1. Tobacco kills about 45,000 Canadians a year. That's more than the total number of deaths from AIDS, car accidents, suicide, murder, fires and accidental poisonings combined.
2. There are over 4,000 dangerous chemicals in cigarettes, cigars and pipes smoke . Many of these chemicals are cancer-causing (carcinogen).
3. Smokers are at very high risk for many diseases:
Quitting smoking is the single best thing you can do to improve your health and quality of life. Non-smokers have a much lower risk of getting dozens of smoking-related diseases like lung cancer, heart disease, and Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD, including emphysema).
Even as measures to discourage smoking grew more stringent in recent years, a new report indicates that the nicotine content of cigarettes rose, making it tougher for smokers to quit.
From 1998 to 2004, the amount of nicotine that could be inhaled from cigarettes increased an average of 10 percent, the study by the state Department of Public Health found. Nicotine is the chemical that causes cigarettes to be addictive, and the study, released yesterday, found higher levels in all classes of cigarettes, including those branded ``light."
During the past decade, aggressive campaigns across the nation have aimed to curb smoking, the leading cause of preventable deaths. Cities and states, including Massachusetts, have banned smoking in public places, and the price of cigarettes has soared. Still, smoking rates among US adults stubbornly persist above 20 percent.
``We in public health have tried to spend a lot of time figuring out why people don't stop smoking," said Lois Keithly , director of the Massachusetts Tobacco Control Program . ``It is more difficult to quit when there is a higher amount of nicotine in the cigarette."
Representatives of the three major tobacco makers in the United States -- Lorillard Tobacco Co. , Philip Morris USA , and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. -- declined to comment on the study and would not answer questions about the nicotine content of their products.
Tobacco control specialists not involved with the Massachusetts report described it as the first major study tracking nicotine in cigarettes in seven years. And those specialists said they believe that the findings reflect trends nationwide.
Industry documents turned over during landmark litigation in the 1990s that led tobacco companies to settle with state governments for billions of dollars showed that the companies routinely spiked the nicotine content of their products so that cigarettes would be more pleasurable and addictive. The state study, tobacco control specialists said, suggests that practice has persisted.
``Their efforts are focused on getting people addicted quickly and keeping them addicted," said Diane Pickles , executive director of Tobacco Free Massachusetts , an advocacy organization.
A 1996 state law required cigarette makers to test the nicotine content of their products using a method specified by the Department of Public Health and report the results annually. Most of the tests are conducted at an independent laboratory in Canada that uses a machine to simulate a typical smoker's puffing.
Though the data in the report came from the tobacco industry, Sally Fogerty , an associate commissioner of public health, said her agency was confident the nicotine readings are reliable because it would not be in the companies' interest to report an increase.
Veterans of the decades-long fight against the tobacco industry said the rising nicotine levels show that companies will adopt strategies to get smokers addicted -- and to keep them hooked. ``I'm always shocked at the new things the industry does," said Richard Daynard , chairman of the Tobacco Products Liability Project at Northeastern University . ``This is sort of sleazy in a new and different way.
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The industry is still absorbing the latest blow against it, a ruling this month by a federal judge in Washington, D.C., that the companies had conspired to deceive the public about the perils of smoking. The judge ordered cigarette makers to stop using monikers such as ``ultra-light" and ``low tar."
The Federal Trade Commission for three decades regularly released reports on the nicotine and tar content of cigarettes -- reports that frequently came under criticism for failing to adequately reflect the amount of nicotine smokers inhale in actual use.
The reports showed that nicotine levels on average had remained stable since 1980, after falling in the preceding decade. The last of those studies was released in September 1999, commission spokeswoman Claudia B. Farrell said yesterday.
The Federal Trade Commission has continued collecting data on nicotine, but she did not know why they have not published reports on the findings.
The Massachusetts approach to measuring nicotine tries to address shortcomings of the Federal Trade Commission's methodology so that it more realistically reflects how people actually smoke, state specialists said.
The state test assumes that half of the tiny holes that filter smoke will be blocked by a user's lips or hands, increasing the amount of smoke inhaled, while the federal reports assumed that all of the holes would be open.
The Massachusetts study analyzed nicotine in 116 cigarette brands, finding that the amount of nicotine that can be inhaled by a typical smoker increased in 92 brands from 1998 to 2004. Only a dozen brands registered a decrease in nicotine. Twelve others remained constant.
In 2004, Newport filtered cigarettes eclipsed Camel and had the highest level of inhalable nicotine, nearly 70 percent above the average. The brands with the lowest content were Doral Ultra-Light King soft pack and Winston Ultra-Light King soft pack.
After being inhaled, nicotine races to the brain in seconds, releasing a flood of chemicals associated with pleasure and motivation. Increasing the amount of nicotine, doctors said, presents a very real danger to smokers.
``If people are getting accustomed to higher levels of nicotine when they smoke, when they stop smoking , I would expect they would have more withdrawal symptoms," said Dr. Nancy Rigotti , director of tobacco research and treatment at Massachusetts General Hospital . ``And it would make it harder for them to quit smoking."
It could make it harder, too, to treat smokers who want to quit, Rigotti and the state's Keithly said. Current formulations of nicotine patches and gums might be too weak to counteract the craving created by high-powered cigarettes.
Massachusetts once was a national leader in spending on tobacco control, but a statewide budget crisis caused funding to plummet to just $5 million a year, from a high of $48 million a few years ago. In July, the state expanded smoking cessation services for the poor and uninsured; about 40 percent of Massachusetts adults covered by government health plans smoke.
The level of nicotine found in U.S. cigarettes has risen about 10 percent in the past six years, making it harder to quit and easier to get hooked, according to a new report released by the Massachusetts Department of Health.
The study shows a steady climb in the amount of nicotine delivered to the lungs of smokers regardless of brand, with overall nicotine yields increasing by about 10 percent.
Massachusetts is one of three U.S. states to require tobacco companies to submit information about nicotine and the only state with data going back to 1998.
Public Health Commissioner Paul Cote Jr. called the findings "significant" and said the report was the first new release on nicotine yield in more than six years nationally.
The study found the three most popular cigarette brands with young smokers — Marlboro, Newport and Camel — delivered significantly more nicotine than they did years ago. Nicotine in Kool, a popular menthol brand, rose 20 percent. More than two-thirds of black smokers use menthol brands.
Calls to Philip Morris USA, the United States' largest cigarette maker and manufacturer of Marlboro cigarettes, and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co., manufacturer of Kool and Camel cigarettes, were not immediately returned.
The study tried to measure nicotine levels based on the way smokers actually use cigarettes, health officials said, in part by partially covering ventilation holes as they smoke and taking longer puffs. Traditional testing methods which do not take real-life smoking habits into account, typically report lower nicotine contents, officials said.
Of the 179 cigarette brands tested in 2004 for the report, 93 percent fell into the highest range for nicotine. In 1998, 84 percent of 116 brands tested fell into the highest range.
Smokers who choose "light" brands hoping to reduce their nicotine intake are out of luck, according to the report that found for all brands tested in 1998 and 2004, there was no significant difference in the total nicotine content between "full flavor," "medium," "light," or "ultra-light" cigarettes.
The finding means that health care providers trying to help smokers quit may have to adjust the strength of nicotine replacement therapies like nicotine patches and gums, according to Department of Public Health Associate Commissioner Sally Fogerty.
Tobacco is the second major cause of death in the world. It is well known that half the people who smoke regularly today – about 650 million people – will eventually be killed by tobacco. Equally alarming is the fact that hundreds of thousands of people who have never smoked die each year from diseases caused by breathing second-hand tobacco smoke.
Michael Moore's Sicko gets audience thumbs-up at Cannes Last Updated: Saturday, May 19, 2007 | 3:44 PM ET CBC Arts
The premiere of Sicko, Michael Moore's scathing documentary about the U.S. health-care system, received enthusiastic applause from an audience packing the 2,000-seat theatre at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday.
Moore's controversial movie doesn't open until late June, but was screened Saturday at the French festival.
Filmmaker Michael Moore, seen here in 2005, visited Cuba with several Ground Zero rescue workers and got them medical care in his new documentary, Sicko.Filmmaker Michael Moore, seen here in 2005, visited Cuba with several Ground Zero rescue workers and got them medical care in his new documentary, Sicko. (Canadian Press)
Variety magazine calls Sicko an "entertaining and affecting dissection of the American health-care industry," and Stephen Schaefer of the Boston Globe wrote Sicko is "a very strong and very honest documentary about a health system that's totally corrupt and that is without any care for its patients."
The 53-year-old filmmaker, who won an Academy Award for Bowling for Columbine in 2002, is a favourite of the festival, which bestowed him with the prestigious Palme d'Or in 2004 for Fahrenheit 911.
Sicko has already landed the controversial filmmaker in hot water. The documentary contains scenes of Moore taking several Sept. 11 rescue workers to Cuba to get free medical care. The U.S. Treasury Department is investigating Moore for breaking the U.S. trade and travel embargo against Cuba.
Moore claims it wasn't a publicity stunt. Continue Article
"I'm the one who's personally liable for potential fines or jail, so I don't take it as lightly," said Moore, who added that he had to spirit a master copy of the film to another country out of fears the American government might seize it. Movie is a 'call to action'
In Sicko, Moore features stories of Americans, who have been refused vital treatment and are facing financial ruin because of the U.S. health-care system. The director also travels to Britain, Canada and France to highlight each country's public health system.
'Why would we allow nearly 50 million Americans to go without any kind of health coverage …?"—Michael Moore
"The bigger issue in the film is, 'Who are we as a people?'" Moore said at a news conference in Cannes.
"Why would we allow nearly 50 million Americans to go without any kind of health coverage … That's not America. That's not the America I want to see exist."
Moore said he went to Cuba because government officials claimed that terror suspects being held at Guantanamo, the U.S. naval base in Cuba, were receiving first-rate health care.
"The point was not to go to Cuba but to go to America, to go to American soil … being in Cuba was just an accident in a sense," he said.
In the movie, the filmmaker demands through a megaphone that Guantanamo officials accept eight Americans, including three Ground Zero rescue workers, for medical care. He then takes them to a Cuban hospital where they are treated free of charge.
John Graham, who was working near the Twin Towers when the planes crashed into the buildings, spent 31 hours helping out initially, and returned for several months to sift through the carnage.
Graham was later diagnosed with lung problems, burns on his esophagus, chronic sinusitis and post-traumatic stress disorder. He stopped working in 2004, split from his wife and can barely keep up with support payments.
The Cuban hospital provided Graham with five days of medical tests as well as medication for his reflux problems.
"I think when Americans see this they are not going to focus on Cuba or Fidel Castro," Moore said. The director says he wants Sicko to be a "call to action."
"We are never going to have real change in the United States if the public doesn't see that it will only happen when they rise up out of their theatre seats and do something about it."
Moore held a private showing on May 15 in New York City for 9/11 emergency workers. With files from the Associated Press
OTTAWA (CP) - Prime Minister Stephen Harper's reticence toward the media apparently doesn't apply to sportscasters.
Harper invited TSN's Gord Miller to 24 Sussex Drive on Wednesday night so he could be filmed watching Game 2 of the Stanley Cup finals.
The prime minister hasn't held a news conference in Ottawa this year, and only rarely stops on the staircase outside the House of Commons to deliver a message to the news media.
His relationship with the parliamentary press gallery is charitably described as frosty.
Last week, he flew halfway around the world to Afghanistan with a planeload of reporters and entertained only three questions during the entire three-day excursion.
But when it comes to hockey, Harper is expansive and accommodating.
The prime minister was also to give Miller a tour of the official residence, and a peek at Harper's extensive collection of hockey memorabilia.
Harper appeared on a TSN Stanley Cup preview program last month, and has also been interviewed on CBC's Hockey Night in Canada this past hockey season.
Ottawa is discriminating against Canada's most populous province by adding more federal seats in other provinces while short-changing Ontario, both the Liberal government and Opposition Conservatives charged Monday.
The federal government's new bill adds 22 more seats across the country and ties political representation to the size of a province's population, but imposes a cap on the number of new seats for Ontario.
Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Marie Bountrogianni said the 10 new seats Ontario would gain from the bill isn't enough to keep pace with the province's population growth.
"People in Ontario will be the only Canadians who do not benefit from the very basic principle of representation by population in the House of Commons," Bountrogianni said.
"Both Alberta and B.C. are projected to get a new seat after 2011 for every increase of approximately 100,000 people. Ontario would only receive a new seat for every 200,000 people."
Federal government House leader Peter Van Loan has said the bill isn't perfect, but that the solution is better than the status quo.
Both the governing Liberals and the Conservatives introduced motions Monday to call on Ottawa to reconsider the change that ``discriminates against Ontario in the House of Commons."
"It's not better than it was," Bountrogianni said. "We will be even more under-represented with this bill. We want representation by population."
Conservative Leader John Tory wrote a letter to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, asking he take Ontario's concerns into consideration.
But Tory said the Liberals are playing partisan politics by publicly posturing against the bill rather than trying to work co-operatively with Ottawa to get the legislation amended.
"The best way is to politely and constructively ask (Ottawa) to reconsider and set out the reasons why rather than engaging in partisan gamesmanship," Tory said, adding he has spoken with several federal cabinet ministers about the bill.
"There is a point of principle involved here – you have to make sure that whatever you do is as fair as it can be to all concerned, including Ontario."
The issue of fair seat distribution is a "very perplexing problem," but it can't be done at the expense of Ontario, Tory said.
NDP Leader Howard Hampton wouldn't say whether he thinks Ontario is being short-changed by the current proposed legislation, but said it's worth debating.
"This is an issue that needs to be explored and looked at," he said.
Under federal legislation introduced two weeks ago, some Canadian provinces would get more seats after the 2011 census to reflect their population growth. Provinces whose populations remain static or shrink would keep the seats they have now.
Although the bill is essentially an amendment to the Constitution, it can be done without consulting the provinces because it deals solely with seats in the Commons.
The proposed legislation would change the complex mathematical formula used to allocate Commons seats – a formula that hasn't been adjusted since 1985. The new formula will add 22 seats, bringing the total number to 330.
Description: Bring the family and wend your way through the natural setting of beautiful Fairy Lake Park situated along the historic banks of the Holland River in downtown Newmarket, Ontario. Explore the paths of our Natural Marketplace featuring over 100 exhibitors of environment friendly products and services.
Saturday - June 9 - 2007 Time: 10am to 5pm
Sunday - June 10 - 2007 Time: 10am to 5pm
Place: Fairy Lake Park Downtown Newmarket (Water Street Entrance)
WOODSTOCK, Ont. -- Canada's greenhouse gas emissions have stabilized in recent years, but the latest numbers are still 32 per cent above Kyoto Protocol targets, according to data sent to the United Nations on Friday.
Canada emitted 747 megatonnes of greenhouse gases in 2005, compared to the 1990 level of 596 megatonnes, according to data sent by Environment Canada to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
But the 2005 emission levels were unchanged from the previous year and only 0.3 per cent higher than in 2003.
Environment Canada suggested the emission levels went up only negligibly in part because of warmer winters, which lowered demand for heating fuels.
Speaking in Woodstock, Ont., at a clean energy expo, Environment Minister John Baird said the steady emission levels can also be linked to less reliance on coal-fired electricity and more nuclear and hydro generation.
He said the decision of former Ontario premier Mike Harris to increase nuclear capacity in the province is now paying dividends.
"The bottom line is more nuclear power was instrumental and the only reason for (emission levels staying steady)," Baird said. "Mike Harris's decision to ... get those reactors online was a big success for the environment.
"It's funny -- in one action, Mike Harris did more to help global warming than the Liberals did in 13 long years."
But the federal Liberals said the three-year trend in emissions is tied to the industrial sector, which was able to cut back on pollution while the economy still thrived.
The Liberals said more than 160 large Canadian companies combined to reduce their emissions by about 150,000 tonnes in 2005, while the economy grew 2.9 per cent and created 550,000 jobs.
Liberal environment critic David McGuinty said the Conservatives deceived the public about the ability to cut emissions without affecting the economy, and their climate change plan isn't strong enough.
"Stephane Dion provided real leadership on climate change that made industry act," McGuinty said in a statement. "But just as Canada was getting the job done, the Harper government stepped in and gave large industry a long vacation."
Green party says federal Tories ducking climate concerns over N.B. refinery
OTTAWA (CP) - Another environmental group is blasting Ottawa's plan to severely limit the scope of its environmental assessment of a proposed new oil refinery in New Brunswick.
Federal Green party Leader Elizabeth May says the refinery decision proves that the federal Conservative government is not committed to protecting the environment and fighting global warming.
The federal government announced Thursday that it is planning to look at only the marine component of the $7-billion Irving Oil refinery proposed for Saint John, N.B.
It wants to leave the more serious environmental assessment of pollution issues to the New Brunswick government - a decision that has infuriated environmentalists.
If the project goes ahead, it will be the first refinery built in North America in about 25 years.
May describes Environmental Minister John Baird as the "minister from Alice in Wonderland" who gives a verdict before considering the evidence.
I came across a great website that was featured on Anderson Cooper 360 last night. The site is called Kiva.org and it allows people from developed countries to loan money to entrepreneurs in developing countries. Loans are expected to be paid back and are crucial to breaking the cycle of poverty in some of the world's poorest nations. I recommend everyone check out the site to see how a small amount of money can have such a large impact on the lives of many in the developing world. Fore more information visit the link below.
Kiva lets you connect with and loan money to unique small businesses in the developing world. By choosing a business on Kiva.org, you can "sponsor a business" and help the world's working poor make great strides towards economic independence. Throughout the course of the loan (usually 6-12 months), you can receive email journal updates from the business you've sponsored. As loans are repaid, you get your loan money back.
We partner with organizations all over the world
Kiva partners with existing microfinance institutions. In doing so, we gain access to outstanding entrepreneurs from impoverished communities world-wide. Our partners are experts in choosing qualified borrowers. That said, they are usually short on funds. Through Kiva.org, our partners upload their borrower profiles directly to the site so you can lend to them.
We show you where your money goes
Kiva provides a data-rich, transparent lending platform for the poor. We are constantly working to make the system more transparent to show how money flows throughout the entire cycle. The below diagram shows briefly how money gets from you to a third-world borrower, and back!
We facilitate connections
Kiva is using the power of the internet to facilitate one-to-one connections that were previously prohibitively expensive. Child sponsorship has always been a high overhead business. Kiva creates a similar interpersonal connection at much lower costs due to the instant, inexpensive nature of internet delivery. The individuals featured on our website are real people who need a loan and waiting for socially-minded individuals like you to lend them money.
It looks like there is an increasing demand for MBAs to manage Canada’s top companies in today’s global business environment.As a Windsor MBA, graduates were always under the impression that there are currently too many MBAs coming out of Universities these days.There are part time, executive, one year and two year MBA programs to chose from today from various schools across Canada.I had a great experience at the University of Windsor and would recommend the Odette School of Business as a potential option for anyone considering following this route.
Thanks for reading…
Darryl
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Too many scientists, not enough managers
GORDON PITTS
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
May 23, 2007 at 6:27 AM EDT
Canada is experiencing a serious gap in management talent that is a major contributing factor in its lagging prosperity compared with the United States, says a new study co-written by one of the country's leading business school deans.
The study, produced by Ontario's Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity and co-written by University of Toronto management dean Roger Martin, says Canada is placing undue emphasis on science and technology talent, while neglecting management skills that are in short supply.
"Our managers are undereducated relative to their U.S. counterparts," concludes the report, co-written by the institute's executive director Jim Milway. "We produce fewer graduates in the management discipline while no such deficit exists in science and engineering."
While science and engineering are important in seeding new ideas and startups, leadership and management skills, such as strategic thinking, come into play as companies try to move to the next level as users and developers of innovation, the report argues.
The study presents comparative data showing that scientists and engineers are well represented in Canada's work force. Canada also produces more science and engineering graduates on a proportional basis than the U.S. - 1.33 graduates per 1,000 people in Canada in the years 2003 and 2004, versus 1.2 in the U.S.
But Canadian managers lack the schooling of their U.S. counterparts, the report says. Statistics Canada and U.S. Bureau of Labour Statistics data for 1997 to 2004 show that only 32 per cent of our managers have a degree, compared with 48 per cent of U.S. managers.
One shortfall is the lack of MBAs at the top of major Canadian companies, the report says. Figures for 2004 show that 37 per cent of CEOs for the 100 largest U.S. companies had MBAs, compared with 24 per cent of CEOs for the 100 largest Canadian companies.
The report says management skills are a key complement to science and engineering skills in creating a high-quality supply of innovation, along with pushing demand for innovation throughout the economy.
But management education critic and strategy professor Henry Mintzberg says any comparative study should be widened to countries in Asia and Europe. Many countries, such as Germany, that perform well in the global economy do not have a history of management education, he says.
"All kinds of wonderful managers didn't spend a day in business school," said Mr. Mintzberg, a professor at McGill University's Desautels Faculty of Management. He also questions the U.S. management model that, he says, puts productivity numbers ahead of providing employment.
Others may question a study whose co-author, Mr. Martin, has so much to gain from increased emphasis on business education. In addition to being dean of the U of T's Rotman School of Management, he is chairman of the Institute for Competitiveness & Prosperity.
Mr. Milway points out that the institute operates independently of the Rotman School. The report, he says, simply reflects what the data are saying.
Oil and gas contributed $40-billion to Canadian economy last year
ROMA LUCIW
Globe and Mail Update
May 23, 2007 at 9:57 AM EDT
Canada's booming oil-and-gas industry employs nearly 300,000 people and contributed more than $40-billion to economic growth last year, according to a government report released Wednesday.
The Statistics Canada report, called Fuelling the Economy, looked at changes in this country's energy sector during the last ten years. It also looked to the future, saying that as global supplies continue to dwindle and prices continue to soar, it will become increasingly profitable for companies to extract resources from harder-to-reach places like Alberta's oil sands.
Canada is currently the eighth-largest producer of crude oil in the world, pumping out about 2.5 million barrels a day. World demand, meanwhile, is about 84 million barrels and current production is 86 barrels.
“If geopolitical tensions remain high in other oil-producing areas of the world, Canada's role will become even more important,” Statscan said.
In all, the report found that the oil and gas sector contributed more than $40-billion (when measured in 1997 dollars) to Canada's gross domestic product in 2006.
The number of jobs in the sector increased at a slightly faster pace than the national average, numbering around 298,000 in 2006, a 22 per cent increase from 1997, Statscan said. That compares with a national average rate of 20 per cent expansion.
The most explosive growth has taken place in the upstream sector – the area that consists of oil and gas extraction, investment and production. Over the last 10 years, these areas have emerged as “driving forces in the economy,” Statscan said.
Between 1997 and 2005, investment in Canadian oil and gas extraction surged 140 per cent from $18.9-billion to $45.3-billion, far exceeding any other industry. The value of oil and gas production increased over 245 per cent to $108-billion.
While production of natural gas levelled off in 2005, crude oil production jumped by 21 per cent during that period.
Employment in the upstream sector rose from 107,000 in 1997 to around 177,000 in 2005, three times the average national pace, while average hourly earnings were about 45 per cent higher than in the labour market in general.
“The majority - 75 per cent - of the jobs were in Alberta, with its vast oil and gas reserves,” Statscan said.
Editorial Reviews Amazon.com In retrospect, it seems absurd that the United States government felt so threatened by the presence of John Lennon that they tried to have him deported. But that's what happened, as chronicled in directors David Leaf and John Scheinfeld's The U.S. vs. John Lennon. The film starts slowly, with a familiar look at the former Beatle's troubled childhood, his outspokenness as one of the Fabs ("We're more popular now than Jesus Christ," etc.), and his eventual hookup with Yoko Ono, paralleled by the growth of political protest in '60s America, particularly against the Vietnam War. John and Yoko went on to stage their own peaceful demonstrations, like the Canadian "bed-ins," but these were largely harmless media stunts. It was when the Lennons moved to New York in the early '70s and took a more active role in the anti-war movement, making friends with radicals like Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and Black Panther Party founder Bobby Seale, that the government got interested--and paranoid--and men like President Richard Nixon, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, and right-wing Sen. Strom Thurmond began actively looking for ways to silence him (it was Thurmond who came up with the deportation idea). That's also when the film picks up. An array of talking heads weighs in, ranging from Ono and others sympathetic to Lennon's plight (Walter Cronkite, Sen. George McGovern, even Geraldo Rivera) to those on the other side, including Watergate conspirator G. Gordon Liddy. Though The U.S. vs. John Lennon is hardly impartial, it's safe to say that although Lennon was more an idealist than an activist, he was an influential celebrity whom Nixon viewed as a potential nuisance in an election year. And even once Nixon had won the '72 presidential race, the Immigration and Naturalization Service refused to drop its case. Why? "Anybody who sings about love, and harmony, and life, is dangerous to somebody who sings about death," says author Gore Vidal. "Lennon... was a born enemy of the U.S. He was everything they hated." For music fans, Lennon's solo recordings provide the soundtrack. The DVD also contains considerable additional documentary footage. --Sam Graham
Former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney recently came out in favour of bank mergers. I agree that Canadian banks and corporations need to compete in a world where globalization has resulted in foreign takeovers and rapid consolidation. The Canadian government also has a duty to protect the consumers. I think bank mergers would be acceptable provided banks can show that it will not result in massive job losses and branch shutting down. I also think they should have to prove customers will benefit. One way to show that consumers would benefit would be for banks to promise to eliminate fees for using bank machines. Opening the banking industry to increased foreign competition would also guarantee choice and fairness for individuals. There is no reason to hide from this debate.
Thanks for reading...
Darryl
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Allow bank mergers: Mulroney
BERTRAND MAROTTE, Globe and Mail Update
MONTREAL — Former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney says Canada's chartered banks should be allowed to merge.
Mr. Mulroney also played down concerns over the so-called “hollowing out” of Canada's corporate landscape through the spate of recent foreign takeovers, U.S. aluminum giant Alcoa Inc.'s hostile bid for Montreal-based Alcan Inc. being the latest example.
In an age of globalization, where mega-financial institutions are looming ever larger as a result of merger activity, the relatively small Canadian banks risk losing out competitively, Mr. Mulroney said Thursday after Quebecor Inc.'s annual meeting in Montreal.
“If there is a legitimate case to be made in favour of bank mergers, I don't see why not,” said Mr. Mulroney, who is a Quebecor director.
“The Canadian banks run the risk of being marginalized by the big American and European banks that are breaking away from the pack.”
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has so far declined to give the go-ahead to mergers in the industry, despite vigorous lobbying by the big five Canadian banks.
The issue is not seen as a big vote-winner among ordinary Canadians.
Mr. Mulroney also said it's his belief that Canada comes out a winner in the global takeover sweeps.
“My recollection of recent numbers that I've seen is that the dollar value of the acquisitions – in the neighbourhood of $500-billion – in Canada is exceeded by Canadian acquisitions elsewhere,” Mr. Mulroney said.
“The government still has the authority to review certain acquisitions and see if they are in the national interest. We still have that right,” he added.
“But, generally speaking, Canadians are acquiring more companies abroad than Americans and others are acquiring within Canada.
Book Review: Web of Deceit: The history of Western Complicity in Iraq by Barry M. Lando
This book is a must read to see how we have gotten us into this disaster called the war on Iraq. A great way to understand Iraq and the history of events that have led us to where we are today. I recommend everyone pick up this book. To purchase "Web of Deceipt: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq from Churchill to George W. Bush" visit the link below: http://www.amazon.com/Web-Deceit-History-Complicity-Churchill/dp/1590512383
From Booklist A former investigative journalist with 60 Minutes, Lando here presents a scathing account of the American role in creating, misleading, starving, and ultimately destroying Saddam Hussein's Iraq. The brunt of his argument is that the U.S. has routinely played Iraq for profit and strategic advantage yet consistently evaded responsibility for exacerbating the carnage of its destructive wars and humanitarian crises. In a chapter on the Iran-Iraq war of 1980-88, Lando describes U.S. efforts to appear neutral while feeding information and selling weapons to both Iran and Iraq. The first Gulf War, he argues, was precipitated by mixed messages between Washington and Baghdad about the consequences of an attack on Kuwait. So, too, did the U.S. falsely imply that it would come to the aid of Kurdish rebels, leaving them to be massacred by Saddam Hussein. But Lando's harshest criticism is of the U.S.-enforced sanctions, which led to a horrific humanitarian crisis, the effects of which ironically plague U.S. forces trying to maintain order today. Lando is, however, no apologist for Saddam Hussein, and this account certainly does not whitewash Iraq's aggressive foreign policy. Fast-paced and thick with realpolitik, this account is sure to draw attention. Brendan Driscoll
Book Review: "Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Buring" by George Monbiot
Given the current climate change debate, I think this book offers several good suggestions on how the World can reduce green house gas emissions up to 90%. I think this is a great read and can be purchased by visiting the link below:
Product Description Review A GLOBE & MAIL BEST BOOK OF 2006
“Each furious chapter in Heat throws out more intellectual challenges by the page than the Canadian media does in a year. . . . Uncompromising in its message, intelligence and honesty. Parents. . . should consider it required reading.” —The Globe and Mail
“A book that anyone who thinks they know what should be done about global warming must read.” —John Gray, in The New Statesman
“I was hooked right away. It's by far the best single source on climate change that I've read: rigorously researched, honestly argued, and very well written.” — Ronald Wright, author of A Short History of Progress
“With a dazzling command of science and a relentless faith in people, George Monbiot writes about social change with his eyes wide open. I never miss reading him.” — Naomi Klein, author of No Logo
“This book is a brilliant and terrifying critique of the crisis of human-induced climate change, and the prospects of stabilizing temperatures before catastrophic runaway warming ensues. George Monbiot brushes aside our rationalizations to maintain the status quo, shallow targets and mechanisms, and the empty promises of political rhetoric and corporate PR spin, to examine the real opportunities and what has to be done to achieve up to 90 percent reductions in greenhouse gas emissions by the industrialized nations.” —David Suzuki
“George Monbiot has written a stunning book. It could easily be titled The End of Hypocrisy, because Monbiot systematically unveils the denial, deceit, and self-delusion that are our common responses to the enormous challenge of global warming. . . . Then with a step-by-step plan grounded in the latest research he explains how we can achieve a 90 percent reduction–in our vehicles, factories, retail centres, and homes–without wrecking our standard of living. When it comes to global warming, it’s time to stop being hypocrites and get on with saving the planet, and this book shows us how.” —Thomas Homer-Dixon, author of The Ingenuity Gap and The Upside of Down
“Monbiot is ahead of the pack. Instead of just warning us about climate change, he lays out clearly and engagingly what we can still do to stop it. This powerful book is for anyone serious about confronting what appears to be the most urgent crisis of our time.” —Linda McQuaig, author ofWar, Big Oil, and the Fight for the Planet: It’s the Crude, Dude
"An engaging, lively, and sometimes fiery analysis of the possible technological and political responses to the crisis of climate change, that starts where so much of the debate remains stalled. To those who say that the requirements of the Kyoto protocol are impossible to meet, Monbiot responds not only that it is possible to hit far, far more ambitious targets, but that it is urgently imperative that we do so. And then he shows how.” —David Chernushenko, deputy leader, Green Party of Canada, and climate change critic.
“Avoiding disastrous climate change is the central challenge of our time. George Monitor addresses it with wit, verve, and rigor. He shows that all of our excuses for inaction are just that — excuses. If you care about the future of the planet, you should read Heat, and then give a copy to a friend.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author ofField Notes from a Catastrophe: Man, Nature, and Climate Change.
Praise for George Monbiot’s work:
“George Monbiot knows not only that things ought to change, but also that they can change. . . . At last, the global movement has found a vision as expansive and planet-wide as that of the American neoconservatives.” —Independent on Sunday
“As he well says, if we do not like his ideas, then think of better ones. He believes that leaving things as they are is not a serious option.” —Financial Times
“Monbiot is a writer of eloquence and passion. . . . The most astute political and ecological cartographer of his time.” —Observer
“Appealing, provocative and idealistic … shows that alternatives are possible.” —Sunday Times
“We need people like Monbiot more than ever before.” —New Scientist
“Not only challenges us to question the status quo, but also inspires us to want to change it.” —Scotsman
“The originality of this thought makes him uniquely influential.” —The Times (London)
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Book Description “We are the most fortunate generation that has ever lived. And we are the most fortunate generation that ever will.” —George Monbiot
What George Monbiot means by this is that our civilization has leveraged the awesome power of fossil energy to create a world that only a short time ago would have been nearly unimaginable. Our health, our wealth, our leisure, our freedom from tyranny and struggle, are all benefits bestowed upon us by harnessed energy of oil and coal.
But the price of these gifts has been a growing environmental crisis. Our atmosphere is filling up with carbon dioxide, which is released by the burning of fossil fuels. Carbon dioxide traps the sun’s heat, causing the temperature of our planet to rise. The reason why future generations are unlikely to be as fortunate as us is that fossil energy is just too good to be true. We cannot go on enjoying the benefits of this dirty energy. We must either address the problem, which will be a tough challenge involving many sacrifices, or ignore it, with unthinkable consequences.
George Monbiot’s Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning marks an important moment in our civilization’s thinking about global warming. The question is no longer whether climate change is actually happening. The question is what to do about it. Monbiot offers an ambitious and far-reaching program to cut our carbon dioxide emissions to the point where the environmental scales start tipping away from catastrophe. (But not before he devotes a chapter to unmasking the vested interests that have spent fortunes funding the specious science of the climate change deniers.)
He does not pretend it will be easy. The threshold for disaster, he argues, is a rise of two degrees centigrade above pre-industrial levels. Past two degrees, science tells us, the ability to control climate change passes out of our hands. At that point, the world’s forests will fall into decline, changing cloud formation patterns and releasing the billions of tons of carbon the trees store. Past two degrees, the permafrost begins to thaw, releasing billions of tons of methane, a greenhouse gas far more destructive than CO2. At the same point, the polar ice begins to melt, affecting ocean currents and water levels. This is called a “positive feedback loop,” and it means that once we’ve passed two degrees, nothing can be done to stop it rising to three. And once we hit three, four will follow.
Two degrees is also the point at which the globe slides towards increasing water scarcity and, eventually, food deficit.
And the fact is, we’re already seeing the consequences of climate change around the globe: collapsing ice shelves, the failure of the cyclical rains in Eastern Africa, drought in Australia, the spread of tropical diseases into new territory as temperatures rise, pollution of aquifers with salt water in Bangladesh. Global temperatures have already risen 0.6 of a degree, causing huge damage to the natural environment and inflicting suffering on vast numbers of people.
The only way to avoid further devastation, and forestall the catastrophe of positive feedback, Monbiot argues, is a 90% cut in CO2 emissions in the rich nations of the world by 2030. In other words, our response will have to be immediate, and it will have to be decisive.
But where to start?
Monbiot starts at home, where we have most control. Though he draws his examples from the UK, and commends Canadians for our superior building standards, he makes a damning case that the buildings we live and work in squander energy. Since our heat and electricity produce CO2, nearly every bit of heat and power we waste (like nearly every bit of heat and power we use) commits us to greenhouse gas emissions. Monbiot finds ways for us to build, and live, so much better that we can cut emissions at home by the required 90%.
He then looks at the source of our electricity, and evaluates the arguments for both local micro-generation (for example, solar photovoltaic panels and small wind turbines), and renewable energy for the grid. His research leads him to some unexpected discoveries, but he finds a way to trim our emissions by the necessary margin.
Another obvious source of CO2 emissions is our transportation – the cars we drive and the flights we take. A little ingenuity, he argues, will allow us to deal with the former. But the latter, he acknowledges, is shaping up to be the Achilles heel of all efforts to curb greenhouse gas emissions.
A couple of less obvious major sources of CO2 are the retail and construction industries. Big box stores, with their inefficient designs, their racks of heaters, air conditioners, and blazing lights (to say nothing of the sprawling parking lots full of cars that drive back and forth on shopping trips), are simply inconsistent with a low-carbon future. But Monbiot has a thoughtful and surprisingly simple solution. Similarly, the concrete industry, that backbone of all new construction, emits millions of tons each year as a consequence of the immense heat and chemical processes involved in the manufacturing process. Though the solution here is not as ready to hand, it is still possible.
In short, the scale of the changes before us is staggering, as is the size of the problem. But Monbiot ends on a note of hope. We have shown ourselves to be capable of enormous ingenuity and great feats of cooperation and sacrifice when confronted with a serious threat. The Second World War provides countless examples of citizens and engineers doing the supposedly impossible in order to get the job done. Fighting climate change will not require young men to die in battle, but a failure to tackle the problem urgently and with all the determination we can muster will cost uncountable lives. There is no reason to think we will do less when faced with a threat to the sustainability of all life on the planet than we did when faced with a threat to our political and ethical values.
Monbiot argues there is no time to waste. As he has said himself, “we are the last generation that can make this happen, and this is the last possible moment at which we can make it happen.”
Being a Leaf fan, it is extremely difficult to cheer for our number one rivals. Having said that Ottawa is now our national team and I hope they bring the Stanley cup back to Canada for the first time since 1993. Go Sens Go!
I found a post the other day on www.freedominion.ca. (see below) It looks like Licia Corbella called a meeting on May 12 to bring back the Reform Party in Kingston. The Globe and Mail quickly picked up the story last week and it now seems that some in the party are getting restless about the direction Harper is taking the party and the government. Gerry Nicholls, Andrew Coyne and the Western Standard have been suggesting for months that this current Conservative government has lost touch with its roots. Chantel Hebert, most of the media and now the opposition parties are saying that this government is out of gas and having trouble finding new ideas due to the fact it never expected to have to serve a full term until the next fixed election date set for 2009. Clearly when Shane Doan and foreign strippers are top priority issues facing parliament, something has to give and we need to be clear where we are going as a movement.
I believe this is one of the reasons why we need a national policy convention that was originally set for November of this year. When the Conservative Party was elected in January 2006, the expectation was that years of scandal would bury the Liberal brand for many elections to come. All the Conservative Party had to do was prove they were a stable moderate and centrist alternative to the Liberals. As a result the party ran on and quickly delivered on the five priorities it campaigned on. The hope was cutting the GST 1%, negotiating guaranteed wait times with the provinces, spending a $100 dollars a month per child under 6, getting tough on crime and bringing in the accountability act would be enough to take the government to the 40% level of popular support required to achieve a majority government. Unfortunately, once those initial priorities were met, the environment and Afghanistan quickly dominated the agenda and the government found themselves on the defensive on both issues with the majority of voters. Throw in relations with China, Israel's war against Lebanon, income trusts and Quebec being recognized as a nation and it seems we are now stalled in support with little incentive to call an election. At the same time, the Bloc, NDP and Liberals also have no incentive to call a snap election forcing us to govern into at least the spring of 2009 baring any drastic shifts in popular opinion polls. Therefore we need to come up with new policy issues that resonate with the voters and also create a vision that can win over hearts and minds from people who voted for other parties last time. To do this, I think we require a conference that will bring Conservatives across the country together to debate what are the core principals of Conservatism and what issues are we willing to compromise on vs. what issues are sacred and require a firm stance in principal from our leader. The party brass also needs to reconnect with its grass roots supporters who they rely on for their campaign teams and donations. One thing that differentiates Conservatives from Liberals is the fact that they stand for something. Conservative supporters are not usually partisan cheerleaders who just want to see their favorite team win. Partisan games are getting old quickly and people want to see action now.
So far we have seen two budgets that have increased spending, poured billions into Quebec and failed to reduce income taxes for all Canadians. I believe all Conservatives support tax cuts and smaller government. I also believe the success of the ADQ in Quebec is a mandate to turn over powers to the provinces and reduce the size of the federal government. The Ottawa knows best Liberal approach is clearly dead in this country. Looking at bank mergers and reforming the CRTC would be worth considering in my opinion. It is time to move forward on fiscal issues based on clear Conservative principals.
To date, Conservative support for police officers, fire fighters, paramedics, customs agents and our military has been huge positives. We must continue to push through bills that take a common sense approach to justice and allow society to get tough on criminals. There should be no compromise on opposing house arrest, setting mandatory minimum sentences, lowering the age of consent and tackling gun and violent crime. We must also address backlogs in the courts and prison shortages as they arise. The issue of crime and security are issues the Conservatives own right now.
Democratic reform also needs to move forward full steam ahead. It may be time to open the constitution and deal with the elected Senate issue with cooperation from the provinces. Moves to expand the seat count in Alberta, BC and Ontario is also a positive start to addressing problems with democratic reform in this country. Recalls, increased referendums on major issues and free votes on all issues accept confidence votes, floor crossing legislation and some form of proportional representation would also be positive moves that would improve our democracy and restore confidence from citizens regarding our elected officials.
Harper has made great strives with national unity and seems to have both the PQ and BQ on the ropes. This might be the time to take advantage of the federalist Liberal and ADQ strength in Quebec and consider a new deal that will finally outline the responsibilities between the federal and provincial governments and the equalization formula. Harper should consider another Meech Lake Accord to allow us to end the politics of separation vs. federalism once and for all. I think we also need to bring free trade among all provinces (unbelievable that it doesn't exist now!) and a national energy grid from the West coast to the East coast in order to protect our power supply and increase are use of clean energy. I would like to see clear responsibilities laid out between federal, provincial and municipal governments in order to stop the constant requests to other layers of government for money and attempts to avoid accountability for failures in their respective areas of responsibility. Issues related to native land claims and self government should also be addressed in a new round of constitutional talks. Enshrining property rights and banning Ottawa from creating new programs within provincial responsibility are two of Harper's babies that could also be negotiated. We need to move forward as a nation and should not be scared off by taking on tough challenges. Doing things piecemeal will not adequately address these issues.
On the environment we need to break away from George Bush and join right leaning leaders in Europe who want to join the fight against climate change. This is the number one issue on the minds of voters and will likely replace terrorism as the issue to come up most frequently at G8 and UN summits. In 2008 a new President will also replace the unpopular George Bush on the world stage. This issue is not going away anytime soon. We need to do a better job promoting our record of action and also must sign on to a plan that Al Gore and David Suzuki will endorse. How we do that without buying international credits or introducing a carbon tax remains to be seen. One thing is clear, not getting our act together on this issue will cost us power. We must find a way to work with cities, provincial governments and international organizations all who are on the green bandwagon these days. Joining George Bush in slowing down international action on the environment will only make us as irrelevant as him.
Finally on foreign affairs we need a national debate on how we want to move forward. I believe we have to balance our desire for increased economic, security and military integration with the United States with our desire for an independent foreign policy. On the international stage we need to focus on free trade with all democracies and also protecting the security of North America through common approaches to immigration, customs and our NORAD/NATO/NASA military alliances. At the same time we need to the promote peace, fair trade, human rights, democracy, opposition to nuclear weapons, the UN, and foreign aid as core Canadian values. We need to stand together with our allies and take international steps to fight climate change, terrorism, AIDS and poverty. With a new leadership just elected or coming soon in Germany, France, Italy, UK, Russia, USA and Israel; Harper and Canada have a new chance to play a role in the post George Bush world. On foreign affairs, Harper must also find a way to better communicate the mission in Afghanistan and its differences from Iraq. We must also demonstrate our commitment to human rights and the Geneva convention as well as our eventual exit strategy prior to 2010. Right now it doesn't seem clear why we are fighting there and also what victory looks like for the nation. It is also unclear if Canada is taking too much of the burden while our NATO allies sit on the sidelines and the Americans seem stretched out in Iraq.
Following this year's cabinet shuffle, Stephen Harper laid out a new set of priorities:
1, Further Tax Reductions
2, Continued steps to tackle crime
3, Strengthening the federation
4, Protecting our Environment
5, Strengthening Canada's global image
Come this summer, I would expect a new priority to emerge and that will be Natives. Right now the living conditions for many natives are totally unacceptable and is reaching a boiling point. Harper himself has called the situation a national embarrassment. Caledonia is an example of frustration with a lack of action on land claims issues. Failure to formally apologize for the residential schools is inexcusable. Chief Phil Fontaine also raised the prospect of mass native protests this summer. The Kelowna accord that Jim Prentice says he supports in principal is stalled in committee despite majority support in the house. Dealing with this issue would go a long way in finally bringing some closure to Canadians and better living conditions and quality of life for our aboriginal peoples.
The Greens, Liberals, NDP, Bloc and Conservatives all seem lost right now in Ottawa. All parties need to regroup, figure out where they stand and paint clear visions that Canadians can get behind. Right now it is politics as usual and the people are turned off by politicians of all stripes. For Conservatives, it is time to go back to the grassroots, call a policy convention and come up with a way to move forward that supporters can enthusiastically get behind. I call on the party to move forward with our convention in November provided we are not in election mode this fall. We will never get a majority government unless Canadians are aware of what we will do should we get one. Today there simply aren't enough people cheering for Team Blue to win by default or a lack of other options. We need to know where we stand before we read the newspapers because right now policy announcements are a complete surprise and supporters have little choice but to rally around them rather in agreement or not. I am not impressed by discipline but ideology and principal. It is time for the people to take back this party from the back rooms of political operations and the PMO.
Ok folks, here it is. We are having a meeting in Kingston, on May 12th, to determine whether we should re-start the party or not. If you can agree to the following 5 policies below, PM me and i will give you more info. I'm am disgusted at where the CPC is going, and the Shane Doan issue is the last straw for me. This will not be a large meeting. We have space for 30 people. Socons and fiscal conservatives will be welcomed with open arms. Red tories...don't bother contacting me. I am a founding member of the Reform party and am completely disillusioned at the dreadful state this country is in. Its now or never. The one thing i can promise you,is that this new party will never be infiltrated by red tories, special interest groups or quebec again. If you have a problem with these policies, do not bother contacting me.
1- Less government (elimination of
>departments and staffing) 2-Substanial tax reductions across the board
>3- referendum, recall, elected senate and elected judges 4-An end to
>enforced bilingualism and multiculturalism 5-enshrining property
>rights...this will resonate with everyone, real vote getters, and most
>importantly the other parties won't touch these issues. We set the
>agenda ourselves, who cares what the other parties are saying or
>doing. None of them will discuss these issues during an election
>anyways,
another reason we stick out like a sore thumb. : Liberal, Tory, same old story… Hi folks, just a little something to get us primed for the meeting on May 12th…in Kingston. A few things before hand, I attend a lot of meetings monthly here in Ottawa. I chair and moderate when asked. I am volunteering to moderate our meeting in Kingston, after were done eating of course. Relax I’m a strong believer in free speech, and I don’t believe in micro managing meetings, but we do need some order and I think everyone should have equal time to speak. I believe this is fair, and I have a lot of experience doing this. We need some one to take minutes as well, some one volunteer please, and let us know.
Ok now, why are we having this meeting? Why do we need a new party? What are your views in regards to policy? What do you bring to the table? What will make us different from the CPC…? Just a few things that we’ll to be discussing…be prepared to answer these at the meeting. Pass this on to the people attending please. This is to be a small meeting, one that will allow us to get prepared for a larger one down the road, hopefully very soon. I’m really looking forward to this meeting. Cheers, I look forward to meeting everyone. T
Licia Corbella
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Fri, May 4, 2007
Federal Tories losing touch
By LICIA CORBELLA
Besides being a political power play that is way offside, the Shane Doan affair is instructive on another level. It shows just how sadly out of touch the federal Conservative party has become. When the Conservatives broke their election promise on not taxing income trusts, most of their voters understood why and forgave them. The Tories did what they believed was best for the country and many economic analysts agreed that changing circumstances required a change in policy. When the Tories fiddled with the equalization formula and gave the lion's share to Quebec, most of their voters understood why and forgave them. In their eagerness to be viewed as more green than Kermit the Frog, the Tories announced a carbon tax. Most of their voters understood why and forgave them. If the Liberals had done this, there would have been screams of bloody murder in Alberta. Then again, a Tory carbon tax is likely better than what the Liberals would do under Stephane Dion. When it comes to the Conservatives being uncharacteristically off-message on what happens to Taliban prisoners after our Canadian soldiers hand them over to Afghan authorities, most of their voters understand why and forgive them. After all, Afghanistan's government is in a bit of a mess. Now that it's been shown the Liberals knew Taliban prisoners might get tortured way back in 2002 and decided to turn them over to Afghan authorities with no provision for even checking on their welfare, many voters recognize the Liberals were much worse on the file than the Conservatives - and hypocrites besides.
But this latest swing by the Tories into shameful Liberal, NDP and Bloc territory in the Doan affair will not be forgiven so easily. It is not good for the country, for the party, for decency or for anything. All politically attuned Canadians know that for power all politicians in Canada must pander somewhat to Quebec. It is simply a necessity. Most of us can live with some of that. But trying to score political points on the back of an upstanding, honourable young hockey star playing his heart out for his country on a volunteer basis in Moscow is akin to a cheap shot for many Conservatives. This will stick in their craws for a long time. Yesterday, Conservative members of the Commons' official languages committee -- including the five Conservatives who supported a Bloc motion to summon Hockey Canada officials to yesterday's hearing -- tried to soften their message and show support for Captain Canada. It was too little, too late. They should have voted against the motion. Period. First, Doan categorically denies having called a French Canadian linesman a "f---ing Frenchman." By virtue of the fact that he is known not to swear and actually uses the word "fudge" on the ice at times of frustration would appear to back him up. In addition, Doan was cleared by the NHL more than a year ago on this almost two-year-old incident. If there is ever a time when French and English come together most beautifully in this country, it is on the ice. The political arena tends to muck up the whole thing. The Tories are plummeting in the polls because they no longer know who they are or what they stand for and voters know it. They should stand up for decency and this country. Always. Shane Doan stands for both. By voting to question his captaincy the Conservatives prove unquestioningly how offside they have skated in their blind pursuit of power. licia.corbella@calgarysun.comwww.ottawasun.com
******************
Selling out true conservatism
Gerry Nicholls, National Post
Published: Friday, April 27, 2007
If Prime Minister Stephen Harper deserves credit for uniting the Conservative Party of Canada, he must also take the blame for dividing the conservative movement.
And make no mistake, Harper's deliberate strategy of diluting conservative principles and moving the party to the left has split the movement into two factions.
The members of one faction, who might be dubbed the "Tory Partisans," support the Prime Minister as they would support their favourite sports team. Ideology doesn't necessarily matter to them. What matters above all to Tory Partisans is winning.
The other faction, which might be called the "Principled Conservatives," are horrified with what Harper is doing; they believe the Conservative party must actually stand for certain values and ideas.
In other words, the Principled Conservatives want the Conservative party to be truly conservative-- that is, a party which stands for free enterprise and less government.
As for me, I am firmly in the Principled Conservative camp.
As a conservative activist for more than 20 years, I have always believed in the importance of linking principles with politics. What's the point of electing a Conservative government if it will act no differently from a Liberal government?
Or to put it another way, Canadians need a true choice when it comes to selecting their governments -- they need an alternative to the Liberals.
And to be blunt, the Tories have simply not delivered.
They have failed to cut back on the size of government, failed to control spending and failed to introduce broad-based tax cuts for both individuals and businesses.
Of course, the Tory Partisans have counterarguments to all this, which they trot out to defend Harper's "centrist" approach. Yet they are not so much arguments as myths.
And for the sake of Canada's conservative movement, we need to examine and debunk these myths once and for all. So here we go:
MYTH 1: CANADA IS A LEFT-WING COUNTRY
Both Tory Partisans and left-wing pundits propagate this myth, which claims that Canadians are too socialist to elect a truly conservative party. Too socialist? Tell that to Don Cherry. Tell that to Albertans. Tell that to the Ontarians who live in what the media likes to call "Harris Country." Or tell that to the Quebecois who live in a province where two of the three main provincial parties are right of centre. The fact is there are enough votes for a truly conservative party to win an election in this country. Somebody just has to go after them.
MYTH 2: CONSERVATIVE IDEOLOGY IS TOO SCARY
One of the oldest myths out there. Remember when pundits and media "experts" dismissed the electoral chances of conservatives like Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Mike Harris. They were all considered "too right wing" or "too scary." Yet they all achieved great success. Why? Because they stood for something. They had values. And there's nothing scary about promising to get government out of people's lives.
MYTH 3: MOVING LEFT IS JUST A TACTIC TO ENSURE A MAJORITY IN THE NEXT ELECTION
Selling out true conservatism Gerry Nicholls, National Post Published: Friday, April 27, 2007
Three problems with this myth: First by moving to the left, the Tories are actually hurting their chances of winning a majority. Second, even if they do win a majority they won't have a mandate to implement a conservative agenda. Third, once you start making government bigger it's hard to make it smaller. As Reagan once put it, "No government ever voluntarily reduces itself in size ? a government bureau is the nearest thing to eternal life we'll ever see on this Earth."
MYTH 4: PRAGMATISM TRUMPS PRINCIPLE
Former Conservative campaign manager Tom Flanagan is the chief promoter of this myth. He recently wrote: "Too many years out of power have given conservatives an anti-government mentality. The whole point of merging the Canadian Alliance and the Progressive Conservatives was to create a political party that could win control of the federal government." Flanagan's wrong. The whole point of conservatism is to make government smaller. We are supposed to have an "anti-government mentality."
I do not seek to cast aspersions on Tory Partisans. They are right when they say that winning elections is important. But Tory Partisans must remember one key fact: They can't win elections without principled conservatives at their side.
Stephen Harper's Conservatives are hardly conservative, but no one --especially not the new Premier Alberta--is standing up for the West. Is Liberal Lite really as good as it gets?
Between sips of white wine and mouthfuls of roast lamb, Ralph Klein, Alberta's recently resigned premier--or fired, as he succinctly puts it--delivers an unprovoked diatribe against all threats to his province's meal ticket. "What happens in the oilsands has to be decided upon by the PhDs and engineers who work in the skyscrapers of Calgary and Edmonton and the folks who work in towns like Nisku and Leduc, not the Al Gores, not the David Suzukis and the not the [federal Liberal natural resources critic] Mark Hollands," says Klein, the guest of honour at a March 29 dinner attended by a dozen journalists from across the country.
The former statesman's rant, whether rehearsed or off-cuff, was vitriolic, and almost lifted him from his seat at the tony Vancouver Club, site of the final dinner of a free-market economic symposium hosted by the Fraser Institute. The line-in-the-sand tough talk entertained the assembled eastern media not familiar with Klein's yeoman's defence of Alberta. For the western media, though, it brought back memories of the man who once boldly used his public office to stand up for the West--even if it wasn't particularly graceful. As Calgary's mayor in 1981, Klein responded to the imposition of the National Energy Program with the threat, "Let the eastern bastards freeze in the dark." It was the delivery of the scrappy sound bite, no matter how hollow, that's been missing from Edmonton since Edmonton-area MLA and farmer Ed Stelmach surprised Alberta's Progressive Conservative party by winning the leadership election in a damp, rundown airplane hangar on a cold Edmonton December evening.
Today, with Alberta's conventional oil production peaked and conventional natural gas forecasted to wane by 2015, any steady prosperity for the province of 3.2 million hinges on the estimated 175 billion barrels of viscous oil saturating the sand of Alberta's northeast corner. The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers estimates that output from the sands is expected to increase from one million barrels per day to 2.7 million barrels a day by 2015, with more than $100 billion in investment already in place. It's a safe bet that provincial (as well as federal) coffers will be full for some time, barring outside interference.
But interference in the province's oil and gas sector isn't going to come from experiments in economic nationalism like the NEP, but from the environmental movement--an ideological movement that has won the public debate, despite conflicting evidence, that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are warming the Earth's atmosphere. And by winning the public debate--or at least cowing into silence any scientific or economic opposition--environmentalists now command the attention of politicians. While a retired statesman like Klein can easily dismiss the global warming cause as a popular bandwagon that politicians embrace, no sitting politicians seem willing to play the role of skeptic--and defender of the West.
If the environmental crowd were a parade, David Suzuki would be the marshal. The former CBC personality and geneticist has a humourless regard for the environment. He's been known to cover his ears with his hands if someone dares to question his opinions, and he holds the Kyoto Protocol in the sort of unquestioning reverence a Scientologist would hold the books of L. Ron Hubbard. During his winter cross-Canada tour, the 71-year-old grandfather routinely referred to Canadians as international "outlaws" for not upholding the precepts of Kyoto--though most nations haven't--and called for a moratorium on oilsands expansion.
"Look, you think you need the tarsands going gung-ho? Albertans have always had the highest standard of living of any province in the country. What the hell do you need all this unlimited expansion for God's sake? That's crazy," barked Suzuki during a stop in Calgary at the city's chamber of commerce, showing his ignorance of Canadian history and Alberta's near bankruptcy during the 1930s. During his emotional talk, hosted by a left-leaning environment think-tank, the Pembina Institute, Suzuki pointed the finger of blame toward Edmonton and Ottawa, signalling out the two governments for Canada's failure to reduce so-called greenhouse gas emissions to six per cent lower than 1990 levels. But while he railed at others, Suzuki himself was racking up emissions. The Western Standard observed that for the majority of the hour-and-a-half speech, his diesel bus was left idling in downtown Calgary. After the talk, Suzuki and his small entourage rushed into the large bus without taking questions, before driving three blocks to the hotel where they were staying.
The reaction to Suzuki's accusations was swift. Stelmach wasted little time rebuking him, saying, just a day after Suzuki's berating, that Suzuki's rhetoric distracted from any real solutions to global warming. But Stelmach's own answer was a concession by the premier that climate change is man-made.
Also in February, Ontario MP Mark Holland chastised the oil industry to a western Canadian radio host, warning there'd be "dire consequences" for the sector if they did not comply with Liberal-created regulations. Again Stelmach was quick to shoot from the hip, warning Liberals that any attempt at halting expansion would be disastrous for the nation as a whole. "You can't just step in and lower the boom on the growth and the development of the oilsands or elsewhere in the province," said Stelmach to a gathering of 300 Calgary Rotarians.
But while Stelmach may rhetorically defend the oilsands and his province, neither environmentalists nor Liberal Opposition MPs have the actual power to tax it in the name of Kyoto. That power resides with the Conservative government in Ottawa. And Stelmach has been nothing but conciliatory to the feds who, in October, announced they were breaking an election promise by taxing income trusts--a disproportionate number of which are energy companies. Federal finance officials estimate that changing the rules on income funds will add $300 million per year to their coffers, which will, in Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's words, ensure "tax fairness" for the funds. But saving that $300 million led to a collapse of $36.4 billion in market capitalization--$17 billion from the energy sector--over the next two days.
Stelmach has not publicly commented on the income trust reversal. More shockingly, he didn't seem bothered by the Conservative budget announcement that cancelled a $300 million per year tax break for oilsands development--a Liberal concession to Alberta, removed by the Conservatives. The premier appeared to defend the feds' decision outside of the legislature on March 19 when he told reporters, "It does give us some sustainability and predictability, because it won't take place until later," he said.
Overall, Stelmach was reported as saying he was "elated" with Harper's budget, thanks to a new social transfer scheme that will give his government, which recently posted a $7-billion surplus, an additional $330 million per annum for social program funding--the same amount, per capita, that other provinces receive. But days prior to the budget, Stelmach had stood in solidarity with other resource-rich provinces, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland, in demanding that oil resource revenue be left out of the transfer scheme, as Harper promised during the 2006 federal election. It wasn't. As a result, the complicated new formula provides more than $39.4 billion to the provinces over seven years--much of it from Alberta's oil. Quebec will receive an additional $3 billion this fiscal year as a result of the rejigging--what Saskatchewan Premier Lorne Calvert says is a placation by Harper toward vote-rich Quebec and Ontario.
Newfoundland Premier Danny Williams was far less diplomatic. Speaking to media after the budget, Williams lambasted the Tories for including resource revenue in the transfer payment scheme--a point of policy they campaigned against in 2006. "It's tantamount to a betrayal of the confidence of the people of this province," Williams said. "What they've done today is basically completely shafted us. It's scandalous." Williams also spent $250,000 advertising Harper's broken campaign promise.
Those on a first-name basis with the prime minister claim the Liberal Lite image the Conservatives are projecting is smart politics that will help them win a majority government, but that it may come back to haunt the Tories if they win the reputation as big spenders. "They won't have a mandate to then turn around and bring about truly small-c conservative governance," says Gerry Nicholls, vice-president of the National Citizens Coalition, a free-enterprise watchdog group. And they're definitely not presenting themselves as fiscal conservatives in the budget. Program spending is set to increase by 5.7 per cent for the fiscal 2007-08 year. In the Tories' first budget, it rose 7.9 per cent. "Look, there are Martin budgets, when he was finance minister, that I would pocket before taking this one," says John Williamson, federal director of the Ottawa-based Canadian Taxpayers Federation advocacy group.
On March 20, one day after the federal budget and one week before he was re-elected with a minority government, Quebec's nationalist Premier Jean Charest announced a $700-million income tax cut for his province. When asked if the transfer to Quebec and the subsequent tax cut would again spark feelings of western alienation, Diane Ablonczy, a Calgary MP and parliamentary secretary to the finance minister, dodged the question, answering that the country as a whole will benefit from it. "These programs have to be roughly the same across the country," says Ablonczy, a former Reformer and one-time member of the separatist Western Canada Concept.
Asked about ending the oilsands development incentives, Ablonczy says the cut was necessary so the government could offer tax incentives for companies that want to invest in unproven technology, such as carbon dioxide capture and release, for which there is no natural investment market. "The big picture is Canada wants to be a leader in balancing both our economy and our environment," she claims. "What we want to do is to help Canadian companies and industries meet new responsibilities and challenges that they're going to be given under a greener agenda. We're very shortly going to be putting emission caps on industries . . . It's actually called Kyoto catch-up."
That PR strategy has proven successful. Both one year prior to the Liberals' signing the accord and one month after, only six per cent of Canadians responded to an Angus Reid poll that the environment was the most important issue on their agenda. Nine years later, 59 per cent of Canadians told Decima Research that Canada ought to honour its Kyoto commitments. In February, an Environment Canada survey found 76 per cent of Canadians believed current regulations are not strong enough.
Jim Carter, outgoing president and chief operating officer of Syncrude Canada, Ltd., a conglomerate of seven energy companies with one of the oldest and largest interests in the oilsands, warns too much regulation, whether environmental or fiscal, will upset the balance in the sector and dissuade investment. "If we pile too many straws on the camel's back we'll eventually find the one that does break it," he told reporters via conference call on March 20. "This is not cheap oil. It's at the high end of world costs. You can't play around with the formula too much before you make it not attractive anymore."
The federal Conservatives have increased taxes on the oilpatch, they've increased spending in the budget, and they've tipped the bias of Confederation increasingly towards Quebec's favour. But there have been some instances of conservative-style policy since the Tories upset Paul Martin's Liberals to form a minority government in January 2006. They've reduced the GST by one point (though they did promise to cut it by another point) and passed parts of a Federal Accountability Act.
They've also taken small steps to eliminate the gun registry, de-monopolize the contentious Canadian Wheat Board, and enact Senate reform. And, as Ablonczy likes to point out, "We're scandal free." But the gun registry still exists, the wheat board still has a monopoly on western farmers' wheat, and the Senate is still appointed, unequal and ineffective. In order to bring about those changes and other pieces of conservative legislation, simple parliamentary math dictates that Harper needs a majority in the next election--a majority that his new, red-and-green politics might give him.
After last year's election breakthrough, Albertans rejoiced that the West "was in" and Preston Manning's battle cry was finally realized. But with Manning out of the political arena and Klein reduced to telling old war stories, it's worth asking: how many more concessions will western conservatives swallow? How much further will the Conservative government go? And who, if anyone, can stop them?
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Tuesday, March 20, 2007 / National Post
Flaherty biggest of the big spenders
http://www.andrewcoyne.com/
At various points in the course of its 477 pages, the budget pauses to declare itself “historic.” As in: “Budget 2007 makes a historic investment of ...” Or: “Budget 2007 takes historic action to...” They got that right. With this budget, Jim Flaherty officially becomes the biggest-spending finance minister in the history of Canada.
It’s true. The $200-billion Mr. Flaherty proposes to spend this year works out to about $5,800 for every citizen. Even after you adjust for increases in prices and population, that’s more than the Martin government spent at its frenetic worst, when it was almost shovelling the stuff out the door. It is more than the Mulroney government spent in its last days, when it was past caring. It is more than the Trudeau government spent in the depths of the early 1980s recession. All of these past benchmarks of over-the-top, out-of-control spending must now be retired. Jim Flaherty has outdone them all.
In two years of this “conservative” government, spending has climbed a historic $25-billion. Bear in mind: that’s on top of the wild rise in spending during the Liberals’ last term. The Tories have taken all of that fat, all of that waste, and all of those hundreds of priorities -- and added to them.
Cast your mind back to 2000. In his budget of that year, Paul Martin, then the Finance minister, pledged to hold increases in program spending to no more than what was required to keep pace with inflation and population growth, or roughly 3% per year. He didn’t, of course -- spending rose more than twice as fast over the next six years -- but suppose he had, and suppose subsequent ministers had followed suit. Today, program spending would be just $157-billion -- $43-billion less than the current estimate.
And that’s assuming Mr. Flaherty shows any greater propensity to stay within his budget than his predecessors. But then, historically, they never do. The $200-billion Mr. Flaherty will spend this year is $4-billion more than he projected in his last budget, just ten months ago. The $207-billion he projects for next year, we may assume, will be similarly revised. The budget boasts of instituting “a new Expenditure Management System.” And why not: That’s a whole lot of new expenditures to manage.
Is this what you voted for, you loyal Conservative followers? Is this what you suffered for, through all those long years of Liberal rule, dreaming of the Conservative revolution to come? “Hiring 50% more environmental enforcement officers?” Increasing “the share of meal expenses that long-haul truck drivers can deduct?” Tax credits for lacrosse? Exactly how does this differ from any Liberal budget -- other than outspending them, I mean?
And on the tax side? We had been conditioned to expect very little in the way of tax cuts by the Tories’ constant trumpeting of their risible “tax-back guarantee,” in which the interest savings from paying down the debt by $3-billon a year -- a whole $20 per taxpayer -- were to be dedicated to tax reduction. But I had not realized quite how little it would be. Because even the “tax-back guarantee,” it turns out, involves no actual tax cut of any kind. Rather, “the interest savings enhance the Government’s ability to deliver on new personal income tax reductions” -- mark those words -- “including the introduction of the Working Income Tax Benefit, the $2000 child credit, raising the spousal amount, and increaseing the age limit for converting a registered retirement savings plan.”
Now, what do the items on those list have in common? They are not tax cuts, in the usual sense of a reduction in tax rates. Rather, they are spending programs, delivered through the tax system. The “$2000 child credit” is in fact a $310 baby bonus. The Working Income Tax Benefit is an earnings supplement. These may be fine programs, but they’re programs: money the government gives you, depending on whether you fit the program criterion. That’s why they’re called tax expenditures -- and why they’re accounted as such on the government’s books.
So even the $1-billion “tax back” -- out of total revenues of $237-billion -- turns out, on closer inspection, to be … zero. What was it Stephen Harper was saying the other day, about the people who didn't have the time to organize a protest or the money to hire a lobbyist? Well, they're the ones that got left out of this budget: the common, ordinary, undifferentiated taxpayers. If you perform little tricks for the government, do the things it wants you to do -- ride the bus, live past 65, invest in a manufacturing company -- you get a cookie. But there isn’t one real, honest-to-God, across-the-board tax cut in the entire document. The government that raised personal income tax rates in 2006 cannot scrounge up enough revenues to lower them in 2007.
Of course they can’t: they gave it all to the provinces. The ad hoc mess that Mr. Martin made of the equalization program -- it was equalization, without the equalization -- has been replaced with a carefully rationalized, formula-driven, principle-based mess. Or rather four or possibly five messes: it’s impossible to speak of a single equalization program any more, not when you have resource revenues that are first excluded (well, 50% of them), then included (via the dreaded “fiscal capacity cap”), only to be excluded again for two of the provinces the cap was supposed to apply to (Newfoundland and Nova Scotia) but not the third (Saskatchewan).
But they did manage to torture the numbers, by means of various one-time payments and other instruments too hideous to mention, to show that no province would be worse off than it “would have” been had they followed some other system. The upshot: equalization, at a time of shrinking disparities between the provinces, will grow by $1.5-billion. And Quebec’s share? Why, all of it, of course. (More than all of it, in fact: don’t ask me how, but Quebec gets 109% of the increase.) Even Gilles Duceppe could not think of a way to find this humiliating.
It is good news, at least, that the “fiscal imbalance,” the notion that Ottawa is systematically stiffing the provinces -- a rank falsehood, but appealing in its simplicity -- somehow wandered into the impenetrable thicket of equalization and got lost. But what a price! All told, this year the federal government will transfer $43-billion, a fifth of every dollar it collects, to other levels of government -- $48-billion if you count the gas-tax giveaway to the cities. (Is it possible to make city governments even less accountable than they already are? Yes: give them billions of dollars in federal lolly every year.) Four years ago it was $29-billion.
And what did the feds get in return? Last year’s budget made some encouraging noises to the effect that Ottawa would use the leverage of its largesse to make some demands of its own, insisting that the provinces get serious about the economic union, harmonize their sales taxes with the GST, accept a national securities regulator, and so on. And now that the money has been delivered? The usual bumf about “working with” our provincial partners to build upon the precedent set in the zzzzzzzzzzz. In other words, about as much cooperation as Mr. Martin got for his $41-billion health accord.
Will it at least shut them up? Don’t bet on it. Quebec may be gorged, but I can hear Ontario squawking already that, while one federal money pot, the Canada Social Transfer, will now be distributed among the provinces on an equal per capita basis, the same is not true with regard to the Canada Health Transfer. It will still get billions more, you understand, than it did before: free money that, notwithstanding the careful labels, it can spend as it likes. But it won’t get quite as much as it might have liked to have got. The new fiscal imbalance?
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Selling the conservative soul
by: Andrew Coyne http://www.andrewcoyne.com/
Do the words CF-18 mean anything to you? No? How about Bristol Aerospace? $1.3 billion maintenance contract? Brian Mulroney?
Ah. Now you recall: it was the Mulroney government's 1986 decision to award the contract to a Quebec firm, over a clearly superior bid from Bristol Aerospace's Winnipeg plant, that touched off the prairie fire of protest that was to become the Reform Party.
Well, here we are, twenty-odd years later, the Reform Party has come and gone, and nothing has changed. A Conservative party is back in power, largely on the strength of Western support, and once again the party seems to have forgotten who it is, or what it stands for -- or, Westerners might say, who put it there. Only now there is no prospect of a Reform insurgency.
Then, the conservative movement in this country was still in its infancy, still full of fresh ideas and enthusiasm. If the nominal Conservative party was not responsive to their concerns, they'd soon put that right. Hell, they'd start a whole new party if they had to.
So they did, and they had some success, but then they got impatient for more, and they started tinkering around with various unsuccessful efforts at rebranding themselves, until at last what remained of the old Reform party was merged with what remained of the old Conservative party to form ... the Conservative party.
But it was not the same as the old Conservative party, was it? It had a leader, after all, who had left the Conservatives to help found Reform, and even if it seemed inordinately concerned with reassuring everyone that it was a "moderate, mainstream" party, that was mostly for show, wasn't it?
Underneath beat the hearts of true conservatives, committed to fundamental changes in the way this country is governed -- for example, in the abuse of defence contracts for pork-barrel purposes, or the crude regional power-plays that had been the Liberal stock in trade. And for a time it looked that way.
The National Post ran a series in the fall of 2005 on the theme, Is Conservatism Dying? The question seemed to me absurd, and in my own contribution I said so. "Oh, dry up," I began, pointing out that the Conservatives controlled five of the ten provinces and were on the cusp of victory federally. "One more heave, and they are over the top," I concluded.
In retrospect I was quite wrong. After a year of Conservative rule, it is now clear, conservatism isn't just dying -- it's dead. And it's the Conservatives who killed it.
It was one thing for their political opponents to denounce conservative ideas. At least they got a hearing, and as often as not the Liberals would steal them. But when Conservatives themselves hasten to renounce them, they have no outlet. And after two decades invested in the Reform experiment, there is nowhere else to go.
So when the Public Works minister, Senator Michael Fortier from Montreal, intervenes in the procurement process for some desperately needed military cargo planes to demand a greater share of the "industrial benefits" go to Quebec, there is no vehicle for dissatisfaction to express itself -- should it even occur to anyone to protest. The Liberals aren't going to raise a fuss, or not seriously: they'd do the same. And whatever Conservatives remain who still believe in free market principles are either too reluctant to rock the boat or too exhausted by the fight to bother. That, or they have grown too accustomed to capitulation.
For there isn't much left of conservatism nowadays, is there? Spending? The Finance minister's fall economic statement projects spending to rise to levels never approached by any Liberal government, and yes, that's after allowing for inflation and population growth. Taxes? The party that once campaigned on a flat tax, then on broad-based tax cuts, now sprays special-interest tax credits hither and yon, such as that for children's sports. (Which sports? Teams of experts have been retained to advise whether the kids are sweating enough to qualify.)
Corporate welfare? Once upon a time conservatives wanted to abolish subsidies to business. No longer. Agricultural quotas? No danger of any reform there. Privatization? Don't make me laugh. Much of this dilution took place in advance of the last election, notably at the party's triumphant founding policy convention in 2005. But the process has only accelerated post-election, in pursuit of the coveted majority.
The more the party has chased the middle, however, the faster it has seemed to recede; with each abandonment of its principles, the opposition and the media, those arbiters of the status quo, simply yawn and move the goalposts a little further down the field. So that even so humiliating a climbdown as the past week's reinstatement of the very Liberal environmental programs the Tories abolished in their first weeks in office wins them no points whatever.
Quebec, missile defence, China, health care, regional development: it's very hard to tell what the Conservative position is any more, or how it differs from the Liberals, or what it will be a week from now. And the result? 31% in the last poll. Sell your soul, you'd think you'd at least get paid.
OTTAWA – There’s never been any doubt as to how a Conservative government would deal with the Kelowna agreement. We accept the objectives and targets agreed upon at the First Ministers Meeting. However, at the conclusion of the meeting, there was no agreement on where the $5.1 billion would be spent.
Let’s review the facts:
The Liberals themselves admit that negotiations with aboriginals and the provinces are not over.
There is still no agreement on the $1.3 billion in healthcare spending for Aboriginals.
There is still no agreement on how funds would be divided among the provinces.
There is still no agreement on how funds would be divided between on-reserve and off-reserve natives.
The Liberals have committed $5.1 billion dollars without any concrete spending plan.
A Conservative government would stand up for Aboriginals and taxpayers with an agreement that clearly lays out both responsibilities and targets for all stakeholders.
The Liberal approach of spend now and ask questions later has resulted in third-world living conditions for Canada’s Aboriginals.
The Conservative Party supports all of the objectives, targets, and principles as laid out in the agreement. A Conservative government will work closely with the provinces and Aboriginal peoples to develop a responsible fiscal plan to meet these objectives.
I encourage all residents of Newmarket, Aurora, King, Stouffville, Uxbridge, Mount Albert, Sharon, Holland Landing, Queensville, Georgina and Bradford to write to your MP, MPP and local governments to stop this incineration plant from being located in our backyard. This plan is bad for local quality of living and also the environment. Residents of Newmarket know all too well what it is like to live near the current Halton Recycling Plan. We demand an alternative solution to incineration, especially located in our part of York Region. As a resident of Newmarket Ward 3, this location directly affects my family and I.
To sign a petition and for more information on what you can do to stop this, please visit http://communitiesfirst.ca/
The Regions of York/Durham have short-listed 5 potential sites for a new incineration plant, one of which is off Davis Drive between Warden and Woodbine Avenue (adjacent to the existing recycling plant) right next to the Moraine and Black River. Area residents in Newmarket, East Gwillimbury, Georgina, Holland Landing, Aurora, Stouffville, Vaughan, Richmond Hill, Thornhill, Markham, King and Sharon will be affected as the toxins from this plant will be carried to all of these areas and even further.
A decision will be made within the next few months… as to the selected site for this incineration plant.
This proposed site location was originally deemed as “environmentally protected” and part of the Greenbelt Area since this land backs on to the Moraine and Black River. It was stated by York Region representatives that no Greenbelt would be considered. It came to our attention at the last meeting that through political and legal loop holes, they are now waiving this as not an environmentally protected area and that since they had it zoned prior to the Greenbelt Legislature that the site is now a viable option for incinerating garbage.
Incinerator plants are the source of serious toxic pollutants: dioxins; furans; acid gases; particulates; heavy metals such as lead and mercury; this needs to be treated very seriously. The emissions from incinerator processes are extremely toxic. Some of the emissions are carcinogenic. We must use every reasonable instrument to stop this insanity and eliminate these toxins altogether, our health and our children’s health is at stake. There are numerous studies that link these types of plants to cancer, birth defects, numerous respiratory problems and heart related disease.
Proponents of incinerators claim the new breeds of incinerators are not problem polluters. But the industry’s own data proves the contrary. Modern incinerators emit mercury at a rate 5 times higher per unit of electricity generated than coal, and greenhouse gases at a rate substantially higher than coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plants. How ironic that the Ontario government has promised to close down Ontario’s coal-fired power plants to reduce mercury emissions, but at the same time is supporting municipal waste incinerators.
Once you build an incinerator, you must “feed the machine”; so recycling and waste reduction become “the enemy” because the machine must have a new load of fresh garbage every day. The machine needs waste, so its very existence serves as a major deterrent to less wasteful life styles - in sum: incinerators promote waste - they thrive on waste, they need waste, they demand waste - they are a major deterrent to clean production, full recycling, resource conservation, zero waste and a sustainable economy.
Incineration is a BAD idea - it is BAD anywhere - it is BAD for the taxpayer, BAD for the economy, BAD for jobs, BAD for sustainability. Simply put, we shouldn’t be spending a huge amount of taxpayer’s money to release more toxins into the air and further pollute our environment, destroy our resources, and increase our health costs.
The ashes created from this incineration plant travels many miles and will pollute nearby waterways (the Black River), plants, trees, wildlife, not to mention our children and grandchildren. The additional traffic created from this site will be horrendous - hundreds and hundreds of huge trucks daily hauling in tons and tons of garbage will be continuously lining our highways and roads, 404, Hwy 48, Green Lane, Woodbine, Davis Drive, creating even more pollution and traffic congestion. The additional noise, smell and pollution created from this site is totally unacceptable…
We, as residents of York Region, urge everyone to send their notice of 100% objection to this proposed incineration site in Newmarket/East Gwillimbury, to the Durham/York Residual Waste Study Coordinator, by either:
Petition Blitz: We are looking for help to distribute flyers and petitions. If you are willing to spend a few hours to help, please contact us at info@communitiesfirst.ca. If you require copies of the flyers and petitions, let us know and we will provide them for you.
Tuesday, May 22nd: East Gwillimbury Council meeting at 7:00 pm
Thursday, May 24th: York Region Council Meeting – 9:00 am
Monday, May 28th @ 7:00pm Newmarket Council Meeting Location: 395 Mulock Dr., Newmarket. Our Newmarket Neighbours need our support. There will be several deputations regarding the Incinerator and we need to ensure that the Newmarket Council’s decision is to also oppose this project.
June 6th @ 9:00am Solid Waste Management Committee Location: 17250 Yonge St., Newmarket There will be several planned deputations- support from residents by attending this sessions is needed
June 9 - 10: Windfall Ecology Festival - Fairy Lake Park, Newmarket - This festival celebrates sustainable living… it is a gathering place for people of all ages to exchange ideas and learn new ways to walk softly upon the earth. It is also a place to take some time from busy lives and reconnect with our natural heritage which has so richly shaped Canadian culture. Learn about conservation, ground water protection, climate change, renewable energy, and many other important environmental issues through the many exhibits, workshops, children’s activities, and prominent speakers. http://www.windfallcentre.ca/default/index.php?section=Festival&page=FestHom e&vrs
June 21st 9:00am York Region Council Meeting 17250 Yonge St., Newmarket We will attempt to get on the agenda with deputations regarding the proposed incinerator site. Even if they choose not to hear our deputations – a huge crowd of support is needed to demonstrate that the citizens of York Region are opposed to an incinerator in York Region. The only way that we will stop this project from going forward is by a showing of public opposition at this meeting!
******************* INFORMATION ON INCINERATOR PLANTS:
I was born in 1980, so today the Canadian dollar is higher than at any point during my life time. This is not good for the manufacturing sector or border communities that attract American tourists such as Windsor and Niagara Falls. It does demonstrate that the Canadian economy continues to do well. Expect interest rate hikes to stop any chance of our dollar reaching par with the US dollar.
Thanks for reading...
Darryl
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Canadian dollar surges to highest level since 1977
Updated Fri. May. 18 2007 10:12 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
The Canadian dollar crept closer to U.S. parity on Friday than it has been in 30 years, at one point reaching a high of 91.94 cents US.
It ended the day at 91.79 cents US, the loonie's highest level since Oct. 11, 1977.
The currency's gain came on the heels of a 0.43-cent rise Thursday, triggered by a hotter-than-predicted inflation report for April.
The numbers on Thursday and Friday were expected to put pressure on the Bank of Canada to raise interest rates, which have remained static at 4.25 per cent since last May.
"If there was any uncertainty about what the next move would be by the bank, I think yesterday's higher than expected inflation data put everybody on the same page in terms of anticipating the next move would be tightening,'' said George Davis, senior technical analyst at RBC Capital Markets.
Michael Kane, of the Business News Network, told CTV Newsnet the flurry of retail activity has helped drive the dollar.
Friday's rise comes as a Statistics Canada report said retail sales were up 1.9 per cent in March, hitting $34 billion and boosting the sales gain for the first quarter of 2007 to two per cent.
Meanwhile, the Toronto Stock Exchange barely moved Friday as lower financial stocks offset higher resources and telecom shares.
This year alone, Canadian dollar has gained almost 7 per cent against the greenback -- one of the strongest performances by any major currency.
Some expect the currency could eventually hit par or even surpass the U.S. dollar, with the world interested in Canadian resources -- from oil and natural gas, to nickel, zinc, wheat and petrochemicals.
But it isn't all good news for the stock market.
The high dollar could result in job losses in the manufacturing industry and makes Canadian exports more expensive, prompting some skepticism among investors.
"It goes back to the same thing: what does it do to manufacturers in Ontario and Quebec?'' said Julie Brough, assistant vice-president at Morgan, Meighen and Associates.
"We're continuing to see job losses there -- it seemed to have stabilized a bit but this next move up could be very very hard on manufacturing in Central Canada -- particularly when we certainly have seen a bit of a slowdown in the U.S."
Former U.S. president Bill Clinton, pictured in Manhattan, Kan., on March 2, 2007.
May 16, 2007 09:57 AM
Jim Byers CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF
NEW YORK – A plan to be unveiled today by former U.S. president Bill Clinton will provide “tens of millions” of dollars for Toronto to renovate and retrofit buildings with the latest energy-saving technology, Mayor David Miller says.
Speaking prior to the start of today’s C40 Large Cities climate change summit, Miller said he’ll appear at a press conference in midtown Manhattan this afternoon with Clinton and a dozen or so other world mayors to unveil what he called an “innovative and exciting” strategy.
Miller said Toronto is riddled with old, concrete apartment buildings and leaky civic structures that could use an energy makeover; changes that would help reduce global warming and save money on heating and cooling.
“The biggest issue in Toronto and most cities with regard to climate change is the energy we use to heat and cool our buildings,” Miller told the Star. “This initiative will provide us with the financing and technical support to make those buildings more efficient.
“We’ve been working with the Clinton Foundation to make City Hall an environmental showcase,” he said. “It’s basically taking the better buildings partnership we already have in Toronto and putting it on a world scale.”
Details are still to be worked out, but the plan will provide tens of millions of dollars for not only City Hall but other public and private buildings in the city.
“This will help us rejuvenate neighborhoods, improve public space, provide jobs and help small business,” Miller said.
Associated Press reports that major global banking institutions have committed $1 billion to finance the upgrades of municipal buildings in participating cities, which include New York, Chicago, Houston, Toronto, Mexico City, London, Berlin and Tokyo.
The makeovers will include replacing heating, cooling and lighting systems with energy-efficient networks; making roofs white or reflective to deflect more of the sun's heat; sealing windows and installing new models that let more light in; and setting up sensors to control more efficient use of lights and air conditioning, AP said.
Clinton's foundation said the planned changes have the potential to reduce energy use by 20 to 50 per cent in those buildings. The reduction could mean a significant decrease in heat-trapping carbon emissions, as well as cost savings on utility bills.
Ira Magaziner, chairman of the Clinton Climate Initiative, said cities and private building owners would like to build and renovate with more energy efficiency, but often cannot put up the initial costs.
Miller asks world's cities to join T.O.'s green scheme
Toronto mayor touts city's water as `more pure than Perrier'
NEW YORK–A San Francisco delegate stood up near the start of yesterday's climate change summit here at the posh Essex House hotel and held up a fancy bottle of water from Norway, one of many given out to summit attendees. "A lot of carbon was used to move this water here," she said. "But New York has great tap water."
Toronto Mayor David Miller said he went for a run in Central Park on Monday and heard a New York tour guide telling visitors the city has the best water in the world. Miller couldn't resist a plug for Toronto's taps, telling the crowd that tests show Torontonians get water that's "more pure than Perrier."
In his lunchtime speech, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said cities are leading the charge against climate change. He said New York's urban planning process makes it the most environmentally friendly on the planet, although a Toronto visitor noted there are no recycling bins on the streets.
Bloomberg mentioned a dozen cities that are doing everything from adding green roofs to improving public transit. He didn't mention Toronto. Probably he's still mad about the Thomson-Reuters deal to take on Bloomberg News, the company he founded.
The Empire State Building was lit up with green lights Monday night to welcome climate change delegates to New York. Of course, if folks here were really environmentally conscious they wouldn't light the building at all.
At one point in Bloomberg's news conference in Central Park, a scribe asked if he knew why the streetlights were on in the middle of the afternoon. Bloomberg laughed and told the man to call the city press office, who, he assured the man, would "provide a cogent answer that makes no sense." Minutes later he said he understood the lights had to be on to power the microphones.
Mayor David Miller was asked about the most impressive thing he'd learned at the summit. He said he was amazed to hear Citibank is spending $50 billion to go green. Citigroup Inc. chair and CEO Charles Prince told a summit panel all new branches will be LEED-certified and the company has committed to reducing its carbon footprint by 10 per cent by 2011.
Jim Byers/ city hall bureau chief
Online project aims to show people how to limit their effect on environment
May 16, 2007 04:30 AM
jim byers city hall bureau chief
NEW YORK—The mayor of Salt Lake City calls it a "fantastic idea." And a spokesperson for the mayor of Seattle says his boss is always up for a good bet.
Speaking at a summit on climate change for leaders of the world's largest cities, Toronto Mayor David Miller yesterday laid down a challenge to fellow mayors to join a new, global, Web-based initiative that would determine which urban centre is the greenest and that would teach residents how they take positive steps to protect the environment.
"We have a similar program that residents can join, and it led to a 31 per cent reduction in greenhouse gases in the last four years," said Rocky Anderson, mayor of Salt Lake. "We've now expanded that to the business community. But I think your mayor's plan is a fantastic idea."
Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels couldn't make the trip to the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit, but representative James McOmber said he's sure his boss would take up the challenge – and even put a few dollars on the line.
"We're known for betting on big things like the Super Bowl," said McOmber, who added that Seattle has a similar program in place. "I'm sure the mayor would be up for this."
The website, created in conjunction with Toronto-based Zerofootprint and Business Objects, a company with headquarters in Paris and San Jose, Calif., will allow Toronto residents to enter their data on such things as car usage and eating habits, to learn about their personal "carbon footprint" – a tool used to measure the impact humans have on the environment based on greenhouse gases produced.
On the website, residents will be able to link with others to make such lifestyle changes as setting up carpools and, ultimately, to vie with other cities.
Miller called the Zerofootprint Toronto initiative "exciting, innovative and, frankly, pretty cool. It's a project that is destined to make Toronto a leader in the citizen-based fight against climate change."
The program – a peek can be seen at www.zerofootprinttoronto.org – has a "calculator" that allows users to understand what effect they're having on the environment, said Business Objects founder and chairman Bernard Liautaud.
"Individual engagement is crucial," he said. "People don't know what impact they would have by turning off their computer, but this will enable them to know. You could call it the power of millions."
Liautaud said the site will be "like YouTube, or a green Facebook."
Zerofootprint president Ron Dembo said Toronto's 40,000 city employees will get the first crack at calculating their environmental footprint, probably by July. Later, the program will be available to everyone.
"There's nothing in the world like it, and for some it might be coming out of left field," he told the Star. "But we hope all cities will eventually link up."
Several Canadian reporters, plus representatives from Associated Press and the Washington Post and a few other outlets, were on hand for Miller's briefing yesterday.
But most of the media appeared to be next door, where London Mayor Ken Livingstone was talking to a panel about controversial traffic congestion charges on drivers.
Livingstone, who created and hosted the first large-cities climate summit two years ago, said cities have to act quickly to save the planet. "We have the tools; all that's lacking is the political will," he said.
Miller told a morning panel that cities have to step in to fill the gap left by senior governments unwilling to tackle climate change: "Where national governments can't or won't lead, cities will."
He offered a long list of Toronto initiatives, including capping methane emissions at the city's main landfill, retrofitting buildings and using cold Lake Ontario water to cool downtown buildings.
Miller said the city has worked with Redpath Sugar to reduce the water used in producing each ton of refined sugar from 1,400 litres to 800. He also said he's working with the Clinton Foundation to improve energy efficiency at City Hall, built when energy savings weren't a consideration.
Asked whether senior governments should take specific action to help cities or simply get out of the way, Miller laughed.
"Getting out of the way would be a very good start," he said.
Miller said Ottawa has "tentative programs" to subsidize building retrofitting, but more needs to be done. Ontario residents can create solar power and sell it back to the electrical grid, but the price the province offers is too low to make the idea economical.
Bill Clinton program to give 16 city skylines green makeover to cut pollution
Sara Kugler, Canadian Press
Published: Wednesday, May 16, 2007
NEW YORK (AP) - Sixteen cities around the world will begin cutting carbon emissions by renovating city-owned buildings with green technology under a program spearheaded by former U.S. President Bill Clinton's foundation.
Clinton was to announce the partnership Wednesday, joined by mayors of several of the cities, as part of an international climate summit he is hosting this week in New York City.
Clinton's foundation described details to The Associated Press ahead of the announcement. Major global banking institutions have committed US$1 billion to finance the upgrades of municipal buildings in participating cities, which include New York, Chicago, Houston, Toronto, Mexico City, London, Berlin and Tokyo.
The makeovers will include replacing heating, cooling and lighting systems with energy-efficient networks; making roofs white or reflective to deflect more of the sun's heat; sealing windows and installing new models that let more light in; and setting up sensors to control more efficient use of lights and air conditioning.
Clinton's foundation said the planned changes have the potential to reduce energy use by 20 to 50 per cent in those buildings. The reduction could mean a significant decrease in heat-trapping carbon emissions, as well as cost savings on utility bills.
Buildings often represent a city's worst culprits in contributing to emissions. In New York, for example, the consumption of electricity, natural gas, fuel oil and steam needed to operate buildings generates 79 per cent of the city's total carbon count.
Ira Magaziner, chairman of the Clinton Climate Initiative, said cities and private building owners would like to build and renovate with more energy efficiency, but often cannot put up the initial costs.
The partnership with Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, JPMorgan Chase & Co., UBS AG, and ABN Amro will make that possible and benefits everyone involved, he said.
"They're going to save money, make money, create jobs and have a tremendous collective impact on climate change all at once," Clinton said in a statement.
With the money from the banks, cities will get the green technology at no cost. The program assumes that cities already have money in their budgets set aside for building operations and will pay back loans, plus interest, through the energy savings that the projects achieve over several years.
To ensure those savings are realized, Honeywell International Inc., Johnson Controls Inc., Siemens AG and American Standard Cos. Inc. will conduct energy audits of the buildings, complete the makeovers and guarantee the energy savings.
If the expected savings are not realized, those companies will pay the difference or make the changes in the buildings to achieve the savings, the foundation said.
To expedite the project, the bank paperwork and building permitting will be streamlined so that the work can begin on groups of buildings, rather than one at a time, Magaziner said. That could happen as soon as this summer.
"By bringing together cities and partnering with the private sector, President Clinton and the Clinton foundation are providing the tools to help cities achieve our goals," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said in a statement.
London Mayor Ken Livingstone called the agreement a "considerable breakthrough."
"This procurement alliance will make it financially feasible for cities to radically cut emissions from buildings," he said in a statement.
The other cities are Rome; Delhi, India; Karachi, Pakistan; Seoul, South Korea; Bangkok, Thailand; Melbourne, Australia; Sao Paolo, Brazil; and Johannesburg, South Africa. The foundation expects the partnership to expand to more cities and companies after the first round.
Ontario plans to review the animal cruelty act in the wake of an attack on a six-month old dog last week, according to a newspaper report.
A German shepherd-Rottweiler puppy named "AK" was found whimpering on a balcony with its ears cut off by the Ontario SPCA last Friday in Windsor, Ont.
According to a report in The Globe and Mail an anonymous phone call led investigators to the balcony of an apartment building where the dog was crying and pawing at his ears.
Amy Nardella, the Ontario SPCA agent who found the dog, told The Globe she believes the dog's ears were cut to make him look more menacing.The dog is expected to recover and is now in the custody of the Humane Society.
This incident has raised the concern of many animal rights groups, who are urging a review of existing animal cruelty laws.
Ontario's Community Safety Minister Monte Kwinter hopes the federal government will consider issuing stronger penalties.
He told The Globe, "these are things that don't necessarily happen overnight,'' but said the province will review the laws, including a provincial offence under the Ontario SPCA Act.
In Ontario, violators of the law currently face a maximum penalty of six months imprisonment and the possibility of a $2,000 fine.
The SPCA would like provincial penalties to be modified, arguing they are less stringent than those in other provinces.
"If this incident with "A.K." occurred in British Columbia or Alberta or New Brunswick, Manitoba, most other provinces, this person ... could have been charged already," Hugh Coghill of the Ontario SPCA told CTV's Canada AM.
"There's a potential for a lifetime prohibition on keeping animals. It doesn't happen in Ontario and that's really sad."
Coghill said that the sections of the Criminal Code that apply to animals are over 100 years old and feels they need updating.
"There's been a number of bills presented to the House of Commons that would change that and take animals out of the property section of the Criminal Code, recognize them essentially as beings with feelings," Coghill told Canada AM. "There's seven or eight of them I think in the past 20 years. Unfortunately none of them have come to fruition."
It is a great time for democratic reform right now in Ontario and in Ottawa. For the first time we are seeing a bill introducing term limits on senate appointments and movement towards an elected senate. We also saw legislation this week that would give BC, Alberta and Ontario a more reflective voice based on their share of the national population through a plan that would increase the seat total in the House of Commons to 330. In the upcoming Ontario provincial election there will be a referendum (I would like to see more of these on other issues as well) on proportional representation. I am hoping this new wave of democratic reform also extends to increased free votes and less party discipline. Floor crossing legislation and recalls would also be welcome in my opinion. I am not sure if these reforms will increase voter turnout or not, but I do know it is offering citizens a greater chance to participate in the democratic process. Digital Democracy is also a revolution that won't be going away anytime soon. It is great to see that some of the roots of the Reform party have not been forgotten now that the Conservatives are in government.
Tories propose bigger Commons BRIAN LAGHI Globe and Mail Update May 11, 2007 at 9:02 PM EDT Ottawa — Ottawa will rectify the political under-representation of Canada's fastest-growing provinces in a move aimed at averting regional tensions in the country. The new legislation would eventually add 22 more seats to the House of Commons, all of them in Ontario, British Columbia and Alberta. “This legislation will restore fairness,” said Peter Van Loan, the federal minister responsible for democratic reform. “This bill recognizes that the growing populations of Ontario, Alberta and B.C. should have fair representations in the national legislature.” The new seats would be apportioned on the basis of the 2011 census. Related Articles Recent Sunday voting? Tories proposing extra hours The House of Commons has 308 seats, a number that would jump to 330. Under the formula currently in use for revising the number of MPs, the Commons would grow by only seven seats. If the proposals become law, Ontario would have 116 seats, up from the current 106, while British Columbia's allotment would jump seven seats to 43 MPs. Alberta would receive another five seats, going up to 33. Mr. Van Loan said that the formula used to calculate seat representation has to be changed because MPs from the three provinces represent, on average, 21,000 more constituents than MPs from other provinces. “Left in place, that imbalance will continue to grow,” he said. “The gap will be almost 30,000 under the current formula … this will likely place great strains on our federation.” Mr. Van Loan speculated that the legislation probably wouldn't come into effect until 2014. The opposition Liberals appeared ready to support the legislation. “It's difficult in this large country with different growth rates at different times to stay strictly to [representation by population],” said Liberal MP Stephen Owen. “But I think this is a welcome addition.” The NDP, however, was less upbeat. It has argued for a more substantial change. “Well [it's] interesting we have the government bringing forward what they believe is democratic reform and clearly what they're bringing us is more piecemeal,” said New Democrat MP Paul Dewar. “It's not going to really deal with the issue of voter fairness, deal with the issue that we've been talking about for many years and that is does every vote count?”
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G33KS 4 PR Andrew Coynehttp://www.andrewcoyne.com/columns/2007/04/g33ks-4-pr.php By this time next week, the battle will be under way. As always, Ontario will decide. Barring the unforeseen, the province is about to become embroiled in an epic political struggle, one that could change the future, not just of Ontario, but of Canada. No, I’m not talking about the federal election, or the provincial election. I’m not talking about a contest between the political parties at all..., but rather one that pits the parties -- the largest ones, at any rate -- against the citizens. Or more particularly, the Citizens. As in the Citizens’ Assembly on Electoral Reform, 103 randomly selected Ontarians who have been deliberating these past seven months over how, or whether, to fix the province’s electoral system. This weekend, the assembly will decide whether to recommend sticking with the present system, known as “first past the post,” or whether, as seems all but certain, to propose adopting a form of proportional representation, the system in use in most of the democratic world. The issue would then be put to the voters in a referendum, to coincide with this fall’s provincial election. And if Ontario goes for it, you may be sure the idea will take on new life elsewhere. By rights, the referendum ought to overshadow the election, a pallid affair between two cautious centrists that will change nothing. Change the electoral system, on the other hand, and you change everything, not least the predominance of cautious centrists: poll-driven, essentially interchangeable brokerage parties who wouldn’t know an idea -- or a principle -- if it bit them in the leg. Electoral reform holds the potential, as nothing else does, to transform our politics, from the present squalid auction of state favours to a genuine contest of philosophies. Which is why the two main parties, Liberals and Conservatives, are already lining up against it. (The NDP is in favour, though for scarcely less self-interested reasons.) Expect to see other interests, heavily invested in the status quo, campaign strenuously to defeat it. The Citizens’ Assembly? It has the support of a handful of geeks like me. But stay tuned: a similar exercise in B.C. last year resulted in a 57% vote in favour of electoral reform, including a majority of the voters in 77 of the province’s 79 ridings -- inches short of the required margin. Which is why it’s disappointing that the assembly punted on the innovative form of PR proposed for BC, known as the “single transferable vote,” in favour of the more familiar “mixed member proportional,” as used, for example, in Germany. The STV model -- or as I call it, the 1-2-3 -- has acquired a reputation for complexity, but as far as the voters are concerned it’s as simple as can be: you just mark your ballot in order of preference. But the STV model also makes use of multi-member constituencies -- instead of just one member of the legislature per riding, you’d have as many as seven competing to represent you -- and apparently the assembly thought that would be a hard sell. Under MPP, by contrast, the majority of the members would be elected in the usual way, one member per riding, but with the addition of a certain number of members elected from party lists, according to the proportion of the popular vote each party received (hence “proportional” representation). In the assembly’s model, there would be 90 MPPs elected in the ridings (down from 107), topped up with 39 elected by PR. Voters would mark their ballot twice: once for the candidate, once for the party. In the end, you get a distribution of seats that is not quite proportional, but not as outrageously distorted as is often the case under first-past-the-post. So far, so okay. The clinching case for proportional representation is not in the name of fairness between the parties, but fairness between voters: to give every vote equal weight in deciding who is represented in the legislature, not just those who happen to vote for the winning team. The 1-2-3 model does that quite nicely; MMP, not so much. Worse, the assembly opted to allow the parties to decide the order in which PR candidates should be elected from lists: what’s called the “closed” list system. (I told you I was a geek.) Far better would have been to allow the voters themselves to indicate which of a party’s candidates they wished to send to the legislature -- the “open” list system. Believe it or not, this is critical. One of the legitimate criticisms of PR, once you get past the usual “Italy and Israel” nonsense, is that it puts too much power in the hands of the party brass to decide who gets in. STV answers this objection, and then some: local candidates in fact would be far more independent of party than at present, since voters could give a high ranking to an individual candidate they liked even if they gave low marks to the rest of his party. Open lists also pass the test. But a closed-list system is vulnerable. No matter. Even a flawed version of PR is yards better than the system we have now. Once escaped from the bovine attachment to the status quo on which so much of the anti-PR case rests, there will be time to discuss improvements. But for now, the game’s afoot! Bring on the referendum!
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Disgruntled Tories consider refounding Reform Party GLORIA GALLOWAY Globe and Mail Update May 11, 2007 at 8:52 PM EDT
Ottawa — Somewhere in Kingston Saturday, a small group of disaffected Conservatives will meet to discuss what would have been unfathomable in the heady days that followed the last federal election: refounding the Reform Party. Organizers say they have room for just 30 people, but that this weekend's event is a mere prelude to a much larger meeting later this month. “It's now or never,” the online invitation says. “This new party will never be infiltrated by Red Tories, special interest groups or Quebec again.” In another part of the country, Link Byfield is writing columns for his Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy that criticize the policies of the federal Conservatives. “Has Stephen Harper been ‘Otta-washed?'” Mr. Byfield, a strong voice for small-c conservative Alberta, wrote on April 5. He went on to decry the March budget as a “massive spending splurge two or three times the rate of inflation [that] clomps big Liberal boots into all kinds of provincial responsibilities.” When the Conservatives were elected in January, 2006, the former Reformers were jubilant at the thought of finally having a voice in Ottawa. But after a series of centrist decisions by Mr. Harper, they are again lamenting their disenfranchisement. Connie Wilkins of Kingston, who owns freedominion.ca, one of the most popular conservative websites in Canada, has been invited to the weekend meeting. At this point, she says, reforming Reform is just a discussion. “The idea is just to get together and to decide how it would be best for people who have conservative values – stronger conservative values – to make their voices be heard better and to be listened to,” Ms. Wilkins said. While it is impossible to gauge just how many on the right feel abandoned by the Harper government, she said Web traffic indicates their numbers are increasing. Many were angry over what they see as the Prime Minister's capitulation on same-sex marriage. But it's not just socially conservative issues that upset the old Reformers, Ms. Wilkins said. “It's the fiscally liberal things that they have been doing lately that people have really started to get upset about.” The fury began with the luring of David Emerson from the Liberals to sit as a Conservative cabinet minister, and the naming of Conservative organizer Michael Fortier as unelected senator and Public Works Minister. Then came a vote to declare Quebeckers a nation, the budget, a settlement with Maher Arar that many found egregious, a reversal on income trusts, and a complete about-face on the environment. A Conservative policy convention scheduled for November – an opportunity for expression of the dissatisfaction – has been cancelled. “It's not a huge issue in and of itself,” Ms. Wilkins said. “But because it's piled on to so many other things, it's just one more indication to a lot of people that we've lost our grassroots feelings and that it doesn't really matter what the membership says.” Conservative Party president Don Plett says the convention was delayed because of the high potential for an election and because the party held a large election-preparation workshop in Toronto this spring. Because Elections Canada considers workshop fees and convention fees political donations, and because the maximum that anyone may donate to a party in one calendar year is $1,100, the party feared that two gatherings in 2007 could put members in contravention of election laws. As for Conservatives who say they feel disenfranchised, Mr. Plett said: “Are there a handful of people that are disgruntled? There are in every party. We have less than others.” That the grumblers are a minority is borne out by the fact that the Conservative bank account is overflowing with donations. “It is a small, very vocal, more-heat-than-light group of professional victims,” said former Reform MP Ian McClelland. But Gerry Nicholls, who was fired as vice-president of the right-wing National Citizens Coalition after he wrote columns that were unflattering of the government, said he has been deluged with e-mails and calls from people who are frustrated with the direction Mr. Harper is taking. “One thing I know about politics is it abhors a vacuum. And a lot of people right now are sensing that there is no party speaking for them, especially small-c conservatives, fiscal conservatives.” There have been major points of disagreement, Mr. Nicholls said, including about seeming small things such as the ban on traditional light bulbs. “That light-bulb ban was just the final thing that broke open the dam for a lot of people,” he said. “It's stupid, it's political correctness, it's nanny-stateism, it's everything that Conservatives of all stripes abhor about the Liberals or the NDP – telling us how to run our lives.” Ms. Wilkins said there is much fear that the creation of a new Reform Party would split the Conservative vote and return the Liberals to power. “So everybody has a lot of mixed feelings about this,” she said. “They just wish the party would listen to the membership and kind of start moving back to the right.” Some of the disenchanted are talking about creating a lobby group to press the Conservative Party from the outside. “What I am hearing online is a lot of people saying ‘I'm not even going to vote for the CPC at this point,' and these are people who were out pounding signs in the last election,” Ms. Wilkins said. Mr. Nicholls said the Conservatives have decided that they can write off the right. “They are basically saying we can afford to alienate these guys, we can afford to abandon them, because where else are they going to vote? … What they are failing to consider is the intensity of support. What helps win elections are volunteers, people putting up signs, people helping to get the vote out, people canvassing. I think increasingly [the support is] beginning to crack under the pressure of what the Tories are doing. If they crack their base, they are not going to win.”
Celebrating Over $114,000 Raised for Easter Seals kids!
We are pleased to announce that the 2006 30th Anniversary Run/ Walkathon was a huge success raising $114,000 for Easter Seals kids. Congratulations on another successful year!
Join us on Sunday, May 27, 2007 for the 31st annual Run/Walkathon!
Join your local heroes, community leaders, class-mates, friends, family and neighbours at the largest Easter Seals fundraising event in York Region!
Founded by local hero and community leader Joe Persechini, the Easter Seals Run/Walkathon has raised over $3 million. All proceeds help give Easter Seals kids living with a physical disability in Ontario a chance at independence, acceptance and achievement. Thank you for making their dreams come true!
Event information Running Through the Years
* 1976 – 65 members of the Persechini Fitness Club in Newmarket raise $2,700 for Easter Seals kids, including Wrestling Stars “Wild Man” Dave McKigney and his wrestling bear. The group ran from the corner of Yonge St. and Davis Drive to Bradford. * 1981 – raises over $100,000 for the first time. * 1988 – Glass Tiger kicks off their National Tour at the local Ray Twinney Complex, raising over $20,000 for the Run/Walkathon. This was only one of many concerts that raised funds for the Run/Walkathon. * 1990 – Joe Persechini’s friend and mentor, Whipper Billy Watson, passes away. * 1991 – for the 15th Anniversary, a parade of convertibles carried past Easter Seals Ambassadors and many of the original 65 runners to cheer on participants. * 1992 – attracts a record-breaking 2,300 participants. * 1993 – the Run/Walkathon hits the $1 million mark for total funds raised for Easter Seals. That year, 2,700 drinking boxes, 1,500 slices of pizza, 2,400 litres of water and 4,000 chocolate bars were on hand to refuel runners and walkers alike! * 1995 – despite another downpour of rain, almost $170,000 is raised for Easter Seals. * 1996 – Rob Quinn sets the 10 km course record of 35 min 33 seconds. * 1997 – Air Farce’s Roger Abbott graces the stage as the event’s Master of Ceremonies. * 1998 – despite a hurricane roaring through the area on the morning of event day, the Run/Walkathon still does its part to raise significant funds for Easter Seals. * 2000 – Joe reaches his goal of raising a total of $2 million for kids with physical disabilities. * Other participating celebrities have included Eddie Shack, wrestler “Bulldog” Brower, ski champ Brian Stemmle, Toronto Maple Leafs player Dave Burroughs, radio announcer John McFayden, soap opera star Vic Cummings, and radio weatherman Bob Rice. * 2006 – marks the 30th Anniversary of the Run/Walkathon.
Corporations and the entertainment industry are starting to do their part on the environment. It was great to see that the Tragically Hip will be doing all of their concerts using Bullfrog Power. In Newmarket are very own Upper Canada Mall has also signed on to this green power source. I think it is great that both the Hip and the Upper Canada Mall have taken the initiative and lead by example on the issue of global warming. I also think the work of Richard Branson and the improvements made with Walmart and the Rogers Centre have also shown great leadership. We all have to make sacrifices and we all have to do our part as a global people to stop the threat of climate change and pollution.
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What's large, green and has the power of a Bullfrog?
We wanted to pass along our best wishes for a happy and healthy holiday season and New Year. Thank you, the fans, for making 2006 such a memorable year for us. From hail at the Gorge to the release of ‘World Container’ we have had fun with you every step of the way.
We will be keeping the good times rolling in 2007. Our Canadian arena tour will start the year off with a bang and we're especially pleased to announce that at all Canadian stops, in front and behind the stage,we'll be using Non-toxic, Biodegradable, Green Shift Products. (Cups,plates, cutlery - on the bus and backstage - everywhere -will be made from 100%renewable resources, 100 % petroleum free, and 100% biodegradable.) Further more, all of the shows in Ontario, will be Bullfrog powered.
Stay tuned for upcoming tour and ‘World Container’ announcements in the United States and Europe.
I find it interesting how no one ever challenges the concept that Saudi Arabia is a moderate nation along with Egypt, Jordan, Turkey and the UAE. I am not sure what evidence there is against the Canadian citizens who are going to likely be executed by the method of beheading unless Peter MacKay intervenes. Beheading as a form of punishment is very common in Saudi Arabia as capital punishment under their interpretation of Islam. Saudi Arabia does not recognize Israel, has a terrible human rights record, it does not support women's rights and is known to fund terrorists around the Middle East. This nation is far more extreme and anti-democratic than even the Iranian regime. It is also the source of Bin Laden and the 9\11 hijackers, no surprise based on their intolerant teachings within their education system. Despite this record, Saudi Arabia gets first class treatment from the United States including most recently Dick Cheney. The media cannot simply accept Bush administration rhetoric that Saudi Arabia is a friend and moderate Muslim state. Obviously it is the opposite of moderate and it qualifies as much as anyone as a state sponsor of terrorism. Saudi Arabia is a stable source of oil for the United States and holds financial clout and lobbying power within Washington. Cheap oil prices and American military alliances/diplomatic relations do not make a country moderate by any serious standards.
Canadian foreign affairs needs to use all pull in Washington and with the Saudi diplomatic channels to stop these men from being beheaded. How is this government any different from the Taliban??? This conflict of interest between economic resources and morality is a prime argument why the world needs to find an alternative to oil. The United States looks foolish pressuring Iran, Sudan, China, North Korea and Russia while turning a blind eye to their royal friends in the Kingdom. The West must lead by example and stay consistent (not selective) with their values on human rights and democracy. As an energy super power, Canada has no reason not to get tough with the embassy in Riyadh and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on this issue. This will be a big test for Peter MacKay...
Thanks for reading...
Darryl
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Canadians face beheading in Saudi Arabia
ALAN FREEMAN
From Monday's Globe and Mail
May 15, 2007 at 4:14 AM EDT
WASHINGTON
— For the past four months, home for Mohamed Kohail has been a filthy prison cell in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, where he says he has been pushed, slapped and abused, and forced into signing a confession for a murder he did not commit.
In a country where capital punishment by beheading is still the law of the land, the 22-year-old Canadian citizen says he fears the worst from the Saudi judicial system, which has accused him of killing a Syrian youth in a vicious schoolyard brawl. His 16-year-old brother also is being held in relation to the death.
“It's going to be death for now,” Mr. Kohail told The Globe and Mail Monday in an extraordinary interview on a friend's cellphone from inside the prison. “That is what the investigators asked from the court.”
“I'm afraid of everything,” he continued in accented English, saying he never wanted to return to Saudi Arabia after spending five years in Canada. “I really want to go back to Canada now. I like everything in Canada.”
Until last year, Mr. Kohail was pursuing English-language courses at Montreal's Concordia University, living with his family in the West Island suburb of Dollard-des-Ormeaux.
But his older sister became ill and the family decided to return to Saudi Arabia, where they had all been born.
Because the Kohails are Palestinian, they never were given Saudi citizenship and were legally stateless until they were granted Canadian citizenship in 2005. Yet their Canadian status has not stopped Saudi authorities from meting out their particular form of justice to the two brothers.
On their return to Jeddah last year, Sultan, who's 16, began studying at Edugates International School, a school frequented by non-Saudi Arabs in a posh suburb of Jeddah. It's there on Jan. 13 that both brothers ran into trouble.
According to accounts from the family and others, Sultan was accused of insulting a Syrian girl named Raneem. Sultan was told that friends and relatives of the girl were coming to school to kidnap him and teach him a lesson. So he called Mr. Kohail, who came to the school to defend his little brother along with a friend.
There are differing versions of what happened next.
According to an account in the Arabic newspaper Okaz, a brawl ensued at the school involving 14 young people, with Palestinians facing off against Syrians. “As the physical attack intensified, one of the Palestinians grabbed a Syrian boy named Monther, punched him violently and hit his head against the school yard fence. Monther fell on the ground and died instantly.” The dead youth has since been identified as Munzer Haraki.
Mr. Kohail said, “I didn't touch anyone. There were 13 people who were beating me up. … They used knives and sticks and bricks.” He said he suffered injuries to his shoulder, ribs and eyes, and broke his front teeth.
Yet, as he was being treated at hospital, Mr. Kohail said, he was arrested by police and transferred to Salamah police station.
He said the police slapped him, pushed him and spat on him until he agreed to confess to punching the Syrian boy. “There was a policeman who told me, you have to sign, because if you sign the papers, you will get out” of prison.
Mr. Kohail said the policeman insisted that Mr. Kohail was risking very little in admitting to punching the Syrian youth, because he was still alive. But as soon as Mr. Kohail signed the confession, he was told that the boy had died and he was going to be charged with murder.
Contacted in Saudi Arabia, the boys' father, Ali Kohail said Sultan had also been coerced into confessing. “They were both forced to sign.”
The father said that the health of both of his sons has deteriorated in prison and that Sultan had suffered a broken leg when he was thrown down some stairs by his interrogators.
He said he was convinced “100 per cent” that his sons had not killed anybody.
The Foreign Affairs Department in Ottawa has confirmed “the arrest of two Canadian citizens in Saudi Arabia” and said that consular officials are following the case and have been granted “several consular visits” to the brothers. A spokesman refused to comment further, citing privacy laws.
The case is the most sensitive to arise in Canada-Saudi relations since the arrest in 2000 of William Sampson, a Canadian marketing consultant. He said he was tortured repeatedly during the 2½ years he spent in a Saudi prison and forced to confess to a series of deadly car bombings that he did not commit. Mr. Sampson was released in August of 2003, but his incarceration and ill treatment created a chill in relations between the two countries.
In the current case, the brothers' Saudi lawyer insists that Mr. Kohail, the older brother, has confessed to striking the blows that killed the victim. But cellphone pictures of the brawl apparently show Mr. Kohail being repeatedly struck on the head with a brick.
The death penalty is still practised in Saudi Arabia and there has been a recent increase in beheadings, according to Christoph Wilcke, a researcher with Human Rights Watch, who says that there have been at least 40 executions so far this year, compared with 35 in all of 2006.
Foreigners, particularly guest workers from Third World countries like Nigeria and Sri Lanka, make up the majority of those executed, and experts say it's rare for holders of Western passports to face execution.
“The death penalty is much more likely than an actual execution,” said Brian Evans, Saudi Arabia country specialist with Amnesty International in Washington. “It's doubtful they would ever be executed. … I can't remember the last time they executed a Westerner.”
Yet, in the next breath, Mr. Evans said it would be wrong to presume that the brothers are necessarily off the hook. “Just because they are Canadian citizens, [it doesn't mean] they can't get executed. It's not out of the realm of possibility.”
And Mr. Evans thinks the fact that the brothers are of Palestinian origin will still be held against them, despite their citizenship. “If they were white Canadians, they'd be better off than being Arab Canadians,” he said.
At Place-Cartier, an adult education centre in the Montreal suburb of Beaconsfield where Mr. Kohail was a student before attending Concordia, there was consternation yesterday that he was in trouble.
“He was an absolutely straight-on polite kind of guy,” said guidance counsellor Barry Gaiptman. “He was a very fine guy, very polite. He wasn't the greatest student here, but he was always a nice guy.”
Mr. Gaiptman recalled how Mr. Kohail would just wander into his office to talk, sometimes about the Middle East. Mr. Gaiptman said the fact he was Jewish never was a barrier to their relationship and Mr. Kohail once told him that one of his best friends was an Israeli.
The brothers' lawyer, Saleh Bin Misfer Al-Ghamdi told The Globe and Mail that he did not believe the brothers would face the death penalty because the killing was unintentional. He said that Mr. Kohail was being held at Briman prison in Jeddah, while Sultan is in a juvenile detention centre, because he is under 18.
He said that he meets with the brothers regularly and is allowed to talk to them by phone.
Mr. Sampson, contacted in Britain, said that from his experience having Canadian consular visits is no protection against abuse and torture by Saudi officials. “Consular access doesn't prevent anything.” But he said that what the Kohail brothers have in their favour is the fact that the altercations appear to have no political overtones. In the end, the whole issue may be settled by the payment of blood money to the victim's family, he added.
As for Mr. Kohail himself, he dreams of moving back to his suburban home in Canada. For the moment, he shares a cell that he estimates is 15 by 10 metres with 185 other prisoners in horrific conditions.
“There are five washrooms without doors and they are filthy,” he said in the interview. Meals consist of five kilos of rice delivered to the cell in a large plastic garbage bag. “I don't eat any more,” Mr. Kohail said.
Why aren't we getting tough with people who abuse animals?
When you read about stories such as the one in the Globe and Mail today, people with morals cannot help but be disturbed by situations that involve people abusing animals. Nothing angers me more than criminals who attack innocent children or helpless animals. I find it sickening that people can get off with a minor fine, house arrest and a ban on owning an animal for a year for these type of actions. If we can get all party unity on debating Shane Doan being captain of Team Canada, I cannot see how anyone can't find agreement on updating animal cruelty laws to conform with basic morality and common sense. Mark Holland currently has a private members bill C-373 relating to animal cruelty. I believe this bill should be passed immediately and without delay. There is absolutely no justification for these actions and it is unfortunate that animals are considered property and not living beings. I urge everyone to write to their MP and MPP and stop these potential serial killers from doing grave harm to our society.
I would support a public registry for sex offenders, violent criminals and animal abusers as a way to humiliate and protect society from these people who may commit repeat offenses. I also believe in mandatory jail sentences for these senseless crimes. On justice in general we have to provide full funding to the police, courts and prison system in order to ensure these types of cases are brought to trial and dealt with appropriately. It is time for politicians to get to work and do what most people are demanding!
Thanks for reading...
Darryl
**************** THE ONTARIO SOCIETY FOR THE PREVENTION OF CRUELTY TO ANIMALS http://www.ospca.org/
Bright orange bandages wrap the head of AK, a six-month-old German shepherd-Rottweiler mix who was found whimpering on an apartment balcony with his ears cut off.
Now, the Windsor-Essex County Humane Society in Ontario is investigating what happened to the puppy and who is responsible.
Amy Nardella, an agent with the Ontario SPCA, said the society received an anonymous phone call on Friday saying that a dog was in distress at a Windsor apartment building.
She and a colleague found AK on the second-floor apartment balcony, bleeding and pawing his ears. The owner wasn't home.
“It did appear that there was severe, severe trauma to the dog's ears. He was crying and shaking his head and really rubbing his ears,” Ms. Nardella said Monday. “It's unbelievable that people would do something like this to an animal.”
She said that at the sound of her friendly voice, AK started wagging his tail when she rescued him. And when she approached him, he licked her and rubbed his body against her.
“He didn't show any signs of aggression at all. ... Despite how much pain he was in, he was still the sweetest dog,” she said, adding that criminal charges may be laid in the coming weeks.
Ms. Nardella alleges that the dog's ears were cut to make him look more menacing. AK's owner surrendered the dog to the humane society Monday.
Legally, owners can get their animals back while an SPCA investigation is continuing, as long as they pay certain fees to the humane society. That's because animals are seen as property, Ms. Nardella said.
She is encouraging people to call their local politicians to get this law changed so animals will be safe in shelters while the SPCA investigates.
Ms. Nardella suspects that AK's ears were cut off about five days ago. Although nothing internally has been damaged, the puppy has jagged cuts right down to his head, she said. He is on antibiotics and pain medication.
Under the Criminal Code, animal-cruelty offences are punishable only on summary conviction with maximum penalties of a $2,000 fine and/or six months imprisonment.
Monday, a Calgary man who scalded his cat so badly it had to be destroyed was sentenced to three months in jail. The judge also banned Duston Wicker from owning an animal for two years.
And in another case of animal abuse, a Didsbury, Alta., teenager was sentenced to three months house arrest and two years probation last week after he ran over a Lab-border collie by accident, then beat it, dragged it and left the dog to die. The incident provoked outrage among animal lovers.
In AK's case, Ms. Nardella said, she is grateful to the anonymous caller, even though the woman was too scared to reveal much information. AK's problems could have worsened and he might have died from a severe infection without the intervention, she said.
For now, AK is receiving special treatment at the shelter. Volunteers have been walking him regularly.
“He's getting a lot of extra care here. He's very comfortable because of the pain meds that he's on. He's not shaking his head or pawing on his ears any more,” Ms. Nardella said. “You can tell he's already feeling 100 per cent better than he did on Friday.”
With a report from Canadian Press
Dog abuse alibi challenged
By Chris Thompson, Star Staff Reporter, Windsor Star
Widespread publicity about a puppy whose ears were sliced off, allegedly by its former owner, has helped investigators with the Windsor-Essex County Humane Society compile their case against him.
Nancy McCabe, field operations manager with the humane society, said she has received in the neighbourhood of 20 calls from people who had seen the man with the dog months ago, contradicting what he has told investigators.
"He told us he only had the dog for a couple of weeks but people have come forward to say they saw him with the dog months ago," said McCabe.
f pulling his story apart as the people come forward."
On Friday agents with the humane society received an anonymous tip about the dog, a German shepherd-Rottweiler mix known as A.K., sitting on the balcony of a second-floor apartment in the 3400 block of Sandwich Street.
He was bleeding from stumps where his ears had been, apparently cut off with a serrated kitchen knife or hand saw.
The humane society, accompanied by police, rescued the dog and immediately took him for emergency treatment at a veterinary clinic.
The owner met with McCabe over the weekend and told her he had only recently purchased the dog from a man named Jay and it was already missing its ears.
He claimed the dog had lost its ears in a fight with another dog.
McCabe has since reviewed humane society records and found they have been called to the man's apartment twice in the past six months for a dog outside with no shelter in bad weather.
"Our agents made him bring him (the dog) in," said McCabe.
She said she is carefully compiling her case against the former owner, who signed over control of the dog to the humane society on Monday, and hopes the regional inspector for the Ontario Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (OSPCA) will lay criminal animal cruelty charges.
"I'm not letting this go," said McCabe.
"People are outraged and I am outraged as well. I'm still proceeding. Just because he signed the dog over he's not off the hook."
The man is not being named pending the laying of charges.
A.K. is healing well, McCabe said, but has had to be put under sedation again for treatment of rotting flesh where his ears were.
The animal will be made available to the public for adoption once his recovery is complete.
The dog's plight has made national headlines, appearing on the front page of the Globe and Mail Tuesday.
The Windsor Star has been flooded with letters and e-mails expressing outrage over the incident.
Dr. Ian Nicholson, an adjunct professor of psychology at the University of Western Ontario, said it is a human being's nature to come to the defence of the defenceless.
"When we perceive someone or an animal who is helpless or vulnerable and needlessly in pain, we react because it's built into us," said Nicholson.
Nicholson said research shows people who abuse animals often progress to harming humans, in particular spouses and children.
"What is lacking is the ability to have empathy toward others, whether animal or human," said Nicholson.
DIDSBURY -- Animal rights activists expressed their outrage yesterday over the probationary sentence handed to a young Didsbury man who clubbed a dog and then dragged it behind a car.
The man, who was 17 at the time of the Oct. 8, 2006 offence and can't be named under the Youth Criminal Justice Act (YCJA), was given two years' probation, three months' house arrest and ordered to perform 240 hours of community service.
He'd pleaded guilty to a charge of animal cruelty in striking Lab-border collie cross Daisy Duke with a shovel, trying to asphyxiate it with a plastic bag then dragging the pet behind a car in the town 60 km north of Calgary.
The gravely injured Daisy Duke was then found in the middle of a street by a passerby and euthanized by a veterinarian.
Calgary dog owner Heather Anderson, who showed up to protest what she calls lenient sentences given animal abusers, said the sentence and comments given by provincial court Judge Peter Barley were unacceptable.
"I'm just sick about it because the judge made it sound like an accident," said Anderson.
"How is this town going to forgive that dog killing?
Earlier, Barley concluded the accused had inadvertently run over the dog at his friend Daniel Haskett's home and then crudely attempted to dispose of the dog to hide the original accident.
"It can't be said the young person dragged Daisy behind the vehicle to torture her but that, of course, doesn't justify the callousness of his actions," he said.
Barley said it's possible the man believed the dog was already dead before they tied her to a tow rope.
But Crown prosecutor Richelle Freiheit argued "there was an intentional infliction of pain in which there is no lawful or reasonable excuse."
Washington — After his KGB spy days and before becoming President of Russia, Vladimir Putin busied himself by writing a PhD thesis at the St. Petersburg Mining Institute.
The seminal, 218-page work – “Strategic Planning of Regional Resources Under the Formation of Market Relations” – still guides his economic thinking today. In it, Mr. Putin floated the idea of nurturing “national champion” companies and harnessing Russia's natural resources to create an economic superpower.
No matter that experts say large tracts of Mr. Putin's dissertation were blatantly plagiarized from a KGB translation of a 30-year-old textbook by two University of Pittsburgh professors. Or that Russia's “champions” are really just privatized reincarnations of stodgy Soviet-era state enterprises. Or even that many of the vaunted entrepreneurs now leading those champions got there by cozying up to the Kremlin, pilfering state assets, strong-arming rivals and then idly watching commodities prices fly.
Russia Inc.'s murky lineage hardly matters any more. The Russians aren't just coming any more. They're here.
Enter stage left: 39-year-old oligarch Oleg Deripaska, who this week bought a $1.54-billion (U.S.) piece of car parts giant Magna International Inc. and its dream of acquiring DaimlerChrysler's U.S. operations. Canadians got their first glimpse of Mr. Deripaska when Magna chairman Frank Stronach introduced the nuclear physicist turned automobiles-to-aluminum tycoon to North Americans at the company's annual meeting in Toronto on Thursday.
The deal makes a lot of sense for both men. Mr. Deripaska, whose empire includes Russia's No. 2 auto maker and UC Rusal, the world's leading aluminum producer, needs foreign technology to build his Russian auto-making company and diversify geographically. Mr. Stronach, 74, needs capital and a global strategy if he is to avoid Chrysler becoming a quagmire.
But the deal is equally important to Mr. Putin, who has made no secret of his desire to see his champion companies step confidently out on to the world stage.
The Magna investment is part of a multibillion-dollar buying binge by Russia Inc. in Canada, the United States and Europe. Russian companies have bought steel makers, alumina and platinum mines, construction companies and gas pipelines. OAO Lukoil operates more than 2,000 gas stations, from Maine to Virginia. And OAO Gazprom wants to invest in liquefied natural gas projects in Canada and the U.S. to help create export markets for trapped resources.
To some analysts, the increasing global reach of Russian companies is the next stage of the Cold War, fought with rhetoric and petro-dollars, instead of missiles. “This process has been going on since the mid-nineties,” explained Steven Rosefielde, professor of economics at the University of North Carolina and an expert on the Russian economy. “At that point, it was about capital flight. Now, with Putin pulling all strings behind the scenes, it has become an intriguing dimension of the second phase of the Cold War.”
Not unlike China, the economic objectives of the Russian state are never far from the global aspirations of its companies, and vice versa.
“There are definitely echoes of the Cold War,” agreed Marshall Goldman, professor emeritus of Russian economics at Harvard University's Wellesley College in Boston. “Do we really trust these guys? Are they playing dirty?”
There is a suspicion Russia's oligarchs may be trying to buy respectability and shed their robber-baron image by buying into public companies overseas. Sales from Russia's enormous reserves of oil and gas have pushed its economy to heights unseen since its dramatic post-communist collapse. From the brink of bankruptcy in 1998, Russia's foreign reserves, estimated at roughly $330-billion (U.S.) are second only to those of China and Japan.
The Russian economy, meanwhile, has been growing at a rate of more than 7 per cent a year for nearly a decade. With economic might has come a much more muscular, even hostile, foreign policy.
Mr. Putin is eager to flex both his political and economic muscles, even if that means ruffling a few feathers in the West. Earlier this year, he accused the United States of imposing its policies on a reluctant world by force, indirectly comparing Washington to the Third Reich.
And to its European neighbours, Mr. Putin has turned rhetoric into action. On New Year's Day, Russia threatened to shut off gas flows to neighbours Ukraine and Belarus unless they agreed to pay substantially more for their natural gas – a move that briefly disrupted deliveries to Western Europe.
The notion that Russia's oligarchs might not be the kind of investors North America should welcome with open arms is a fair question.
Back in Mr. Putin's Russia, foreign investors have been blatantly abused. And recognition of property rights is spotty.
Moscow recently bullied a powerless Royal Dutch Shell PLC into handing over part of its stake in the massive Sakhalin Island oil and natural gas project to state-owned OAO Gazprom. It had been the largest foreign investment in Russia. Exxon Mobil could well see some of its investments expropriated. And BP PLC has been shut out of a Siberian gas field project.
If it's any consolation, Russian investors are often treated even worse. Mikhail Khodorkovsky, former chief executive officer of oil giant OAO Yukos, lost his company and is now in jail after running afoul of Mr. Putin.
The line between state and private ownership in Russia is often fuzzy. Mr. Deripaska, for example, is very close to Mr. Putin, and he's politically well-connected through his wife, the granddaughter of former Russian president Boris Yeltsin.
Being independent on paper does not mean Mr. Deripaska and the other oligarchs can operate entirely freely, even abroad.
“The key skill for an oligarch in Putin's times is the cow's dilemma: Choose whether to give milk or meat,” remarked Sergei Guriev, associate professor of corporate finance at Moscow's New Economic School. “The government can either nationalize and imprison them or keep them private, but milk them and ask them to do the government's bidding.
“Deripaska is second only to [Russian industrialist Roman] Abramovich in this art – staying private and yet keeping government happy and actually have the government lobby on his behalf.”
And yet by all appearances, Mr. Deripaska's privately held business empire remains quite apart from government, according to Anders Aslund, director of the Russian program at the Washington-based Peterson Institute for International Economics. “He uses the Russian government for his purposes, rather than the other way around,” Mr. Aslund argued. “He makes sure he has good relations with the Kremlin, but he is not a creature of the Kremlin.”
That isn't the case with all of the Russian oligarchs. The assets of Mr. Abramovich, owner of Britain's Chelsea FC soccer team, are sometimes indistinguishable from those of the Russian government.
“Mr. Deripaska is not a self-made man. He's not Bill Gates,” added Wellesley College's Mr. Goldman. “None of the oligarchs are.”
Russia Inc.'s arrival on North American shores has created a dilemma for Mr. Putin. With their Western investments, Russian companies must now play by market rules. At the same time, Canada and the United States have new leverage to protect their own investors against abuse in Russia. “Suddenly they are subject to being held hostage and threatened with expropriation here, rather than the other way around,” Mr. Goldman said.
In the end, more Russian investment overseas may not be such a bad thing. It's in the interests of Canada and the other leading industrialized countries that Russia becomes more integrated into the global economy, and that its companies play by Western rules.
The Magna investment is a step in the right direction, argued Andrew Kuchins, senior fellow and director of the Russia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “We want the Russian economy more integrated in the world economy,” he said. “This is a major way that it's going to happen.”
MONTREAL -- Former Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney says Canada's chartered banks should be allowed to merge.
Mr. Mulroney also played down concerns over the so-called "hollowing out" of Canada's corporate landscape through the spate of recent foreign takeovers, U.S. aluminum giant Alcoa Inc.'s hostile bid for Montreal-based Alcan Inc. being the latest example.
In an age of globalization, where mega-financial institutions are looming ever larger as a result of merger activity, the relatively small Canadian banks risk losing out competitively, Mr. Mulroney said yesterday after Quebecor Inc.'s annual meeting.
"If there is a legitimate case to be made in favour of bank mergers, I don't see why not," said Mr. Mulroney, who is a Quebecor director.
"The Canadian banks run the risk of being marginalized by the big American and European banks that are breaking away from the pack."
Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has so far declined to give the go-ahead to mergers in the industry, despite vigorous lobbying by the big five Canadian banks.
The issue is not seen as a big vote-winner among ordinary Canadians.
Mr. Mulroney also said it's his belief that Canada comes out a winner in the global takeover sweeps.
"My recollection of recent numbers that I've seen is that the dollar value of the acquisitions - in the neighbourhood of $500-billion - in Canada is exceeded by Canadian acquisitions elsewhere," Mr. Mulroney said.
"The government still has the authority to review certain acquisitions and see if they are in the national interest. We still have that right," he added.
"But, generally speaking, Canadians are acquiring more companies abroad than Americans and others are acquiring within Canada.
Think-tank says prices unjustified since Hurricane Katrina
May 10, 2007 04:30 AM
Julian Beltrame canadian press
OTTAWA–Canadians are being gouged at the gas pumps, paying in excess of 15 cents a litre more for gasoline than justified by costs and historic petroleum industry profit margins, says a report being released today by a think-tank.
The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives says it examined gasoline prices before and after Hurricane Katrina in the fall of 2005 and found that the rules of the game for pricing gasoline at the pump had changed overnight.
Hugh Mackenzie, an economist and researcher with the group, said there has always been an "unexplained differential" between what consumers pay at the pump and what they would be paying if the industry tied prices to costs and traditional profit margins.
"Up to the point of August 2005, what you saw was a normal pricing pattern where the unexplained price would fluctuate between the positive and negative," Mackenzie said.
"But after the fall of 2005, there's a marked change and the price differential became mostly on the positive side and grew.
"Frankly, I think in Canada there was psychological barrier of $1 a litre, and the industry probably felt there would be real consumer resistance to pushing prices beyond that. What they discovered is that the market will in fact bear going well north of $1 a litre and they took advantage."
The overcharge at the pump ranges from 15 cents a litre in Toronto to as much as 27 cents a litre in Vancouver, the report says.
Mackenzie argues that events such as Katrina and the recent disruptions at oil refineries may give producers an excuse to raise prices, but they cannot justify the hefty increases on the basis of costs.
"The crude oil that ends up in our tanks today doesn't cost one cent more to produce today than it did in 2001 when the pump price was less than 60 cents a litre," the report says.
"And the windfall for Canadian producers amounts to $1.7 million every day for every dollar the price of crude goes up."
As evidence for the claim, the report attempts to gauge the relationship between crude oil prices and gasoline prices at the pump. At current exchange rates, it calculates, a $1.25 (U.S.) per barrel increase should result in an increase of one Canadian cent per litre. But in September 2005, when crude oil prices increased by $10 (U.S.) a barrel, gasoline prices more than doubled, and at one point increased fivefold, above what the crude oil price justified.
"I think the facts speak for themselves," he said.
Tony Macerollo of the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute, which represents major Canadian refiners, said he "categorically rejected" the argument.
While he conceded industry profit margins have increased, he said there were a number of reasons for the current high prices, including increased demand, speculation and the fact many North American oil refineries postponed upgrades in the wake of Katrina. "We may still be experiencing some catch up."
But Liberal MP Dan McTeague said the report merely confirms what most Canadians instinctively know, that oil companies are reaping profits on the backs of consumers who have no choice but to pay.
"Frankly, it doesn't matter," McTeague said. "If a group of people want to push the price of gasoline beyond what is realistic, there's no one in Canada there to stop them."
The MP says competition in the oil industry is an illusion. The four major distributors in Canada each set the price in the region they control and the others follow, he said.
"You have a classic oligopoly and it's important for Ottawa to get its collective head out of the sand because it is responsible for our flawed Competition Act."
The Competition Bureau has conducted several investigations into allegations of price collusion but has cleared the industry of wrongdoing.
McTeague, who has sought amendments to the act, said the government should also look into establishing an independent body that could monitor and analyze gasoline price increases so that Canadians will know whether they are justified.
The Chirac era in France is over and now the Blair era in England has come to an end. Bush and Putin are also not far from the end of their careers either. It will be interesting to see how sweeping new leadership across the G8 handles the major issues of climate change, Iran and the Middle East peace process going forward.
Tony Blair leaves a positive legacy for his work in bringing peace in Northern Ireland, however his legacy will also be forever tainted in history for following Bush into the Iraq war disaster.Gordon Brown will likely succeed Blair as Labour leader and Prime Minister, however Conservative leader David Cameron currently holds a lead over the Labour Party in recent UK polls.
It will be interesting to see how the world moves forward in the post Bush/Blair era.
Thanks for reading...
Darryl
**************
Blair to step down June 27
May 10, 2007 08:58 AM
David Stringer Associated Press
TRIMDON, England – Prime Minister Tony Blair said Thursday that he will step down as prime minister on June 27, after a decade in office in which he brokered peace in Northern Ireland and followed the United States to war in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Surveying his time in power, Blair, 54, told supporters: "Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right.''
Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the U.S., it was right, Blair said, to "stand shoulder to shoulder with our oldest ally, and I did so out of belief.''
"And so Afghanistan, and then Iraq – the latter bitterly controversial.
"And removing Saddam and his sons from power, as with removing the Taliban, was over with relative ease. But the blowback since, with global terrorism and those elements that support it, has been fierce and unrelenting and costly.
"And for many it simply isn't and can't be worth it. For me, I think we must see it through.''
In a short, almost apologetic speech, Blair added: "I may have been wrong. That's your call.''
Treasury chief Gordon Brown, Blair's partner in reforming the Labour Party and a sometimes impatient rival in government, was expected to easily win election a the party's new leader and become the next prime minister.
Blair's announcement is one that his Labour Party, and the nation, have been expecting for nearly three years, ever since the prime minister said in 2004 that his third term would be his last.
"Today, the beginning of the end," read the front page of The Guardian newspaper.
Blair met earlier with Cabinet members, who left No. 10 Downing Street without answering questions shouted by reporters swarming outside.
Brown has already declared he will be a candidate; at least one opponent from the party's left wing was expected to announce his candidacy Thursday afternoon.
John Burton, Blair's political representative in the northern parliamentary district of Sedgefield, said earlier that Blair would continue to represent Sedgefield in Parliament until the next national election, expected in 2009, unless he is offered "a major international or United Nations job.''
The Iraq war, a police investigation of allegations that the government traded honors for political contributions and endless questions about when Blair would step down overshadowed his last term in government, after winning the third term in May 2005.
Blair has stopped short of openly endorsing Brown, a stern Scot who has long coveted the top job, but said last week that Brown would make "a great prime minister.''
"One of the things I very much hope will be part of the legacy of the government is the strongest economy in the Western world which he has been responsible for," Blair said.
Blair led Labour to two landslide election wins in 1997 and 2001, and a narrower but still comfortable victory in 2005.
The first term was marked by several significant initiatives: the Bank of England was given the freedom to set interest rates, Scotland and Wales were given regional governments, London gained an elected mayor and all but 92 hereditary members were ejected from the House of Lords.
In 1998, Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern led successful negotiations for a peace agreement in Northern Ireland, launching a process which reached its culmination earlier this week as former enemies from the Protestant and Catholic communities joined to form a new regional government.
The Iraq war severely dented Blair's popularity. Blair's close alliance with President Bush was unpopular at home, there were mass marches in Britain opposing the U.S.-led invasion before it began, and the government's claims that Saddam Hussein was building an arsenal of weapons of mass destruction proved false.
For more than a year, Labour has consistently trailed in opinion polls behind a Conservative Party revived by its new leader, David Cameron.
In local and regional elections earlier this month, Labour lost hundreds of seats in city and county councils, and was beaten into second place in the Scottish Parliament elections by the Scottish National Party, which advocates independence.
In recent months, Blair's thoughts have turned to the lessons of his decade in power.
"When I first started in politics, I wanted to please everyone," Blair said during a tour of the Middle East in December. "After a time I learned that you can't please everyone, and you learn that the best thing is to do what you think is right and everyone can make their judgment.''
Blair is the first British prime minister since Harold Wilson in 1976 to leave at a time of his own choosing, rather than by losing an election or being forced out by the party.
Blair's leaving had little of the drama of downfall of Margaret Thatcher, who announced her resignation in 1990 just nine days after she was the target of a savage resignation speech by her former Cabinet colleague, Geoffrey Howe.
WASHINGTON — The latest dreary statistic: The war on terror has become more expensive than Vietnam.
The real costs, however, have yet to be paid, or even determined.
Congressional leaders and White House staffers are haggling over how to replace the war-funding bill that President George W. Bush vetoed last week.
The final figure for this year will be about $140-billion (U.S.) - which, when added to the $609-billion already spent, makes the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns more expensive than Vietnam - more expensive, in fact, than any U.S. war other than the Second World War, in constant 2006 U.S. dollars.
The U.S. economy is experiencing none of the inflationary trauma that the Vietnam War precipitated, because the economy is much larger than it was then. As The Washington Post observed yesterday , the Iraq campaign is consuming less than 1 per cent of U.S. gross domestic product, and overall defence expenditures, at 4 per cent of GDP, are less than half of what they were during Vietnam, which consumed 9 per cent of GDP at its peak.
Further, not only has the Bush administration not raised taxes to pay for the war, which would slow economic growth, it has actually cut taxes, and is determined not to reverse the policy - which is why on the home front this war feels phony.
That does not mean, however, that the Americans are waging war for free. Economically and psychologically, the real costs have yet to be borne.
Joseph Stiglitz, who won the Nobel Prize for economics in 2001, and Linda Bilmes, an economist at the Kennedy School, Harvard University, authored a report late last year that estimated the direct costs to the federal treasury of the war in Iraq would come in around $1-trillion, and that macroeconomic costs, such as higher oil prices and increased insecurity, will add another $1-trillion to the final tab. (And they did not anticipate the increase in troop strength in 2007.) A significant portion of that bill, the authors estimated, will consist of the direct costs of treatment and the indirect costs of lost economic potential of disabled veterans.
A report released yesterday by the National Academy of Sciences lends credence to that prediction. It revealed that claims for post-traumatic stress disorder filed by veterans increased by 80 per cent between 1999 and 2004, and payment costs increased 150 per cent, to $4.3-billion.
While most of the claims came from Vietnam vets (PTSD can come on late in life, as mental acuity begins to fade and old memories are harder to suppress) the report also notes that "personnel who served in the first Gulf War and in the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan," are also starting to make claims.
"There likely will be many more claims from the latter group in the future, so how this issue is resolved now will eventually affect many active duty personnel," the report concludes. The Bilmes/Stiglitz study estimates the direct costs of all disability payments at about $120-billion.
According to another school of economists, however, these costs are easily manageable, and the Bush administration was wise not to raise taxes in order to finance the war.
"Defence spending is still historically low," observes Brian Riedl, a policy analyst at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington. While the debt is growing, thanks to a budget deficit that last year came in at just under $250-billion, the overall debt-to-GDP ratio, at 37 per cent, is lower than it was in the 1970s, 80s or early 90s, he observes.
Raising taxes to pay for the war may simply have encouraged Congress to spend the money on other things, which is why "raising taxes never helps the economy," Mr. Riedl said.
So, as with every aspect of this conflict, the economic costs of the war on terror are politically polarized, between sky-is-falling liberals and no-worries conservatives. Besides, the economic cost of a war often has little to do with its significance.
After all, in 2006 dollars, the War of Independence cost the 13 colonies less than two billion bucks.
The cost of war
Combined, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the second costliest camaign in U.S. history, surpassed now only by the Second World War.
Sometimes in politics, issues disappear and partisan games begin. What is lacking today in politics in both Toronto and Ottawa is a clear vision that looks ahead 20 years. Having said that on May 7, change was refreshing. Mike Harris, the founder of the Common Sense Revolution and Preston Manning who gave us fresh ideas with the Reform Party have given us a vision that deserves debate and attention. I believe further integration with the United States economically is crucial and many good ideas are presented regarding trade and foreign aid policy. I appreciate this long term approach and I find it very refreshing that someone is painting a strong vision that is often lacking at Queens Park and Ottawa these days. I recommend everyone read this report from the Fraser Institute.
Toronto, ON - Canada needs to fully open its economy and drop restrictions on foreign ownership in all business sectors including banking, financial services and telecommunications, Preston Manning and Mike Harris say in a new policy paper released today by independent research organizations The Fraser Institute and the Montreal Economic Institute.
The two also call for eliminating Canada’s supply boards and agricultural subsidies, establishing a customs union and common external tariff with the United States, and reforming Canada’s approach to foreign aid.
The recommendations are laid out in International Leadership by a Canada Strong and Free, a policy paper in which Manning and Harris argue that Canada should redefine its international position by becoming the world’s leading proponent of free trade.
“If Canadians want this country to have a leadership role on the international stage, we need to be champions of free trade and a role model for the benefits of open markets and wealth creation. We must drop investment restrictions, build on our relationship with the U.S. and change the way we define and deliver foreign aid,” Manning said.
“The market does a much better job of picking winners than government. To allow the market to do its job, governments should stop protecting the losers and eliminate business subsidies, ownership restrictions, and supply management programs. That will encourage investments to shift to areas of greater promise, leading to a more productive and wealthier Canada,” Harris said.
International Leadership by a Canada Strong and Free is the fifth in the Canada Strong and Free series written by Manning, former leader of the federal opposition and of the Reform Party of Canada, and Harris, former premier of Ontario. Both men are now senior fellows with The Fraser Institute.
Canada lost ground as an international leader in the last decade as a result of ill-considered choices, Manning and Harris write. Canada’s foreign policy failed to reflect the full range and depth of Canadian values and interests. The country’s contribution to international peacekeeping became more rhetorical than substantive, and gratuitous anti-Americanism by some Canadian leaders eroded relations with Canada’s closest neighbour and largest trading partner.
“Whatever else Canada’s foreign policy for the 21st century entails, it needs to work. If we are to lead and inspire others, our actions must accomplish something. Talk is not enough,” Harris said.
In their new paper, Manning and Harris argue that Canada can be effective as a middle power by focusing our foreign policy on promoting free trade, deepening our influence and relationship with the U.S., and finding ways to deliver effective aid to nations in need. When it comes to promoting free trade, they say Canada can’t rely on rhetoric, but instead needs to open its borders. They recommend:
• Eliminating supply management and business subsidies; dropping ownership restrictions in transportation, telecommunications, and financial services; and allowing Canadian firms to become more productive and competitive in international markets.
• Pursuing a customs union and common external tariff with the United States, and using this process to lower remaining tariffs and reduce cross-border transaction costs.
On Canada’s relationship with the United States, Manning and Harris point out that Canada’s place in the world depends heavily on our ability to gain and exert influence in Washington, while the ability of our national government to advance the security and prosperity of all Canadians depends critically on working jointly with Americans.
“The inescapable factor is proximity. Like it or not, Canada lies squarely within the U.S. security and economic perimeter. We may be more comfortable with the economic aspects of proximity, but we must accept that in the present climate, security is top of mind for the U.S.,” Manning said. “In order to protect our economic interests and maintain access to one of the world’s largest markets, we must reach joint agreements that would render the border invisible to commerce.”
Manning and Harris, while commending the federal government’s recent strengthening of Canada’s military and defence capabilities, recommend:
• Canada and the US work together to create a more open and secure common border for the movement of people and goods.
• Canada’s federal government revisit the decision not to participate in the Ballistic Missile Defence program and not to broaden the mandate of NORAD.
• Canada pursue the creation of a customs union involving a common external tariff, a joint approach to the treatment of third-country goods, a fully integrated energy market, a common approach to trade remedies, and an integrated government procurement regime.
On the issue of foreign aid, Manning and Harris write that Canada should direct foreign aid at supporting policies and institutions with a proven track record of increasing prosperity and improving people’s lives.
They recommend:
• Using the Tools of Wealth Creation approach as a centerpiece of development aid that could equip poor people with resources to pull themselves out of poverty. This approach includes broadening the distribution of property rights, providing access to capital, developing human capital, and providing access to technology and trade markets.
• Reforming CIDA (Canadian International Development Agency) and refocusing it on the Tools of Wealth Creation approach.
• Untying Canada’s food aid from the requirement that it be Canadian-sourced.
• Re-aligning Canada’s aid and peacekeeping efforts to focus on Africa, and increasing aid allocations to both conflict-prone nations and post-conflict situations.
“The same weakness that crept into other areas of our foreign policy in the past decade and a half—mistaking rhetoric and activity for results—has infected our government’s approach to foreign aid as well,” Manning said.
“These policies will boost Canada’s actions internationally while here at home, providing more jobs with higher incomes, improving personal security, and re-establishing Canadians’ pride in this country as an international leader,” Harris said.
For Manitoba this is great news. I firmly believe that Winnipeg could once again support an NHL franchise, especially under the new salary cap system. The fact that potentially a provincial government would be on side with issues such as an arena is great news for Jets fans. I would love to see the league expand to Kansas City and also Winnipeg while moving a team such as Columbus or Detroit into the Eastern Conference. Hockey is a big part of Canadian culture and has the ability to unite cities and our nation behind something positive during the Stanley Cup playoffs and Olympics. I congratulate Manitoba Tories for getting behind an issue a lot of people are passionate about. I hope the business community and Manitoba hockey fans can turn this dream into reality.
Go Jets!!!
Darryl
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Manitoba Tories promise to lure in NHL
Winnipeg Jets
Canadian Press
5/7/2007 1:06:04 PM
WINNIPEG (CP) - Manitoba's provincial election campaign has turned its attention to hockey with the Conservatives promising to bring the NHL back to Winnipeg.
Standing alongside former Winnipeg Jet Thomas Steen, Tory Leader Hugh McFadyen said he'll work with the private sector to bring back the team, who left Manitoba a decade ago.
McFadyen won't say how much taxpayer money he'd be willing to put up, but says the government could follow Manitoba Hydro's example and raise money by issuing bonds.
He also says he would consider a special lottery to raise money as well as a players tax similar to one implemented in Alberta at one time.
The Tory leader says an NHL team would make Manitoba more attractive to young people and help stem the tide of university graduates who leave for Alberta.
UN watchdog salutes Canada for human rights advocacy
Steven Edwards, CanWest News Service
Published: Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Article tools
UNITED NATIONS - A wide-ranging study of the United Nations Human Rights Council identifies Canada as the most active advocate for the world's human rights victims. But it also warns Ottawa and other democracies could still do far more to challenge the council's near-domination by human-rights-abuser states.
In a 44-page review of the council's first year, the monitoring group UN Watch charges that political expediency has led to a situation where "too many democracies have thus far gone along with the spoilers."
The Geneva-based watchdog adds that democracies should instead "unite and redouble their efforts" to turn the Council into a credible monitor of human rights.
The United States has refused to even stand for election to the council since the 192-member UN states voted in majority last year to create the body to replace the discredited Human Rights Commission, which had become a virtual mouthpiece for human rights abuser states.
Washington has said the new body is little better than its predecessor.
At a luncheon at the United Nations Monday, the New York-based democracy monitor Freedom House echoed UN Watch's broad findings - including the praise for Canada - as the two groups also issued a joint assessment of the countries standing in May 17 elections to the Council's second annual session, which starts later this year.
They warn the line-up is not encouraging.
Of 15 countries nominated by their regions to fill as many seats under the UN's regional block system, the monitoring groups said four - Angola, Belarus, Egypt and Qatar - were "not qualified" because of their lack of respect for political rights and civil liberties.
Another seven - Bolivia, India, Indonesia, Madagascar, Nicaragua, Philippines and South Africa - were "questionable," mainly because their international voting records are inconsistent with respect for human rights principles even though they themselves, as fledgling democracies, go some way to respecting human rights domestically.
Freedom House deputy executive director Tom Melia said the General Assembly should "shame" the regional nominating groups into finding replacements for the "not qualified" countries by rejecting them.
"There should be no argument about whether these countries are elected," he said.
He said the "questionable" candidates are arguably not ideal for council membership, but added they're democratic enough that "we can talk to them" and work for change.
But the arithmetic of the Council's selection structure will almost certainly ensure that even the "not qualified" countries sail through, for each needs only 96 votes of a General Assembly that is made up of 103 countries Freedom House designates only "partly free" or "not free" and, therefore, arguably more susceptible to backing other non-democratic countries.
Working to ensure the long-term effectiveness of the Human Rights Council is important to Canada, which, under both the former Liberal and current Conservative governments, was centrally involved in negotiations that created it, and stood for and won election to the new body last year for a three-year term.
n "Dawn of a New Era?", UN Watch grades the 47 member states according to the way they voted on 20 key Council actions over the past year, using as a yardstick internationally recognized human rights principles.
Canada came in at first place, followed by seven of the council's eight European Union members, which were in turn followed by France and Ukraine.
The 17 countries receiving, equally, the worst score included four emerging democracies: Indonesia, Mali and Senegal, and also South Africa, whose presence UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer called "disturbing" because of the influence it is able to exert as a major emerging developing nation.
The report points out how Islamic countries and their allies on the council have used the body in its first year to focus criticism on Israel - pushing through nine condemnations of that country. For comparison, the council has ruled on only one other country, Sudan, but passed only three resolutions highlighting abuses in Sudan's western Darfur region - and each of those was "non-condemnatory."
"Israel should be held accountable," says the report. But "the systematic demonization of Israelis - and dehumanization, with Syria telling the Council that Israelis are invaders from the Planet Mars - ... directly causes the world's worst situations to be ignored."
Islamic countries have also pushed through a resolution stating that the right to freedom of expression may be limited out of "respect for religious beliefs." While they said the measure aimed at preventing recurrences of the 2005 publication by a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, Canada and other western countries unsuccessfully opposed the measure on free speech grounds.
Protestant leader Ian Paisley, who spent decades refusing to cooperate with Northern Ireland's Catholic minority, was elected Tuesday to oversee a power-sharing administration alongside his longtime Sinn Fein foes.
The unopposed election of Democratic Unionist Party chief Paisley and Irish Republican Army veteran Martin McGuinness to lead a new 12-member administration heralded an astonishing new era for Northern Ireland following decades of bloodshed and political stalemate that left 3,700 dead.
Paisley, 81, immediately affirmed an oath pledging to cooperate with Catholics and the government of the neighboring Republic of Ireland -- moves that the evangelical firebrand had long denounced as surrender.
Seconds later, Sinn Fein deputy leader McGuinness accepted the No. 2 post of deputy first minister. McGuinness, 56, affirmed the same oath, which required all ministers to support the Northern Ireland police and British courts -- a position that Sinn Fein refused for decades to accept.
Within a few more minutes, all 12 power-sharing positions were filled on the basis of how many seats each party holds in the Northern Ireland Assembly.
Paisley's Democratic Unionists took five Cabinet positions, Sinn Fein four, while the moderate Protestants of the Ulster Unionists received two and the moderate Catholics of the Social Democratic and Labour Party just one.
The assembly quickly adjourned to mingle with a jubilant crowd of dignitaries and well-wishers in the grand foyer of the Stormont Parliamentary Building.
There, the audience was treated to back-to-back speeches by Paisley, McGuinness and the British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, who had watched the rise of power-sharing from the public gallery.
Paisley, a Christian evangelist who leads his own church, quoted King Solomon's teachings that all societies faced a time to kill and a time to heal, a time for war and a time for peace.
"From the depths of my heart I can say to you today: I believe Northern Ireland has come to a time of peace, a time when hate will no longer rule. How good it will be to be part of a wonderful healing in this province," Paisley said.
McGuinness said they had "astounded the skeptics" and would govern Northern Ireland for the good of both sides of the community. "To Ian Paisley, I want to wish you the best as we step forward into the greatest and most exciting challenge of our lives," he said.
Blair, who is widely expected to announce his resignation from office later this week, said Ireland had suffered "centuries pockmarked by conflict, hardship and hatred." He said Belfast power-sharing offered the chance "at last to escape those heavy chains of history."
Blair and Ahern paid fulsome tribute to the leadership of Paisley and Sinn Fein -- but particularly to each other.
"Bertie has always been there, willing to surmount another obstacle ... Bertie, thank you," he said to Ahern, who is facing a tough May 24 election to remain in power.
Ahern said peace in Northern Ireland could not have been established without Blair's exceptional hands-on involvement in coaxing the two sides together.
Ahern said the British leader "has been a true friend of peace and a true friend of Ireland." He praised Blair for "the true determination that he had, for just sticking with it, for 10 tough years."
Earlier, McGuinness and Paisley sat down in separate armchairs at a small living room-style table, while Blair and Ahern shared a crowded sofa with Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain.
A live television feed beamed the first few, largely awkward minutes of their conversation, which was dominated by Paisley. McGuinness did not manage an audible word.
Blair spoke, but largely as the straight man to Paisley's quips.
Paisley, referring to Blair's imminent departure from Downing Street, noted to laughter all around: "As you're going out as a young man, I'm coming in as a granddad!"
When the British leader noted how friendly Northern Ireland people were, despite their bitter political situation, Paisley shot back: "I wonder why people hate me, because I'm such a nice man!"
Both Paisley and McGuinness have spent time behind bars for their past extremist paths. Analysts agree that both, in different ways, have blood on their hands today.
Paisley, a bombastic orator who leads his own virulently anti-Catholic church, was imprisoned in 1969 for leading an illegal demonstration against Catholic marchers demanding equal rights in voting, housing and employment. His strident, stubborn invective fanned the flames of Protestant mob violence and helped to delay by decades today's historic compromise.
McGuinness, a high school dropout from Londonderry who rose to become the city's IRA commander, served two short 1970s sentences for IRA membership -- and spent many years more on the run while serving in the IRA's ruling "army council," the seven-man committee ultimately responsible for killing nearly 1,800 people and maiming thousands more.
Power-sharing was a central goal of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace accord of 1998, but Blair and Ahern since have had to lead several summits aimed at coaxing local leaders of the British Protestant majority and Irish Catholic minority together.
A four-party coalition led by moderate Protestants and Catholics took power in December 1999 but repeatedly broke down amid confrontations between Protestants and Sinn Fein. It collapsed for good in October 2002 over allegations that the IRA was using Sinn Fein's position inside government to pilfer files and other intelligence on potential targets.
McGuinness served as education minister in that coalition. Paisley, who once campaigned on a slogan of "Smash Sinn Fein," permitted two of his deputies to take part -- but not to sit in Cabinet meetings because of McGuinness' presence.
When 2003 elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly produced twin triumphs for Paisley's Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein, it appeared to cripple prospects for revived power-sharing.
But prospects were been transformed by the IRA's 2005 decisions to disarm and renounce violence, and Sinn Fein's vote in January to open normal relations with the Northern Ireland police.
Paisley stunned Northern Ireland on March 26 by appearing live on television beside Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams -- barely an hour after the two men negotiated together for the first time -- to declare a deal.
"I see today very much as fulfilling the wishes of all the people of Ireland," McGuinness said.
Welcome to our 5th Annual Gala and Fundraiser. FRIDAY, MAY 25, 2007 Reception 6:30 pm ** Dinner 7:30 pm
Joe, Lozanne, Jonathan Wamback & their guests
Invite you to join
Global Televisions Susan Hay Ava Alan Frew of Glass Tiger – 5 Time Juno Award Winner
at the 5th Annual CCVF Gala and Fundraiser and silent auction Tickets $125.00 per person Reserved tables of 10, $1,000.00 Silent Auction Delta Chelsea Hotel, -- 33 Gerrard Street West Toronto
Please make cheques payable to Canadian Crime Victim Foundation Tickets not available at the door. Sponsors and Donations gratefully accepted. For more information, contact Joe or Lozanne Wamback 905-898-7472 www.ccvf.net
The film explores what Moore suggests are the causes for the Columbine High School massacre and other acts of violence with guns. Moore focuses on the background and environment in which the massacre took place, and some common public opinions and assumptions about related issues. The film looks into the nature of violence in the United States, focusing on guns as a symbol of both American freedom and its self-destruction.
In Moore's discussions with various people, including South Park co-creator Matt Stone, the National Rifle Association's then-president Charlton Heston, and musician Marilyn Manson, he seeks to explain why the Columbine massacre occurred and why the United States has higher rates of violent crimes (especially crimes involving guns) than other developed nations.
Yesterday I caught some of the hearings into Shane Doan and if it is appropriate that he represent Team Canada as captain at the international tournament taking place in Moscow. There were some comments apparently made to an NHL official that Shane Doan was cleared of in an internal league investigation. It is absolutely unbelievable that with all of the major issues facing Canadians today, this issue took up time, resources and generated a tonne of media coverage. The house is rarely in session and every minute that MPs are in Ottawa should be focused on the priorities of constituents. This was not a priority and was an incredable waste of money and time. It also smeared an individual and distracted the team currently playing in Russia. Because this issue got on the agenda with all party support, I blame all MPs equal. Politicians do not have the right to select Canada's hockey team or its captain. Any MP who draws a salary this week should be embarassed and know that it is not earned. Get to work on the issues that matter such as Afghanistan, the environment, cutting taxes, guaranteed wait times and getting tough on crime! Everyone on that committee should get a five minute major for delay of game. Cleary Canadians are completely disgusted and with good reason. If politicians want to tackle discrimination, I would suggest one hundred other places to start in order to bring about more impact on this issue. MPs should be forced to stay another week in Ottawa to make up for the lost opportunity to deal with matters of importance to Canadians. Shame on our elected officials and best of luck to Shane Doan and the Canadian hockey team in their quest for gold.
Thanks for reading...
Darryl
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Hockey Canada defends Doan, denies he said slur
Updated Thu. May. 3 2007 10:00 PM ET
CTV.ca News Staff
Hockey Canada President Bob Nicholson delivered a passionate defence of Shane Doan on Thursday to a House of Commons committee, describing him as a devout Christian who finds it difficult to even curse. "You should get to know Shane Doan," said Nicholson. "You can talk to all of his teammates that have played with him. He says 'fudge' a lot if he gets upset. He's a Christian and a person that I am proud to know." Nicholson and other Hockey Canada officials met with the House of Commons' Official Languages Committee to defend their decision to appoint Doan as captain of the Canadian world championship team. Doan, a right-winger for the Phoenix Coyotes who allegedly made derogatory remarks toward a French-Canadian NHL linesman, volunteered to step down on Wednesday as team captain over the controversy. "Shane Doan is a person who has represented our country eight times," Nicholson said. "We are 100 per cent behind Shane Doan." The National Hockey League has cleared Doan of any "wrongdoing" in the matter and Nicholson said he should be free to represent Canada on the national team. "There is no question those words were said on the ice," Nicholson told the committee. "The National Hockey League's investigation clearly shows that that was stated, but it also clearly shows that they felt that it wasn't Shane Doan." But Bloc Quebecois Leader Gilles Duceppe said even the controversy should still have prevented Doan from being named captain. "When someone robs a bank he's presumed innocent until proven guilty -- but I don't know many people who'd name them bank manager while the trial's still on," Duceppe said. "They want to name him captain even before the verdict comes in. It makes no sense. It's an insult to Quebecers." That sentiment was earlier expressed by committee member LucMalo, another Bloc MP. "Why don't you follow the logical suggestion of Mr. Doan himself and give the 'C' to someone else?" he asked officials. Doan has said he was trying to pacify goalie Curtis Joseph after a loss to the Canadiens in 2005 when linesman Michel Cormier thought he heard Doan utter "F---ing French. Did a great job." However, Doan maintained he said "Four French referees in Montreal, Cuje, figure it out.'' Doan has sued one Liberal parliamentarian for defamation, claiming he has been falsely accused of making anti-French comments. The case against Denis Coderre is still before the courts, and Coderre has counter-sued. Last month, linesman Michel Cormier testified in a court that he was skating next to Doan when he heard the slur. Nicholson said there is no doubt the words were spoken on the ice, but that the NHL investigation "clearly shows that they felt that it wasn't Shane Doan" who made the remark. The Hockey Canada president said Doan and his family have been very upset by the allegations. "We're taking Shane Doan, his wife, his mom and dad, his four kids through an allegation that could have been dictated by someone else,'' Nicholson said. Rene Marcil of Hockey Canada also defended Doan, saying French Canada is well-represented within the organization. He maintained the controversy surrounding Doan's appointment is an unnecessary distraction to the national hockey team, which is currently competing in Russia. "I think this should have ended quite some time ago," Marcil said in French. "This is another event that is upsetting the concentration of our team." "I don't see, therefore, why we can't work with Shane Doan," Marcil said. However, the House of Commons committee members said that it is their duty to discuss the allegations for all Canadians. "The puck is on the ice and now we don't know where to send it. The whole situation has lead to uncertainty and now we are trying to figure out how to solve it," said a representative. "There are taxpayers who want to be able to identify with Team Canada," said another representative from the committee. With files from the Canadian Press
Amid rising gas costs and fears that prices at the pump will spike to record highs this summer, the federal government is facing calls for an inquiry into gasoline prices.
The Consumers' Association of Canada began demanding the inquiry after gas prices rose sharply across Canada on Tuesday, with oil companies blaming the spike on low inventories.
The average price of regular gas across Canada on Tuesday was $1.10 per litre, according to MJ Ervin & Associates Inc., a Calgary-based consulting firm. The price represents a spike of five cents in the past week.
In Vancouver, drivers were forking out as much as $1.28 per litre on Tuesday.
Bruce Cran, the president of the association, said oil companies are seeing record profits and refuse to provide a clear explanation for the reasons behind the high prices.
The kidnapping of six oil workers in Nigeria, low inventories in the U.S., disruptions at refineries, and production cuts at OPEC were all cited this week as having contributed to the price spike.
"At this point it doesn't even matter any more what the reasons behind the price rise are," Cran said, noting that Canadians are "exhausted and frustrated" with the situation.
"We've got no satisfactory explanations as to why these huge price rises take place year after year."
Cran said his association received hundreds of calls Tuesday from frustrated motorists demanding to know why prices had gone up.
Tony Macerollo, of the Canadian Petroleum Products Institute, said that the organization is doing its best to keep costs down.
"I appreciate that Canadians don't want to pay any more for gasoline than they possibly have to and, in fact, Canadians are among the most price-sensitive consumers for gasoline products in the Western world," Macerollo told CTV Newsnet on Wednesday.
"I would still remind them -- although this is not much of a solace at a time like this -- we still have some of the lowest prices pre-tax in the Western world."
Jason Toews, co-founder of Gasbuddy.com, a website that tracks prices across Canada, said by Wednesday morning the national average had already risen over Tuesday's average, reaching $1.11 per litre -- an indication that the cost will likely keep going up.
"The national average is rising quite rapidly and I'm expecting gas prices to reach $1.20, possibly even $1.30 across Canada on average this summer," Toews told CTV's Canada AM on Wednesday.
He said people in Alberta were paying, on average, the lowest price at the pumps, with prices in Calgary hovering around $1.05 per litre. Vancouver had the highest, with $1.28.
Toews offered a number of tips for Canadians looking to save money on fuel.
"Of course, alter your driving habits, combine trips to the grocery store with trips to the barber," Toews said.
"You can make sure that you drive consistently, don't accelerate hard, make sure that you drive without your AC on. Drive with your windows up, although in the hot Canadian summers that's not always an option. You can car pool or ride a bike. There are lots of things to do."
Here are some of the gas prices in cities across Canada on Tuesday:
St. John's, N.L. -- $1.16 per litre
Victoria, B.C. -- $1.22 per litre
Montreal, Que. -- $1.17 per litre
Ottawa, Ont. -- $1.09 per litre
Gas in question period
NDP MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis asked why the Conservative government didn't launch a public inquiry.
Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn said Liberal and NDP Mps would like an investigation, they could bring a complaint to the federal Competition Bureau.
"It's been done six times, and we all know the results," he said, adding the government was helping Canadians by bringing in incentives to buy fuel-efficient vehicles and to take public transit.
Some mischief was made in the House of Commons on the issue.
In response to a question from a Conservative backbencher about whether higher gas taxes would be good for Canadians, Environment Minister John Baird said, "In the Calgary Herald on Aug. 24, 2005, do you know what the leader of the Liberal Party said? He said that high gas prices are actually good for Canada.
"It's time for the Liberal party to expose their secret plan to bring in a massive new tax called a carbon tax."
Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale said after question period that if Baird checked, he would find the stance "can be attributed to a newspaper, but not to the honourable leader of the opposition."
A Wednesday, Aug. 24, 2005 Herald story contained the following:
"On Tuesday in Regina, Environment Minister Stephane Dion said high gas prices are actually good for Canada in the medium and long term.
"'We have to get used to changing our way of life,' Dion said. 'We consume way too much gas. If all of humanity had the same consumption levels as we do, it would take five planets instead of one in order to maintain the planet's capacity for reproduction.'"
OTTAWA -- Canadian fire chiefs are calling for the creation of a national fire adviser as they challenge federal political parties to state their positions on emergency services in their next election platforms.
Ontario fire marshal Pat Burke, president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs, has sent letters to major party leaders, urging them to address the "urgent concerns" of the country's 100,000-plus firefighters and their families.
Foremost among those concerns is the appointment of a national fire adviser to establish and monitor national fire statistics and training standards, co-ordinate emergency preparedness and provincial fire-prevention activities, and act as a national link for provincial fire marshals and commissioners.
Meeting in Ottawa this week, the fire chiefs say the frequency and magnitude of disasters, both natural and manmade, are increasing.
They say dealing effectively with such events will far exceed the capacity of individual fire departments and they need a national adviser, like the one recently proposed by Liberal Leader Stephane Dion.
The fire chiefs also want tax incentives for volunteer fire services, automatic sprinkler systems in all buildings, and more money for emergency services - including $40 million to equip and train firefighters in chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear emergencies.
Thank you very much to the Conservative members who supported my re-election to the federal board of directors for the Newmarket-Aurora Conservative Party. I look forward to continuing to work hard to get Lois Brown elected to Ottawa in the next election. I am also looking forward to making a contribution in building Conservatism in this riding beyond the next election. Congratulations to all those who were elected and put their names forward to run. I look forward to working with all of you in the future.
-Darryl
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Dear CPC-NA Members,
Further to the recent notice you received via automated message, this is to remind you that the ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING of the Conservative Party of Canada Newmarket-Aurora Electoral District Association is taking place on May 2, 2007.
The details are as follows:
Event:CPC-NA Annual General Meeting
Date:May 2, 2007
Time:7:30 pm Registration, 8:00 pm Meeting Begins
Place:Aurora Community Centre, Auditorium, Second Floor
The Aurora Community Centre is located just west of Yonge St. and AuroraHeights, on the south side of AuroraHeights, across from MachellPark.
The 2007-2008 Board of Directors will be elected at this meeting. Lois Brown will be addressing the membership.
All members are most welcome to attend, but only those who havebeen members for at least 21 days before the meeting arepermitted to vote.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has a garish knack for making the world think he's the most radical of radicals. So when the left-wing, anti-U.S. leader ascended a raucous stage in front of a petrochemical plant in eastern Venezuela today — May Day, the leftiest day of the year — and announced his government's takeover of the nation's lucrative heavy oil industry, it sent the usual panic through Washington and the international media. "It's national power!" shouted Chavez, who controls the hemisphere's largest crude reserves. "We can't have socialism if the state doesn't have control over its resources!"
But the truth — one that both Chavez and his archfoe, the Bush Administration, would prefer you not know — is that when it comes to oil nationalization, Hugo is hardly the most radical of his global peers. In fact, even after today's petro-theatrics, Chavez is just catching up with the rest of the pack.
From Mexico to China, more than 75% of the world's oil reserves are controlled by national oil companies today. Of the world's top 20 oil-producing firms, 14 are state-run. And even though Chavez has now stripped foreign oil companies like Exxon Mobil of any majority stakes they had in Venezuelan oil production projects — mandating that his state-run company, Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), have at least 60% ownership from here on out — he's at least allowing those private multinationals to continue taking part in the drilling. Not so, for example, in Mexico or the world's largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia. Washington touts those two countries as model energy allies, despite the fact that for more than half a century their national oil companies have barred U.S. and other foreign oil businesses from production ventures.
Apart from his fiery rhetoric, what makes Chavez's move seem more jarring is the fact that, until he came to power in 1999, Venezuela had been a trend-bucking oasis for Big Oil. Venezuela did nationalize its oil industry in 1976, but in the 1990s it had steadily reopened its fields to foreign investment — in some cases handing the multinationals deals that even conservative Venezuelans considered too sweet. Chavez has just as steadily, and stridently, reversed that policy, paring down the multinationals' ownership while ratcheting up their taxes and royalties. And because Venezuela is America's fourth-largest foreign crude supplier — providing the U.S. with almost 15% of its oil imports — each turn of his nationalization screw tends to provoke outsized alarm.
That, perhaps, is the real cause for concern — how deeply the nationalization trend affects the quantity of oil that not only Venezuela but other countries can export, and hence the price we pay for it. The lack of new investment in Mexico's oil fields, for example, has led to some of that nation's steepest production drops ever. The drilling ventures Chavez expropriated today involve tar-like heavy crude in Venezuela's Orinoco belt — perhaps enough to add some 300 billion barrels to the country's reserves, which would move it ahead of Saudi Arabia. But to make that heavy oil refinable requires billions of dollars, capital that Chavez's critics fear he may now have alienated — especially if, as the multinationals fret, he ends up giving the companies inadequate compensation for the expropriation.
Chavez, who is determined to reduce Venezuela's dependence on the U.S. market, is betting that high oil prices as well as deep-pocketed ideological allies like China and Iran will help make up for any investment shortfall. It's a risky gamble — but not much riskier than U.S. energy policy. Between 2001 and 2006, U.S. gasoline consumption decreased by a laughably small 1%, according to a recent study by the University of California at Davis. Americans could blunt the effects of policies like Chavez's by lessening their dependence on foreign oil. But that, it seems, would be too radical.
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Did you know…
Incinerator plants are the source of serious toxic pollutants: dioxins; furans; acid gases; particulates; heavy metals such as lead and mercury; this needs to be treated very seriously. The emissions from incinerator processes are extremely toxic. Some of the emissions are carcinogenic. We must use every reasonable instrument to stop this insanity and eliminate these toxins altogether, our health and our children’s health is at stake. There are numerous studies that link these types of plants to cancer, birth defects, numerous respiratory problems and heart related disease.
Proponents of incinerators claim the new breeds of incinerators are not problem polluters. But the industry’s own data proves the contrary. Modern incinerators emit mercury at a rate 5 times higher per unit of electricity generated than coal, and greenhouse gases at a rate substantially higher than coal-fired or natural gas-fired power plants. How ironic that the Ontario government has promised to close down Ontario’s coal-fired power plants to reduce mercury emissions, but at the same time is supporting municipal waste incinerators.
Incineration is a BAD idea - it is BAD anywhere - it is BAD for the taxpayer, BAD for the economy, BAD for jobs, BAD for sustainability. Simply put, we shouldn’t be spending a huge amount of taxpayer’s money to release more toxins into the air and further pollute our environment, destroy our resources, and increase our health costs.
We, as residents of York Region, urge everyone to send their notice of 100% objection to this proposed incineration site in Newmarket/East Gwillimbury, to the Durham/York Residual Waste Study Coordinator, by either:
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