no effect on VQA wines — which are always 100% Ontario product, period the end. The easiest way to solve this problem would be to get rid of the Cellared wines altogether; however, as it was explained to me during a breakfast meeting with one of our larger wineries (when I got into big trouble during the Olympic wine scandal — see newsletter #82) — this will never happen: too much money is involved and deep pockets create the law — but then again am I telling you something you don't already know?

[. . .]

Yes the LCBO, whose middle name is "control"; and where VQA means nothing. I say this because they can't seem to organize their shelves between "Cellared in" and genuine "VQA" wines. The last time I brought this up, it prompted one of my readers to ask: "when did the "O" in LCBO change from "Ontario" to "only"?" I've been into many stores within the liquor monopoly where the VQA wines (those made from 100% Ontario grapes) are intermingling and fraternizing with the Cellared garbage. Sure we outlawed segregation, but here's an instance where that policy might actually be effective. I say separate these wines out entirely . . . real Ontario wines on one side of the store, cellared stuff goes all the way to the back corner . . . make it a walk of shame to be buying this stuff. Don't make it so accessible at the front of the store, with large displays and bright signage: there’s no pride in this wine, it's all about making cheap plonk. If you will allow me to come right out and say it: these are the bastard children of the Ontario wine industry, and they should be cast out of the system, not be allowed to carry the word Canada anywhere on the label — and there should be truth on the label stating the grapes' country of origin and percentage. Our grape growers struggle while our big wineries flourish by putting money into foreign countries, money that would best be spent here at home making quality VQA products.

Re-interpreting the national anthem

H/T to Rob Galbraith for the link.

Rae bows out

Michael Ignatieff's gambit (linked here) appears to have paid off:

Bob Rae told his supporters in a conference call Tuesday that he will end his bid for the Liberal leadership, CTV News has learned.

CTV's Ottawa Bureau Chief Robert Fife confirmed Tuesday that Rae will not challenge frontrunner Michael Ignatieff — virtually ensuring that Ignatieff will become Liberal leader.

"I put my support behind Michael Ignatieff," Rae told the small group of close supporters, according to notes obtained by Fife.

"I know many will be disappointed but our interests must be put aside."

Rae also said his "goal has been and will be democracy and not division."

It's been a real whirlwind tour of Canadian politics for the last two weeks, hasn't it? We're running out of shoes to drop . . . I hope.

Traditionally, it's been the Conservatives who've indulged in public squabbles, open rebellion, and active sabotage of party for personal gain. The Liberals, in contrast, have historically done a much better job of leashing, collaring, and herding their supporters. Now we wait to see how long the Conservatives can stick together without someone deciding it's time to seek promotion the fast way (by knifing the current leader).

Iggy makes his move

Michael Ignatieff took the gloves off on Sunday, according to this Globe and Mail report:

Toronto MP Michael Ignatieff launched a bulldozer charge at the federal Liberal leadership on Sunday, campaigning for the party's parliamentary caucus to elect him immediately as an interim replacement for Stéphane Dion.

Mr. Ignatieff's organizers said Sunday night they had the support of at least 55 of the party's 77 MPs, including Mr. Dion's most vocal supporter, suburban Toronto MP Bryon Wilfert, and MP Maurizio Bevilacqua, who chaired the 2006 leadership campaign of Mr. Ignatieff's major opponent, Bob Rae.

In addition, leadership contender Dominic LeBlanc flew to Toronto Sunday night to meet with Mr. Ignatieff. He is widely expected to drop his leadership bid and pledge support to Mr. Ignatieff on Monday, along with a group of Atlantic MPs and senators.

Of course, sometimes even the most stubborn man can read the writing on the wall.

The comments on the original article got quite interesting, as this example (of 750) shows:

Introverts Unite from Toronto, Canada writes: Here's the scenario the way I see it. The election ended. Dion doesn't believe he's lost and goes into seclusion. Seclusion means sitting on the phone hatching a plot with Jack and Gilles who also conveniently disappear or at least Jack does. They can't come to an agreement. Bob Rae finds out about it. Decides it's a quick ticket to jump past Iggy in the leadership race and unite the left. He calls papa Chretien and brother John, both officers in Power Corp to facilitate and Jack calls in Ed Broadbent. As Dion is Chretien's protege, he is quickly persuaded to agree to a power sharing with Layton with the understanding that Bobby will take over once the coalition has overthrown Harper. Bobby will become spokesperson for the coalition and it's ultimate success will knock Iggy out of the race. That way Power Corp retains the reins of the government and the Liberal Party, and Bob gets to be leader. Paul Desmarais (owner of Power Corp) puts the finger on Duceppe to not throw a wrench into the agreement. Harper meanwhile finds out about all of this and throws a fit in the form of the economic 'Plan' taking all their money away. The coalition can't back down now and does the formal signing and tries to throw mud at Harper to cover their backsides. Iggy is enraged but appears to try being a team player while not divulging his hand. Harper knows that his coalition is toast but still has to treat it as dangerous. Dion, meanwhile is not being the patsy and is trying to take control of the coalition. Dion bombs out. Rae is livid, so is Layton. Their dream of uniting the left is in tatters. Rae goes on a rampage vowing to bring down the Conservative government regardless of whether a good budget is presented or not. Iggy realizes that things are getting out of control with Bob about to launch into a trans Canada speaking tour to sell the coalition. The middle of the road Liberals decide to pull the plug on Bob and anoint Iggy.

So, if separatism is back on the table, why not?

In one short week, separatism moved from being something that we read about in history books to something big, noisy, smelly, and malevolently pulsating in the corner of the living room. It's probably not going to go back into the closet without a lot — and I mean a LOT — of money, attention, and wheedling.

In short, it's not going to be pretty. Or cheap.

It's actually worse than that: it may be breeding right at this very second. We may hear a sudden tearing sound as western Canada heads for the exit, and there's always a welcome audience on the rock for Newfoundland re-separation.

If we can briefly assume that the latter two separatist movements are not quite as ready to leave, how about the alternative?

Encourage, nay, demand that Quebec has another referendum. If it's even close to 50%, lets' go with the notion that no forseeable combination of cash, credit, appeasement, enticement, force, or favour is going to persuade Quebec to stay. So, we start from there: Quebec is leaving Canada. Is it a total divorce or a separation with some form of customs/currency union?

If Canada, as we've known it for the last 30 years, can't continue, what is the easiest way to transition to a more workable model?

Real AFV's learn from toy tanks

One of the biggest problems for soldiers riding inside armoured vehicles is that the quality of the ride is far from optimal: it's so physically tiring that two hours of riding can reduce the combat effectiveness of the troops dramatically. This is about to change:

Rattling along in the "washing-machine environment" of an armoured personnel-carrier (APC) on steel tracks can shake the soldiers inside to the point of exhaustion, according to Dan Goure, a military analyst at the Lexington Institute, a think-tank in Arlington, Virginia. And J.G. Brunbech, an APC expert at the Danish Army Material Command in Oksboel, observes that the crew's limbs are prone to becoming prickly and numb, and their hands get tired, because they must grip the vehicle's safety handles tightly. The vehicle itself suffers, too. The vibrations cause rapid wear and tear — not to mention outright damage, especially to electronics.

In the past, engineers have tried to reduce these vibrations by fixing rubber pads to the treads. The pads wear out quickly, however, and often get torn or even melted. But now tough, new rubbers have come to the rescue. Moreover, these rubbers are not being used just as pads. Instead, they are crafted into enormous rubber bands that replace the steel tracks completely. The Danes are converting their entire APC fleet to rubber tracks. This will increase the amount of time a soldier can safely spend on board from just one and a half hours to ten hours.

Details of how the new super-rubbers are made are still classified, but the results are not, and they are impressive. Rubber tracks weigh less than half as much as their steel counterparts. That, in turn, allows the weight of the suspension system to be reduced by 25%. All this can cut fuel consumption by as much as 30%, says TACOM, the American army's Tank-Automotive and Armaments Command.

There's also a Canadian tie-in:

As a result of all this, Soucy International of Drummondville, Quebec, one of the firms that makes the tracks, reports booming business. The armed forces of both Canada and Norway have converted almost all their APCs to tracks made by Soucy. Those of several other countries, including Britain, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore and Sweden, are following suit or are in the advanced stages of testing the tracks. France plans to start tests next year. And although America has not sent APCs with rubber tracks into action, they form part of Future Combat Systems, the Department of Defence's main modernisation programme.

At the moment, rubber tracks can support only vehicles weighing less than 20 tonnes. They are not strong enough for 50-tonne battle tanks. But this is changing. The MGV, for example, will weigh 30 tonnes, and Canada recently began a trial of rubber tracks on the Mobile Tactical Vehicle Light (MTVL), a 22-tonne APC. If the MTVL passes muster it will join Canada's rubber-tracked 20-tonne M113 APCs in Afghanistan. Soucy, meanwhile, is developing rubber tracks for full-sized tanks. Warfare, it seems, is about to get quieter.

Harper vs. Dion

Well, those were interesting — and contrasting — presentations. Prime Minister Stephen Harper's very short speech basically re-hashed what he and his ministers have been saying for the past week, with little or no new overtures to the opposition. The CBC talking heads read much significance on the use of "sovereigntist" in the French version and "separatist" in the English version, but otherwise were underwhelmed.

Coalition leader Stephane Dion's rebuttal was delayed for nearly half an hour in delivery, which made the CBC crew do what they could to fill the time, but there wasn't much new they could add. When Dion's tape was finally available to air, it was a remarkably amateurish affair, with the focus set just behind Dion, so that his face was slightly blurred, but the bookcase behind him was fairly clear. There were several minor fluffs that I would have expected to be edited out, but which were left in for the TV broadcast. It was a source of much amusement to us that one of the books visible behind him appeared to be titled "Hot Air".

Update, 4 December: CTV has the timeline:

• 6:15-6:30 - The Liberals miss their promised deadline to deliver Dion's statement to the television networks.
• 6:40 - Liberals arrive with a single tape at the press gallery in Ottawa. They were supposed to deliver two tapes: one in French, one in English. They arrived with a single tape in DVD-minicam format, which is not broadcast quality.
• Shortly after 6:40 - The Liberals decide to run back to their offices — a block away — because the French portion of the tape needs another edit.
• 7:05 - Liberal staffers are still in their offices as the networks go to air with the Harper address.
• 7:07 - Harper's statement finishes and network anchors are forced to kill time as they wait for Dion's address.
• 7:10 to 7:15 - Liberal staffers arrive back at the press gallery on Wellington Street with a DVD-minicam player that they had taken from their own offices, along with the associated cables. There is still only one tape, not two. A press gallery official tells the Liberals that the gallery is not the feed point and an argument ensues. The Liberals ask why they weren't told that earlier. The feed point is next door at the CBC building, which is the long-established feed play point for all network pools. The Liberals are informed that they need to be walked into the building by authorized staff.
• 7:20 - English network anchors are still live on television, wondering where the tape is. CTV has still had no communications from the Liberals about Dion's address.
• Approximately 7:15 - CBC receives the tape and begins dubbing into French and English versions. This takes about 10 minutes.
• 7:28 - CTV decides to go off-air and back to regular scheduled programming at 7:30. CTV has still not seen a feed of the tape.
• 7:28 - CBC incorrectly punches out the finished feed only to their network.
• 7:30 - CTV signs off broadcast at scheduled time.

Update from a few years back

Long-time readers (or those of you sampling the back-catalogue using Google) might remember a post from 2006 about a wrecked Halifax bomber that crashed in 1944:

"I'd love to be able to contact any surviving relatives of the remainder of the crew," said Paul Reilly (email: preilly@blueyonder.co.uk).

"All my efforts so far have drawn a blank other than finding Lorne's brother. It would be fantastic if any of the relatives in Canada, if traced, could be there for the dedication."

The Halifax aircraft, serial number DK185, crashed on Ilkley Moor, West Yorkshire, England, around 5:30 p.m. on Jan. 31, 1944.

I received an email from "Wreck Hunter" today, linking to this post at Peak Wreck Hunters:

This memorial to the Halifax crashed on Ilkley Moor was found with some assistance from Richard Allenby. We have therefore agreed to restrict the level of precision of our published coordinates.

Location:SE 092 468

Rogers needs money

My personal email is with Rogers, and I've been using the web interface for quite some time. This morning, I discover that the account I'm paying for now sprouts ads like some low-rent "free" email account. It's quite irritating. When I open the page, the right 1/4 is now occupied by ads, which allows me to click on a small triangle to hide the ad . . . but the next time I change to another message, it's right back in my face.

There's a helpful link added to the page, saying "Learn more about ads", which I was hoping would include a way to shut the damned things off permanently. No such luck. It opens a "help" page which includes the oh-so-useful information:

Advertisements in Rogers Yahoo! Mail

Recently, Rogers and Yahoo! jointly introduced advertising content to the Rogers Yahoo! Mail service.

More questions? Click this link.

The link? Goes to the self-service support page. Very helpful indeed.

Update: The little "hide ad" control is just small enough that it's easy to miss the control and click in the frickin' ad. This is getting old fast.

Update, the second: I've temporarily opened the comments on this post, as I've been getting email responding to the post that I'd like to include. (I just hope I remember to turn it off before the spam-comment-bots find it open.

Update, the third (16 November): You can reduce the sucktastic all-ads-in-your-face, all-the-time by switching back to what Rogers amusingly calls Mail Classic. Ads, but in a much less obtrusive, less aggravating way.

Of course, there's no guarantee that they won't pull Mail Classic without warning . . .

Chronic care waits in Canada

In no surprise to any Canadian who's needed to see a specialist in the last decade or so, Canadian waiting times are significantly longer than average:

Canadians with chronic illnesses wait longer to see medical specialists than counterparts in seven other developed countries, a new international survey suggests.

Only 40 per cent of Canadians with chronic illnesses who took part in the survey reported waiting less than four weeks to see a specialist. And 42 per cent said they had to wait more than two months - substantially longer than counterparts in the seven other countries.

The findings are part of the 2008 survey of the health-care experiences of the chronically ill compiled by the New York-based Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation focused on improving health-care delivery. The survey was published Thursday in the journal Health Affairs.

Canadians with chronic illnesses also reported higher rates of problems accessing same-day care.

Only 26 per cent said they could get a same-day appointment to see a doctor, putting Canada at the bottom of the heap with Americans when it came to same-day access to care. In contrast, 60 per cent of Dutch respondents and 54 per cent of New Zealanders said they could get same-day medical appointments.

Canadian respondents seemed to turn to hospital emergency departments to fill the care gap, with 23 per cent saying they visited an emergency room to get help for a problem that could have been treated by a family doctor if one were available. Only six per cent of German and Dutch respondents said they sought care from an emergency department that they could have received from a family doctor.

That last point is also unsurprising: new doctors in Canada disproportionally prefer to set up practice in large urban centres. Small towns (population less than 250,000) are significantly under-served. Lots of dentists, chiropractors, and other health professionals, just no MDs.

QotD: Canada's largest hate-mongering group

Who is Canada's largest "hate group", as measured by the number of anti-Semitic, anti-gay, anti-black and pro-Nazi comments published on the Internet?

As I've pointed out before, it's none other than the taxpayers' own Canadian Human Rights Commission.

It is official CHRC policy for their employees to join neo-Nazi groups, and go online in full neo-Nazi drag, spewing filthy venom that would make Joseph Goebbels proud. You can see a few examples here.

This, of course, is being done in the name of human rights.

It's also why the CHRC is currently under investigation by the RCMP and the Privacy Commissioner — because in one case, they actually hacked into a private citizen's Internet account to cover their tracks as they went out surfing as Nazis.

Ezra Levant, "Canada's free speech enemies to lay Remembrance Day wreath", National Post: Full Comment, 2008-11-10

Dissing "smart" growth

Frequent commenter (from back when I could allow comments) "Da Wife" sent along an interesting link on so-called smart growth:

Simply put, smart growth means an end to sprawling, car-oriented suburbia. In its place should rise transit-friendly communities where you can live, play and work.

The province's Places to Grow legislation has made it the new normal in the GTA and communities like Markham Centre are developing in response. But Mr. O'Toole is not impressed.

Q: Has the smart growth idea been around long enough to evaluate it?

A: Yes. California has been doing various versions since the 1970s, Hawaii since the 1960s . . . Are more people riding transit, riding rail because of higher densities? The answer is, no. One per cent of travel is by transit. Maybe 98 per cent is by car.

Has it has any effect on preservation of open space? Well, their urban growth boundaries are preserving marginal pasture land, but it's forcing people to drive 100 miles to build their homes on prime farmland.

It's also making housing very expensive. In Canada, the city that has done the most planning for smart growth is Vancouver, and it has the least affordable housing.

Q: But when you talk about housing prices in a city such as Vancouver, there's also geography and the economy; how high on the list does planning rank?

A: Number one. Seventy per cent of the Vancouver metropolitan area has been ruled off-limits to developers. There's plenty of room for growth if they allowed people to live in those areas. So people are having to accept housing they don't really want.

Most Canadians and Americans agree their preferred form of housing is a single-family home on a lot, where they can have a garden or place for their kids or pets to play.

Q: Is the model we've been living with, with a downtown, suburbs and bedroom communities, outdated?

A: It's definitely outdated. The part that's outdated is the downtown part.

In many metropolitan areas, more than two-thirds of the jobs are not in any kind of centre and that's because we have such good personal transportation, namely automobiles.

We have much a better distribution of jobs and that’s a remedy for congestion.

When we draw an urban boundary, we're saying we're going to deny people access to low cost land. I don't think government knows where people ought to live. I don't think government knows where jobs ought to be.

One of the attractions of "smart growth" policies is that it puts a lot of power in the hands of appointed planners, and keeps it out of the hands of those irresponsible property owners and developers. Bureaucrats almost always believe that they know better than individuals what is best for those individuals. This is the same thing on a larger scale: the government explicitly dictates what kind of land use is going to be allowed (to a finer degree of granularity than existing zoning rules), and there's little or no recourse for the people directly affected by the rules.

Remembering Vimy Ridge

Tim Cook describes the preparation and the actual battle of Vimy Ridge:

Vimy is often portrayed as an artillery battle, with the guns shredding the enemy defences as the infantry simply advanced to victory. The counter-battery fire was equally devastating: Of the 89 enemy guns, only 17 remained active at the end of April 9. The artillery shellfire was, without a doubt, essential in allowing the infantry to advance. Indeed, as William Antliff of the No. 9 Canadian Field Ambulance put it, "The boys can't praise our barrage too much and every inch of the ground is chewed up." One Canadian infantry staff officer even went so far as to write in his diary, "It is no wonder the Germans couldn't hold us, for our artillery work had been terrible, everything smashed to pieces. We had broken their hearts first and there was no fight left in them."

While this was true along parts of the front, and more than 4,000 prisoners were captured, the battle the Canadians faced at the sharp end was in most sectors nothing short of brutal, and there was a lot of fight left in the defenders. Though success could not have been achieved without the guns, the firepower did not translate to victory on its own. German troops survived the barrage in every sector of the front. It fell to the Canadian infantry to pin the enemy down with machine-gun fire, snipe him with rifles, tear him apart with grenades, and spear him with bayonets.

The Canadians' intense training and pre-battle preparation had paid dividends. Driver Cyril Brown, from Port Hope, Ont., felt that the prebattle training had so well prepared him for the front that he felt he knew every trench and crater he might encounter, as well as "a lot of rats by their first names".

Co-incidentally, I just finished reading the author's At the Sharp End, the first of two volumes on the Canadian Expeditionary Force (the Canadian Corps) on the Western Front in 1914-1918. Highly recommended . . . I'm looking forward to Shock Troops, the second volume.

"More like this, please"

Jon, my virtual landlord, sent me this link to Ghost of a Flea with the comment "More like this, please". I can only concur:

Socialists do not create wealth for themselves; they parasitize the wealth of others, primarily through confiscatory state bureaucracies. Therefore, to destroy the left, the next real conservative government has to do one thing (and one thing only): Stop paying the left to destroy civilization. Shut down the CBC's national television news, shut down funding to arts and social science departments at all publicly funded universities, shut down all fine arts funding, shut down all tax incentives to write or produce leftist propaganda in whatever medium and let all of the above fend for themselves in the marketplace.

Problem solved.

We can no more win this war so long as we continue to fund the other side through our taxes than we can expect to defeat the Islamic forever war against us even as we fund the jihadis every time we buy gasoline.

We're often told (almost always by folks directly or indirectly benefitting from government grants) that it is the government's responsibility to fund the arts, and that "we wouldn't have any culture" if the feds and the provinces turned off the taps. Even if we assume that they're right, and that nobody would ever act, paint, write, or sculpt without a stipend, can it really be proven that we'd be culturally weaker? How much subsidized art is actually aesthetically useful (even as a bad example)?

Also, Nick provides some useful post-election advice to the Tories:

Related note to Stephen Harper: Those arts grants cuts did not cost you any votes; at least not until you restored them in a bid to placate Quebec. Quebec was not — and cannot be — placated and you must know there is not a single publicly funded artist or arts functionary in the country who would vote "Conservative" under any circumstances. But you can alienate your base by kissing Quebec's ass and you can alienate your base by tacking so far to the centre we might as well vote Liberal Classic instead of your New Coke version of the same agenda. Do the right thing now, please.

QotD: Orwelling Orwell

It is not an accident these [George Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm] have disappeared down the memory hole. The Establishment has decided it is more important for you to feel empowered than for you to be empowered.

Nick Packwood, "An unbroken line", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-10-21

Planning an escape to Canada?

Brilliant, just brilliant.

H/T to Diogenes Borealis (by way of SDA).

The "hicks" came to town

Mark C., posting at Daimnation, points out that the common assumption about Tories being rural hicks and Liberals being urban slicks is less and less accurate:

The Conservatives won the most votes in:

Calgary
Edmonton
Hamilton
Kitchener
London
Niagara
Ottawa
Québec
Regina
Saskatoon
Vancouver (Yes, you read that correctly — 41.5% of the vote)
Victoria
Winnipeg

In those places the Conservatives also won 66 of 104 seats. Pretty decisive, what? Toronto and Montreal are the two elephantine anomalies in the urban electoral room. And even if one includes the seats in those two, truly "metro", oddities, the Conservatives still won 74 (8 in metro Toronto, 0 in Montreal) of 180.

Some knuckle-dragging, red-necked hicks, eh? But then I guess our major media, almost all in ToMo, just can be bothered to do the arithmetic, what with their certainty that only they live in the real word. The power of unexamined journalistic memes in Canada.

Canada now truly does seem to be quatres nations: The RoC, Québec, Toronto and Montreal. With this further nasty reality, that the Québécois really, really, do not think themselves Canadian in any real sense anymore.

Update: Mark was really on a roll yesterday, pointing out that the Tories actually hold a significant majority of the non-Quebec seats:

That majority is outside Quebec. In fact, a 33 seat advantage over other parties. The Conservatives won 133 out of 233 seats in the Rest of Canada, compared to 100 seats taken by others: Liberals 63, NDP 36, Independent 1 (subtract Quebec seats from national seats).

Moreover, in the RoC the Conservatives got a very respectable 44% of the vote (same process using popular vote figures).

The Afghan balance sheet

Damian "Babbling" Brooks has an excellent post up at The Torch:

Kudos to Mike Blanchfield for breaking the number down to a figure Canadian taxpayers could digest — what it means to them. I assume that since he started breaking it down, he won't mind if I take it a bit further...

$1,500 per household over a decade works out to $150 per household per year. Assuming three people per household, that's $50 per Canadian per year. That works out to about 13.7¢ per Canadian per day to run the Afghan mission.

Just to give you a bit of perspective, World Vision — certainly a noble-minded and worthwhile charity — asks for about ten times that daily amount to sponsor a single child.

Damian goes beyond the costs and tallies up some benefits:

• more than 1,500 wells dug, 600 roadway culverts built, and more than 3,000 kms of canals rehabilitated
• humanitarian food assistance to more than half a million Afghans in 2007 alone
• more than 530 Community Development Councils elected in 9 districts, which facilitated more than 700 community projects completed, including improvements to transportation, water supply and sanitation, irrigation, power supply, education, health, and agriculture
• maternal health care professionals being trained in emergency obstetric care and monitoring
• approximately 350,000 children being vaccinated against polio
• measles and tetanus vaccination program reached more than 76,000 children and 63,000 women
• non-food kits (teapots, soap, gas stoves, towels, buckets, kitchen sets, blankets, floor mats, sweaters and health kits) supplied to 1,500 families
• more than 30,000 Afghans received functional literacy training and more than 4,000 received vocational training throughthe World Food Programme in 2007 alone
• More than 5,000 people (the majority of them women) have received literacy training through UNICEF

...and that's just in Kandahar province, folks.

QotD: The crisis, in perspective

So. We are not in a depression. We are not even, so far as anyone knows, in a recession. And while the rest of the world's financial system dissolves in panic, Canada remains a notable island of stability. We do not have an emergency on our hands. What we have is a nasty downdraft in the stock market — one that is reflective of a deeper crisis, to be sure, but a crisis not of our making.

Is a 35% drop in the stock market (from its June peak) a crisis in itself? No it is not. The stock market does not owe you a living. It's down 35% from four months ago, but it was up 50% in the three years before that (see chart). The present "crisis" has taken prices on the TSE all the way back to where they were in the dark days of 2005 — when they had just finished climbing 50% in two years. Think back to that time. You were rich! You were happy! You were counting your money!

Maybe you should have sold then. But you didn't, because you wanted more. Now you're paying the price. You've given up three years of gains. But you're still up 50% from where you were five years ago. And, if you're sensible, you'll make up for not selling then by buying now. Those who were on the buy side on October 19, 1987 made a killing in the months that followed.

Not willing to risk it? Fine. Just sit tight. Worried about your retirement? If you're anywhere under 55, you'll be fine. You don't need the money for 10 or 15 years. Stocks will have more than recouped their losses by then (at a compound annual growth rate of 5%, you double your money every 14 years). If you're over 55 — what are you doing in the stock market?

Andrew Coyne, "The only thing they have to fear", Macleans.ca/blogs, 2008-10-08

Jon asks 680 News if they're also rooting for a depression

Jon (my virtual landlord) sent the following query to 680 News:

Just sent this to 680 News, the tossers:

Hello —

Just a quick question for you about your editorial position: your current headline notes that the TSX has seen a "slight rebound" after a 1200-point drop. That "slight rebound" is currently, as of 4:03 pm, 734 points. That's hardly slight.

Just wondering why you're being misleading on this by referring to a rebound of 700-plus points as "slight."

Certainly Rogers has to understand that once we hit recession or worse, it will be the cable and cell phone accounts that will be first against the wall in many household budgets. So why would you want to egg on economic disaster? I can see why the Toronto Star would want to cheer on a recession — more people will be sleeping on and under newspapers, so they stand to gain from increased sales. But I can't see why Rogers would be rooting for a collapse.

Just wondering.

Jonathan Piasecki

He says he'll update me if they respond.

IOC steals part of O Canada

Cory Doctorow reports that the IOC has trademarked a line from O Canada:

The International Olympic Committee has trademarked a line from the Canadian national anthem, "with glowing hearts," and is threatening to sue anyone who uses the line in Canada, as part of the Vancouver Games.

This is par for the course. The IOC is a corrupt, bullying, greedy, hypocritical organization that uses trademark laws to limit the free speech and commerce of people who have the misfortune to attend or live near the games — for example, in Athens, they forced people to take off or cover up t-shirts that had logos for companies that hadn't paid to sponsor the Olympics; and in Washington, they attacked decades-old businesses named after nearby Mount Olympia.

The Olympics cloak themselves in the rhetoric of international cooperation and development, but everything they touch turns to garbage: totalitarian surveillance camps where corporate greed rules all. The Canadian IOC ought to be disbanded over this — it's an affront to the entire nation.

If nothing else, it'll teach Canadians how to sing the words . . . which the CBC reports we can continue to sing without charge:

Despite the trademark placed on the lines, VANOC said it has no desire to own the phrases and VANOC's use of the mottoes in no way changes how the national anthem is used by Canadians.

VANOC would only challenge the commercial use of the mottoes if a business began using them to create a specific, unauthorized commercial association with the 2010 Winter Games, said the statement.

O Canada is over 100 years old and, according to the Department of Canadian Heritage, is in the public domain so may be used without permission from the government.

The committee is so serious about protecting the Olympic brand it managed to get a landmark piece of legislation passed in the House of Commons last year that made using certain phrases related to the Games a violation of law.

The list includes the number 2010 and the word "winter," phrases that normally couldn't be trademarked because they are so general.

So remember, fellow Canadians, we must now add trademark acknowledgements every time we use the word Winter™, the number 2010™, and the phrases With glowing hearts™ and Des plus brillants exploits™, or get our collective asses sued by VANOC.

Today's "blitheringly obvious" news item

Hands up anyone who didn't see this coming:

So many people were trying to sign up their phone numbers Tuesday on the first day of registration for the federal do-not-call list, the website crashed at one point and the phone lines were busy.

The popularity of the list, whose registration went live Tuesday just after midnight, was not unexpected.

The Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission has projected that of Canada's 27 million residential phone lines, which include cellphone numbers, 16 million would be on the do-not-call list within two years.

However, it's possible the CRTC didn't expect so many people to try to register in one day.

By 1:30 p.m. ET, more than 223,000 people had registered using the phone and internet, according to CRTC spokesperson Denis Carmel. Although the website went live at 12:01 a.m. Tuesday, it crashed eight or nine hours later.

Bumper stickers of the future

More here.

The Deschamps Doctrine

New horizons of human rights activism have been opened to exploration by the newly defined Deschamps Doctrine:

On Friday, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal (HRT) adjudicator [Pierre Deschamps] became the first jurist in recorded human history to convict someone of racial discrimination for praising visible minorities.

The "Deschamps Doctrine" was inspired by a certain Shiv Chopra, a disgruntled Health Canada microbiologist who spent the better part of his career haranguing colleagues with bitter accusations of ill-treatment. Friday's decision by Deschamps in the case of Chopra vs. Health Canada is only the latest in a mind-boggling stream of litigation that goes back almost two decades.

Activists, start your litigation!

"Bad move on my part" says Krugman

Radley Balko links to this highly entertaining little moment from an "Intelligence Squared US debate on state-provided healthcare:

PAUL KRUGMAN
And private insurance? That's the thing, I — Actually, can I just — I wanted to ask a question. And —

JOHN DONVAN [MODERATOR]
Please — please do —

PAUL KRUGMAN
— and I wanted to ask, actually two questions, to the audience. First, how many Canadians, would Canadians in the room please raise your hands. [ONE PERSON APPLAUDS, LAUGHTER]

JOHN DONVAN
We have about seven hands going up —

PAUL KRUGMAN
Okay, not as many as I thought. Okay, of those of you who are not on the panel who are Canadians, how many of you think you have a terrible health care system. [PAUSE] One, two —

JOHN DONVAN
We see — almost all of the same hands going up. [LAUGHTER]

PAUL KRUGMAN
Bad move on my part. [APPLAUSE]

A blast from the (distant) past

John Scalzi digs through the digital vault to come up with a post from ten years back, a tribute to Wiarton Willie:

To tell you the truth, the most disturbing thing is not that the groundhog died — certainly this animal earned his eternal rest — but that his handlers couldn't think of anything better to do but tell a festival crowd that he had croaked. Those kids in the crowd will be forever traumatized. Groundhog Day will no longer be a happy time, but a constant reminder of death and mortality in the bleak midwinter. 10 years from now, I expect that Wiarton, Canada will become the new North American epicenter of dark, gothic teenage poetry.

Lying frozen in the snow
The groundhog soul resides far below
Gone to a place of doom and gray
Now winter will always stay.
Die Groundhog Die!
Mommy and Daddy Lied!

But wait, there's more:

Now, on to the groundhog Wiarton Willie, who, as you know from yesterday’s entry, died before Groundhog Day and whose body was photographed lying in state in a dinky little pine coffin. Or was it? Now news comes from the sordid little burg of Wiarton, Canada, that the rodent corpse in the coffin was not Wiarton Willie at all, but a stuffed stand-in. The real Willie was apparently found so decomposed that the gelatinous remains were unsuitable for public display. So the town elders found a stuffed groundhog that just happened to be lying around (apparently the body of a previous "Wiarton Willie," who was no doubt poisoned by the current, and now rotting, Willie in an unseemly palace coup), plopped it into that Barbie coffin, and presented the remains to a horrified public. Here's the groundhog you’ve all been waiting for! And he's dead! Winter for the next ten years!

The people of Wiarton meant well, I'm sure. But I'm having serious doubts as to their combined mental capacity. First off, the real Willy was found in a state of advanced decomposition, which means he had been dead for weeks. Weeks. How could that happen? This rodent is the cornerstone of Wiarton's entire tourism economy for the month of February, and no one bothers to check on him from time to time? Did they just stick him in a cage after last Groundhog Day and then forget to feed him? Every kid in the world had a hamster they forgot to feed, but you’re usually, like, five at the time. These were actual adults. They say he was hibernating when he died. Sure he was. I used that excuse about the hamster.

The inevitable LCBO

Michael Pinkus doesn't mind telling us that he'd like to see the end of the LCBO:

Nobody dislikes the LCBO more than a wine writer, it's not being boastful, it's just a fact. I feel that those who shop only at the LiCk-BO and don't go to trade events are the lucky ones. They don't know what they are missing. They don't get to try some mouth-watering wines that make you covet them immediately. They know not of the insanely cheap prices our friends south of the border get, the discounts, mail in rebates, 3-for-$10 specials, or heaven forbid, a $2 bottle of wine. They'll never know that some of the wines you try at these events are only sold through an agent by the case, but many people don't buy by the case, they want 3 or 4 at the most. "Get in with a friend," you'll be told, "our hands are tied." And tied they are, by, you guessed it, the protective liquor board, saving our cities and towns from the wilds of alcohol.

It's those who travel outside the country that get the biggest shock of all. They find out that Mondavi makes a true Bordeaux blend called Vinetta, or that Rosenblum makes about 800 kinds of Zinfandel . . . and yet their Ontario agent can't get it, never heard of it or won't bring it in. If you try on your own, well you'll pay close to, if not more than, double what you paid for it outside the country, thus taking all the fun and value out of your little finds and giving you a headache bigger than if you drank the whole bottle yourself in half-an-hour on an empty stomach. Sure this system we have might work for a case of 2-Buck-Chuck, but "I-can't-believe-it's-only-12-bucks" a wine find gets close to $30 once you get it home where the LCBO puts its grubby little duties and taxes on it . . . then it just doesn't seem like such a deal anymore, does it?

Folks, the LCBO is here to stay, I don't like it, but something tells me we have to work with it. Trust me, there is nothing more that I would like to do than walk into Larry's Liquor-Licious or Bob's Booze Boutique and hunt around looking for his "deal of the day", buy 2-for-1 Lafite, or save 25% on white sticker items. But the boys and girls at the BO have us by the short and curlies, like an ex-lover who has a naked picture of you and decided the world must see it 'cuz you're running for public office.

I've written about this before.

Camouflage moves into the digital age

A useful introduction to modern military camouflage at The Economist:

Even the most common form of camouflage — the coloured patterns printed onto combat fatigues — is being given a high-tech twist, as designers work with new software that incorporates neuroscientists' understanding of human vision. Pattern-generation software analyses a large number of photographs of a given theatre of operations. By crunching meteorological data on typical lighting and visibility conditions, combined with information about the colours and predominance of shapes visible in cities, fields and wilderness areas, the software proposes new, improved patterns. "It really does get technical," says Réjean Duchesneau, a lieutenant-colonel with NATO in Casteau, Belgium, who helped design a Canadian camouflage pattern called CADPAT.

Some camouflage designers, including those at America's Army Research Laboratory, also study the reflective and light-absorbing properties of materials common to an area, such as sand, cement and foliage. As well as being used by the camouflage-generation software, this information is used to manufacture fabric inks with the desired optical properties. Similar software optimises colours and patterns for vehicles and aircraft. The ability to customise camouflage for particular theatres has increased the use of temporary camouflage, which is painted on hardware before missions and washed off afterwards.

For decades most fatigues, now referred to as battledress uniforms, incorporated wiggly patterns of solid colours known as tiger stripes. But research in the field of "clutter metrics" — the study of how well observers locate and identify objects — has recently discredited tiger stripes. With the help of eye-tracking devices that follow iris movements to determine where subjects are looking, researchers have determined that fabrics with small squares of colour, known as pixels, are harder to see. These new pixel patterns are now worn by many Western armies, including those of the United States, Britain, Canada, France and Germany. Canada has improved its camouflage so much in recent years that to spot soldiers in some conditions, observers must be 40% closer than they would have to have been in 2000.

<Old grognard mode>In my day, we didn't have no fancy printed camo . . . we used natural materials to camouflage ourselves and our equipment.</Old grognard mode> — and we've have been shot to pieces at long range by today's troops out of positions we probably had no chance of seeing before we were in their range . . . Actually, aside from the Canadian Airborne Regiment's jump smocks, the combat uniform of my day was just drab green, with no disruptive pattern at all (our helmet covers were in a camo pattern, and — of course — we had white winter shells).

". . . all we asked for was six."

From today's Globe and Mail, what may be the unofficial death knell of the NATO alliance. This is sad:

So, Canada has worked out a way to provide our troops with medium-lift helicopters in southern Afghanistan: a one-year lease for six Russian-made helicopters that will cover us until we can purchase six used Chinooks from the U.S government next year. Total cost? More than $300-million.

This simple but telling example is, in my mind, the final nail in NATO's coffin.

The Atlantic Alliance was a successful bulwark against the Soviet Union from 1949 until the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War, but in today's more complex world, it's time for it to "rest in peace."

There are more than 3,000 medium-lift helicopters sitting safely on the ground far, far away from Afghanistan, at airbases located in NATO's 26 member countries. Three thousand, and Canada is stuck with providing helicopter support, not just for its own troops, but for all the other national contingents in Region South.

Lewis Mackenzie is probably right: if all of NATO's military couldn't scare up half a dozen helicopters for use in a NATO operation, the alliance is not just dead, but the corpse is starting to rot.

There is no doubt the Canadian Forces need medium-lift helicopters for any number of tasks at home and abroad. However, the responsibility to provide them in a NATO operational theatre — the alliance's first — is not Canada's. It's time to check around to see who our real friends are. Three thousand helicopters in NATO — and all we asked for was six. Go figure.

One fireman confirmed dead in Toronto explosion and fire

A veteran Toronto fireman has died, although it's not clear yet what caused his death. No other reported casualties, fortunately, although an employee of the propane facility is still not accounted for. More details:

Although one person believed to be an employee of the propane plant was unaccounted for and a firefighter died after he was found near the scene without vital signs, officials said the city's residents "got off very lucky."

While the blaze continued to burn into the evening officials declared it "under control." The serious threat posed by propane and the possibility of further explosions saw a voluntary evacuation order upheld for the northwest Toronto neighbourhood that's home to some 12,500 people.

Taken first to a military base and then to York University, traumatized residents - some who fled in their pyjamas - faced an uncertain night waiting for the OK to return home.

One by one, witnesses recalled the booming noise and acrid charcoal smell of the blast at Sunrise Propane Industrial Gases that shook surrounding buildings shortly before 4 a.m. and was heard seven kilometres away.

"It was just a tremendous explosion and blew all the windows out of the house, just blew the house up, and I just managed to get out of there in time," said Robert Halman, who was covered in cuts and bruises as he fled his home.

I'm not sure how "voluntary" the "voluntary evacuation order" is . . . when my family was evacuated in 1979 during the Mississauga train derailment, there was no voluntary component.

QotD: That peculiar Canadian moral stance

During the Beijing opening ceremonies, Peter Mansbridge farted out an opinion to the effect that Western governments considering a boycott could hardly ignore a "quarter of humanity" but managed to leave the entrance of the Iraqi delegation totally unremarked. Canada is in the peculiar position of being able to say whatever it wants about its largest trading partner, say nothing that is not muttered from kowtowing position to its second largest parter and to do so while sporting a smug grimace in place of a smile. This as we celebrate "the Olympic spirit" and recapitulate every moral and strategic failure of the 1930s.

Not to worry; I expect Canada's future Prime Ministers will have no trouble finding another meaningless apology to offer the survivors.

Nick Packwood, "One World, One Dream", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-08-09

Fire and explosions at Toronto propane facility

The major east-west highway through Toronto is closed in both directions right now due to a fire and explosion which began around 4 am this morning:

Thousands of people have been evacuated and an entire section of the city's north end has been completely shut down as emergency officials continue to fight a major fire at a propane distributor in the Wilson Ave. and Keele St. area, caused by a series of explosions just before 4 a.m. this morning.

At this point, official say the number one concern for firefighters are two large rail tankers on the property. Each tanker has the capacity to carry 220,000 litres of propane gas. Officials do not believe they are full but have caught fire throughout the morning.

"The tanks are venting and we have to cool them with water to prevent them from potentially exploding," said Bob O’Hallarn, Toronto fire division commander.

The amazing thing is that (as of 10:00 this morning) there was only one injury reported — and that was just a sprained ankle!

Much more linked from Google maps:

More free advertising for Westboro Moonbat "Church"

It's a PR coup for the pathetic wankers who announced they'd be coming to Canada to protest at Tim McLean's funeral:

Canadian border guards have been told to bar a fanatic church group that was planning to protest the funeral of a man beheaded on a Greyhound bus, reports say.

NDP MP Pat Martin told the Winnipeg Free Press that Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day sent the alert to border guards Thursday.

We should have let them in, and given them no media coverage at all. Instead, we're giving them exactly what they wanted, and we're giving them plenty of air time to push their noxious views. Brilliant move.

The Phelps family carries on a long, long history of moronic hatred

Victor sent me this link with a comment that "Take a look. If it has you boiling with rage too, I think you'll see my point."

The daughter of the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church, based in Topeka, Ka., told CTV.ca she and several other church members will go to Winnipeg on Saturday to demonstrate against what she described as McLean's "filthy way of life." Shirley Phelps-Roper said his life was emblematic of Canada's moral decay.

"God handed us a gift," Phelps-Roper said in a phone interview on Thursday.

She said McLean deserved his death by beheading on a Greyhound Bus last week.

"(His death was) supremely unemotional. You got God shaking in rage. There is no emotional component . . . He was a rebel against God. He was taught to be a rebel by his parents. He came from a rebel country . . . They brought this wrath upon his head. And it sucks to be him and it sucks to be them," Phelps-Roper said.

She said his brutal murder was a sign from God.

Ms. Phelps-Roper is, as they say on Fark, an attention whore. The media loves having her and her ilk around, because they can always make an otherwise unexceptional event highly newsworthy. She not only knows almost nothing about the case, she's actually boasting about knowing nothing. In her view, Tim McLean's horrible death is proof that God meant him to die.

In this instance, her band of merry morons don't even need to show up: they've got media attention paid to them and their "cause". It would play right into her hands to try to block her from entering Canada, as that would allow her more opportunities for media attention.

It would be best if the media could manage to somehow ignore her and her "church". Without the TV and print coverage, she'd be just another unhappy, paranoid whackjob with obsessions. With the media as a partner, she's able to increase the world's already bountiful supply of misery and anger. Nice work, guys.

Whole thing here.

"Rush" in their early Randroid phase

Original link from Wired:

Stripped of the band's usual banks of synths, amps, peripherals and extracurricular percussion, Rush simply rocked back in the 1970s. And while there is much to be said for technology, and the way it has changed the group's music, it was refreshing to watch them tear the heart out of "Anthem" without the use of anything other than bass, guitar, drums and pure energy. I haven't been able to stop watching that video, more than a week later. It's a bracing reminder of how pure riffage can get when there's little put in its way.

Which made me think: Which Rush rules the most? Is it the stripped-down outfit that avoided synths and turned out brain-teasing grinders like Fly By Night and 2112? The keyboard-laden prog-rockers that made Moving Pictures, Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows? Or the back-to-basics revisionists that turned out Counterparts and Test For Echo? Or is it a moot point, given the band's productive continuum?

J.J. Hill, Rail Robber Baron

There's a good biography of Canadian rail magnate J.J. Hill over at Gods of the Copybook Headings:

Neil Reynolds at the Globe recounts the legend of James Jerome Hill (1838-1916), the Canadian who built an American transcontinental railroad, without government subsidies.

[. . .]

Hill also played a key role, until Sir John A Macdonald and his business allies at the Bank of Montreal muscled him out, in the early history of the CPR. He pushed for the appointment of Van Horne as General Manager of the CPR and argued, correctly, that the road's route was economic nonsense. For political reasons the transcontinental route was built through northern Ontario - this long before any significant natural resources had been discovered in the region. The more commercially viable route would have taken the road through Chicago and St Paul, thereby picking up traffic for the Pacific ports of Seattle and Vancouver. Eventually the CPR was forced to purchase the SOO Line to tap into the Chicago and St Paul markets.

Of course, the route taken by the Canadian Pacific had to be within Canada . . . the political realities of the day didn't allow mere economic facts to get in the way. Mistrust of the American government was nearly as bad then as it has been for the last 20 years (I kid, I kid).

Rogers claims that iPhone sales in Canada still going strongly

The only Canadian distributor for Apple's iPhone says that they're still selling very well:

Sales of the iPhone in Canada are still outpacing supply, but the device's exclusive carrier Rogers Wireless (TMX:RCI.B) says it's getting weekly shipments from manufacturer Apple Inc. to help meet the demand.

The much-hyped iPhone went on sale across the country July 11 amid hoopla and buzz similar to the launch of a sought-after video game. Hundreds of Canadians lined up to buy the iPhone at Rogers stores across the country — albeit a year after the device was available to U.S. consumers.

What consumers waited hours for is a next-generation version of the smartphone that lets users surf the Internet and check their email with the added bonus that it works just like an iPod, storing and playing music and video.

"Sales continue to exceed supply and we continue to receive weekly incoming shipments from Apple thanks to pre-ordered inventory," Rogers Wireless spokeswoman Odette Coleman said Wednesday.

There's only one person in my immediate circle who's flaunting a JesusPhone around, but several have mentioned they're considering getting one. I'm still thinking about it myself, for that matter. We'll all be keeping an eye on the end of August, as that is when Rogers' temporary data plan price break ends ($30 per month for up to 6Gb).

A cross-party defence caucus?

J.L. Granatstein calls for a new approach to parliament's consideration of Canadian defence policies:

Another way to improve traffic on the intersection between politics and the military is to have more MPs acquire the expertise they need to comment intelligently on defence.

To be blunt, the NDP's defence critic, Dawn Black, and the Liberal's former critic, Denis Coderre, wouldn't know an entrenching tool from a LAV III. Such ignorance helps no one and no party.

But what if there were an informal "defence caucus" that brought together Members from all parties on a regular basis to hear from knowledgeable military figures, scholars, and industrialists?

The Bloc's Claude Bachand from Saint-Jean knows his stuff; so too do the NDP's Bill Blaikie from Manitoba, unfortunately not running again, and Peter Stoffer from Nova Scotia. Add in Senators Colin Kenny and Hugh Segal and MPs from ridings with large military bases or major defence industries, and it would be possible over time to create a group of knowledgeable parliamentarians who could improve defence expertise in the House of Commons and Senate in a fashion that can benefit all Canadians and the Canadian Forces.

Given that the Canadian Forces are a significant part of the government's budget, they seem to get little understanding and less consideration from MPs than just about any other area of government. This idea might help to improve the situation for parliament and for the CF. It's certainly better than what we have now.

H/T to The Torch.

The Economist profiles General Rick Hillier

An unexpected combination of publication and choice of subject, here. Canada barely ever registers on The Economist's radar, and the selection of Canada's former Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) is highly unusual in and of itself:

"We are not the public service of Canada," General Rick Hillier once told journalists. "We are the Canadian Forces and our job is to be able to kill people." Such a robust view of military power was unusual when General Hillier was appointed chief of the defence staff. In the three years he spent in the post before stepping down earlier this month, he almost succeeded in making it mainstream.

Canadians have often seemed more comfortable with an army that puts up tents and dishes out aid than with one that actually shoots people. The reasons for this are partly historical: the Liberal Party, which ruled Canada for most of the second half of the 20th century, drew much of its support from Quebec, where a dislike of military adventures dates back to the days of the British empire. Defence spending was frozen in the 1970s and 1980s, and then cut back in the 1990s.

Bucking this history, Canada announced in 2005 that it would assume NATO responsibility for providing security in Afghanistan’s Kandahar province and sent 2,000 soldiers to do the job. The task of selling the deployment of these troops fell to the plain-speaking general. The Taliban and Osama bin Laden were, he explained, "detestable murderers and scumbags" who should be hunted down.

General Hillier was an extremely effective communicator, and in a most unusual way (for a Canadian soldier): he talked like a soldier. Most of his predecessors had absorbed the language of bureaucracy by the time they were appointed as the CDS, and their public statements were (literally) indistinguishable from those of civil servants — woolly, non-commital, bland, boring. Hillier was so obviously not cut from the same cloth as the bureaucrats and politicians that it was a source of constant surprise that he was appointed at all, and then that he was able to not only stay in the job, but that he put on such a bang-up performance.

It's hard not to say that he was the first "rock star" Canadian general. He'll be a very difficult act to follow.

Gimli Glider 25th anniversary

Tomorrow is the 25th anniversary of one of the stranger episodes in Canadian flight history, the "Gimli Glider":

Air Canada Flight 143, with 61 passengers and eight crew members, was headed from Montreal to Edmonton.

Due to a miscalculation of the recently adopted metric system, the Boeing 767 ran out of fuel 12 km from the Ontario-Manitoba border at an altitude of 41,000 feet.

Plummeting fast with no engine power and no chance of making the Winnipeg airport, Captain Robert Pearson and First Officer Maurice Quintal made the decision to turn the plane into a giant glider and landed it at an abandoned air force strip at Gimli, Man.

No one was hurt except for some minor scrapes from exiting the plane.

Fan fiction . . . possibly not legal under Canadian law

John Scalzi links to a discussion of fan fiction under Canadian law:

For all you fanficcers out there, an interesting take on fan fiction from the Canadian legal perspective, i.e., whether fan fic would be legal in Canada if it ever went to court there. The author suspects not and notes that in Canada (and much of the rest of the world outside the US) there's an additional layer of complication in that the author is assumed to have a "moral right" to a work which includes some strictures on how the work (and the characters within) is to be used. There is no moral right issue in US law, of course, because we in the US don't have morals. Or something.

Ah, but just what is "fan fiction" I pretend to hear you ask? Here's a good answer (from the LRC article):

This is fan fiction, and it's all over the web, at sites such as http://www.fanfiction.net, and http://www.sugarquill.com. Though its roots are in the science fiction book world, the phenomenon really took off with the TV series Star Trek. By the series' second season in 1967, fans were writing their own episodes and sharing them with like-minded friends. Drawing on Star Trek characters and settings — referred to as the canon — they placed the characters in narratives not contemplated by the show's writers, very often with subversive results. Most famously, these early fan writers perceived a repressed sexual passion between Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk and began writing stories exploring this relationship. Thus was started a roaring sub-culture of fan writing, largely by women and for women, about homoerotic relations between ostensibly heterosexual male characters. Stories of such relationships — known as slash from the "/" used to connote a pairing (such as Harry Potter/Severus Snape) — continue to make up a major proportion of fan fiction.

Social scientist Camille Bacon-Smith, in her book Enterprising Women, identifies a number of sub-genres beyond slash which give a good sense of fan fiction's diversity. Sub-genres include mpreg (where a man gets pregnant), deathfic (where a major character dies), curtainfic (where the characters, typically a gay male pairing, go domestic and engage in such comfortably bourgeois exercises as shopping for curtains together), and AU (alternative universe, where the characters are displaced into an entirely new fantasy setting). Sexually explicit sub-genres — often tagged as 'kink' or 'with plumbing' — include PWP (porn without plot or 'Plot? What plot?') and BDSM (bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism). And universally deplored as the worst cliché in the genre is the Mary Sue story, in which the fan writer writes her thinly-veiled self into the plot. 'Infinite diversity in infinite combinations' is fandom's abiding motto.

Should you feel the need to read some bad fan fiction — of which there is an incredibly large and possibly endless supply — you can cut right to the chase by visiting http://www.godawful.net/, who claim they've "scoured the 'net since 1998 to bring you the foulest fan fiction available and we like to think that we're responsible for many a dry heave and sleepless night, but the truth of the matter is, we just showcase these abominations. We'd like to take this opportunity to thank those deluded souls actually writing Godawful Fan Fiction, without whom this site would never have been possible. Or necessary."

QotD: Buh-bye!

American army deserter Robin Long could be headed home as early as today after his bid to delay his deportation order was rejected yesterday by [. . .] Canada's Federal Court. In her ruling, Justice Anne Mactavish said Mr. Long did not provide clear and convincing evidence that he will suffer irreparable harm if he is deported. Mr. Long, 25, is the first of an estimated 200 American army deserters who have sought refuge in Canada to be deported. Bob Ages, chairman of the Vancouver chapter of War Resisters Support Campaign, said he fears the decision will set a new precedent. Mr. Ages said he suspects the deportation is in reaction to his group's recent successes — last week, Canadian courts granted deserter Corey Glass a stay of removal and, in a separate case, ordered the Immigration and Refugee Board to reconsider the failed refugee claim of Joshua Key. Mr. Long, who had been living in Nelson, B.C., since moving from Ontario, needed the Federal Court to grant a stay of his deportation order in order to have his appeal heard.

Uncredited report in the The Ottawa Citizen, 2008-07-15

Rogers blinks

Colour me astounded: Rogers is offering a better deal:

Rogers Communications Inc. has thrown a bone to potential iPhone customers by offering a limited-time promotional data rate plan that should silence complaints about Canadian pricing for the eagerly-anticipated device.

The wireless giant said today it would give iPhone subscribers who sign up before Aug. 31 the option of purchasing a 6-gigabyte data plan for $30 per month in addition to any voice plan.

While that still doesn’t match the unlimited data plans offered in the United States by AT&T Inc., the promotion offers significantly better value than the rate plans Rogers unveiled earlier this month.

Under that pricing model, the cheapest plan offered just 400 megabytes of data, 150 minutes of weekday talk time and unlimited evenings and weekends for $60 per month plus fees and taxes.

Interestingly, $60 per month was about as much as I'd be willing to pay.

So, I take back some of my pessimism that the public outcry from potential Rogers iPhone customers wouldn't force the company to make any change to their offerings. It's still not as good a deal as many other countries' iPhone offerings, but it's much better than the original offer.

H/T to Jon for the link.

Steve Jobs reportedly "disgusted" with Canadian partners for iPhone 3G

According to The Register's Cade Metz, Apple's Steve Jobs isn't too happy with the deal they've struck with Rogers — unhappy enough to prevent Apple's own stores in Canada from selling the iPhone 3G:

On Friday, the 3G Jesus Phone makes its debut in 22 countries across the globe, including Canada. But you can't buy one from a Canadian Apple Store.

"[The 3G iPhone] will not be sold in [Canadian] Apple retail stores, but we will have the product to demo, and all our specialists will be trained on the 3G iPhone as well," is the word from an Apple automaton at the Eaton Centre Apple Store in Toronto.

According to AppleInsider, Steve Jobs has barred 3G iPhone sales from Canada's six Apple Stores because he's "disgusted" with the service plans laid down by cell provider Rogers Wireless. Rogers' monthly service plans for the reborn Jesus Phone start at $60 Canadian a month for just 150 calling minutes, 75 outgoing text messages, and 400 megabytes of net data. And each requires a three-year commitment.

Jobs is loath to sell these plans, so he's forcing Rogers and partner Fido to sell them on their own.

Interesting indeed, if true. Also "3G Jesus Phone" . . . heh!

iPhone Watch: D minus 2

Wired is first out of the gates with a look at the iPhone operating system:

I can't tell you how we got ahold of a first-generation iPhone loaded with version 2.0 of the iPhone operating system. What I can tell you is that if I do reveal this information, homicidal ninjas will come to my house and kill my family. Nevertheless, we do have one — and we were able to take a look inside and find a few minute yet interesting changes. Here's a preview of some of the ways in which iPhone 2.0 differs from iPhone 1.0.

iPhone 2.0, of course, is the operating system that will come preinstalled on iPhone 3G models when those start shipping on Friday, July 11. iPhone 2.0 will also be available as a free software upgrade to people who have first-generation iPhones.

[. . .]

Contacts Search
The Contacts application now features a long-awaited search function. No more scrolling through endless menus: You can just type the first few letters of a name and the list narrows down to matching entries as you enter each letter. The search applies to fields that aren't visible, too, so you can search on company names, for instance.

Here, we entered the search term "Wired" and Chris Anderson, the magazine's editor in chief, popped up in the search results. Amy Winehouse popped up when we typed in "trainwreck."

The nutbars are apparently also iPhone 3G fans:

iPhones and sustainable agriculture don't have a lot in common, but a bedraggled group of publicity-seekers and iPhone enthusiasts who want the next U.S. president to plant an organic farm on the White House lawn have connected the two as a reason to line up for Friday's iPhone 3G launch.

Led by a fresh-faced sprite called Daniel Bowman Simon — who looks more likely to be driving his father's SUV than getting his hands dirty hoeing a row of seeds — Waiting for Apples' mission is to encourage people to grow their own food while setting a Guinness World Record for the most time spent waiting in line to buy something.

The group also wants to promote The White House Organic Farm Project, which is taking names for a petition to inspire the next president to plant an organic farm at the White House, the official residence of the U.S. president.

A few members of Waiting for Apples have been camped out in front of New York City's flagship Apple Store on Fifth Avenue since Friday morning, fortified by stacks of organic produce that a friend is delivering to them via bicycle from the Union Square Greenmarket.

An uncharitable person (like, well, me) might say something like "These folks probably don't bathe regularly anyway, so a week of camping out isn't likely to make them smell any worse than they normally would."

And no iPhone round-up would be complete without at least one of my fellow Canadian malcontents whining on about how Rogers is overcharging for iPhone service:

I'm Canadian and proud of it. Despite the fact that Macworld operates out of San Francisco, I still live in Halifax, Nova Scotia with my wife, two kids and our dog. It's a wonderful place to live and bring up a family. However, not everything is peachy up here, north of the border.

Specifically, for the past couple of weeks, I've had an uneasy feeling--the kind of feeling you get when you are walking in a strange city late at night and you notice a gang of thugs behind you. The difference is, these thugs wear suits and work for Rogers. Don't let the suits fool you, they are trying to rob me blind.

I'm referring, of course, to the iPhone plans announced by Rogers Wireless, which is Apple's iPhone partner here in Canada. The plans (all priced in Canadian dollars) are $60 a month for 150 weekday minutes, 400MB of data, and 75 text messages; $75 for 300 weekday minutes, 750MB of data, and 100 text messages; $100 for 600 weekday minutes, 1GB of data, and 200 text messages; and $115 for 800 weekday minutes, 2GB of data, and 300 text messages. Each plan also includes unlimited evening and weekend minutes (9 p.m. to 7 a.m.), visual voicemail, and access to Rogers Wireless and Fido Hotspots. Sending additional text messages will cost 15 cents per message, and additional data is billed at a rate of 50 cents per megabyte for the first 60MB, and then an additional 3 cents per megabyte. The price for extra weekday minutes varies depending on the plan, ranging from 35 cents to 15 cents.

No word on whether Rogers also wants one of my kids and an extra limb or two as well.

Parenthetically, RuinediPhone.com is up to 54 thousand petitioners who may well be upset but a significant proportion of whom are likely to be lined up outside a Rogers outlet at 10 am on Friday morning. I almost wish Rogers was evil enough to note who'd signed and then refuse to sell 'em an iPhone on Friday morning . . .

To restate: Rogers is a corporate entity. Corporations exist to make money. The only way Rogers will be prompted to change their current iPhone offerings is if it becomes clear that their current plans will not yield as much profit as a revised plan. The only way this might happen is if enough people choose not to purchase an iPhone 3G when they become available on Friday. Signatures on a petition are just a moral gesture . . . not an economic one.

Of course, it would help in so many other ways if the Canadian wireless market wasn't a duopoly of Rogers and Bell . . .

Canadians now wealthier than Americans?

In an astonishing economic turnaround, Canadians appear to have overtaken Americans in terms of individual wealth, according to Macleans:

How did this happen? Canada often comes out ahead when you look at squishy things like quality of life. But since when were we richer? Mintz credits the rising loonie, the boom in commodities, and better public policy. He says that over the past decade productivity growth in the U.S. has slowed, while we've been hacking away at our government debt and lowering taxes. In short, as a nation, we've been doing everything right, while the U.S. has been doing everything wrong.

When you look at how individual Canadian and American families make and spend their money, it gets even more interesting. The numbers show that our median household incomes are about the same, or at least they were back in 2005 when the most recent figures came out. That year the median household income in Canada was about US$44,300, after you adjust it for the exchange rate and our lower purchasing power, while the American median was US$46,300. Since then, the loonie has gained on the U.S. dollar, so we've likely narrowed the gap. But while our incomes may be similar to American incomes, we're still much wealthier because we have less debt. What you make isn't a good measure of how rich you are — to figure out your true wealth you should add up everything you have and subtract what you owe. And Americans owe more. A lot more. Here in Canada the average amount of personal debt per person is US$23,460. In the U.S. it's a whopping US$40,250. And all those numbers are from 2005, just before their housing market slipped into a sinkhole. If you looked at the numbers now, you'd find that Americans are even further behind, because their largest asset — their home — is worth less. "There has been a lot of destruction of wealth in the U.S. over the past few years," says Mintz, "and that would affect the net worth figures significantly. I would suspect that they would be even worse off today."

This is a very interesting article, although it does reinforce a few smug Canuck notions, it's surprising how different the average statistical American is from the average statistical Canadian. (Note the careful deployment of the word "statistical" in that statement.) Certainly some of the differences between Canadian and American attitude to debt can be traced to the differences in tax policies: Americans can deduct mortgage interest, while Canadians don't have that incentive. That alone would encourage people to take on a larger mortgage debtload, and with the housing market currently wobbling and the employment picture dimming, there are going to be more people discovering that they can't service those larger debtloads.

That being said, we're still disproportionally dependent on the overall health of the US economy . . . if recent anaemic economic numbers continue or worsen, Canada will still suffer as our largest trading partner does. In economic terms, no North American country is an island, and we're all much more vulnerable to economic downturns in the US economy than we used to be.

H/T to Craig Nodwell for the link.

Come to Canada . . . and freeze your butt off!

Philip Delves Broughton glances across the Atlantic to Canada — and sneers:

Despite banging its own drum for decades, calling on the world to gather on its shores, Canada still looks like one of those poor young girls at a trade show, thrusting flyers at disinterested passers-by.

It is the big, earnest, empty restaurant which can't understand why the scrappier joint next door is hopping. People just do not want to go.

[. . .]

Culturally, Canada does not hold a candle to Britain. Its museums and orchestras are resoundingly second tier, though it may have an edge in country music festivals.

This is, after all, the home of Shania Twain, whose full-throated warblings make Dolly Parton sound sophisticated.

In the dramatic arts, Canada's greatest recent contribution - unless you include Jim Carrey and Pamela Anderson — is the incomprehensible, semi-nude contortion act of Cirque du Soleil. And as for its newspapers, they are lifeless and hobbled by the provincialism which divides the country.

[. . .]

Sure, Canada has been through a food revolution similar to Britain's, but still the way to a Canadian's heart is not through fancy Newfoundland oysters, but with 'poutine' — chips smothered with cheese curds and gravy. It makes a chip butty look like the healthy option.

[. . .]

Ah yes, hockey. If you thought British sport was becoming crude and violent, try watching two teams of toothless brutes sliding around on ice and pausing every few minutes to beat the daylights out of each other. It makes the Premiership look like synchronised swimming.

However bad Britain may seem, trust me, moving to Canada is not the answer. Why not try somewhere more appealing. Siberia, for example.

"It's a fair cop, guv."

It's easy to understand why civilized, educated people would not want to come out to the colonies. Why, the servant problem alone is enough to drive you mad! And the weather is terrible, unlike the perfect weather we have at home. And worse, you're likely at any moment to be overrun by Cousin Jonathan and his fascist hordes. Better stay at home, where the loving eyes of the surveillance cameras can keep a better eye on you.

Happy Canada Day

It's the 141st edition. In previous years, July 1st, 2004 was another day after a lost soccer game, July 1st, 2005 was a break from overtime, July 1st, 2006 was a remembrance of the First Day of the Somme, and July 1st, 2007 was when I finally flew the Red Ensign.

Online protest against Rogers iPhone rates

I doubt it'll do much to influence the decision-makers at Rogers, but there is an online petition being put together against the high rates for Canadian iPhone users:

A Canadian online petition has been launched to protest the rate plans offered by Rogers Communications Inc. (TSX:RCI.B) and its Fido subsidiary for Apple's iPhone when it goes on sale next week.

On Friday, Rogers and Fido released the pricing for iPhone calling plans, listing them as starting at $60 a month and requiring three-year contracts.

Nearly 22,000 had signed the online petition posted on the website RuinediPhone.com by 7 p.m. on Monday.

Oddly, when I tried to visit that site this morning, I got a 403 error. According to a post at the group page on Facebook, Rogers has blocked access to the site for Rogers customers, and they're recommending using a proxy to get access instead.

Elizabeth sent me this link to a Financial Post story:

The petition, found on the Web site ruinediphone.com, was launched shortly after Rogers unveiled its pricing scheme last Friday for the iPhone, scheduled for sale in Canada July 11.

The Web site, titled "Screwing Canadian iPhone consumers since ‘08", also includes an open letter to Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Signed by James Hallen, the letter calls on Mr. Jobs to intervene and pressure Rogers into cheapening up their iPhone rates.

"I was going to buy an iPhone for me, my girlfriend and my family. Now, sadly, I cannot afford the plan," writes Mr. Hallen. "I hope you can do something Steve; we are loyal customers and trust that you will. We don't want to lose faith in Apple."

While I'd like to think that this online effort would have some effect, the only real way Rogers will be forced to reconsider their pricing model is if potential buyers stay away in droves on July 11th. Lower-than-expected sales would be a strong indication to Rogers that they've overpriced the iPhone.

I don't expect that to happen: there are too many people eager to get their hands on an iPhone . . .

A pro-free-speech decision by the Supreme Court of Canada

Ezra Levant has the details:

Today's decision by the Supreme Court of Canada about defamation law has shifted the balance from plaintiffs to defendants — in other words, towards greater free speech. The court calls it a modernization, which it is — phenomena like talk radio shows, partisan TV panels and the Internet were not around when defamation law was developing (it actually goes back 400 years). It also brings us more in synch with the U.S. approach to free speech, and breaks away from the European model of soft censorship.

In other words, it should terrify Canada's human rights commissions. I had no doubt before this decision that Canada's HRCs were conducting themselves in an unconstitutional manner — exceeding the narrow censorship powers granted to them in the 1990 Taylor decision. Now it's a certainty that section 13 would be batted down by this free speech-loving court.

[. . .]

The decision doesn't end defamation suits, of course. It merely moves the fulcrum a bit, by widening the scope of what constitutes "fair comment". Fair comment must still be rooted in true facts; but if those facts are clear, and the defamer's comments are clearly his own views, the court will give latitude to even "outrageous" and "ridiculous" opinions.

The rule of thumb for writers — and bloggers — remains: get your facts straight. But the good news for free speechniks is that, if your facts are accurate, you can be dramatic, critical and even wrong in your opinions. It's good news for bloggers — and bad news for censors everywhere.

This is excellent news. Free speech in Canada has been under threat for quite some time and it's wonderful to see the SCC stepping up to help protect it.

Federal "Human Rights" Inquisitors buy a clue

Ezra Levant gets to say "I told you so" as the CHRC backs away from a prosecution of Maclean's:

The Canadian Human Rights Commission, like any petty tyranny, has a strong instinct for survival. As I predicted last week on the Michael Coren Show, that instinct would cause them to drop the complaint against Mark Steyn and Maclean's. And so they did.

With an RCMP investigation, a Privacy Commission investigation and a pending Parliamentary investigation, they're already fighting a multi-front P.R. war, and losing badly. Not a day goes by when the CHRC isn't pummelled in the media. Holding a show trial of Maclean's and Steyn, like the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal did earlier this month, would be writing their own political death sentence.

So they blinked. Against everything in their DNA, they let Maclean's go. That's the first smart thing they've done; because the sooner they can get the public scrutiny to go away, the sooner they can go about prosecuting their less well-heeled targets, people who can't afford Canada's best lawyers and command the attention and affection of the country's literati.

The need to separate politics and state

The idea of the separation of church and state is relatively well understood (if not universally accepted) in North America. The next thing we need to get general agreement on is the separation of politics and state:

In his zest to purge enemies in the government, Richard Nixon was so thorough that he set out to remove a "Jewish cabal" at the Bureau of Labor Statistics. President Bush and his subordinates may match Nixon for paranoia. Some of them lay awake nights wondering how to keep ideologically questionable applicants from infiltrating the Justice Department's summer internship program.

According to the department's inspector general in a report issued this week, they had some success in heading off this potential catastrophe — eliminating many candidates with subversive affiliations like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. But the report condemned the effort, finding that it involved official misconduct and broke the law.

The Canadian federal government is a good example of how a bureaucracy can be captured by a political party — especially when that party stays in power for a significant length of time — and how the goals of the bureaucracy become ever more tightly aligned with the goals of the political party currently in power. This is a very good reason for a healthy alternation of parties in government: it counter-acts the natural tendency of the bureaucrats to align themselves with the politicians.

Steve Chapman again:

If you want to know the source of Barack Obama's success, look no further. Republicans think they will win once Americans figure out he's more liberal than he sounds. But Obama's appeal lies less in any supposedly moderate ideology than in his rejection of a corrosive but prevalent view: Government is nothing more than partisan warfare, and may the stronger side win.

The Bush administration thinks every aspect of governance should serve the ends of the Republican Party. Obama says — and may even believe — that some matters should be above politics.

In the case of federal prosecutors, that is not a new view but an old one. U.S. attorneys are political appointees but not, traditionally, political agents. They are supposed to advance justice without fear or favor. To turn them into partisan attack dogs is to make the law merely a weapon of those in power.

Doubling the navy: nice idea, never happen

J. L. Granatstein outlines the challenges facing the Canadian Forces at sea, and calls for a significant increase in navy shipping:

To get it right this time, the government needs to consider the future strategic environment. Trade has shifted massively from the Atlantic to the Pacific Oceans; already the volume in the Pacific is 3.5 times that of the Atlantic. There are rising naval powers on the Pacific — Russia, China, India, Japan — and there are rapidly growing numbers of submarines operated there by a number of nations, not all friendly.

To protect our national interests, Canada needs a bigger navy than its present 30-ship fleet and 8,000 sailors. Senators Hugh Segel and Colin Kenny, one a Conservative, the other a Liberal, have recently called for Canada to have a 60-ship navy. They are surely correct. The nation must have a strong presence in the Pacific (and an expanded base at Esquimalt, B. C.) and the Atlantic. Twelve to 15 of the planned Surface Combatant Ships on each coast would meet the need for 2025 and beyond. Then Canada needs a credible naval and Coast Guard presence in the melting Arctic where the international scramble for resources is likely to be fierce and where the Northwest Passage has the potential to alter traditional trade routes and pose huge environmental and security challenges. The Conservative government's Canada First policy is the right one, but it needs more ships and more sailors to adequately protect the homeland.

But Canada First also means protecting national interests abroad. Our sailors must be able to transport and support Canadian troops operating overseas, sometimes perhaps on a hostile shore. The presently planned three Joint Support Ships can't do this; four might be able to manage, but six would be better, along with what General Rick Hillier called "a big honking ship" that could transport four to six helicopters and a battalion-sized expeditionary force. Such ships can also do humanitarian work — in tsunami-hit Indonesia, for example — that we can scarcely tackle today.

While a strong case can be made (and, above, has), the government won't go there. Even if the current government was enjoying a majority in the house, they wouldn't spend their political capital on military equipment. For all that the Canadian Forces have much higher visibility and consequently much higher public respect, they're still considered a luxury, not a necessity. Canadians may talk about rebuilding the CF's equipment inventory, but they're not willing to forego social spending or bear higher taxes in order to do so. Nobody will cast their vote because they favour adding ships to the navy, but many might withhold their votes on the same issue.

Canadians still fondly imagine that they inhabit a world where "soft power" is capable of doing things without the implicit backing of "hard power". Where UN resolutions matter, and the bad guys back down before the concentrated glower of the UN General Assembly. It's not likely they'll willingly leave that pleasant dream world and come back to planet Earth.

Canadian military penury is exactly like the weather . . . people can talk about it all day, but nobody will (or can) do anything about it.

This week's contender for "most inane court ruling"

I can't imagine how peaceful it must be in Quebec's court system . . . they've taken care of all the real issues, so they're down to making rulings about whether a father can ground his daughter:

If you deny your children access to TV or withhold their allowance, can they take you to court? And win?

That implausible scenario emerged after a judge in Gatineau, Que., sided with a 12-year-old girl who challenged her father after he refused to let her go on a school trip for disobeying his orders to stay off the Internet.

Experts in family law and child welfare say they were dumbfounded by last Friday’s ruling by Superior Court Justice Suzanne Tessier.

So, at least in Quebec, it's now perfectly acceptable for the courts to review any parental decision regarding that parent's children. As they say on Fark.com, "this should end well".

Can of worms? Check. Opener? Check. Loony tunes judicial precedent set? Check. The Crazy Years have officially begun.

Update: The Volokh Conspiracy treats the news with exactly the right kind of seriousness:

Another Great Satire from The Onion: Court Reverses Father's Decision to Ground Daughter by Keeping Her from a School Overnight Trip. I just love it how the Onion can take real practices and extrapolate them three steps forward to the utterly absurd.

The article is on what must be some mirror site for The Onion — something in Canada called TheGlobeAndMail.com. And it's odd, but the other stories on the site don't seem that funny.

QotD: Forbidden fruit's allure

I wonder if these students appreciate the great irony that always occurs when censorship is involved: As a result of their case, undoubtedly more people have sought out and read the supposedly denigrating articles than would have ever done so in the normal course of events. There is perhaps no surer way to get people to read something than to tell them that they should not be allowed to read it.

Edward Greenspan, "Civil Liberties Alert: CIC's human rights complaints are an administrative fatwa", Edmonton Sun, 2008-06-16

Acquittal in Quebec raid trial

Amazingly, the court has come down on the side of the defendant:

Laval police chief Jean-Pierre Gariépy seems to be taking the right attitude to the acquittal of Basil Parasiris, saying that he would ask the Quebec minister of public security for far-reaching changes in the drafting of search warrants, and in the training given to police officers about how to undertake surprise raids.

Laval police conducted the raid in the belief that Parasiris was involved in a local drug ring. Unfortunately, as Superior Court Justice Guy Cournoyer ruled, there was little proof to back this belief, certainly not enough for a search warrant to be executed in a surprise, pre-dawn raid. Such a raid should be carried out only in an emergency.

The inevitable result of the creeping militarization of police work is that casualties will increase, both among the officers conducting military style raids, and among the victims of the raids. It's heartening that the Quebec Superior Court recognizes the risks these raids incur, and are willing to exonerate those caught up in the real-life terror of being targetted by this kind of attack.

A search warrant for "dynamic entry" should not, on the evidence, have been issued in this case. Police could have arrested Parasiris under calmer circumstances.

A man is dead as a result of an apparently ill-planned raid. Only vigorous corrective action by the authorities can add anything positive to this tragic series of mistakes.

H/T to Radley Balko.

Happy Tax Freedom Day, Canada

It's four days earlier this year:

Effectively, "every dollar they earn before June 14 would be required to pay the taxes owing to all levels of government."

The computation of tax freedom day includes income taxes, property taxes, sales taxes, profit taxes, health, social security and employment taxes, import duties, licence fees, taxes on alcohol and tobacco, natural resource fees, fuel taxes, hospital taxes and an array of other levies.

Thanks to the reduction of the goods and services tax and trimming of various provincial taxes, this year's tax freedom day falls four days earlier than in 2007.

That in turn was five days sooner than in 2006, which followed a two-day gain from the latest-ever tax freedom day - June 25 in 2005.

"Even with the recent improvements, tax freedom day still falls 40 days later than in 1961, the earliest year for which we have calculations," Veldhuis said.

"Given the number of different taxes imposed on Canadians, it is virtually impossible to know exactly how much tax we pay," he added.

"The point of tax freedom day is to give people a comprehensive and easy-to-understand indicator of the total amount of taxes paid to all three levels of government."

228-year-old warship discovered at the bottom of Lake Ontario

An amazing underwater discovery has been announced: HMS Ontario:

A British warship that sank in Lake Ontario 228 years ago during the War of Independence has been found almost intact by two shipwreck hunters.

"This is the Holy Grail of Great Lakes wrecks," says Jim Kennard who, with his partner Dan Scoville, discovered the 22-gun brig-sloop HMS Ontario in deep water "somewhere" between Niagara and Rochester. "There's nothing more significant than this one."

"It's the oldest confirmed shipwreck in the lakes," Scoville adds. "And very few warships went down. The Ontario is so complete, the two masts are in place and there's still glass in some of its windows."

The ship was a few hours into a voyage from Fort Niagara on Oct. 31, 1780, when it foundered in a sudden, violent storm. There were no survivors. Built at Carleton Island, where Lake Ontario meets the St. Lawrence, it was launched the previous May and may never have fired its guns in anger. It spent the summer ferrying troops and supplies around the lake. Its captain, James Andrews, was also commodore of the lake squadron of ships.

The ship appears to be in amazingly good shape, but will probably be designated as a war grave site, as up to 120 people died when the ship went down (88 including the crew and known passengers, but there are letters from Fort Niagara indicating that there were 30 or more American prisoners on board as well). This would mean it is unlikely that the ship would ever be raised, regardless of the amazingly good condition of the hull.

Update: More historical details and a selection of photos are online at Shipwreck World.

More on the "Canadian DMCA"

Bob Kopman sent me another link decrying the recently proposed bill C-61:

Canada, one of the shining lights in the copyright and intellectual property world, has a shadow approaching that may dim that for all. The name of that shadow? Bill c-61, which was formally introduced by Industry minister Jim Prentice an hour or two ago. One of the 'highlights' is the abolition of court's flexibility in statutory damages, fixing it at $500 (CAD)

The bill, dubbed the 'Canadian DMCA' has not been popular with many of those it will effect. Over 40,000 have joined a facebook group, run by Michael Geist opposing it. Geist, a law professor at University of Ottawa, has been fighting to oppose these laws for some time now. On the tabling of the bill, he writes "The government plans for second reading at the next sitting of the house, effectively removing the ability to send it to committee after first reading (and therefore be more open to change)"

The bill is controversial in many ways. Whilst supporters of the bill will point to the allowances for time shifting, format shifting, and the ability to 'private copy' (moving a song from CD to an mp3 player for instance). It will, however, prevent that activity, though criminalization, if there is any sort of technological restriction on it. Anti-copy flags on TV shows, DRM on music, or rootkits on CDs would mean that any attempt to make a fair use, would be subject to prosecution and heavy fines.

I guess it's time to lobby the MP . . . before we get to third reading.

Trademark hijinks now

Ezra Levant reports on the latest attempt to shut down freedom of speech and freedom of expression:

I think another lawsuit is coming my way.

Today, my lawyer received this letter from a radical Muslim activist in Toronto. It's a Certificate of Registration of Copyright. He claims to have copyrighted the image of Mohammed, PBUH (which stands for "peace be upon him"). In other words, it's now Mohammed, PBUH ^TM.

I checked it out on Industry Canada's copyright database and, sure enough, there it is: two weeks ago, Akhtar "Hector" Agha has indeed registered a "Restriction on Depiction of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH)". It's right there on the government website.

I'm not sure, but I think "Hector" might be looking for a royalties payment for whenever I do something like post this picture.

H/T to Jon for the link.

Proposed changes to Canada's copyright law

In a display of serendipidity, Jon sent along a link to this Toronto Star article on proposed revisions to the Copyright Act:

Canadian consumers could face damages of $500 and upwards for owning bootleg copies of music, books and other copyright material, under legislative reforms introduced today.

There would be fines of up to $20,000 for public infringements of copyright law, such as posting music to the Internet or even giving a iPod loaded with your music.

The Conservative today unveiled long-awaited changes to the Copyright Act, a bid to bring the law into the digital age.

And if you're confused about the changes, the government has some advice — go see a lawyer.

"If you need to know how the law applies to a particular situation, please seek advice from a lawyer," read the warning printed on the information sheets distributed to reporters this morning.

"Intellectual property is complicated," a government official told a briefing this morning.

This does seem to support some of the things reported in the article I linked to earlier today.

Update: According to Cory Doctorow, this is just like the American DMCA, except worse:

Canadian Industry Minister Jim Prentice introduced his answer to the American Digital Millennium Copyright Act today as planned, and it's even worse than the US DMCA. The Canadian DMCA allows every single exception to copyright to be eliminated by adding DRM: whatever the law allows you to do, a corporation can take away, just by using DRM to prevent you from doing it. Breaking DRM is illegal, unless you fit into a tiny, narrow, useless exception for security research.

It used to be that Parliament got to write copyright law. Now, it's Hollywood companies, who get to overrule Parliamentary law with whatever "business rules" they put in their DRM.

Michael Geist has the depressing analysis. Makes me want to cry. Watch this space for tips on getting in touch with your MP to make sure that this farce dies in Parliament.

Give me a break . . .

By way of Radley Balko's site comes this link to a month-old story about a distressing development:

The federal government is secretly negotiating an agreement to revamp international copyright laws which could make the information on Canadian iPods, laptop computers or other personal electronic devices illegal and greatly increase the difficulty of travelling with such devices.

The deal could also impose strict regulations on Internet service providers, forcing those companies to hand over customer information without a court order.

Called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), the new plan would see Canada join other countries, including the United States and members of the European Union, to form an international coalition against copyright infringement. [. . .]

The deal would create a international regulator that could turn border guards and other public security personnel into copyright police. The security officials would be charged with checking laptops, iPods and even cellular phones for content that "infringes" on copyright laws, such as ripped CDs and movies.

The guards would also be responsible for determining what is infringing content and what is not.

The agreement proposes any content that may have been copied from a DVD or digital video recorder would be open for scrutiny by officials - even if the content was copied legally.

QotD: "The chains of history always rust away"

For all the paper thin guarantees of the Charter, Canadians have no more rights before the law than Czech dissidents did forty years ago. This is not only the province of those few singled out for the extremity of their views or, increasingly, those singled out for their audacity to mock the Canadian Establishment. This is also about the systematic silencing of what used to be Canada across entire professions, academic disciplines, the federal and provincial civil service, the arts and the media. To merely hold as private opinion what was until recently the law of the land can now produce fines, imprisonment and — worst of all to my mind — public recantations.

There was a lot I did not like in what used to be Canada: A priggish, self-satisfied narrow-mindedness, the public imposition of private morality and a nose in every window. Much of which, I suspect, would not have bothered David Warren in the least, transparent as the imposition of his religious views on the rest of us might have been to him at the time. But it dawns on me now not a thing has changed; Canada's clothes are new but the sour expression remains.

Yet we must not despair. I share a conviction with David Warren if not the particulars of his faith. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierces me that in the end the Shadow is only a small and passing thing: there is light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.

Nick Packwood, "The chains of history always rust away", Ghost of a Flea, 2008-06-12

No bad press, revisited

I posted a short piece last week about the owner of Nathaniel's Restaurant in Owen Sound, who probably didn't agree with the old saying about there being no such thing as bad press, after his business came to the notice of the media for firing laying off a waitress who'd shaved her head for a cancer charity fund-raiser. Yesterday, he apologized:

Dan Hilliard is offering his apology to Stacey Fearnall, a waitress who no longer works at the downtown eatery after shaving her head for Cops for Cancer.

Hilliard is also apologizing to the Canadian Cancer Society, Cops for Cancer and the public "for failing to resolve the issue."

Hilliard says the public outcry after the story broke has been devastating for all involved and has upset the staff, who he describes in a news release as family.

Hilliard says Fearnall was not fired — but was offered to take the summer off to spend with her children and husband.

He says he has not received a response from her yet on the offer.

Remember that old saying about there being no such thing as bad press?

The owners of Nathaniel's Restaurant in Owen Sound may beg to differ:

When she took part in a local fundraiser for cancer research, all Stacey Fearnall thought she had to lose was a full head of hair.

Instead, the 36-year-old waitress at Nathaniels restaurant in Owen Sound, who raised more than $2,700 for the charity Cops for Cancer in exchange for her locks, was laid off when she showed up for work earlier this week with a shorn head.

Okay, that's pretty bad: the restaurant sounds like a medium-bad employer from circa 1965. But it gets worse . . .

"Nobody would really look at her, make eye contact. They didn't really say anything and it made her feel kind of less than human."

It was a slow night so she came home early, but when she called to say she'd be in the next day, she was told not to bother, he added.

Nathaniels owner and chef Dan Hilliard defended his decision, saying the restaurant has certain standards. He prohibits male staff from wearing earrings and requires employees keep their hair at a reasonable length.

Yikes. I'm guessing that Mr. Hilliard will be banning customers from bringing in copies of the Toronto Star after this.

What is at stake in BC's kangaroo court

Brian Hutchinson gives an overview of the ongoing quasi-legal star chamber:

None of the main players starring in this quasi-judicial drama actually live or work in B. C. Not Mr. Steyn, not the editors responsible for Maclean's, and not Mohamed Elmasry, a Muslim who launched a complaint to the B. C. Human Rights Tribunal on behalf of all Muslims in this province.

Neither Mr. Steyn, nor his editors, nor Mr. Elmasry were in sight when the tribunal panel began the week-long hearing yesterday. Mr. Steyn will not testify, say lawyers for Maclean's. Nor will Mr. Elmasry, the aggrieved. So why bring the complaint forward here? Because Mr. Elmasry can. This thanks to provincial human rights legislation of a breadth and elasticity not known in other parts of Canada.

Mr. Elmasry, the president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, and a highly controversial figure himself — especially among Jewish groups — claims the Steyn excerpt denigrated and vilified Canadian Muslims and promoted hatred of an identifiable group.

He is not obliged to demonstrate what harm occurred to whom, or to what degree. Maclean's magazine and Mr. Steyn could still be found to have violated B. C.'s Human Rights Code. No proof of damage is required.

Meanwhile, if found to have violated the code, Maclean's faces sanctions, including payment to the complainant "an amount that the member or panel considers appropriate to compensate that person for injury to dignity, feelings and self respect or to any of them."

The magazine could also be ordered to stop publishing certain ideas and points of view. Lawyer Faisal Joseph, representing the complainant, asked the Tribunal yesterday to use its "discretion" and order Maclean's to publish a suitable response in its pages. That, or publish the panel's ultimate findings. Such are the frightening aspect of this case.

"Strict rules of evidence do not apply" in cases before the Tribunal, noted its chairwoman, Heather MacNaughton. A lawyer and a veteran of human rights inquiries, she made the comment yesterday afternoon, when allowing an Ontario law student — yet another non-B. C. resident — to deliver for the complainant testimony about the "Islamaphobic" Steyn excerpt.

As several writers have pointed out, it's difficult to imagine Steyn and Maclean's being found innocent: the language under which the Tribunal operates pretty much guarantees a conviction. This is, in that sense, merely the opening act of the drama . . . after they are found guilty, then the real legal case can start to unfold.

Update: Iowahawk gets to the heart of the matter:

Announcer
Thanks to stepped up enforcement and random internet checks, Canadian speech crimes have been cut nearly in half over the last three years. It's a record all Canadians can be proud of, but it's only a first step.

Man's Voice (echo-y reverb)
Stupid foreigners!

Announcer
Experts estimate that only 1/2 of 1% of all Canadian speech crimes are ever prosecuted, because most occur in the shadowy silence of private thought. It's time that all Canadians work together to recognize and report these non-verbal crimes before it's too late. If you know or suspect someone of harboring or contemplating offensive or otherwise un-Canadian ideas, please report to your Provincial Human Rights Office.

Man's Voice (echo-y reverb)
Stupid foreigners!

Sound FX:
jail door slamming shut

Announcer
This has been a public service announcement of the Royal Canadian Mounted Human Rights Police, reminding you to Think Before You Think.

Live-blogging the end of free speech in Canada

My old drinking buddy, Andrew Coyne*, will be live-blogging the final gasp of freedom of speech in Canada starting at 12:30 EST today. Tune in, turn off, get nauseous.

Just a head's-up: I'll be live blogging the case of Mohamed Elmasry vs. Mark Steyn/Maclean's before (sigh) the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, direct from kangaroo-courtroom 105 of the Robson Square Provincial Court building in Vancouver, starting sometime after 9:30 Pacific/12:30 Eastern Monday morning and going on for, I don't know, days. Just hit refresh.

All the dense legalese, with twice the politically correct jargon!

* Okay, we drank together once. At a blogstravaganza. I doubt he could pick me out of a police line-up.

Canarmageddon, 2020

Mark Steyn quotes Tom Kratman at some length:

The Dominion of Canada. It was nice while it lasted:

"Nineteen Regular Army divisions, one dozen divisions of the Army National Guard, plus the Second and Fourth Marine Divisions, rolled across the border just before dawn on 11 May, 2020.

"Despite the gallant resistance put up by the main elements of the Canadian Forces, notably the Royal 22nd and Twelfth Armored, which died in defense of Quebec City, the Royal Canadian Regiment and Royal Canadian Dragoons, shattered in the forlorn defense of Ottawa, and the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry and Lord Strathcona's Horse, butchered in detail in a hopeless defense of the long western border, Canada — rather the thin strip of well-populated area that roughly paralleled the border with the United States — fell quickly."

Oh, dear. Only 12 years of "Canadian values" to go. If you want to put in for your hip replacement now, they may just get to you before the tanks roll. It's going to be mighty expensive once the Princess Margaret Hospital is renamed for whichever Halliburton subsidiary winds up running it.

Miller moves to make Toronto safe . . . for criminals

In a classic display of misguided enthusiasm, Toronto's mayor moves to punish the law-abiding:

Mayor David Miller announced a plan today that would make all handguns illegal in Toronto, a series of measures that will effectively shut down gun ranges and make it all but impossible to manufacture, assemble or store firearms within city limits.

But critics, including one Olympic target shooter, labeled the mayor’s program window-dressing, saying it will penalize law-abiding gun owners while doing nothing to curb criminal gun violence.

"This is not going to have any impact whatsoever on gun crimes in the city of Toronto,' said Larry Whitmore, of the Canadian Shooting Sports Association, which says it has a membership of 15,000 across Canada.

The measures are contained in a report prepared by city staff that is to be presented to the executive committee next week. The report, "City-Based Measures to Address Gun Violence," must still be approved by city council but Mr. Miller wasted no time in signaling his approval of its recommendations.

"I want a safe city," the mayor told reporters. "The truth is, guns are too easily available and if you talk to some kids in some neighbourhoods they tell you they want a gun to protect themselves."

He's right, you know: guns are too easily available.

Unless you want to actually obey the law.

You can't legally buy a handgun in Toronto (or anywhere else in Canada, for that matter) without going through a prolonged bureaucratic process. You cannot get a permit to carry a handgun unless you are employed in law enforcement or a small number of other very specific cases. You have to belong to a gun club, and you have to get specific permission to move your handgun from your secure storage location (which the police have the right to inspect, without advance notice, at pretty much any time) to your gun club.

Even people who are interested in doing so often cannot, because the memberships at many gun clubs are strictly limited and there can be a years-long waiting list.

On the other hand, folks who just want to get themselves a 9mm pistol for "busting caps" can get them on very short notice . . . and Mayor Miller's proposed changes will make no difference to them at all.

QotD: Same-sex marriage

We introduced same sex marriage up here after conservatives assured us this would result in wall to wall orgies. This promise was a lie, just like the one about how if we legalized upper body nudity for women in Ontario, Ontario would become a sea of naked boobs despite the climate. And the mosquitos and the blackflies. Conservatives are always promising promiscuity and licentiousness if only we will liberalize our laws and they never deliver.

On the plus side, the initial divorce rate was extremely low for SSM because we didn't think to change the explicitly "one male one female" language in the Divorce Act.

James Nicoll, posting to the Lois McMaster Bujold mailing list, 2008-05-26

Criminalizing speech is stupid

I've argued against hate speech laws before, not on the basis that I want to hear more of it, but that I distrust the government with the power to tell me what I can and cannot say. Kate has a different reason for being concerned about this:

I do care that "truly marginal and deeply resentful fools" get caught in the HRC web as much as I do the unsuspecting restaurant owner wanting to keep his doorway free of pot smoking loiterers.

I don't need to share their marginal views or resentment to defend their right not to be harrassed by a bureaucracy that defaults to "guilty until proven innocent".

Why? Because, it's the truly resentful who are most likely to carry their frustrations beyond verbal release into murderous violence when backed into a corner, and doubly so when those doing the backing trade in provocateurism and injustice. When the unbalanced finally snap, it's rarely the bureaucrat behind the machinery who endures their wrath — it's the innocent at their workplace, or the police officer who pulls them over for speeding who finds themselves in the crosshairs.

It's a tricky enough business dealing with these individuals within the justice system proper. The last thing we need are the thumbscrews of the human rights racket being applied to such cases.

Hate speech is a form of aggression, but it is not the same as physical assault. We have laws against the kind of behaviour that causes physical harm, but attempting to quantify certain forms of speech for the (potential, perceived) harm they may cause is the wrong way to produce a more tolerant, peaceful society.

As Mark Steyn has noted, it's one thing to attempt to muzzle neo-Nazi/KKK/holocaust deniers, but there is no legal reason why the muzzle can only be applied to far right/anti-semitic whackjobs. As our society becomes more multicultural, there are plenty of ways to offend lots of different groups of people. Just noting the facts can be enough to "harm", and the HRC model is tailored to allow perpetual offence-takers free rein.

All I'd need to say is that people from the country of Absurda commit a certain crime out of proportion to their representation in the general population, and I could be accused of hate speech against the Absurdian-Canadian community. If offence can be taken, offence will be taken . . . and with the various HRCs around to provide both a stick for beating on the "offenders" and a financial carrot for the "offendees", there'll be more folks looking for things to get offended about.

If you're a glass-half-full kind of person, you could see it as a strong positive for our culture that we haven't already been overwhelmed with bogus human rights cases. But the incentives are all stacked to create a less-free society through the enforcement of our expanding definitions of what hate speech actually is.

Canadian Military WHATegy?

Paul Wells has a bit of fun at the Conservative government's expense:

We tease Le Devoir because we love it. You had to read that paper's Alec Castonguay this morning to begin to understand the true extent of the Harper government's clapped-together, carefully-obscured, clumsily-exercised plan to rebuild the Roman legions on Canadian soil. I refer, of course, to the 20-year, $30-billion defence plan, which the Globe is calling a $50-billion defence plan and which Le Devoir explains — I believe credibly — is actually a $96-billion defence plan.

"The 'Canada First' strategy of the Department of National Defence calls for new spending of $96 billion over 20 years, which is three times what Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced on Monday in Halifax. The five largest military procurement projects alone will incur costs reaching $45 to $50 billion," Alec writes.

Note the Globe's peculiar choice this morning to total only capital costs in their accounting of a plan that will also include increases to operating budgets. It's like reporting that your housing costs for the next 20 years will include kitchen renovations but not mortgage payments or rent. But then, I wasn't at the briefing yesterday and I'm willing to believe it was simply incomprehensible. Because as far as anyone can tell, that's the Harper government's strategy.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't the nice folks in Toryland all keen to address the many failings of previous Liberal governments, especially the multi-decade neglect to which the Canadian Forces had been subjected? Why, then, after two years in office, has the current Conservative government not come up with something a bit more finished than a verbal outline of a spending plan?

Is it me? Am I expecting too much, too soon?

QotD: Human Rights Commissions

[. . .] off-air the chit-chat went rather more pleasantly, and, in the course of it, Mr. Awan observed that Jews had availed themselves of the "human rights" commissions for years but it was only when the Muzzies decided they wanted a piece of the thought-police action that all these bigwigs started agitating for reining in the commissions and scrapping the relevant provisions of Canada's "human rights" code.

He has a kind of point. Which is why some of us consistently opposed the use of these commissions even when it was liberal Jews using them to hunt down the last three neo-Nazis in Saskatchewan. Yet, accepting that the principle is identical, there is a difference. For the most part, the Canadian Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith and the other beneficiaries of the "human rights" regime went after freaks and misfits on the fringes of society, folks too poor (in the majority of federal cases) even to afford legal representation. These prosecutions were unfair and reflected badly on Canada's justice system, but liberal proponents of an illiberal law justified it on the assumption that it would be confined to these peripheral figures nobody cared about. You can't blame Muslim groups for figuring that what's sauce for the infidel is sauce for the believer — and that, having bigger fish to fry, they're gonna need a lot more sauce.

Mark Steyn, "I'm starring in one of those movies", Macleans, 2008-05-14

Why is Rogers "improving" my service?

Elizabeth got a very confusing message from Rogers (our ISP) yesterday, saying that "to improve our service" they'd be eliminating all but one email account from each customer account. That is, of the _five_ free user accounts we were previously entitled to, we'd only be able to keep one. Since Elizabeth and I both use our Rogers accounts for primary personal email, you can understand that we'd be a bit freaked out by the notice. I was even more worried, as I didn't get the notice, indicating that my account was going to be disconnected (only the "primary" email address was to receive this information).

I'm not sure how Rogers figures that reducing our service by up to 80% is an improvement. Perhaps it's some weird form of new math. It goes without saying that there would be no price decrease for this "improvement", right?

Elizabeth called to try to get to the bottom of the issue. Supposedly, the email accounts aren't actually going away . . . they just won't have access to the Rogers portal. It's not clear whether this means only one email address per account will be able to use the Rogers webmail (since that's accessed through their portal) or if they'll still allow webmail access for each email account.

Confused yet?

Update: I originally posted a version of this on my Facebook page, to which Brendan responded:

"New math you say — it's nice to see a creative side coming through on their end . . . INNOVATION!!! It might be a new take on the 80-20 rule — perhaps they've been taking notes from the master-crafted Customer Satisfaction attack plan over at Bell? You see — as a Sympatico customer, leaving me only 20% of my services would mean that they have, in fact, freed me of 80% of my hassles and irritations. Perhaps they'll only be interested in collecting 20% of your payments?"

Great. My backup plan was to switch to Sympatico. That doesn't sound like it'd be much of an improvement after all.

RCMP lowers the bar . . . again

The bold gendarmes of the RCMP/GRC upheld peace, order and lousy policework yesterday in Kamloops, BC. At great risk to themselves, they fearlessly tasered an 82-year-old.

Three times.

While he was lying in his hospital bed after heart surgery.

I'm not making this up . . .

Canadian wine marketing follies

Michael Pinkus points out how not to market Canadian wine:

Jackson-Triggs has two new wines out to celebrate the spirit of the Olympics called "Esprit" — a Merlot and a Chardonnay. Now, let's forget about what's in the bottle for the moment and focus on the outside — the packaging, more specifically, the label. Yes, it's a standard bottle and sure the label isn't as eye-catching as it could be, but take a good hard look at the label, when you get a chance, and you'll notice something's missing. I'll give you a hint by telling you what the wine is celebrating: The 2010 Winter Olympics in British Columbia, currently and arguably Canada's hottest wine region. Time's up?

If you guessed that a VQA logo is missing you'd be absolutely correct. Canada's official wine of the Vancouver games is a blended, cellared in Canada bulk wine, from "imported and domestic" wines, all whipped up by our most recognizable "industry leader". This to me is a crime and a slap in the face to B.C. and all of Canada's wineries. This would be the equivalent of the Albertville (France) Olympic games (1992) having Masi as their official wine; the Sydney (Australia) games (2000) with a George DuBoeuf produced product or the Turin (Italy) games (2006) relying on Wolf Blass for their wine. Am I the only one appalled by this action?

You'd be hard-pressed to find a better example of marketing self-inflicted wounds.

Steyn and the sock puppets

Mark Steyn recounts his discussions with the "sock puppets" both on the air and after the show. The core of the problem (aside from having extra-legal "courts" at all) is this:

I believe these Canadian Islamic Congress lawsuits — and, yes, I can hear the Socks yelling "That's a lie! They're not 'suits', they're 'complaints'," but that's a distinction without a difference if you're paying lawyers' bills and you regard, as I do, the Human Rights Commissions as a parallel legal system that tramples over all the traditional safeguards of Common Law, not least the presumption of innocence. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I believe these lawsuits are deeply damaging to freedom of expression. If they win (when they win) and the verdicts withstand Supreme Court scrutiny, Canada will no longer be a free country. It will be a country whose citizens are on a leash whose length is determined by the hack bureaucrats of state agencies.

And that leash will shrivel, remorselessly. One of the better points Khurrum made off-air was that this is the first (federal) "human rights" complaint by a Muslim group, and that when it was just the Jews and gays milking this racket we didn't have any of this talk about scrapping Section 13 and abolishing the commissions. And he's right. Which is why the Canadian Jewish Congress position is untenable. As I said in my speech to the "legal jihad" conference in New York a couple of weeks back:

Canada and much of Europe have statutes prohibiting Holocaust denial. Muslim scholars are not impressed by these laws. "Nobody can say even one word about the number in the alleged Holocaust," says Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the favourite Islamic scholar of many Euroleftists, "even if he is writing an MA or PhD thesis, and discussing it scientifically. Such claims are not acceptable." But a savvy imam knows an opening when he sees one. "The Jews are protected by laws," notes Mr Qaradawi. "We want laws protecting the holy places, the prophets, and Allah's messengers." In other words, he wants to use the constraints on free speech imposed by Europe and Canada to protect Jews in order to put much of Islam beyond political debate. The free world is shuffling into a psychological bondage whose chains are mostly of our own making. The British "historian" David Irving wound up in an Austrian jail, having been convicted of Holocaust denial. It's not unreasonable for Muslims to conclude that, if gays and Jews and other approved identities are to be protected groups who can't be offended, why shouldn't they be also?

They have a point. How many roads of inquiry are we prepared to block off in order to be "sensitive"?

It was wrong to create a special category of speech that was protected under Canadian law: holocaust denial is pure, distilled idiocy, but the best way to refute it is to let it be spoken and ridiculed. Forbidding it to be spoken created the worst possible precedent . . . and that precedent is being used now by the "sock puppets" and their controllers to create more restrictions on freedom of speech. It's no longer a question of "whether", it's just a question of "how much more?".

Remember folks, "just because Pierre Trudeau cooked it up" doesn't mean "it's chiseled in granite".

Freedom of the (virtual) press?

Kathy "Five Feet of Fury" Shaidle is being harassed over a blog post — which merely quoted a section from a national newspaper:

So now this chick Mitra Kermani is calling me on the phone, telling me to take down this post.

I not-very-patiently explained to her that I can post whatever the hell I want on my blog, because this is Canada not Ooongaboongaland, that I got my info from a national newspaper and linked to it, so she has to take up her complaints with them

Based on the original story, you'd have to say that major Canadian corporations must not be running the country, because the kind of trouble Loblaws put up with would be unthinkable in most countries. If the corporate world really did run everything, there'd have been a scurry and hustle on the part of police and courts to cater to the whims of the all-mighty corporate leadership. Obviously that didn't happen in this case . . .

QotD: The origin of the name Canada

"Canada" [. . .] is the ancient Ojibwa word for "kick me"

Kathy Shaidle, "I missed 'Pingu' for this?", Five Feet of Fury, 2008-04-30

Two Gents

The best money you'll ever spend on amateur theatre . . . need I say more?

H/T to Meredith Hubbard.

Illegal in Montreal, too

A couple of days back, I made fun of my home town for their sudden attempt to create a crime of "taking photos of storefronts". Apparently, Montreal is feeling left out, so they're creating a new crime of illegal sitting in a park:

Most people who walk by Émilie Gamelin Park downtown see its many granite surfaces as an invitation to sit and relax.

Dozens were doing just that in the sun yesterday and ever since the park opened in 1992.

But as a Concordia University student found out Saturday, Montreal police, if they so choose, can hit you with a $628 ticket for nothing more menacing than sitting on a ledge.

The connection is, of course, attempting to suppress photography by "civilians".

Boris and Natasha's photography expedition

So, we were out and about yesterday, just getting away from the usual, when we happened across STALAG LUFT MMVIII:

We happened upon the well-preserved remains of RCAF Camp Picton, in Prince Edward County. This site provides some background, including the origin of the unlikely looking guard towers.

Honouring the fallen

For most Canadians, most of the time, the kind of in-your-face, flag-waving displays of patriotism common to American patriotic events are seen as being rather uncouth. That is why these patriotic displays are so much more meaningful.

From the air base in Trenton, Ontario, the funeral cortege passes along motorways lined with scores of people holding Canadian flags, some with a hand on their heart, carrying banners emblazoned with the words "we support our troops."

All 50 of the motorway bridges on the journey into Toronto were said to have been packed with the general public.

As the cortege passes fire engines and police cars, officers and emergency workers solemnly salute as children wave flags.

But the solemn gesture is a far cry from Britain, where Our Boys are turned away from public places and told not to wear their uniforms following sickening insults.

Canada rocked on its foundations: Tim Horton rims rigged?

In a story that might topple governments from coast to coast, it is being alleged that Tim Hortons coffee cup rims may have been tampered with:

Some Nova Scotians believe Tim Hortons employees are rolling up the rim to rip them off.

But the company is apologizing for a manufacturing error that makes it appear someone has tampered with the rims of some of its disposable coffee cups in Atlantic Canada.

"When I take off my top, I’ve been noticing the rim has already been rolled up, and a lot of people have been noticing that," said Richard O’Brien, a construction worker from Halifax.

Cars, powerboats, global positioning systems, gift cards, coffees and doughnuts are among the prizes up for grabs.

He figures employees from the ubiquitous coffee chain are checking under the rims to try to win prizes for themselves or their friends.

"I’d say it would be the back shifts that are doing it," Mr. O’Brien said.

"As soon as you take the top of the cup off, you can see two little crimps in the sides where they just flipped it up to see if it was a winner."

He won a few free coffees and doughnuts after the annual contest started Feb. 25, but lately the free crullers have been few and far between.

"I work on a construction site and nobody has been winning," Mr. O’Brien said.

Anecdotally, I have overheard several coffee addicts moaning that they think the Timmy coffee cup contest is less generous this year than in previous years . . . they uniformly say they've rarely won anything at all, where in other contests they'd at least had a few free coffee or donut prizes.

Fark wins the prize for reporting, though:

QotD: Morris Dancers

Morris dancers, for those of you who don't know, are cute people who dress up in little white suits with green sashes and pork-pie hats with feathers. They tie sleighbells to their feet and they strap long white hankies to their wrists. In any event, there's nothing really alarming about Morris dancers; they're actually quite harmless.

Except that from time to time they will arm themselves with some kind of cudgel or bludgeon or some kind of blunt instrument. And they will gather in a knot or a mob known as a clot, or a team. And they'll gather in kind of a mystic circle and, to the accompaniment of accordion and violin, they will rhythmically and ritualistically hit each other again and again and again, with these sticks.

This is supposed to be some form of British fertility ritual, or some form of entertainment, or something. Anyway, this next song has the sort of knuckle dragging Neanderthal beat that Morris dancers really love to dance to.

Stan Rogers, introducing the song "The Idiot" on the album Home in Halifax.

What to do about Vincor's Wine Rack stores

Michael "Grape Guy" Pinkus has some thoughts on what should be done about Vincor's chain of own-label wine stores, now that the company is foreign-owned:

Since Vincor was sold, April 3rd 2006, there has been no consideration or mention of what to do with those Wine Rack stores (you know the little kiosks you find in grocery stores, malls and on street corners that sell Vincor wines exclusively — and one of the few "competitors" to the LCBO’s centralized liquor dominance). The moment Vincor was sold there should have been, and should have continued to be, an uproar about these stores — not stopping until the problem was fixed. Originally the special license to open up additional locations was given to Vincor to promote and sell Ontario wine, but now — not so much. Although Jackson-Triggs, Inniskillin etc. remain Canadian wineries, their profits go south of the border. Have you been in one of these stores (and I don't even have o say lately, because this has always been the case)? Not all the wines on the shelves are VQA, it's that "cellared in Ontario" crap that makes us the laughing stock of the wine world [. . .] Those stores should have been seized from Vincor soon after the sale was made to Constellation and they should have been turned into VQA Wine Stores promoting 100% Ontario wine. Currently, according to the Wine Rack's website, there are 164 in the province of Ontario. If we were to divide those up evenly and geographically among the wineries of Ontario (for argument's sake let's say those that belong to the wine council — 73 in 2007), each winery would have their wines in an additional 2.24 stores. Now say we allow these wineries to have joint control over these locations — buddy-up so to speak with four other wineries (5 in total), these five would have their wines in 11 locations across the province . . . Imagine how many more hands good quality VQA wine would find itself into. These stores would not be allowed to sell "cellared-in-Ontario" wines — only 100% VQA-Ontario product. These stores would serve to educate the public as to what VQA actually is and stands for, because confusion still exists, especially with all those reports about short-crops and lowered percentages. Think about it, the exposure would be amazing and the profits would remain in the hands of our own Ontario-based wineries. Of course the government would get their share, we'd need some kind of governing body over these stores, this is Ontario after all — but let's leave the LCBO out of this one, and create an independent body not beholden to the current monopoly.

Interesting idea, although I'm not normally friendly to proposals to force private companies to disgorge assets at the behest of regulators. In this case, as the stores only exist due to a special dispensation from the regulators, that may not apply with the same force.

Plastic bags rehabilitated

You know the current campaign against plastic bags, urging people to avoid using them because they contribute to the deaths of millions of birds and sea mammals? Not so fast:

Campaigners say that plastic bags pollute coastlines and waterways, killing or injuring birds and livestock on land and, in the oceans, destroying vast numbers of seabirds, seals, turtles and whales. However, The Times has established that there is no scientific evidence to show that the bags pose any direct threat to marine mammals.

They "don't figure" in the majority of cases where animals die from marine debris, said David Laist, the author of a seminal 1997 study on the subject. Most deaths were caused when creatures became caught up in waste produce. "Plastic bags don't figure in entanglement," he said. "The main culprits are fishing gear, ropes, lines and strapping bands. Most mammals are too big to get caught up in a plastic bag."

He added: "The impact of bags on whales, dolphins, porpoises and seals ranges from nil for most species to very minor for perhaps a few species. For birds, plastic bags are not a problem either."

The central claim of campaigners is that the bags kill more than 100,000 marine mammals and one million seabirds every year. However, this figure is based on a misinterpretation of a 1987 Canadian study in Newfoundland, which found that, between 1981 and 1984, more than 100,000 marine mammals, including birds, were killed by discarded nets. The Canadian study did not mention plastic bags.

Fifteen years later in 2002, when the Australian Government commissioned a report into the effects of plastic bags, its authors misquoted the Newfoundland study, mistakenly attributing the deaths to "plastic bags".

The figure was latched on to by conservationists as proof that the bags were killers. For four years the "typo" remained uncorrected. It was only in 2006 that the authors altered the report, replacing "plastic bags" with "plastic debris". But they admitted: "The actual numbers of animals killed annually by plastic bag litter is nearly impossible to determine."

But don't worry . . . I'm sure that there'll be another scare along really soon to replace the "plastic bags are evil" meme.

Canadian rednecks

ChuckerCanuck performs a service in identifying the characteristics of Canadian Rednecks:

Often, as we travel the United States, we pass folks who stick their patriotism on their bumpers — the stars and stripes pasted on their cars to advertise their unthinking love of America. For many Canadians, this overt patriotism is decidely foreign. And yet, in my corner of the world, where Liberals win ridings by margins that would make Bashir Assad blush, there is a growing prevelance of people slapping Canadian flag license plates on the front of their vehicles. Canada has rednecks. And to help you identify a Canadian redneck, I have put together a short checklist for your benefit.

H/T to Mark C. at Daimnation for the link.

QotD: Americans, from the Canadian perspective

Like all Canadians, Americans are my #1 spectator sport. I find you all hugely entertaining to observe anthropologically, and I know you pretty well by now.

Bruce Rolston, "A quiet plea", Flit, 2008-02-01

Obama-mania explained to Guardian readers

A brief introduction to the wave of Obama-worship currently engulfing Democratic primary voters by David Weigel:

Maybe it started with the fainting. After a while you couldn't ignore video and reports of Barack Obama supporters, sardine-tin-packed into his monster rallies, blacking out and dropping to the floor as the candidate hit his applause lines. Or maybe it started with the music video Yes We Can, a black-and-white, celebrity-studded mash-up of Obama's soaring South Carolina primary victory speech.

Somewhere on the Illinois senator's improbable march toward the Democratic nomination — and his remarkable steamrolling of the heretofore invincible Clinton family — the American commentariat tried to shake it off. Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein fretted about a "cult of Obama." New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, whose anti-Obama tirades have been reprinted in Hillary Clinton campaign mail, saw the campaign becoming "a cult of personality". Neoconservative Washington Post scold Charles Krauthammer, whose ideology has the most to lose from an Obama triumph, warned Americans that history was repeating: "As a teenager growing up in Canada, I witnessed a charismatic law professor go from obscurity to justice minister to prime minister, carried on a wave of what was called Trudeaumania." (Not as spine-chilling as Krauthammer's usual warning of this or that third-worlder becoming the next Hitler, but scary enough.)

The whole Trudeaumania thing would certainly be enough to scare the pants off me!

The best part of the article is this:

The problem for Clinton isn't just that 79% of her fellow Americans actually believe in celestial choirs. The problem for both of Obama's opponents is that being a "cult leader" is not a demerit in the quest for the presidency. Americans don't want a down-to-earth executive. They want Jesus Christ. They'll settle for Sun Myung Moon.

Charter of easily-revocable temporary privileges

What little actual use there is in the current Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is being steadily undermined by the courts. This is just the latest move to make the concept of "rights" a mockery in Canadian jurisprudence:

The Ontario Court of Appeal yesterday approved the use of evidence obtained through flagrant police misconduct, saying any black eye caused to the justice system is outweighed by public interest in prosecuting a serious crime.

In a decision that even one of their fellow judges finds intolerable, a majority of the court upheld a trial judge's decision to admit evidence of 35 kilos of cocaine found in Bradley Harrison's rented SUV – despite the judge's finding an OPP officer had no legal grounds to stop the vehicle, seriously infringed the Toronto man's Charter rights and misled a court while trying to justify his actions.

The 2-1 ruling is the latest in a line of recent decisions in which the court has been accused of weakening Charter protections by refusing to exclude evidence obtained unlawfully. In a case last fall involving a gun found in a backpack at Westview Centennial Secondary School, the court said throwing out reliable evidence because of Charter violations must be balanced against public concerns about escalating gun violence.

So the message is two-fold: first, that the courts will back the police in any blatant abuse so long as the perp can be convicted, and second, that there really isn't any protection of rights in the Canadian justice system anyway.

Sweet. If you're a cop looking to harass people, that is.

H/T to Jon, my virtual landlord, for the link.

The saddest drive, and the witnesses

There is a post at The Torch you really should read.

QotD: Are Canadians Sexy?

As a people we have two problems. The first I would dub the Tilley Hat phenomenon. No-one looks good in a Tilley hat, but they're damn practical. When you live in a country where you spend eight months a year trying to stay warm and four more warding off mosquitoes you tend to lean toward the practical. Tilley hats and Sears down coats are not sexy.

The other problem arises from another innately Canadian character trait. We're so obsessed with fairness and inclusion we hand out the status of "sexy" the way a special-ed teacher hands out praise. How else to explain Defence Minister Peter MacKay's annual topping of the sexiest parliamentarian list?

Having begun with a hoary old quote, allow me to paraphrase another. The answer to the question of whether Canadians are sexy would appear to be "as sexy as possible under the circumstances."

John Moore, "Canadians - as sexy as possible", National Post, 2008-02-09

At this rate . . .

. . . Toronto drivers may eventually learn how to cope with snow on the streets.

The view outside my office window. (It's actually pure white, but either the window coating or some artifact of how the Treo compresses the image adds some false colours.)

QotD: Save the HRCs!

Who will there be to read before we read, and tell us what is proper for us? Who will be there to edit the editors, to copy check the copy checkers? Who will shield our vulnerable law-students, and who will tend to the commission's most industrious serial complainant? There is one person, so eggshell brittle that he has drummed up a fierce amount of business for the HRCs. Is so loyal a customer now to be ignored because the Steyn-Levant tsunami is about to rumble mercilessly on shore?

[. . .]

Mostly I fear, if the HRCs are tied up, Canadians will be reading, unguided, what they choose to read, deciding for themselves what they like and what they don't, will discard a book or pass it to a friend, like a column or curse one - lit only by the light of their own reason.The horror! Before we know it, we'll have an unstoppable epidemic of free speech, free thought, and freedom of the press. And, surely, no one wants that. Otherwise, why would we have human rights commissions?

Rex Murphy, "Coming to a human rights commission near you", Globe and Mail, 2008-01-27

Update on AHRC investigation

Jon (my virtual landlord) sent along this link to the progress report on the interrogation of noted hatemonger Ezra Levant:

CLERK OBSERVATIONS (use extra sheets if necessary)

Defendant acknowledges awareness of charges against him. He is represented by counsel but insists on opening statement and filming the hearing. Despite warnings and brochure on self incrimination he proceeds.

Defendant states he is attending under protest and would do crime again. States belief that AHRCC has no authority to prosecute. Under eye contact, defendent's counsel shrugs. Defendant says hearing in violation of "separation Mosque and State" (note: potential violation of Section 118-c(a) AHRCC Innuendo Act?). Claims "original intent" of Commission not to enforce Islamic law. Defendant apparently unfamiliar with AHRCC interoffice memo HVM-d11, "Koranic Compliance Guidelines for Non-Muslim Associates."

Calls Commission "dump for junk," cites previous cases. Calls AHRCC "joke," "pseudo court," "Judge Judy." Cites critical statements of Commission founder, even though he doesn't work here any more. Says authority unlawful, unconstitutional. Counsel seems oblivious to client's contempt, is seen reading "Highlights for Children" magazine from waiting room.

Starts yapping about British common law, Magna Carta, Canadian law, UN Declaration of Human Rights, other documents of white male privilege, etc. Subject seems agitated. Stuff about conscience, religion, expression blah blah blah. Seems to be stonewalling because none of this has any reference in my copy of Publication AHRCC-0503(k), "Hearing Guidelines for Human Rights Clerks." Long diatribe about Sharia Law, radical Islam.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

There's a good reason why most Canadians hold Toronto in contempt: one of the bigger reasons . . . Toronto's pansy frou-frou reaction to a little bit of snow:

Two frickin' hours to get to work through a tiny little bit of snow. You'd think they'd never seen the stuff before.

QotD: The Afghan mission

[. . .] We recognize the conflict in Afghanistan as a liberation struggle, waged by the Afghan people and their allies, against oppression, against obscurantism, illiteracy, and the most brutal forms of misogyny. It is a fight for democracy, and for peace, order, and good government. It is also a struggle waged by the sovereign Government of Afghanistan, a member state of the United Nations, against illegal armed groups that seek to overturn the democratic will of the Afghan people.

In Afghanistan, the great global struggle for the recognition and protection of basic human rights — universal rights — is being waged with a particular and necessary ferocity. We cannot and must not retreat from that struggle.

The objective of extending and securing the sovereignty of the Government of Afghanistan to all corners of that great country cannot be achieved without a robust international military presence. Canada is one the richest countries on earth, and as such we have absolutely no excuse to shirk from our duty to make a proper and effective contribution to that military engagement.

Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee, "Submission to the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan", 2007-11-28

When you pull into the Tim Horton's drive through . . .

. . . you'll want to be sure you follow proper ordering practices.

H/T to "Da Wife" for the link.

Your-mind-will-melt statement of the week

"Looking back, it seems that only one institution functioned properly during this whole mess. And quite unbelievably, it was Parliament."

[Blink, blink]

I can't believe I just read that. But it's apparently true.

You want to invade where? Are you mad?

Unlike a lot of bloggers, I don't spend too much time taking potshots at the current leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition . . . but this just cries out for comment. Stephane Dion has been pushing for a definite end to Canada's commitment to the mission in Afghanistan, but now is talking about somehow invading a nuclear-armed nation to make that mission more likely to succeed:

Any attempt to counter terrorists war-torn Afghanistan will not succeed without an intervention in neighbouring Pakistan, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion said Wednesday.

Mr. Dion hinted NATO could take action in Pakistan, which has a porous border with Afghanistan, if the Pakistani government doesn't move to track terrorists.

"We are going to have to discuss that very actively if they (the Pakistanis) are not able to deal with it on their own. We could consider that option with the NATO forces in order to help Pakistan help us pacify Afghanistan," said Mr. Dion in Quebec City, commenting after his two-day trip to Afghanistan last weekend. "As long as we don't solve the problem in Pakistan, I don't see how we can solve it in Afghanistan."

That's not just ill-advised . . . that's absolutely batshit-crazy.

QotD: Cabernet Franc

Ontario's grape is Cabernet Franc [. . .] and after smelling and tasting my way through over 50 different kinds in a variety of styles, I'm even more convinced than ever before. Franc is the blending grape of Bordeaux — the right bank has Merlot, the left bank has Cab Sauv . . . but the lowly Franc has neither, used mainly to add structure to the blend — basically it's a back up role, it's along for the ride, think of it as the Ringo Starr to Merlot and Sauv's Lennon and McCartney.

Here in Ontario, Franc shines. Sure we blend it into Meritages, sometimes it's at the forefront of the blend and other times it takes a backseat, but we also make straight Cab Franc, Reserve Cab Franc, Late Harvest and Icewine Franc wines; we run the gamut of Franc and we make it well and consistently year after year.

I've been in discussions with winemakers, winery owners and wine people from all aspects of the industry — some hear Franc calling out to them while others dismiss it as the rantings of lunacy . . . but it is my belief that Cabernet Franc should be the grape we focus on as an industry and use it to help turn the world's attention to Ontario. It seems these days that every winemaking country has a calling card — a grape to call their own. I mention Riesling you think Germany, Cabernet Sauvignon = California , Shiraz = Australia, Sauvignon Blanc = New Zealand, Carmenere = Chile, Malbec = Argentina , Zinfandel = California, Chardonnay = anywhere that makes wine, same thing with Merlot, of course blends (Meritage) go to France [Bordeaux ] . . . the list goes on and on but nobody has adopted Cabernet Franc as their mainstay. It's homeless — sure it roams the globe popping up here and there, but it has nowhere to call "home". It's time we heed its calling and bring Franc into our fold, and give it a place to finally call home. We have the world's attention with Icewine. Now it's time to show them that we can make other wines too — not just copies of wines from other places, but a distinctive Ontario wine — Cabernet Franc; as with Shiraz, Sauvignon Blanc and Zinfandel, when people hear Ontario, they should think "great Cab Franc".

Michael "The Grape Guy" Pinkus, "My Two Barrels Worth — Cabernet Franc and Ontario", Ontario Wine Review #73, 2008-01-03

QotD: Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense, Canadian version

A skeptic might say I am going easy on Martin because I have met him, because he is a Canadian (and there is Canadian mafia), and/or because he gave me a copy of his book. May I reassure you that there is no Canadian mafia. Furthermore, I have met, worked with, and deeply admire Zaltman, so personal acquaintance has no sway. And if you think my good opinion can be purchased with a free book, well, I wonder if we should step into the corridor and discuss this further. (This is the Canadian version of Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense. Or, as we might call it in honor of the national sport, Honi Soit Qui Mal Y Pense on ice.)

Grant McCracken, "Canada, the Martin Paradox, and The Opposable Mind", This Blog Sits at the, 2008-01-10

Sea Kings: "You can only stretch that rubber band so far"

To no great surprise, given the sordid history of the entire saga of the Sea King replacement helicopters, there's another hitch in delivery:

The delivery of new military helicopters to replace Canada's aging fleet of Sea Kings will likely be delayed by 30 months and Ottawa is threatening to deeply penalize the U.S. contractor "thousands of dollars" for each day the choppers are late, The Canadian Press has learned.

A senior government source, speaking on background, said late Wednesday that department officials told Public Works Minister Michael Fortier on Monday that Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. would be late with the long-awaited delivery of new CH-148 Cyclones.

The Cyclones were scheduled for delivery later this year, and the delay means the breakdown-prone Sea King fleet will have to be maintained until the new helicopters arrive.

For Canadian air crew, it's not at all surprising to find that the senior member of the crew is younger than the airframe of the chopper they're flying, but at this rate, it'll become common for the airframe to be older than the crew's parents, too.

For all the great technology that went into the helicopters (and they were top-of-the-line birds when we first go them), there is a definite limit to how long they can be safely kept operational. Most other nations flying Sea Kings decided that they'd passed that point about a decade ago. Our military flight crews deserve far better than that from Canada.

Home Owners 2, Home Invaders 0

In a surprising result, the latest match between home invaders and home owners resulted in a decisive win for the home owners:

A home invasion in this bustling hamlet east of Calgary early Thursday morning ended with one of the invaders dead and the second in critical condition in hospital.

Two men forcibly entered a home and burst into a bedroom where a 35-year-old man and his 24-year-old girlfriend were asleep.

When it ended, the 32-year-old attacker was dead and his accomplice, 27, was eventually taken to hospital with stab wounds where he was listed in serious condition.

"It is an unusual case. It doesn't happen very often to have a home invasion where you have an attacker who ends up deceased," said RCMP Cpl. Patricia Neely. "It is pretty rare."

Of course, this is Canada, where the rights of the criminal often seem to trump those of their intended victim:

The police investigation will now try to determine what precipitated the attack. There is no indication whether the death of the home invader could be described as a murder, said Neely.

"I think if people enter your home at 3:30 in the morning it's not for a cup of tea and there was probably some nefarious component to the entry," she said.

"The Criminal Code authorizes people to use as much force as necessary to protect themselves and their property."

"However, that force must be the minimum amount necessary. Obviously this person had a right to protect himself but the investigation will focus on whether or not he used the minimum amount of force necessary to ensure his safety and that of the other person in the home," she added.

Unless there is clear evidence of premeditation on the part of the home owner, the Crown should not be automatically assuming that cases like this mean that the person defending their life and property is culpable. (And no, "premeditation" in this context would not include "owning a weapon".)

New reader comments on an old post

A new reader contacted me yesterday about adding a comment to a post from over a year ago. As I've had to close down the comments for anything over a couple of days old, I thought I'd add it here instead. This is from the original posting:

The search for easy labels and obvious scapegoats is as old as the news business. People don't want to think more than they have to: providing them with an easy, obvious person or group to blame for misfortune or bad news is, I hate to say it, a deeply rooted part of the human psyche. If it's not the Gypsies, it's the Jews. If it's not the Jews, it's the Mexicans, or the Masons, or whatever group will most easily satisfy the need to assign blame to among your listeners.

Perhaps the most reprehensible reaction seems to be the most common . . . something bad is happening? Who can we blame? It's sick. It's twisted. It often prevents logical thought. And it's absolutely human.

And the would-have-been-a-comment is:

Dunno about Canada . . . but the more whoever is in power can pit us against one another dividing us by race, looks, preferences and such, the more they can make us think it's the other one, and the more we fight, the more distracted we are from what they can do above our heads.

Sometimes it even gets other people fired up to fight wars against another. But a part is also in the mind naturally, too no doubt. It is sick. Ignorant, and horrible to imagine.

You've just gained a new reader.

Natilya

Winter outside the office window

The view directly outside my office this afternoon. Brrrr!

Attempting to excuse the inexcusable

Nick Packwood writes on the recent "honour slaying" in Toronto:

A father who murders his daughter with the connivance of other family members may justify his acts as the defense of the family's honour in upholding traditions and — grotesquely — of acting morally. I imagine the experience is one of horror as his daughter transforms into something non-human that he must kill if he is to defend his own authority. I can only pray that men who do this have some love of their own children and some horror at themselves for what they do; I am not convinced this is the case.

But this is only to consider such murders as individual tragedies and at the level of "the family", the primary social unit in the minds of many religious fundamentalists. At a wider level, such acts serve to terrorize society as a whole and as a warning to other girls lest they consider disobeying familial authority. Young Muslim girls are taught from the day they are born that women have a particular place in the world and must yield to familial authority or bring down upon themselves the wrath of God and an unforgiving, homicidal malice from those closest to them in all the world.

This is true not only for medieval backwaters without the law in the "tribal areas" of north-western Pakistan or ten minute's drive beyond the Kabul city limits. This is true of suburban Toronto with its shopping malls and multi-lane highways and CNN; its parliamentary democracy, Charter of Rights and Freedoms and countless titled faculty at women's studies and sociology departments. What lesson can Muslim girls take from this but that tribal law applies to them here as surely as it is does for hundreds of millions of other girls around the world? Their own fathers will not protect them; their fathers may be their murderers. Worse yet, their friends, their teachers and a small army of police will not anticipate such crimes, perhaps because none can imagine a father strangling his own daughter to death over a supposed religious edict.

Nick is quite correct. Locally, after the shock of the act wears off, it will continue to work as a compelling argument to every Canadian Muslim girl that despite living in a Western society, the tribe still has the final say over her fate. It will encourage submission to standards and mores of societies where women are considered little more than property . . . to be disposed of at the whim of the "owner" — their fathers, brothers, or even sons — with no hope of achieving self-ownership.

If you don't think this is utterly wrong, there is something seriously wrong with your world.

Update: Damian Penny has more.

Freedom of speech? In Canada, not so much . . .

Not having the financial resources to fight* a defamation case, I'm being extremely careful not to comment on this situation in a way that could come to the attention of the Canadian Human Rights Commission**.

So I won't make any comment about the serious erosion of the right to freedom of speech that this situation represents. But you might freely infer that I'm not happy with the direction things are headed. I didn't say that, and you are — at least for the time being — still free to draw your own conclusions about the facts as presented in that article.

     * Based on the most recent decisions, it'd be a hopeless fight: calling someone a censor is now legally punishable as defamation under Canadian law.

     ** In fact, you'll notice, I'm also being careful not to quote from that article. There are statements made in the article which would be actionable if they were published in a Canadian blog, although not in an American one.

H/T to Jon (my virtual landlord) for the link.

Update: Jon also sent along a link to Eugene Volokh's post on this topic, which I also don't feel safe in quoting here.

Go, Royson, Go!

Toronto Star columnist Royson James got a public dressing-down from the mayor for his brilliant column on Friday. The mayor's letter was published on Saturday. James responds, with more restraint than I'd have expected:

[. . .] Mayor David Miller inserted his hectoring presence into the debate — and before you know it, a rhetorical hanging became a "public lynching," the memory of his "Uncle Jim" is exhumed and he has concluded that the very foundation of democracy is being threatened by one columnist raging against city hall spending.

As they say in basketball, no harm no foul. At issue is not whether Toronto councillors deserve to be hanged (I'm against capital punishment, banned in Canada), subjected to public flogging (opposed wherever it's practised), or run out of office (we've just elected them, they're in until 2010). At issue is how do we register our disgust — sorry, our displeasure — at their fiscal indiscretions.

A number of readers have emailed concern about the mayor's "over the top" rhetoric. Some, mine. Others fear I'll be beaten (metaphorically?) into submission, afraid to utter a single contrarian view in future. My bosses, far from moving to censure me, are more concerned that I might be "chilled" into overlooking wasteful habits as council embarks on this crucial 2008 budget cycle.

No worries. Let's just use the mayor's letter to the editor Saturday as the template for all further analysis and critique of city hall. Surely, an ink-stained wretch is allowed to borrow the mayor's own carefully crafted words.

A cursory glance at the mayor's letter, dripping with bile and bluster, reveals no cause for concern that one's criticism must now be facile, gracious or temperate. The mayor provides a list of choice adjectives and phrases that might now be at a columnist's disposal.

Appropriating the title of ombudsman, editor and publisher — in addition to chief magistrate and monarch — in an attempt to control all propaganda, er, communications in Hogtown, the official list of approved words and phrases include: "Beneath contempt," "Shows absolutely no respect for democracy," "stoop so low," "outrageous thoughts," "beyond belief," "hateful ruminations," "absolutely offensive," "loathsome advocacy."

The win goes to James, by knockout, in the second round.

Toronto council wastes money . . . in other news, water is wet

I was amazed to find this column in the Toronto Daily Worker Toronto Star today:

Toronto city councillors do seem tragically hooked on spending needlessly and foolishly — despite constantly crying poor.

The mismanagement of the Union Station file being a recent example.

The private sector wanted to fix up the place, pay the city an annual fee and make some money off the venture. That deal fell apart. GO Transit wants to buy it, but the city isn't willing to deal. So now a city-inspired fix-up plan has hit $388 million and counting — and hopelessly dependent on cash from the federal government.

Another example. Budget committee voted Wednesday to borrow $700,000 to purchase food carts so the city can then rent them out to food vendors. Why not let the vendors get their own carts? Because the city wants to control the trade, keep entrepreneurs (conglomerates, John Filion says) from cornering the market.

Why the city has created this business to compete against restaurants is another question. But let's say it's good to be selling a variety of food from the sidewalks. Why must city hall get involved in the purchase, maintenance and distribution of the carts?

If Royson James isn't careful, he'll find himself the "token right-winger" in the TorStar newsroom! He may never do lunch in this town again!

All joking aside, this is the kind of thing you very rarely find in the local media: an article that isn't demanding yet more government spending and more government control over businesses and the lives of private citizens. Huzzah, Mr. James.

It's tough to disagree with the sentiments here:

Councillors should be hanged, one a day, at noon, in Nathan Phillips Square. Charge admission. We'll net enough money to pay off most of our civic bills.

To the tumbrils with them!

Canada cracks down on religious extremists

Hey, who knew? Canada is apparently getting all muscular over religious extremism, and the Canadian Human Rights Commission is the point of the spear:

Jessica Beaumont does not own a website. She was merely posting comments on existing sites (mostly in the United States). But the fact that she could go to prison for posting Scripture verses on a server in another country means that our religious freedom is in direct jeopardy.

Evelyn Beatrice Hall once wrote, "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." It has also been said that the real test of a person's commitment to free speech is their willingness to defend the speech of those with whom they disagree.

I think, despite the fact that many of the targets in CHRC Internet tribunals have been people with political opinions that we find downright offensive, we need to put those differences aside and look at the big picture.

When a government agency has the power to make a ruling that could put a 21-year old waitress in jail for posting thoughts that do not violate the law, we should be worried. When they set themselves up to determine what Scripture quotations should send her to prison, we should be confronting our Parliament.

And high time, too. Those fanatics going around quoting obscure religious books are clearly a threat to the public peace and should be locked up where they can't harm anyone again.

What? What harm did she do? Well, she quoted biblical sayings and not only that, but she did it on the INTERNET! God only knows, er, I mean who knows what other harm she might cause? Society must be protected.

Or, you know, we could mind our own flipping business and let her quote the Bible, the Q'uran, Torah, or the testicles of the Flying Spaghetti Monster without raiding her home and threatening her with five years in prison. Radical concept, I know, but I think it just might work.

Tarantino pulls no punches

Bob Tarantino has the best coverage of the hideous clusterfuck at Vancouver airport:

Having watched the long version of the Robert Dziekanski video (that's a six-minute version - there's also an approximately nine-minute version here), I'm not sure how anyone can come to a conclusion other than that the police conduct on there is utterly . . . appalling. That's the most docile "violent" person I think I've ever seen — how it is that what he was doing warranted two Taser shots is beyond me. What you see on that video is homicide — and now it'll be up to the courts to decide what type of homicide, and the punishment (if any) to be handed down for it.

Those four officers aren't solely to blame, of course. That the staff at an international airport in Canada were apparently befuddled by a traveller who didn't speak English shouldn't come as any surprise to anyone who has travelled extensively, but it is no less absurd for that. That the security personnel evidently weren't quite up to handling a non-violent, frustrated man who was acting erratically is unlikely to qualify as breaking news either. Finally, that the bureaucrats have conducted their own review of their own conduct and found . . . wait for it . . . nothing culpable about it whatsoever, is also about par for the course (my favourite quote is that "airport staff are not responsible for that area" — meaning, as near as I can tell, that there is a no-man's land inside the airport where the writ of the airport does not run — or something).

Go, as they say, and read the whole thing.

Yet more evidence that the judiciary is out of step with the country

Bob Tarantino outlines another case where the judge handed down an incredibly lenient sentence for an outrageous crime:

The maximum punishment which can be meted out for a conviction of aggravated sexual assault is a term of life imprisonment (see section 273 of the Criminal Code of Canada).

Cody Paul Lemay received a sentence from the trial judge of five years in prison.

Now what's fascinating about that punishment is how it was arrived at. It's an example of what I will dub the Moldaver Paradox (for reasons which will become apparent momentarily). As the British Columbia Court of Appeal noted, when the trial judge was reviewing other court cases for guidance on what constituted an appropriate sentence,

"he had difficulty understanding why some of them had not attracted longer sentences"

With the story so far? Confronted with a case of hideous violence (against a baby), the judge looks at what other judges are handing out as punishment — and he's bewildered to discover that the judgments he reads are lenient to the point of absurdity.

So what does he do?

He hands out an even shorter sentence.

Bob's summary is something that should be carved in the doorways of every courthouse in the land: "Our judiciary has the tools. They consciously, deliberately, inexplicably and consistently refuse to use them."

Remembrance Day

National Steel Car has a very well-done, very respectful, and very appropriate Remembrance Day clip. (Enter the main site, then click the "In Memoriam" link and the Remembrance Day, 2007 links.

Well done, NSC!

Update: John Donovan posts his recognition of Canada's military heritage.

15 Days

I'm not yet finished reading Christie Blatchford's latest book, but on the whole, I agree with Lewis MacKenzie's review:

Blatchford has the rare ability to make her descriptions of combat, particularly those involving loss of life or serious injury, almost embarrassing to the reader. You feel that you are eavesdropping on very private matters. Her extensive research and her own recollections as she was caught up in the thick of some of the heaviest fighting are compelling, gut-wrenching and, unfortunately, real. Her admission that on one occasion during a firefight her bowels turned to water and got the best of her is ample proof that that she walked the walk. Her description, witnessed up close and under fire, of the evacuation of fatally wounded Corporal Anthony Joseph Boneca, shot in the throat and bleeding on the dirt under her feet, exposes the reader to the gut-wrenching reality of close combat.

During three extensive stays with the Canadians in Afghanistan, Blatchford was able to penetrate the macho façade presented by soldiers in combat, and to see the cohesion and affection born of an obligation to those vets who have gone before them, and of an intense dedication to their fellow soldiers. Contrary to popular myth, soldiers don't risk their lives — and in some cases die — for God, Queen, country or even the regiment. They do so for their fellow soldiers, their buddies, frequently only a few meters away due to the tunnel vision generated by the rush of adrenalin when someone is trying to kill you.

So far, my only complaint is that she takes some discredited research about combat as a proven issue: US Brigadier General S.L.A. Marshall's Men Under Fire, with its contention that only a tiny minority of soldiers ever fire their weapons in combat situations. She doesn't reference Marshall by name, but talks about this factoid in one of the early chapters.

But not its spelling centre

A sign I pass every day on the way home. We may be the "Bus ness Centre", but we're not so gud at speling.

QotD: "Le p'tit gar"

Reading this book you detect an undercurrent of hostility toward "Bay Street" and "Wall Street," but no great sense of what Chrétien's for — other than "tolerance" and the other hollow cobwebbed buzzwords that boil down to little more than a passionate belief in not believing passionately in anything. The Iraq chapter is headlined "No To War," as if M. Chrétien is an elderly student on the march with Naomi Klein and Maude Barlow. In fact, under the cover of various "liaison" programs, Canada had more men in Iraq than many full-throated paid-up members of the "coalition of the willing." It was happy to be a unilateral coalition of the unwilling as long as it didn't have to march in the victory parade. But the author strains credibility when he claims to have told Bush, six months before the invasion, "I've been reading all my briefings about the weapons of mass destruction, and I'm not convinced. I think the evidence is very shaky." My Beltway pals scoffed when I relayed this snippet to them, and I'm inclined to agree. Even Chrétien's chum Chirac, who opposed the war, never disputed the fact that Saddam had WMDs, if only because he had a big bunch of the relevant receipts.

Mark Steyn, "He's still da boss", Macleans, 2007-10-23

Missing passages from the Throne Speech

Scott Feschuk goes dumpster diving to find the excised sections of the recent Throne Speech:

Only this blog has the 15 key missing passages from last night’s Speech From the Throne:

1. "Honourable Senators, Members of the House of Commons, Ladies and Gentlemen . . . and whatever Stephane Dion qualifies as now that the Prime Minister has possession of his balls."

2. "Through the Speech from the Throne, the Government shares its vision with Canadians . . . along with a sinister mind-control ray that will make you our willing hypno-slave upon the utterance of the code word, 'Pheasant.'"

[. . .]

9. "Our Government will introduce legislation to place formal limits on the use of the federal spending power. This legislation will allow provinces and territories to opt out with reasonable compensation if they offer compatible programs . . . or are Quebec."

10. "Canadians want a government that is a competent and effective manager of the economy . . . which is bad timing, because obviously we're spending our nuts off over here."