The Six Billion

More on Deficits

2009-05-29T09:42:00.004-04:00

The proper deficit figures, presumably from more current GDP information:

Canada: 3.3%
U.S.A.: 13.6%
Japan: 9.9%
Britain: 9.8%

The same editorial concludes:

It is time to stop these juvenile exchanges and move on to an adult conversation on what should be done after the recession to bring the budget back into balance. Ignatieff has said he would be open to the idea of raising taxes. Harper isn't. Would he undertake massive spending cuts or continue to run deficits? Canadians deserve an answer.

I couldn't agree more. Ignatieff made much of his intention to respond to personal attacks by attacking the CPC's record, which he has done. But the criticisms reported so far haven't contained much substance at all. Perhaps his demand for Jim Flaherty to be fired just made a better story than anything else he might have said, but until I see those other things, I'll remain unimpressed.

Speaking of Deficits...

2009-05-27T19:38:00.002-04:00

From here:

[Stephen Harper] added that, despite a deteriorating financial situation across the world, the Canadian deficit is a third to a quarter of the size of the shortfalls faced by the United States, Britain and Japan and that the money is being borrowed at historically low interest rates to help create jobs and build infrastructure.

Projected Canadian deficit: $50 billion CAD = $44.6 billion USD
Projected U.S. deficit: $1800 billion USD
Projected U.K. deficit: £175 billion = $279.3 billion USD
Projected Japanese deficit: ??? (anybody?)

But these things are usually measured as percentage of GDP, I gather.

IMF 2008 says:
Canadian GDP: $1.510 trillion USD
U.S. GDP: $14.265 trillion USD
U.K. GDP: $2.674 trillion USD
Japanese GDP: $4.923 trillion USD

Thus:

Canadian deficit: 3.0% of GDP
U.S. deficit: 12.6% of GDP
U.K. deficit: 10.4% of GDP
Japanese deficit: ???

Yup, Steve is telling the truth.

For once.

Conservatives Raising Taxes?

2009-05-26T17:53:00.003-04:00

Here

In short, the following words by Stephen Harper:

“What we’re not going to do, is every two or three months, come up with another economic policy, another budget, until we need to raise taxes.”

Are misinterpreted by Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale as meaning that the CPC has a secret plan to raise taxes. I'm as happy as anybody to pick on the CPC, but this herring is as red as they come.

I mean, Conservative deficit spending and tax hikes? Steve would never live it down.

It's On

2009-05-15T10:23:00.002-04:00

The Globe and Mail catches up.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper continued this new, aggressive tack in the Commons yesterday, engaging in sabre-rattling as he flatly rejected Mr. Ignatieff's proposals to boost access to employment insurance and warned he was ready to fight an election on this.

I believe that settles it: it's on. Ignatieff made clear that he'll fight an election for EI reform and Harper agrees. The two party leaders have been getting increasingly blustery, and neither looks likely to back down. People in the know disagree with me, but in a self-contradictory way:

The Liberals, anxious not to be forced to look like they're dodging a fight, have double-timed the selection of candidates and advanced the deadline for their election platform to have it ready in weeks.

But senior strategists on both sides said they don't believe there will be an election this spring.

Here, Lawrence Martin wonders why the Liberals are being so polite when they could have savaged Harper for his prorogation. Perhaps Iggy is trying to emulate Obama and remain above all that, but I doubt that he could paint himself as such an idealist at this point. Nonetheless he keeps things pretty high-brow in his response:

"Now, when we're in the middle of the worst economic crisis this country has faced in a generation, all the Conservatives can think about is getting together in some basement room and working on some attack ads. Is that serious government?"

It has begun!

2009-05-13T21:58:00.003-04:00

Finally, the Conservatives frame Ignatieff. It took them long enough; Iggy did warn that he'd be quick to pounce if they started running attack ads when they ought to be worrying about the economy. But now the talk of a summer or fall election (what, again?) has probably got them worried, especially when the polls are unfavourable.

I have a feeling that there will be retaliation and escalation; if the mid-year election is really going to happen, then the campaign effectively began tonight.

Rules are for other parties

2008-12-23T11:30:00.003-05:00

... especially our own rules.

Fixed election dates? Sure, we campaigned on 'em and pushed 'em through. But we can still call an election a year early.

Elected senators? Maybe next time.

Parliamentary review for Supreme Court appointments? It's not like we have a Parliament anyway, so nyah nyah nyah.

Seriously. How can you re-elect these people?

Second time's the charm?

2008-12-22T15:58:00.005-05:00

Here: MacKay sees risks in U.S. plan to arm tribal militias [in Afghanistan].

Isn't this the most delightfully and tragically ironic plan? In the 80s the USSR armed the Afghan national army to take care of the mujahideen. The U.S. armed the mujahideen, who overthrew the Soviet-supported government, and are now the new government, and the insurgents, and the tribal militias. So let's arm them some more, because it worked out really well last time.

The Framing of Michael Ignatieff

2008-12-11T09:50:00.008-05:00

Just short of two years ago, Stéphane Dion was chosen as the new leader of the Liberal Party. Outside of Quebec, many people hadn't heard of him until then and didn't know anything about him. The Conservative Party was thinking ahead; this man would be their biggest competitor in the next federal election, and they had an opportunity. Enter the frame.

The first major piece of media about the man himself was the slogan: "Stéphane Dion is not a leader." Twenty months later an election was called, and Dion's biggest problem was the public's perception that he is not a leader. If there's one thing for which you have to respect the Conservatives, it's their tactical acumen.

Now, finally, Dion's first mistake has taken its course and he's stepped down to make room for Michael Ignatieff. What have we heard about the latter? He went to Harvard, he spent a lot of time in the USA, and he used to support the Iraq war. In Conservative-speak that will be, "He's an ivory tower elite, out of touch with ordinary Canadians, and he flip-flops on the issues." I hope that he won't make the same mistake as Dion; the race is on to see who can frame Ignatieff first and best.

Clearly, he's well aware of the above. The Globe and Mail reports:

Mr. Ignatieff's response to the prospect of the Conservatives quickly launching attack ads against him was further evidence of his ability - as Mr. Harper once boasted - to take a punch. Rather than bleat about Conservative mean-spiritedness, he all but dared his opponents to take aim at him. "The least I can say is that we are in a situation of parliamentary crisis," Mr. Ignatieff said. "It would seem to me a very serious mistake to engage in partisan attacks against the party leader at this moment. I hope I make myself clear."

Way to kick things off, Iggy. Not only is he daring them to try it, he's framing himself in the process as a man who's not to be trifled with, just the sort of thing that might have saved Dion early on. This is the hard edge that the public needs to see. Now give us more.

Prorogued

2008-12-04T22:49:00.005-05:00

Everybody* knows by now that Parliament has been prorogued until mid-January, thereby sparing Harper from tomorrow's confidence motion.

At first I was going to write something about how I disagreed with the Governor General's decision. If her discretion in the matter exists for any non-ceremonial purposes at all, then surely those include preventing the Prime Minister from evading confidence motions? And is the spirit of all these rules not to ensure that whoever holds that title has the confidence of the house?

As I did my best to consider the opposing arguments, though, I really couldn't think of a good rebuttal to this one: Parliament will resume in less than two months, and if the opposition's coalition can't hang together that long then they shouldn't be governing the country. Certainly there is a cost; we lack a proper government when we really need it, but I think that one way or another we'll be better off afterward.

If the coalition holds together, we'll at least know that they can offer some stability, and we'll have a government that balances the interests of a majority of the electorate. If it disintegrates, we'll have Conservatives who know that they can't get away with the sort of machinations seen in last week's economic update, and most likely will have to behave like a minority government for the first time since coming into power.

Another possible side-effect is that the Liberal Party finds a new leader in time to take up the reins. A recent poll in my local paper concluded that a strong majority of Canadians are against having Stéphane Dion as their Prime Minister, even in the Liberal stronghold of Ontario. Personally I'm more tolerant of him than most (are the people who claim that "Stéphane Dion is not a leader" aware that they're just regurgitating the punchline of a two-year-old Conservative attack ad?), but when centre-left voters are unwilling to support a centre-left coalition, you know there's a serious problem. The best possible outcome, which is admittedly a lot to ask in a short time, is that by January we have a coalition with the support of the majority of Canadians.

I close with an example of Peter MacKay's magnificent powers of reason:

Defence Minister Peter MacKay defended the Conservative leader's move, saying the Governor General was "duty bound" by precedent and parliamentary procedure to accept Harper's prorogation request.

...

"This is certainly an unprecedented situation that we saw unfold."

She's duty bound by precedent in this unprecedented situation? Riiiight.

* Or at least, every one of the three of the people who might read this.

The end of an era

2008-11-28T15:33:00.002-05:00

It's official: "the post-9/11 era" is over.

The present is now called "these uncertain times".

The Conservative party's economic "plan"

2008-10-15T19:46:00.003-04:00

As reported by the CBC:

Hold a first ministers meeting to discuss the global financial crisis.
Continue to work with other G7 nations to take "appropriate actions" to support Canada's financial system.
Summon Parliament to meet in the fall.
Send Harper to meet with European Union leaders later this week to discuss the economic crisis and strengthen Canada's economic partnership with the EU.
Attend a summit of G-20 finance ministers in Brazil in early November.
Continue a review of departmental spending.

But let's make it clear and simple, the way Steve likes it:

Hold a meeting.
Do something unspecified.
Hold a meeting with the rest of the government.
Attend a meeting.
Attend a meeting.
Do something that we were already doing anyway.

This is not a plan. There's not much more to say than that. It might qualify as a plan for forming a plan. Beyond that it's useless.

And there you have it

2008-10-15T08:36:00.003-04:00

Status quo. Despite much talk of majorities and coalitions, we have a mundane minority. The green party goes back to having no seats, the Conservatives gain some ground, but in the balance it's the same.

Here are a few things I'll be watching from now:

Will the party of openness and accountability be held accountable for wasting $300,000,000 on an early and possibly illegal election?
Will this new old Parliament be "dysfunctional"? (By what measure?) And if not, will the party of openness and accountability be held accountable for lying about the need to dissolve Parliament?
Will the party of openness and accountability stick to their platform?

Oh those fat-cat artists

2008-09-24T09:24:00.004-04:00

I'm guessing that Stephen Harper is either lying again, or has never met a real live artist. "Stephen Harper ... draped himself in populism and said he sided with regular folks who aren't troubled that his policies rile fat-cat artists or people 'in ivory towers.'"

Fat-cat artists? Really? Really?! I mean, I know a few artists myself. They're slim and largely non-feline. And they're also just getting by - working class, at best. The Green Party offers some numbers on this:

In 2000 the average employment income in Canada was $31,757. Actors that year earned an average of $21,597, painters and sculptors $18,666 and musicians and singers $16,090. By comparison, a senior government manager averaged $65,020 in 2000.

The poverty line is currently set at $20,778. So... maybe actors are the fat-cats, rolling around in a bed made of the $800 that they're raking in beyond the poverty line? The Prime Minister of Canada, on the other hand, is making only $280,000 or so. Poor guy.

UPDATE: I think this is the original quote from Harper that the Globe & Mail refers to:

I think when ordinary working people come home, turn on the TV and see a gala of a bunch of people, you know, at a rich gala all subsidized by taxpayers claiming their subsidies aren't high enough when they know those subsidies have actually gone up - I'm not sure that's something that resonates with ordinary people.

So he didn't actually use the term "fat-cat", just implied it. I'm not sure what gala he's talking about, but I assume that he's referring to film industry ones. In which case he's being extremely disingenuous in implying that the actors/directors/etc. you might see at such galas are in any way representative of average artists in Canada.

Leaders debate revisited

2008-09-15T22:11:00.002-04:00

A column from Lysiane Gagnon here. Summary: the Green Party should not have been allowed into the leaders debate because they don't meet established "clear and perfectly fair" criteria of proven popular support and Commons representation.

Clear? They aren't clear to me, because they've never been cited by the broadcasters consortium or any of the articles I've found on this issue. Apparently they aren't clear to Ms. Gagnon either; she goes on to say that popular support "should ideally be measured by the percentage of the vote won in the previous election" and "a threshold of 5 per cent... seems reasonable." 'Should', 'ideally', 'seems reasonable'. All the terms one expects to see in reference to something that's absolutely clear, right? If they're clear then why speculate about what they ought to be?

She goes on to write: "The other rule was that the party had to be represented in the House of Commons. Yet, the Greens have no MP elected under the party's banner." They don't have an MP elected under the party's banner. They do have an MP. Are the rules clear here? Does the broadcasters consortium have it written down somewhere that the MP has to be elected under the party's banner? Or is Ms. Gagnon being, perhaps, a little disingenuous here by sneaking in the word 'elected'?

Really, this article misses the entire point. Elizabeth May was able to "elbow her way into the major leagues" because the other party leaders, not "the rules", were offered as the reason for her exclusion. If the rules had been clear and fair and cited as a reason for May's exclusion, that might have been the end of it. They weren't cited because their nature and application aren't clear at all. The article does nothing more than interpret that uncertainty so as to support a particular point of view.

Stephen Harper speaks on arts cuts

2008-09-12T08:57:00.002-04:00

Here. From the article: "Mr. Harper flatly denied any ideological underpinnings...."

See, that's called lying. As I've mentioned before, the Conservative party's own leaked memo complained that "left-wing" artists were benefiting from the grants. Not that they were "political" or "right-wing" or "radical" or anything else. Just that they happened to espouse ideology that's opposed to conservatism.

So which is the lie? The internal memo leaked at the time, or the public statement a month later during an election campaign? Gee, I wonder.

In their own words

2008-09-10T17:59:00.003-04:00

The Globe and Mail is running a daily selection of quotes from the major party leaders. My two cents here:

Stephen Harper says

"Being a family man ... a father of school-age children is a big part of my life. People say it must be tough to balance your family life with being prime minister. In fact if I didn't have this family life I don't think I could stay balanced as prime minister."

"We will not be getting into a bidding war [of election promises] with the opposition. That is a fundamental choice of this campaign: do we stay the course or do we go back to an agenda of tax and spend."

"My opponent [Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion] has said he wants to tax things that are bad ... taking groceries to market, is that bad? Allowing airplane transportation - the shipping of goods across the continent around the world; business and passenger transportation - are these bad things? No, these are essential things for the economy."

I think it's very telling that he only stops talking about the Liberals to make the irrelevant claim that he is a family man. This is only a limited selection of quotes, of course, but it's reflected in his campaign. The ads so far have been "Stéphane Dion, scratch'n'lose" and "Stephen Harper, family man". Good on you, Steve, but what's your agenda?

Stéphane Dion says

"I have a hearing problem and it may be linked to that."

"I challenge Stephen Harper to debate this seriously, to stop to lie to Canadians, to not try to win an election by lying. And to be honest for once."

"Yes, I love the beginning of this campaign. The fun is in the Liberal Party. The 'party' is back in the Liberal Party. And I've been told ... speaking about fun and party, we have some burgers somewhere to eat."

#1 is in regard to his alleged lack of proficiency with the English language. Dion shouldn't dignify personal criticisms by trying to defend himself against them. I wasn't paying much attention to his delivery until he brought it up. And if he's going to challenge Harper to be honest, he should really just dive into the attack and start pointing out lies. Taking the high road is admirable but if he's going to define himself in relation to his adversary, he'd better be clear about what's wrong with his adversary.

Jack Layton says

"Winds of change are blowing south of the border and many Canadians are catching that sense of optimism for a better North America - and indeed a better world."

"When we see Mr. Harper claim to be standing up for the North and to have a vision for the North, he'd better start by controlling the pollution and taking action to protect the North from the toxic discharges of his friends in the big oil companies."

"There is a sweater on over his agenda. I'm not sure it changes the agenda, however."

#1 is a continuation of the Harper equals Bush tack, and it's getting tired. That anti-Americanism card isn't going to win new votes, it's preaching to the choir. Layton needs a new line.

Gilles Duceppe says

"These elections will be an occasion to raise a primordial question - what kind of society do we want to live in?"

"Lots of people are family men. It's not All in the Family, it's an election."

"That candidate said very openly that self-whipping is a sacrifice they have to do. I question myself on such practices."

#2 is on point. #3 is in reference to Nicole Carbonneau Barron, an Opus Dei member running as a Conservative in Quebec. Way to take the low road, Gilles. Her religion is none of your business.

Elizabeth May says

"You across Canada: Please pay attention now. Don't tune in CNN. Tune in our networks. Yes, the McCain-Obama fight is interesting, but this is our future."

"It's Day 2 of the Canadian election and democracy's taking a nose-dive."

"I'm grateful for the outpouring of outrage that we're seeing across the country."

#1 is so right. I was thinking about writing a whole post on it. I meet people yammering on about Obama, McCain, and Palin all the time and they don't know squat about local politics. They seem to feel that being well-informed means knowing about American politics because "they affect the whole world." Maybe so, but local politics affect you.

Thoughts on the Leaders' Debate

2008-09-09T09:43:00.005-04:00

Day-old news: The Green Party will not be invited to the leaders' debate. Various reasons have been offered, but none of them is especially compelling. Here's my analysis:

1. The excuse from the broadcasters' consortium was that the other party leaders refused to attend if Green Party leader Elizabeth May were allowed to. For that matter, I'm sure that Stephen Harper and Stéphane Dion would be happy to have the floor all to themselves. The other leaders' desires should not be the issue. This is a chance for the public to find out what the party leaders are all about; if some of them are about boycotting a debate with a leader whose party is supported by around 10% of Canadians (nearly as many as the NDP, and more than the Bloc Québécois whose leader was invited), then they've made their statement. Let it stand. May can have the floor to herself while the others' positions remain unvoiced, but clear:

Harper: "Why do you need to hear from anyone else when you've got me?"
Dion: "Harper's not coming? If there's nobody around that I can compare to George Bush then I've got nothing left to say."
Layton: "There ain't room in this left for the two of us."

2. The NDP and the Conservatives have both painted May as a second Liberal candidate because of her and Stéphane Dion's agreement not to run candidates against one another in their own ridings. Stephen Harper added "I think it would be fundamentally unfair to have two candidates who are essentially running on the same platform in the debate."

This is just weak. Their platforms are not the same, and someone minimally informed can point out numerous differences. There may be some overlap, but that didn't stop the Progressive Conservative and Reform parties from both participating in the May 1997 leaders' debate. They were similar enough to later merge into one party... guess whose? The fact that the Green and Liberal parties aren't running candidates against one another's leaders is trivial. It's much more important to note that the Greens are siphoning off Liberal votes, which thoroughly undermines the idea that they will somehow bolster the Liberals' position. It benefits the Conservatives if anyone.

3. BQ leader Gilles Duceppe said "The rules are the rules are the rules," citing the fact that the Green party has no elected MP (their one MP is a converted former independent). But nobody else mentioned these rules, not even when the broadcasters explained their decision, so are they really the rules? And if they are then why did anybody ask you and the other party leaders? The rules should have resolved the question, right? Come on, now you're just making shit up.

UPDATE: A caller to a local news discussion on the topic claimed that there's a 19-seat cutoff for participation in the leaders' debate, and it has been exercised before. If it's true, it would be an acceptable reason, but why hasn't anybody else mentioned it?

He Finally Called It

2008-09-07T09:55:00.002-04:00

The foreplay is finally over. Stephen Harper has requested that the Governor General dissolve parliament for an election on October 14th. Here's what I want to say about it:

Strategic voting is a huge mistake!

Today Ipsos-Reid reports that 33% of Canadians intend to vote strategically - i.e. vote to keep the party they dislike out of power rather than to put a party they like in power. To them: don't do it!

I confess, I've done it before. We feel we only have two viable options right now, the Conservatives (CPC) and Liberals (LPC). Those who dislike the Conservatives can vote Liberal or NDP, but everybody knows that the NDP won't win and then the Liberals will be less likely to defeat the Conservatives.

I will hazard a guess that most of the 33% are of the variety I just described. In Alberta, the Conservative stronghold, the figure drops to 28% which confirms my feeling that more Conservative voters genuinely like the party. In our last federal election the Liberals pulled 30.2% of the vote (103 seats) and the NDP pulled 17.5% of the vote (29 seats). Now, how unreasonable is it to think that even 40% of those strategic voters are people who like the NDP but will vote otherwise out of fear? Supposing that's true, the numbers are suddenly reversed. The NDP becomes our viable alternative to the Conservatives.

At the very least, we can say that with that many voting for a party they don't genuinely want to see in power, the political landscape is very different from what it could be. And it's a short-sighted approach. You try to make your next four years better but you do nothing to improve the long-term prospects. We'll only secure other options for ourselves when we decide to bite the bullet, let the bad guys win one, and send a message to the country that there are more than two viable options.

My bias is probably clear enough, but I'm not even trying to argue for one side or the other. I'm arguing for honest voting. Check the box next to the candidate you want to see in parliament, or next to the party you want to see in power. It's that simple, and it's the only way to get out of this lesser-of-two-evils rut we're stuck in. That won't happen by itself. We can bring it about only when we stop waiting and stop reacting.

Harper's fixed term

2008-08-27T09:43:00.002-04:00

It's just too rich, isn't it? A year ago, Stephen Harper was harping on fixed election dates. October 19, 2009 was set to be our next election date. Here's what the Conservative party had to say about it:

"Fixed election dates will improve the fairness of Canada's electoral system by eliminating the ability of governing parties to manipulate the timing of elections for partisan advantage. Establishing fixed election dates fulfils one of this government's key campaign commitments. It is an important step in improving and modernizing Canada's democratic institutions and practices."
- Rob Nicholson, previous Minister for Democratic Reform

"This important piece of legislation will ensure fairness in the electoral process by eliminating the power of the governing party to call an election to capitalize on favourable political circumstances. The previous Liberal government repeatedly abused the power to call general elections and this legislation will strengthen accountability and provide certainty by setting October 19, 2009 as the date for the next general election."
- Peter Van Loan, current Minister for Democratic Reform.

Of course everybody knows now that Harper is likely to call an election a year early. According to the article, "Mr. Harper said he would not be breaking his word by disregarding his own fixed-election-date law that schedules voting day in October of 2009. He argued that opposition parties want to bring down the government before then, so it is up to him to remove doubt about who will govern."

Yet, there are a lot of bad things in store for the Conservatives in their near-future, between the party's election funding scandal, a slowing economy, and Julie Couillard's upcoming book that will presumably hang MP Maxime Bernier out to dry on his NATO-briefing-paper-indiscretion. It's highly likely that this is a better year for the Conservatives than next year will be. But this isn't an attempt to "manipulate the timing of elections for partisan advantage", nor "capitalize on favourable political circumstances". Nobody will be able to claim that they "abused the power to call general elections", right?

Accountability, you say?

P.S. What did the fixed term bill actually accomplish if both the PM and the opposition can still force elections?

Canada's Ministry of Truth

2008-08-18T08:48:00.003-04:00

Oh, I mean the Department of Canadian Heritage. Typo, sorry. More details here, but I'll summarize the juicy bits:

Bill C-10, currently before the Canadian Senate, would deny important tax credits to artistic productions deemed “contrary to public policy.” With no guidelines for what that means, exactly. You can read the left-leaning summary, or the right-leaning summary (the thesis of this article seems to be that it's the Liberal Party's fault - quelle surprise).

Without knowing the guidelines, any discussion of what it entails will be speculation, I suppose, but let's consider some evidence. When the federal government announced its cuts to the PromArt program (among several others) which promoted Canadian art abroad (left version, right version), a leaked Conservative Party memo complained that the funds were being spent on "left-wing" artists. The National Post asks "Why, for instance, is it the duty of Canadian taxpayers to fly left-wing anti-war journalist Gwynne Dyer...." Let's not get into a discussion of all the bad ways in which tax dollars get spent, because that's not so relevant. What's relevant is why it should be the government's business to single out left-wing (or anti-war) art/journalism. Is that what they mean by "contrary to public policy"? At this point, what little evidence we have indicates as much.

So bill C-10 seems to be about letting the federal government moderate art on a political basis. Whether it's harming "left-wing" art, or right-wing art, that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up. My brother-in-law grew up in a Communist country, and that was how they ran things there. "It sounds like something they do in Beijing," said Canadian director David Cronenberg. To have it enacted here is a terrifying prospect. The fact that it was even proposed (and then passed by the House of Commons) is disturbing. It has no place in a democratic country.

You can blame the Conservatives, as most do, or you can blame the Liberals, as the National Post does. I don't really care, because I don't think you should vote for either of them. I don't think you should support any party or MP that lets bill C-10 through without a fight.

Why are Canada's Olympic athletes so fat and lazy?

2008-08-17T10:09:00.008-04:00

Yesterday's Toronto Star offers up some poll results:

68% of Canadians "find our athletes' performance moderately or completely unacceptable."
50% of Canadians "were disappointed at our athletes' failure to win medals before today."
30% of Canadians "feel the government is to blame for our athletes' performance so far."

Here, one of my (presumably) countrywomen asks "Why are Canada's Olympic athletes so fat and lazy?" I had hoped it would be satire, but it doesn't appear to be.

1. Meanwhile we've had (as of today) 24 top-8 finishes. How awful and shallow to consider that failure and focus on pointing fingers, while sitting safely here on our couches in front of CBC Television. Mike Brown was reported as nearly in tears after his 4th-place finish in the 200m breaststroke. Since when is a 4th-place finish bad? This obsession with medals is hardly sportsmanlike, in my opinion. Hey, Canada, let's stop blaming and start supporting.

2. B.C. Premier Gordon Campbell wants Canada to fund and foster a "culture of sport". Meanwhile the federal government is hacking away large blocks of arts funding. How about a culture of art? A culture of intellect? Let's not devalue the natural talents of all the millions of Canadians who aren't athletes. How about funding social or environmental programs? Is it more important to win Olympic medals than to reduce carbon emissions, provide good health care, home the homeless, etc?

3. What are the Olympics all about, anyway? Sometimes there seems to be a disturbing undercurrent of measuring national or even racial superiority. It's a show of strength, a flexing of national muscles. Why, after all, are governments so intent on pumping money into it at the expense of their own citizens, many of whom live in poverty? Not naming names; the guilty are legion, in varying degrees.

* * *

Michael Phelps has a genetic oddity that causes his muscles to produce half as much lactic acid as other athletes, which means that he recovers more quickly from exertion, and which should be helpful in almost any sport. To me, this points out that success in the games isn't just about effort and spirit. Not to disparage his effort, I'm sure it was Olympian, and I know that he's trained from a young age. But so did many other competitors, and he crushed them (though only emotionally in the case of Milorad Čavić).

A larger population increases the probability of finding such tailor-made athletes, more money makes for better training, and having athletes raised in appropriate environmental conditions can result in beneficial adaptations. In light of the superiority of Kenyan runners who'd trained in natural low-oxygen conditions all their lives, moneyed countries began building hypobaric training chambers for their aerobic athletes. Pretty soon I'm certain that genetic engineering will be involved (if it hasn't begun already).

What does it mean to win or lose an Olympic medal under such conditions? As the science and technology evolve and become more difficult to regulate than drugs, the spirit and effort will be increasingly marginalized we'll be left with a highly-televised sham. Is it avoidable? I don't see how.

There are other parties, you know

2008-08-16T10:26:00.004-04:00

Here, Stephen Harper tells us,

"In the past few months, and particularly over the summer, we have seen increasing signs that this Parliament is really not working very well any more. It is becoming increasingly dysfunctional. Quite frankly, I'm going to have to make a judgment in the next little while as to whether or not this Parliament can function productively."

Let's see how far back our political memories go: In 2007, which party was caught red-handed distributing 200 pages of Parliament-disrupting-dirty-tricks to all of its MPs? Which party is systematically evading or ignoring Parliamentary summonses? Who answers pointed ethical questions in Parliament with lawsuits? It's pretty clear that this entire scenario has been brought about deliberately.

The Conservative party simply doesn't want to make do with a minority government. They don't want discussion or compromise. They want their majority. Increasingly it appears their strategy is to bring Parliament grinding to a halt, blame the Liberals, and call a new election before their funding scandal from the previous election really hits the fan. And then blame the Liberals some more. I'll bet you $100 (I'd bet more, but I'm only a student) that they've got an ace in the hole for election time, they're going to produce something newly scandalous about the Liberals at a key moment, to try to secure their majority.

I've asked it before, and I'll ask it again: How long should we go on picking between two corrupt parties on the basis of who was less corrupt in the last 4 years?

Openness and Accountability

2008-08-14T09:59:00.003-04:00

That was the Conservative platform, yes? Sorry, Stephen, but there is no way you can mash words together so as to make that compatible with having your party members systematically evading and ignoring ethics committee summonses. Calling the committee a kangaroo court doesn't explain why members of your own party quit and accused you of dirty tricks. Obviously you did something wrong, and you're making it impossible for us to learn the details. That's pretty much the definition of closed and unaccountable.

I've decided to start making a list of all ways in which your party is open and accountable. I'll be fair and keep both positive and negative examples, and I'll do it for the other parties as well. Then when it's election time I'll ignore the attack ads from all sides, and just consider my list.

I think everyone knows that one of the underdog parties will win in that case, though, right? They simply haven't had the chance to sully themselves in public. Which reminds me of an argument I keep hearing for why we shouldn't elect the New Democratic Party: "They have no administration experience." Well no wonder... you never elect them. By that logic we should just switch to the two-party system, and spend the rest of our elections trying to decide whether the Conservatives or the Liberals are less corrupt.

A Brief History of Corn Biofuel in Canada

2008-07-31T08:33:00.004-04:00

A recent opinion piece in the Globe and Mail, Corn-based ethanol: The negatives outweigh the positives, spurred me to do a little research about this. I had some opinions on the matter which I hadn't really taken the time to thoroughly examine, but I felt that columnist Jeffrey Simpson was being a little too gentle in his criticism.

According to a Library of Parliament primer, the federal government has been preparing for a biofuel push since the mid '90s - the Liberal Party era - through various economic incentives. In 2006 the Conservative government announced a strategy to have ethanol and biodiesel account for 5% and 2%, respectively, of what's sold at the pumps, which included $345 million for research and agricultural development. In 2007 that number was increased to over $2 billion, and a tax rebate for "green cars" was introduced. This is notable because the rebate was quietly removed from the 2008 budget. Which makes you wonder: why would it be better to funnel money into corn ethanol rather than low-emission vehicles? You might argue that it's simply a matter of spending efficiency, but the evidence would not be in your favour.

A recent report (among many similar ones) from the non-partisan C.D. Howe Institute is quite damning. It concludes that, even if corn biofuel has any positive net effect on greenhouse gas emission, the cost per tonne of CO2 reduction is seven times that of the alternatives. Furthermore the environmental impact of growing, harvesting, milling, transporting, and fermenting the corn is arguably worse than that of simply burning gasoline, and many of the published green-house gas (GHG) reduction figures are per litre consumed, which hides the fact that ethanol produces less energy, resulting in lower fuel efficiency. So even before considering all of the distribution-related factors, the decrease in GHG emissions is already slim. After considering other factors, it is possibly nil or even negative.

The main question on my mind is whether or not any of this was known when the federal government's policies were enacted. Most of the research cited in the Howe Institute report comes from the 2000-2007 period, which leaves a bit of uncertainty, but it seems clear that at the very least, there was significant debate about whether or not corn ethanol offered any benefits when the Conservatives made their big announcements. We have a great many ways to spend $2 billion with more clear-cut benefits. Why this?

Here are a few things we know.

Canada's canola and soybean crushers were lobbying for the biodiesel move - precisely the one announced in 2006 - since well before the current federal government came into power.
A side-by-side comparison between a map of 2006 federal election results and a map of agricultural land usage is fascinating, if unsurprising. Guess who voted Conservative?
Food prices were already well into their rise in 2006 and corn ethanol was already a suspect at the time.
Once upon a time, Kory Teneycke was head of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, a lobby group for Canada's biofuel producers. He has a history of involvement in politics, spanning all of Canada's major right-wing parties. His sister-in-law works as an assistant to the Prime Minister's wife. In 2007 he joined the Conservatives as Director of Research, and as of this month he's the PM's director of communications.
Our Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food, Gerry Ritz, has a personal relationship with ethanol industry lobbyists.
Many of these lobbyists have ties with the Conservatives. I don't have a unified source for this, but look up some names and the trend starts to become pretty clear. This is not particularly surprising or contentious, given that conservative policies tend to be most favourable to industry, but it's still worth bearing in mind because conservative policies don't tend to favour the environment. When they do, I tend to wonder what else is going on.

At the very least, there are some massive conflicts of interest and callously ill-informed decision-making driving the Conservatives' biofuel policy. That's being charitable. I'll let you come to your own conclusions, but my own is that Canada has been scammed, big-time.

Mmmmmm eely

2008-07-28T09:09:00.002-04:00

First ever eel energy drink on sale

"The 140 yen (80p) drink costs about one-tenth as much as broiled eel, but has a similar flavour."

No thank you.

"Just another African mess"

2008-07-27T19:12:00.007-04:00

What? Rwanda. Not my words.

I just finished watching Shake Hands with the Devil, a docu-drama about the Rwandan genocide. I'm not all that discerning when it comes to technical aspects of film so I won't comment on any of that. I was just happy to see a perspective from someone who was inside it all. "Happy" is not exactly the right word, however, since I'll probably be depressed for a few days after seeing all that.

Here are the highlights, to me:

When the genocide happened in 1994, I was 15. A year or two later I picked Rwanda as my country in a model UN debate. I took matters seriously, and did my research. There was already enough internet at the time, and I already had enough access to it, to find quite a bit that hadn't filtered its way into the available literature yet.

What I found that interested me most was that the Hutu government was propped up by France, and the Tutsi rebels were propped up by the good old USA. My conclusion at the time was that this was essentially a sort of neo-colonial proxy war. Perhaps evidence that a lesson learned in Vietnam was "don't go there yourself, just find a way to get the locals to do it for you". (And before the Afghanistan lesson: train them, arm them, mobilize them, and then cut them off when you're done? Bad plan.)

Anyhow, in the intervening half of my life I more or less forgot about those discoveries, or when I remembered them assumed that they were probably a product of some youthful naivety. The movie, however, supported my teenaged assessment, and it's worth noting that protagonist Roméo Dallaire - the Canadian general whose autobiography it was based on - was deeply involved with the film project.

His perception was that France's involvement took the form of evacuating the Hutu government leaders who had planned the genocide, providing weapons to their militias, and then attempting to bail them out when it was apparent that they were going to lose to the Tutsi RPF (Rwandan Patriotic Front). There is also an unsourced claim in Wikipedia to the effect that French troops were directly involved on the Hutu side. Dallaire didn't have much to say about RPF leader (and current Rwandan president) Paul Kagame. He did, however, note that the USA was resolute in not getting involved until after the RPF was in control of the country.

Read a bit of Paul Kagame's Wikipedia bio (fairly well sourced), and something very odd may stand out. A Tutsi, born in Rwanda, raised and schooled in Uganda, later fighting in the Ugandan National Resistance Army. In 1986 he helped form the RPF, became head of military intelligence of the NRA, and joined the Ugandan military. And then "In October 1990... Kagame was participating in a military training program at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas...." Yes, four years later he was suddenly training in a US army facility involved in "leader development, collective training, Army doctrine, and battle command." What the heck? On top of that he is alleged by investigative journalist Wayne Madsen to have ties with the CIA. (I can't comment on Madsen's credibility; he does seem to be widely read, but his involvement in blaming the Bush administration for 9/11 paints him as a bit of a radical to my mind.)

So Kagame gets military training in the USA, goes back to Rwanda to take the helm of the RPF, and then wrests control of the country from its French-backed government while the rest of the world stands back and watches. Hmmm. We don't need to believe in the CIA ties in order to be suspicious here.

But enough of that. Somewhat more poignant and personal are the events leading up to Dallaire's request to be relieved from command. Throughout the unfolding of the genocide he was prohibited from firing on anybody unless fired upon, which often frustrated his attempts to protect Tutsi refugees. This being a movie, I repeatedly found myself half-expecting and hoping for a Rambo moment where Dallaire and his UN cohort just forget their god-damned orders, break out the machine guns, kill the bad guys, and save everybody. But they never did.

After successfully shipping most of the Tutsi refugees out to RPF-controlled regions, Dallaire began taking care of some goats on base, just in order to keep something alive amidst the corpses that seemed to be piled on every street. MILD SPOILER: At the end of the film a pack of dogs attacked his goats. At this point he drew his pistol and emptied the clip at them, and if I'm not mistaken this was the only time he fired a gun in the entire movie. I realized then that he must have wanted his Rambo moment too, but he was too disciplined a man to ever humour such an idea. It was only when faced with something that he was allowed to shoot at that the discipline cracked, and he let it all out on some dumb animals.

What people are afraid of, and dying with dignity

2008-07-27T00:30:00.004-04:00

Light reading.

This is the sort of thing everyone is afraid of. I'm sure Maher Arar isn't surprised. A year of torture in Syria followed by exoneration and apology, but he remains on the terrorist watch-list for reasons that he isn't privy to. Canada's right-right minister of public safety found them unconvincing. Now we get a sense that Homeland Security considers itself to be engaged in a series of pissing-matches more so than anything else.

When people whine about the erosion of civil liberties, net neutrality, etc., it's easy to dismiss their fears as paranoia. But if you ask me, whatever can be abused will be abused. Let's conduct ourselves accordingly.

* * *

Randy Pausch has died. If you haven't heard of him yet, here's why you might care. Yes, it's over an hour long, but it's better than anything on TV. My main thought was, "When the time comes I hope I'll be able to face death the way this guy did." Perhaps that was the unmentioned headfake; this is how to live, and also how to die.