You know it's spring when the slush appears [update]

Update: Jason Cherniak responds. Apparently my post below was mostly crap, but at least one section did make Jason refine his thinking on one issue, so in that sense, my efforts were not wasted. My goal is always to get people to think about things, not necessarily agree with me. If I wanted people to agree with me, I'd just post anti-Bush anti-Harper messages laced with plenty of expletives on the rabble.ca message board. I still think there are unintended consequences bubbling under the surface of Jason's stated goal, and I still think he has to be careful of what other people might do to take advantage of what he is doing to advance their own agendas. But then I'm a conservative with my own hidden agenda, so of course I expect other people to be as devious and duplicitous as me.

Or is that slush funds?

From Jason Cherniak's blog:

Today I will obtain the final signature on the application to incorporate the list of Liberal Bloggers as an Ontario non-profit company. We have now approached the moment of no return, where I will begin paying the government to make this all official.

For those who do not know yet, this new organization has been created for two reasons. The first is to protect me from liability for what others might post on sites that the Liberal Blogs list will link to. The second is to create an organization that can receive donations and then spend excess money to help the Liberal Party.

Spend the excess money to help the Liberal Party? Like donations? Subject to the limit of $1000 per year for a corporation?

Well, after a flurry of comments such as this one...

Am I the only one who finds it odd that Chermiak [sic] decided to redirect blog donations to the Liberal party?

Aren't you just setting yourself up to be a fundraising wing for the party, not to mention all the objectivity issues it raises for you and the other Liblogs?

Or do the Blogging Tories do the same thing? Blogging Dippers? As far as I know, they are in no way associated with either of their "mother parties". With the financial relationship Cherniak has set up, I don't know he can say the same thing.

Maybe it's just me.

...Cherniak made it clear that the money raised would not go directly to the Liberal Party or any of its various wings.

And the comment was dead on about the Blogging Tories -- they do not collect funds and make donations as a group, though members are free to do as they wish as individuals.

So if the money being raised "to help the Liberal Party" is not going to the Liberal Party, where is it going? And how is it helping?

The main idea is to become a third party advertiser during elections. The other and less certain idea is to create a Liberal Blogger Scholarship.

Third party advertising is a choice fraught with danger during an election period. If the Liblog members combine into some sort of single entity under this umbrella organization, and then identify themselves as a third party, the group will have to be registered with the Chief Electoral Officer. Then each blogger will have to identify each pro-Liberal blog entry (and possible every anti-Conservative, anti-NDP, and anti-Bloc entry) as an ad authorized by the umbrella group. Presumably Cherniak would want to check each posting before granting that authorization.

Cherniak says that the purpose of the group is to protect himself, but now every Liblog is tied to every other like climbers on a rock face.

On election day, no new posts can go up. According to the rules, posts that have gone up prior to election day can stay, but they cannot be changed. I think that comments might be considered a "change", so comments would have to be turned off on the very day when election blogging would hit overdrive.

How about limits of election spending? As a registered third party, all the Liblogs would be required to submit to an audit run by an auditor appointed by Cherniak's umbrella group if the total money raised exceeds $5,000. How much does an audit cost? I don't know, but it's probably not cheap. Not to mention the irritation felt by all the Liblog members who are sucked into this. That means also tracking all the donations to make sure they aren't coming from non-Canadian sources.

Register as a third party advertiser? Unless Cherniak raises thousands of dollars, it hardly seems worth the trouble, and might chase more than a few good bloggers away from the Liblogs.

What about other uses for the money? Like this scholarship? Cherniak admits that's a long shot. Seems to me the real desire here is offset some of his own costs:

The main goal is to raise money to pay for startup and hosting.

Well, looks like he'll be lucky to hit that plateau:

We have now raised just over $100, but we will need at least $400 to cover all of the startup costs. As a result, all I ask is that Liberal bloggers donate $10 each to the cause. To do so, please click on the donation button to the right.

For me, the best help I can provide to the Conservative Party is insightful commentary and the odd investigative piece here or there. I can tell you that if I ever entered into a formal relationship including financial renumeration in either direction, the blog would be retired immediately. Blogging is, and should remain, the domain of unaffiliated observers. They should not be fronts for fundraisers and slush fund operators.

One more thing. There is a risk here that if Cherniak tries to take his blog and those of his Liberal friends into the some kind of formal relationship with the Liberal Party, people will think that other political communities such as the Blogging Tories and the Blogging Dippers are in similar cahoots with the political parties they support. At best, that will be a misleading impression that will colour the opinion of the reader of any blog. At worst, it could trigger some kind of regulatory interest in the Tories and the Dippers that rightly should be focused only on the Liblogs.

Ironically, during the last election, people at odds with the Conservative Party, disgruntled ex-Tories Carole Jamieson and Eugene Parks, tried to paint the Blogging Tories as some sort of arm of the Conservative Party of Canada and so subject to regulation. Frankly, I couldn't take it too seriously.

Why were the Blogging Tories targeted and not the Liblogs? Probably because the Blogging Tories were far more effective during the election campaign than either the Liblogs or Blogging Dippers as measured by the amount of interest garnered by the main stream media. Several stories first cracked by Blogging Tories were picked up by the main stream media and became part of the story of the campaign. And of course, Stephen Harper and the Conservatives won.

Despite this, Elections Canada dismissed the attempt by Jamieson and Parks to muzzle the Blogging Tories via third party regulation.

I wonder if the real value of Cherniak's Liblog corporation, for certain people, will be to force Elections Canada to clamp down on all blogs. I'm not saying Cherniak is playing some sort of Ludlumesque double game here. But if I were a Liberal Party strategist looking for a way to shutdown, or at least severely curtail, the work of those meddling Tory bloggers, I might take advantage of a situation in which Elections Canada is forced to regulate my own Grit bloggers. I might make a big donation to Cherniak's fund to make sure his non-profit organization is formed and then registered with Elections Canada, even though I know that, in the end, it would be a major blow to the Liblogs. Being less effective than the Tory bloggers, that sacrifice would be minimal for the Liberals, but I could then argue that Elections Canada should regulate all political bloggers in the name of fairness, formal incorporation or not.

The Liblogs might be sacrificed as a weapon to knock down the Blogging Tories, in other words.

Too complicated? Maybe. But then people who play politics are too clever by half sometimes.

I thought reporters belonged to a union, not a cabal

A cabal?

A cabal is a number of persons united in some close design, usually to promote their private views and interests in a church, state, or other community by intrigue. Cabals are secret organizations composed of a few designing persons. Its usage carries strong connotations of shadowy corners and insidious influence.

One famous such group was P2, or Propaganda Due (Italian: Propaganda Two). It has been alleged that P2 was involved in the murder of Aldo Moro, the Italian Prime Minister, in 1978.

A new cabal dedicated to the selection of Canadian prime ministers has been identified. Though the group has no formal name, they pose as reporters, and I have dubbed them the Zolfians!

Harper’s treatment of the media is that of an ingrate. The media made Harper. The media also first made Trudeau and Mulroney. Later, the media made both Trudeau and Mulroney and their parties suffer at the polls.

A similar fate awaits Harper if he doesn’t change his basic suspicion and hatred of reporters and news commentators.

Strangely for a cabal, this group of power brokers has been revealed not by the painstaking process of analyzing subtle clues hidden in historical documents and such, but rather by a widely published commentary by their leader, CBC journalist and commentator Larry Zolf.

I suppose shadowy intrigue isn't what it used to be. I mean, the whole point of being the power behind the throne is that no one sees you pulling the strings.

Unless, of course, there is another group behind the Zolfians, and the Zolfians are just dupes who don't even realize that they don't have the real power to choose a prime minister.

Could it be the voters of Canada?

Scary.

[Hat tip to small dead animals]

Following or leading?

I guess the Conservatives will have to get used to this:

“Canada is blindly following the lead of Washington,” and of pro-Israel lobby groups, she said.

Yes, Stephen Harper does whatever George W Bush does. Typical neo-con. Can't be trusted to chart Canada's own unique destiny.

The problem with this statement of national vice-president of the Canadian Islamic Congress, Wahida Valiante, is that it simply isn't true.

Canada has become the first country after Israel to cut funding and diplomatic ties to the Palestinian Authority over the new Hamas government’s refusal to renounce violence.

The Conservatives say they will still offer humanitarian aid to Palestinians through the United Nations and other agencies.

But Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay said Wednesday that Ottawa cannot go farther.

"As you know, Hamas is a terrorist organization — listed in this country — and we cannot send any direct aid to an organization that refuses to renounce terrorist activity, refuses to renounce violence."

The first country after Israel. Doesn't sound like someone who follows. Sounds like someone who leads.

Palestinian leaders are shocked. I bet they are:

Ottawa has been sending $25 million a year to Palestine but the Liberals had planned hefty increases.

Instead, the $25 million will now be cut by $7.3 million to $17.7 million, said Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Marie-Christine Lilkoff.

The argument for not cutting off aid is predictable:

Cutting off contact will not help Palestine improve its democratic systems, Valiante says.

Rewarding terrorists is not likely to do much to improve democracy either.

Killing with kindness

The case of Abdul Rahman, the man in Afghanistan sentenced to death for the crime of apostasy, from both the Christian and Muslim point of view, and just how lucky Muslims are that the Christian view is very different.

Bill 602p?

I got this email, and I'll quote it without naming names:

Bill 602p is being ushered through Parliament at this time, it will give Canada Post the ability to levee a charge of 5 cents on every email that internet users get. The internet provider will be sent a bill from Canada Post and they in turn will bill the user.

I have emailed my MP Rona Ambrose to suggest that I did not vote for more taxation and told her if this bill gets passed don't come looking for my vote next time. How stupid do they think the Canadian public is that Canada Post can charge a service they don't provide

I thought to myself, how can there be any bills being ushered through Parliament? Any bills died when the election writ was dropped. Parliament hasn't been recalled so a new bill can't have been submitted. And the numbering is wrong.

So I did a quick check:

A new, localized variant of the venerable modem tax legend (a perennial headache for the Federal Communications Commission in the U.S.) has swept across Canada during the past week in the the form of a bogus email alert. The message claims that the Canada Post Corporation (the post office) is pushing legislation to impose a 5-cent surcharge on every email "delivered" to Internet users...

The bogus email is shown:

Subject: E-MAIL SURCHARGE

Internet Subscriber:

Please read the following carefully if you intend to stay online and continue using email:

The last few months have revealed an alarming trend in the Government of Canada attempting to quietly push through legislation that will affect your use of the Internet. Under proposed legislation Canada Post will be attempting to bill email users out of "alternate postage fees".

Bill 602P will permit the Federal Govt to charge a 5 cent surcharge on every email delivered, by billing Internet Service Providers at source. The consumer would then be billed in turn by the ISP. Toronto lawyer Richard Stepp QC is working to prevent this legislation from becoming law.

<snip>

Don't sit by and watch your freedoms erode away! Send this email to all Canadians on your list and tell your friends and relatives to write to their MP and say "No!" to Bill 602P.

Kate Turner
Assistant to Richard Stepp QC
Berger, Stepp and Gorman
Barristers at Law
216 Bay Street
Toronto, ON
MlL 3C6

There is no firm "Berger, Stepp and Gorman", and the postal code "M1L 3C6" is for Stellarton Road in Scarborough. There is a reverse search page for postal codes, by the way.

The page has more information about this hoax, the Australian and American counterparts, and how it has been rebutted over and over again. Like a rash, though it comes back. I suppose it depends partly on people having never heard of the hoax before. I hadn't. It was only my natural skepticism that kept me from reacting.

So if you get this email, ignore it. Don't write your MP. And if you are an MP or one of the people who writes responses to letters from constituents, be nice when you tell the person it was a hoax. It's easy to be taken in by these things.

Accommodations in Ottawa

A hypothetical question. If a family of 6 (husband, wife, and 4 young children) were looking for accommodations in or near Ottawa, is there anyone out there with a place to stay? These people are looking for free or near-free living for a few months or so in order to get established. Maybe you've got a big house and are entering the "empty nest" phase of life, and could use help with utilities and such. Let yours truly know if you can help out, and I'll pass it along.

Rescuing Canada's Left?

I can't think of a better comparison that this.

From the right we have two of the finest minds in Canadian conservatism, Adam Daifallah and Tasha Kheiriddin, authoring a blueprint for what conservatism has to do to become a force in this country.

If you haven't already bought their book Rescuing Canada's Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution, do so now. It's a bargain at twice the price. Just follow the banner at the top of this page.

In it, they review the history of conservatism, deal with how conservatism interacts with different institutions in this country (media, academia, etc) and make recommendations about how to improve those relationships, and then outline a number of policy platforms that would resonate with Canadians, re-invigourate conservatism, and cure a lot of problems in this country.

Two people.

Of course, on the left, it's very different.

Taking sides on crime

This article in the Ottawa Citizen is interesting on two levels. First, on the story itself:

The federal opposition is sending signals it will block Conservative plans to impose automatic jail terms for a variety of gun-related crimes unless the stiff terms are watered down.

The opposition, while willing to deal with the governing party to fight a spate of gun violence in urban centres, say the Conservative penalties could run afoul of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms' guarantee that the punishment must be proportional to the crime.

Sue Barnes, the Liberal justice critic, suggested the Conservative penalties are "draconian" measures that would have to be diluted to survive a court challenge.

Strange that Sue Barnes had no comment on the Liberal Party election platform plank that called for law-abiding citizens to have their firearms confiscated. But a criminal, found guilty in a fair trial, and given the punishment already required by law as opposed to a retroactive punishment for a hithero legal activity, is going to win a Charter challenge?

The Liberals and the NDP have to be careful here. Canadians are in no mood to pander to criminals:

One factor working in the Conservatives' favour is that no party wants to be seen as opposing a bill on firearms crimes at a time when there is public concern across the country, particularly in such cities as the Liberal bastion of Toronto.

Of course, a Liberal bastion is the prison population itself, so the Liberals are in a bit of a bind here.

Funny how being in a minority government can actually make the Conservative position stronger. Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Justice Minister Vic Toews take a strong position, guaranteed to anger the opposition. But can the opposition oppose? If they do so too strongly, they can bring the government down. The Conservatives are the only party in a position to fight back-to-back elections. Stephen Harper's approval ratings are sky high. The Liberals are broke and leaderless. And the Canadian people will crucify any party that forces a snap election so soon.

If they faced a Conservative majority government, the opposition could be loud and uncompromising. But now, they have to tread very carefully.

But aside from the issues of crime and punishment and of parliamentary strategies, it is interesting to note that the Ottawa Citizen tucks this bit of information in the very last paragraph:

There is a consensus among criminologists that minimum jail terms, which eliminate discretion for judges to impose sentences they see fit, do not deter crime.

I'm not going to discuss whether this is true or not, or if deterrence is the only motive, or even the most important motive, in setting sentences. But the fact that a newspaper left this to the very end suggests that the paper is not eager to criticize the Tory plan. It would seem that the Conservatives have some allies.

Masking a poor product with a gimmick

We've all seen gimmicks. We tend to dismiss them, because by definition, they have a childish appeal:

Finding a successful gimmick for an otherwise mundane product is often an important part of the marketing process. For example, toothbrushes are often given various gimmicks, such as bright colors, easy-grip handles, or color-changing bristles so they appear more exciting to consumers. This is often done when trying to appeal to children, who often get more excited about the gimmick than the product.

Who gets excited about typical leftie belly-aching about evil corporations, evil conservatives, evil this and evil that? Normally no one does. I mean, after a while, the sheer volume of evil is mind-numbing. More than a few people sympathetic to the left must begin to wonder just how evil these things really are -- I mean, the world manages to function reasonably well despite all the alleged evil.

And for those who think this works in reverse, remember that the right thinks the left is misguided, while the left thinks the right is evil.

With that, it comes as no surprise that the left resorts to gimmicks far more than the right. This can be burning effigies and flags, staging sit-ins and die-ins, or throwing pies and balloons filled with paint. The right rarely indulges in these sorts of theatrics. On Canada's web-based home for the left, rabble.ca, we see a new gimmick that tries to maintain the interest of the consumer:

The goal here is to make Stephen Harper disappear:

Depressed about the Conservative victory in the election? Wishing you could think of a way to get rid of Stephen Harper before he does too much damage? Now you can help us make that smirk just disappear. How?

From between $10 and $100, you can buy a 10x10 pixel spot on this banner showing Stephen Harper's face. The price is adjusted to reflect where on the banner you pick, the face being the priciest bits. On that spot you get a teeny tiny symbol and a link to your progressive web site. For instance, NDP MP Libby Davies links to her website from Stephen Harper's chin.

You're not actually helping defeat the Conservatives as such, but just indulging in a bit of web-based graffiti. The purpose is to generate cross-traffic and help build the ARRG:

Your pixel ad will help rabble build an Active Rapid Response Group (ARRG) that will be there every time the Conservatives try to cut funding, cut programs or do anything else to destroy what you care about in this country.

Sure. Whatever.

For example, did you know there was a vigil outside Sussex Drive the day of Harper's swearing-in to demand that he maintain the federal commitment on child care?

Um, no, so I guess it wasn't really effective. And since Stephen Harper's approval rating is now hitting the 66% range in British Columbia, where so many die-hard NDP-types make their home, ARRG seems to be off to a bad start.

That's the problem with gimmicks. They sound cute. They might even catch your eye. But in the end, they are shallow, and they certainly can't transform a fundamentally poor product into a good one. But they can help mask a poor product, which probably explains why rabble has a gimmick on their home page, while the home page of the Fraser Institute web site is filled with actual ideas.

But what if a right-wing web site decided to go with a gimmick? How about a Java-based game not unlike the old Missile Command from Atari. Instead of missile raining down on you, NDP talking points come out of the sky. More money for the environment. Higher minimum wage. Labour-friendly laws. Punitive taxes. Complete demilitarization. If one hits the ground, it means that the NDP has succeeded in causing you embarrassment on that particular issue. Your job is to shoot down each of these by sending up a counter-missile made up of money from your limited budget. Use enough money, and the NDP missile is eliminated before it strikes.

Sort of the way the NDP didn't seem to care about having a parliamentary debate and vote on the issue of Canadian troops in Afghanistan while the Liberals were in power as long as the Liberals were spending billions to incorporate NDP platform planks into an ad hoc budget. Now that the Conservatives are in power, however, having that debate has suddenly become the most important thing in the world.

Cognitive Dissonance

Of course, we all know what the war in Iraq is all about -- oil, right? And the men and women in the coalition fighting it are murdering countless innocents who were better off under the gentle hand of Saddam Hussein.

Naomi Klein is one of those who knows better:

MONDAY FEB 21ST, 6-9PM
LA FUNDRAISER
NAOMI KLEIN
FREE IRAQ! From Killer Liberators and the Corporations They Serve

Venice United Methodist Church
1020 Victoria Ave. (at Lincoln)

Of course, for Naomi Klein, everything reduces to corporations.

So what happens when the brutal killers don't act in a brutal and murderous manner? The obvious thing to do is to ignore evidence contradictory to what you know to be true. This is the most common defence in the face of cognitive dissonance, the state in which a person finds himself or herself when two contradictory realities are perceived.

Of course, any conservative will tell you there is only one reality, and you have to face up to it. But for idealists, who fill the ranks of the left, there is the world as it is, and the world as it should be (that being defined differently by each person, of course). When they don't match, there is a drive to resolve the dissonance -- but very few adjust their ideals. Best to adjust the perception of reality.

For instance, coalition soldiers should be killers in the service of corporate interests because George W Bush is evil (or stupid, depending on which ideal reality you believe in).

But then we learn that soon after a number of Christian pacifists who have been highly critical of the coalition, who subscribe to the idea that all the wrongs of the world are the fault of the Americans, and specifically of the conservatives, were kidnapped by the poor oppressed people they came to help, those same coalition forces began planning the rescue of those pacifists.

This week, the rescue happened:

But, in the event, the coalition devoted huge resources to securing their release. The SAS, special forces from the US and Canada and military intelligence officers spent months trying to locate them.

A force consisting of SAS troopers backed up by about 50 paratroops and Marines spearheaded the task force that rescued them. US and Iraqi troops were also involved in the mission.

So the reality is that the evil corporate thugs risked their lives to rescue those who kept insisting to the world that these people were evil corporate thugs.

You'd think that revelation would require a major rethink. Of course, the simplest thing to do is to pretend that these brave and selfless men and women don't even exist:

NORMAN KEMBER, the freed peace activist, will arrive back in Britain today amid growing controversy over his failure publicly to thank the military forces who rescued him.

Neither Professor Kember nor the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) organisation for whom he worked have acknowledged the work of the soldiers who rescued him and two Canadian hostages on Thursday, or of the teams of military and intelligence officials who spent months trying to track them down.

General Sir Mike Jackson, the head of the British Army, expressed the unhappiness of the military last night when he told Channel 4 News that he was “saddened that there doesn’t seem to have been a note of gratitude for the soldiers who risked their lives to save those lives”.

This is to be expected. These pacifists and their kind have invested a great deal of time and effort in constructing a world in which the US is evil, all the world's problems are related to lack of access to abortion, that capitalism doesn't work, that recycling is the right thing to do at any cost (even if it costs more in energy and resources than making a new item), that the legends and myths of native people are inherently better at describing the world than Western science (unless those cultural beliefs lead those same native peoples to eat seals and whales, in which case another acute case of cognitive dissonance develops).

The problem with the case of the Christian Peacemaker Teams is that the press has not played its accustomed role. See, the way to avoid cognitive dissonance is to avoid data that contradicts your idealized world view. As long as the media continues to report on explosions in Baghdad and never reports on the schools, the hospitals, the rebuilt infrastructure, and so on, there is no cognitive dissonance.

But in this case, the media has let the left down. Not only did it report on the rescue, it compounded the problem by reporting on the amount of effort put into the operation and then made things worse by obliquely suggesting that the rescued hostages and their colleagues were wrong not to aknowledge their rescuers.

It's going to take a lot of marches, placards, slogans, and fundraisers by luminaries on the left to set the world right after this mess.

President Bush calls on the blogs

From Expose the Left:

President Bush spoke to military and civilian families in Wheeling, West Virginia this afternoon about the War in Iraq. As usual, he spent a long period of time with the audience to answer the questions they may have. One woman, a military wife, told President Bush about her husband’s career as a military broadcast journalist and the footage he got about how great things are going in Iraq. She told the President that many cable news channels are just not reporting good news and only the bad news. She wanted to know what people could do to see the good happening in Iraq.

The President's answer:

Help over there will ya? I just got to keep talking and word of mouth, there’s blogs, there’s internet, there’s all kinds of way to communicate which is literally changing the way people get their information and so if you’re concerned I would suggest that you reach out to some of the groups that are supporting the troops, that got internet sites and just keep the word moving.

A video of the encounter is available there as well.

There is a message to the main stream media here -- control of the national agenda is slipping, and the administration is well aware of alternative ways to get information out and how to use these alternatives to frame the debate. In Canada too, the situation has changed. While in Ottawa, I spoke to several senior people in the Harper government, and each had the same thing to say -- the last election was the breakout election for the blogs. Blogs played a role larger than maybe is appreciated, and that role is only going to grow.

The infidel creed of 'Help thy neighbour'

A story of kindness and generosity in Afghanistan stands in stark contrast for the calls of neverending emnity between Christian and Muslims issued by Osama bin Laden and the Islamists.

A pathetic threat

The Liberals are acting tough:

Opposition party leaders warned yesterday they are willing to bring down Stephen Harper's minority government if it does not change its course -- particularly on the Tory promise to provide a child-care subsidy to parents -- in the next two weeks.

In separate meetings with the Prime Minister, interim Liberal leader Bill Graham and the Bloc Quebecois' Gilles Duceppe reminded the Conservative leader his party is outnumbered in the House of Commons and urged him to compromise on the government agenda as he drafts his Throne Speech.

The speech, which will be delivered by Governor-General Michaelle Jean on April 4, sets out the agenda for the coming parliamentary session and will be passed or defeated in a confidence vote that could spark another election.

Mr. Graham insisted the Liberals are willing to face the consequences of a confidence vote even though they won't have a new leader until December and are still struggling with the fallout of the party's defeat in January.

He laid out his party's well-known concerns about the Tory agenda, including the fate of a $5-billion deal -- signed by the Liberals last year -- to improve living conditions for aboriginals, opposition to a cut to the Goods and Services Tax and Mr. Harper's promise to pull out of child-care agreements that were also signed by the previous Liberal government.

Strong words from a weak party:

Despite Mr. Graham's threat, his party is ill-suited to face an election until at least 2007. The Liberal executive agreed last weekend to hold a leadership convention in December to replace former prime minister Paul Martin.

Mr. Graham pointedly refused to say whether he was prepared to lead his party into an election if Mr. Harper's government suffered a quick defeat. He called one reporter's scenario "hypothetical."

One wonders just how many in the Liberal caucus are really willing to go into another election less than three months after the last election, which was preceded by an election only 17 months earlier. And that election in June 2004 was called early by Paul Martin in an attempt to win a majority ahead of the Gomery Inquiry testimony.

The last two elections saw the Liberals cut down from a majority to a minority, then from a minority to the largest opposition party. Continuing the trend means third party status or worse. Stephen Harper is doing well in the polls, better in fact, than before the vote on January 23. The Liberals are in debt and without a leader. In fact, they lack even a potential leader as all the big names have already dropped out. In Quebec, the Conservatives are likely to build on their success in the last election, while the Liberals are likely to fall lower, again based on the personal popularity of Stephen Harper.

Moreover, if the Throne Speech outlines the same five priorities, including the commitment to cut the GST and to replace the Liberal daycare program with direct payments to parents, then Stephen Harper and the Conservatives will be doing exactly what they've promised to do for months now. Promises that got the party elected.

I don't know what makes Bill Graham thinks that having a "do-over" on the last election so soon will accomplish. The Liberals have no new ideas. They don't even have a new face yet. The Conservatives are being consistent. Nothing else has changed. I suppose the fight for David Emerson's seat would be interesting, but that's about it.

Defeating the government now would be seen as a colossal waste of time by the electorate, especially if the government is defeated for doing exactly what it promised to do, promises that already won it an election. Stephen Harper would call for the shortest campaign allowed by law, arguing correctly that nothing has changed from the last campaign to justify anything longer. The Liberals would have no choice but to offer to Canadians a chance to vote for an interim prime minister, and then ask voters to trust the party to replace him or her with a new leader that they would like once the leadership convention happened.

Another unelected prime minister -- just like Paul Martin when he got the job. And look how well it turned out for him when he first went to the polls in June 2004.

For Canadians who cast their vote influenced primarily on who they think would be the best prime minister, the situation would be seen as ridiculous. And be certain that all the other parties would make hay on the fact that during a Leaders' Debate, the Liberal contender is just a placeholder, making any comments he or she makes essentially irrelevant.

I expect a few Liberal MPs would not even bother running for re-election, and that more than a few losers from the January 23 vote would decide to sit this one out. Donors would keep their checkbooks in their pockets, and I doubt the Liberal Party credit line with the banks would go very far right now. Could they even get an airplane this time around?

The whole thing is absurd. I don't know why the Liberals think making these sorts of wild threats will accomplish anything. Expect Stephen Harper to meet with the other party leaders, but in the end stay true to himself and his party platform. No one knows what will happen during an election, but at first glance, it sure seems like a bad idea for the Liberals.

Actually, the threat seems rather pathetic.

Clear policy for clear water

Indian affairs is one of the trickiest and thankless portfolios in the Canadian government. It looks like the Conservatives are off to a good start, though.

Insightful political analysis?

If this is what passes for insightful political analysis on the left, then I can sit back and do some serious relaxing.

Larry Zolf is an award-winning commentator and journalist and a friend of Canada's left. He is also considered a bit of a fool by some observers (see here and here).

Maybe I wil join that list based on this piece from the CBC:

Martin made one particularly fatal blunder. He could have visited the troops in Afghanistan over Christmas 2005, in the middle of the campaigning for the Jan. 23 federal election.

If he had, he would have been the hero of the troops and stolen the campaign momentum away from Harper's one-a-day policy announcements.

Instead, Martin did nothing, letting the Tory leader steal the momentum with military announcements and promises to deploy more troops.

Is this how the left sees an election campaign? As six weeks of campaigning that could have been ignored because the people of Canada would have been utterly captivated by a single photo-op? Canadians would have forgotten Adscam and the Income Trust Scandal and beer-and-popcorn and the non-confidence chicanery and the budget follies and the dithering because Paul Martin would have popped his head out of LAV III?

Is this the opinion the left has of the voting electorate?

Stephen Harper's visit was no stunt. It was a carefully crafted message about the importance of the military and of Canada's foreign affairs and interests. The visit was not driven by polls or by impending votes. In fact, the visit preceded polls that showed Canadians beginning to see the Afghanistan mission in a positive light.

The honesty and leadership Stephen Harper showed is resonating with Canadians and has set the tone for this new government. You can't fake honesty and leadership. The people would have seen through that. The troops would have seen through that.

That is, unless you believe Larry Zolf. If you do, then every Canadian in and out of uniform would have trumpeted the gutsy leadership of Paul Martin because he gladhanded some troops in a tent in Kandahar, despite the months of evidence to suggest he was no such leader, and the campaign would have turned around.

Larry Zolf has seen more campaigns than me. Maybe he's right. But I don't think so. Moreover, I think it reveals a lot about what the left thinks of the rest of us.

To be fair, Larry Zolf makes some other points in the article that make sense. But I can't get past this notion that Canadians would have voted the Liberals back in power if only Paul Martin had done this one photo-op. It makes us sound so...so...infantile.

I guess it's all part of the beer-and-popcorn mindset.

I know which I'd rather be

From CTV:

As his growing girth becomes the subject of endless speculation, Prime Minister Stephen Harper admits he is enduring an ongoing battle of the bulge.

"When I was young I was very thin," he told television host Claude Charron during an interview for Quebec network TVA Monday.

Well, given the choice between being chubby and smart, or skinny and stupid, I know which I'd rather be. Because I can always go on a diet.

That having been said, let's hope we don't spend too much time in the media worrying about weight and clothes sense and other fluff.

A funding decision

From the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives home page :

The CCPA is an independent, non-partisan research institute concerned with issues of social and economic justice. Our research and analysis show that there are workable solutions to the policy questions facing Canadians today.

Just how independent are you when you are on the government dole? The CCPA gets nearly a half-million in yearly funding from the federal government. Of course, that means the Liberal Party, which might explain these "policy" titles:

• Canada's Failure to Promote Collective Bargaining as a Human Right
• Budgeting for Women's Equality
• Foreign ownership of telecom puts Canadian culture at risk
• Canada's high-income earners are not overtaxed

Will the CCPA switch gears now that the Conservatives are in power? Not likely. More interestingly, will the Conservative government take away funding, letting the CCPA get funding from private supporters?

But then the fundamental working principle of the CCPA is that government funding is prefered over private sector funding, that somehow that makes a hard-left think tank "non-partisan".

Total nonsense, of course.

So the CCPA is fundamentally at odds with the the principles of small-c conservatism. But look to the CCPA to put the government on the defensive. Withdrawing funding is a partisan move. Never mind that right-wing think tanks like the Fraser Institute accept no funds from the government.

It leads to the question that can a small-c conservative party ever really be suited to government, given that government is antithetical in many ways to government function? I think the answer is yes, but then the details are likely to come out of the research from the Fraser Institute than from the CCPA. If the government has no intention of ever implementing, or even listening to, the ideas from the CCPA, funding them seems to be a waste of money.

And wasting money is another one of those things small-c conservatives hate to do.

The Million Blogger Page

Check out the Million Blogger Page for a new take on a blogger search engine:

I'm a Web developer and have been dreaming of building a better blog search engine. A kind of visual search that allows you to quickly browse thousands of blog profiles on one page, and discover interesting blogs not just popular ones.

It is true that in blogging, as with any complex system with distinct nodes, there will be nodes that for one reason or another become slightly larger than the others (in this case, blogs that are seen as being of somewhat higher quality). As the system evolves, these nodes become attractors, which means that any trajectory that comes close to that node ends up staying close even if disturbed. For instance, Instapundit is an attractor, since invariably everyone who gets into blogging puts Instapundit on their blog roll, and there it stays even if Instapundit goes on a three-month sabbatical. The presence of attractors makes it hard for other blogs to get noticed.

So any attempt to create a new system that allows people to avoid the attractors and find other blogs of interest is worth looking into.

It's not an ethical question

Finally we can get on with business:

Canada's ethics czar has cleared Prime Minister Stephen Harper of any wrongdoing in his controversial decision to bring former Liberal David Emerson into the Conservative fold.

"My conclusion from the preliminary inquiry is that neither Mr. Harper nor Mr. Emerson contravened any of the specific Sections of the Members' Code," federal Ethics Commissioner Bernard Shapiro said in a report released Monday.

"I am satisfied that no special inducement was offered by Mr. Harper to convince Mr. Emerson to join his cabinet and his party."

As well, Mr. Shapiro said, there is "no reason, and certainly no evidence" to contradict Mr. Emerson's assertion that he accepted the Prime Minister's officer in order better serve his Vancouver-area constituents.

"I therefore find no reason to pursue these matters further," Mr. Shapiro said.

Moreover, the Commissioner agrees with me that cabinet appointments are a matter of judgment, not of ethics:

With regard to Mr. Harper, Mr. Shapiro found that he was "performing a constitutionally recognized executive function, and not an activity associated with his legislative duties or functions" and as a result was entitled to make the cabinet appointment.

For Mr. Emerson, he added, the higher salary and benefits afforded a cabinet minister can't be considered an improper inducement on their own.

"If it was, the appointment of any person to Cabinet could be considered suspect," Mr. Shapiro said.

Also true.

No reaction yet from the the folks who want to overturn the fair election of David Emerson. I'm willing to be they won't give up. This was never about ethics. It's all about politics and the chance to take a seat from the minority Conservatives and give it to the opposition.

Well, if nothing unethical happened, then clearly nothing illegal happened, and nothing is going to change. Emerson is in cabinet, and he's going to stay there. Another win for Stephen Harper.

Interestingly, Belinda Stronach should be concerned:

He also noted that if an opposition member were approached — or did the approaching — with the sole intent of changing their vote on a specific issue in the House, then such a move may be considered inappropriate and unacceptable.

Nothing will come of this statement in terms of an inquiry, but a subtle jab nonetheless. We might yet see this comment come up again during the Liberal leadership campaign if Stronach runs.

Take him seriously

The first reaction is to laugh, of course:

Yesterday, Cape Breton fiddler Ashley MacIsaac called The Daily News to say he intends to run for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada.

He also wants to run to bring his youth to the party and to end the "continuous mockery that's been allowed to take place of my party."

MacIsaac has mused about running for office in the past. He insisted yesterday that this time he's serious.

He will finance his bid by selling some art he owns. Leadership contenders must pay the Liberal party $50,000.

I'm not suggesting he is a likely to win, or that he will have any serious influence during a leadership convention, or that I would want any party, large or small, led by MacIsaac. But I think anyone who wants to serve his country in politics should be given the courtesy of consideration. He should be allowed to present his case and have it judged, but not pre-judged.

Making a major change in direction like this isn't easy. If he's serious, I wish him luck.

Goodbye to the Blogging Dippers [Update]

Update: It's been a week, and the Blogging Dippers are back on the blogrolls.

I don't like being the subject of the story:

Oops! It looks like that guy who was last seen cavorting with crooks had best get those enemy blogrolls off his blog before the Konservative Kops see it. So much for that “strict policy”. Once again, a Blogging Whorie is caught lying.

I'm "that guy". The crooks? I guess he means Conrad Black -- but I don't know why "crooks" is plural. I won't bother getting into the childishness of calling Conrad Black a crook before he has been found guilty.

Whatever.

What are the "kops" looking for? Whether or not I have other blogrolls on my blog. Apparently this blogger received an email that said in part:

we have a strict policy on multiple Canadian partisan blogrolls. If you'd like to be included on the Blogging Tories blogroll, we don't accept blogs that also have the green bloggers / progressive bloggers / blogging dipper blogrolls on their blogs

That's the first time I've ever heard of this policy. No one from the Blogging Tories has ever made mention of my blogrolls, and I take pride in maintaining links to as many Canadian political blogs as possible. I've secure enough in my convictions that I don't mind the shopper comparing my ideas with the ideas of others. I know they'll see the strengths of my arguments, moreso after having checked out the opposition and their penchant for name-calling ("Blogging Whories"??).

I don't know that the email is real. But I do know that I'm not about to change my blogrolls without good reason. The Blogging Tories have never indicated to me any reason to change, good or bad.

But the Blogging Dippers have provided me with a reason in the person of Robert McLelland. Throwing around the label "crooks" indiscriminately, suggesting I cavort with crooks because I was at a party at the same time -- I've had enough that. The Blogging Dippers are off my site until Friday. I doubt I drive much traffic to them, but then having them on my blogrolls was a symbolic gesture anyway, and so is tossing them off.

Recruitment

From Sun Media:

Despite an upswing in attacks against Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan, recruiters at a Canadian Forces job fair said yesterday they are seeing their ranks swell with eager candidates.

A steady crowd took in the event at the HMCS Tecumseh, watching demonstrations and getting up-close-and-personal with Canadian Forces equipment, including an LAV III armoured fighting vehicle and a Griffin helicopter.

"Despite"? Maybe "Because of"?

Capt. Nolan Kemp with the Calgary recruiting centre said coverage of Canada's major role in southern Afghanistan and Kandahar has led to an upswing in recruitment for the Forces and its part-time reservists.

"There's a further sense of patriotism - people willing to go out there and make a difference," Kemp said.

I'm not saying people are signing up so they can get shot at. But they are signing up because they see the military as relevant, both to the world at large and to Canadians in particular, which is a new thing for Canada.

With that, though, comes responsibility. The government must establish a respectful and professional relationship with the military, and the military must move beyond constantly complaining about the lack of funding. Basically, the maturity level has to go up. I think that process is well underway already, though, and just in time too.

We owe all these new recruits the best possible future in return for their commitment to spend that future defending us in a world that seems a lot more dangerous than it did only a few years ago.

"Harper Derangement Syndrome"?

"Bush Derangement Syndrome" is a well-known phenomenon in the United States:

the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush

As Charles Krauthammer points out, it normally strikes the intellectually weak, but is beginning to affect others as well:

It is, of course, epidemic in New York's Upper West Side and the tonier parts of Los Angeles, where the very sight of the president -- say, smiling while holding a tray of Thanksgiving turkey in a Baghdad mess hall -- caused dozens of cases of apoplexy in otherwise healthy adults. What is worrying epidemiologists about the [Howard] Dean incident, however, is that heretofore no case had been reported in Vermont, or any other dairy state.

Moreover, Dean is very smart. Until now, Bush Derangement Syndrome (BDS) had generally struck people with previously compromised intellectual immune systems. Hence its prevalence in Hollywood. Barbra Streisand, for example, wrote her famous September 2002 memo to Dick Gephardt warning that the president was dragging us toward war to satisfy, among the usual corporate malefactors who "clearly have much to gain if we go to war against Iraq,'' the logging industry -- timber being a major industry in a country that is two-thirds desert.

Apparently, like a species-jumping virus, there are hints of the afflication mutating into a Canadianized version:

In Ottawa, about 250 people showed up to voice their opposition to everything from security certificates to the cost of university education.

They also demanded Canadian troops leave Afghanistan.

"There's no reason for these soldiers to be there," said Lincoln Addison, 25, a member of the Student Coalition Against War that helped organize Saturday's protest. "They're being lied to by their government."

In Halifax, there was a similar theme as hundreds of anti-war protesters marched downtown, banging drums, yelling out chants and carrying placards depicting war-ravaged children.

In Calgary, Dijla Al-Rekabi, 29, was moved to tears as she spoke to about 150 protesters about the situation in Iraq, which she left in 1996. "Iraq is a dream that I've had," she told the crowd. Now, Al-Rekabi said, she can only "look for the memory of it."

No reason for Canadians to be in Afghanistan? Why? Because Afghanistan under the Taliban can't matter to Canadians? Tell that to the families of the two dozen Canadians killed on 9-11.

But to think of Iraq under Saddam Hussein and his psychopathic sons as a "dream"? Derangement among Canadians already exists of course, directed at the United States, but now starting to target Canadians as well:

The protesters, some dancing to keep warm, then marched down Ste. Catherine St. to Complexe Guy Favreau, many carrying anti-Harper placards.

Among them: Harper is putting our lives in danger, and Mr. Harper, you were BARELY elected. Many chants targeted the U.S. president and Harper, including: "George Bush: terroriste, Harper: complice"

Philippe Viene, a 25-year-old community activist, took part to send a message to Harper, who has said that Canada's soldiers - sent by the previous Liberal government - will remain in Afghanistan.

"The Conservatives always said they were for the war in Iraq and the occupation," Viene said. "I want to send a message that we still don't want to participate in the war. And I want Canada's troops in Afghanistan to come back home, because we're just helping the U.S. military strategy in the region."

Helping US military strategy? Well, d'uh! Should we be help Sheik Omar? Or just sitting tight and hoping that the number of Canadians killed in terrorist attacks is kept to a dull roar (and of course, hopefully only evil business people).

Ah well, it's going to get worse from here on. It's only a matter of time before Stephen Harper changes from stooge to evil warmonger. The key will be the media. If the media reminds Canadians that Afghanistan needs help, that groups within Afghanistan like women or religious and cultural minorities stand to lose not just political freedom but quite possibly their lives if the Taliban return, that Canada was targeted by Osama bin Laden long before Canadians went into Afghanistan, then maybe the disease can be contained.

I hoping the media will be up to it. I also hope the Conservative Party recognizes the positive role the media can play (and will play, if the message is delivered correctly), but that it will only happen if the media is treated with some respect and understanding. You know what they say about flies and vinegar...

One thing to watch for is implicit or explicit support for the HDS crowd from the political class, especially the NDP and the far left of the Liberal Party. Well, maybe not support. More like manipulation. Goading the HDS-afflicted protesters on to more loud and disruptive activities and eye-catching stunts. One thing to watch out for is those politicians using the media more effectively to get that coverage and make life hard for Stephen Harper, harder than it should be for the relatively small numbers of radicals involved. That's where the Conservatives have to be proactive and have to win the media battle in order to win the larger public opinion war.

A trivia test concerning some well-known Canadians

I'm going to list a number of well-known Canadians:

• Peter Amrstrong: national CBC reporter
• Tim Powers: Conservative Party strategist and vice-president at Summa Communications
• Kady O'Malley: freelance reporter and mainstay at The Hill Times
• General Rick Hillier: Chief of the Defence Staff
• Tom Parry: parliamentary reporter for CBC Radio
• David Akin: parliamentary reporter and blogger for the Globe and Mail
• Lawrence Martin: one of Canada's leading political authors and columnist for the Globe and Mail

The question: What do they have in common?

For all I know, lots of things. Maybe they all love Canadian Idol.

But I know for certain one thing they have in common. Yours truly spent time with all of them, and many others as well, in a St Patrick's night that will not be forgotten anytime soon.

What did we talk about? Sorry, but that's off the blogging record.

Cheers.

The learning curve

From the Globe and Mail via Bourque:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper has imposed central control over all information and comments to the public issued by government officials and even cabinet ministers, directing them to have everything cleared by the Prime Minister's Office, according to an internal e-mail and government sources.

The orders, described in an e-mail to bureaucrats, indicate that ministers have been told to avoid talking about the direction of the government, and that the government wants them to be less accessible to the news media. And all government officials are instructed to avoid speaking about anything other than the five priorities outlined in the Conservative campaign.

"Maintain a relentless focus on the five priorities from the campaign. Reduce the amount of ministerial/public events that distract from the five priority areas identified in the campaign," the e-mail states.

Of course, anyone in the private sector is used to this sort of thing. Any major corporation I've worked for has always maintained a very strict "no comment" rule for all employees at all levels when dealing with the press. Only the pros in the communications group actually communicate to the outside world.

Now a government is not a corporation. Or is it? Shareholders or voters? CEOs or Prime Ministers? Division vice presidents or ministers? The fact is that any heirarchical organization will tend to look the same. Should it come as a surprise that they behave in a similar manner?

But then there is the whole democracy thing. Do these rules work against the ability of MPs to serve their constituents?

The article seems clear that this applies to all ministerial communications, not to riding issues. Though I suppose that for MPs who are ministers, given their added responsibility, they can expect their riding newsletters to be vetted as well.

For what it's worth, these sorts of rules tend to be very temporary. In projects I've managed, we've always started with the formal "all communications go through the project manager" phase. That never lasts long. Very quickly, I would ensure that once I understood the lines of communications, and the people in the project understood what their responsibilities were, and what they were allowed to promise and not promise to other departments, the reins were loosened dramatically.

It's the up-front investment in some discipline that pays dividends later. Call it a learning curve for a minority government with inexperienced ministers and staff, with a need to stay on message, focused on the priorities, with little time for distractions, and not too much capital with a particularly suspicious press corps to spend on buying forgiveness for missteps.

I expect that once key ministers are in sync with the message and the style of communications this government wants to use, the restrictions will be relaxed. It'll have to happen for the sake of efficiency.

Warren Kinsella pulling our collective leg (and sending a message) [Updated]

Warren Kinsella as prime minister?

Since 1990, one true Liberal has stood above the rest. He has fought for the real values of the Party. He served under Jean Chretien, and as special assistant helped deliver huge political wins again and again for Canada's most popular Prime Minister ever.

One true Liberal stood up to Paul Martin and the business Liberals. During the 2004 and 2006 campaigns he used the internet to bring down "L'Equipe Martin Team."

And now, this ass kicking Liberal who testifies to the true meaning of Liberal Party is helping to rebuild the Party he loves. Now that he has defeated the evil "Board" that has mangled the inner workings of LPC, he is taking it upon himself to shape the bright future of the Party he loves.

This gushing piece appears on the blog confidently, if prematurely, called "PrimeMinisterKinsella" at Blogspot. It refers to Warren Kinsella, who has repeatedly said he is not interested in running, or helping a potential candidate.

He is busy helping the Ontario Liberal Party right now, as well as raising his family, and pursuing his legal and writing work.

Kinsella is the obvious choice for Canada's next great Liberal Prime Minister. A well experienced Party man, he has shown his unwillingness to compromise his true beliefs during his period of exile from the Party.

Maybe. Certainly he is a man of his convictions. I like him personally. The Liberal Party could do worse. It probably will, judging from the current crop of potential candidates.

Then the blog seems to take a different direction, and I'm not sure which direction it's going. Is it seriously disconnected from reality, or is it cleverly sending a message that Kinsella is not leadership material?

If I knew who was behind the blog, I'd know if the person was clever enough to pull it off. I suspect in fact the person is smart enough to do just that.

But first some examples:

Kinsella's criticism of Harper has been severe. During the campaign, he called Mr. Harper "Too sexy." With such criticism, I am surprised that Mr. Harper even managed to keep his seat in Calgary.

The "sexy" comment came from a December 10 posting:

I cannot believe I actually said Stephen Harper's haircut is "too sexy." Mary Vallis at the Post, who is doing a weekly campaign panel sort of thing, regularly gets me to say things I will live to regret. Ipso facto, she is an excellent journalist.

Too sexy. Sheesh.

Hardly crushing criticism. Actually one of those endearing posts that makes me come back often to read Kinsella's blog -- he knows how to poke fun at himself.

The next part of the post tells me the person behind this is playing a big joke on us all:

To further help the strength of the Party, Kinsella has supported other strong progressive candidates who are considering leadership bids. He helped Mr. Brison, for instance, by posting private blackberry messages that exonerate Mr. Brison from any wrongdoing in the I.T. story.

OK, here is what Kinsella said to help Brison:

What does the below exchange mean, captured this morning on front page of the National Post? It means someone's done like dinner, I think. (Hell, CTV's David Akin is reporting the email may have been sent from a cabinet meeting.). And this IT thing is just getting started, remember: that's why I have taken the position, since January 23, that this government's lifespan is measured in years, not months:

[emails from Brison]

Helping Brison? He follows up with an example of how Kinsella has forgiven David Herle, Paul Martin's right-hand man, which of course is an example of quite the opposite.

To me this is clearly Kinsella. I think he's sending a message to all the potential Kinsella recruiters that they are not paying attention if they think Kinsella is about to help Brison or David Herle or any of the former Martinites continue to hold power. If the Liberal Party picks another Martinite as leader, they can forget about Kinsella's help.

Moreover, he's playing a big joke on those people who will read this piece (very well written, by the way -- another Kinsella trademark) without actually checking the facts, and who will then jump on the faux bandwagon.

In fact, I expect Kinsella will post a gotcha follow-up, with the best of the "recruit Kinsella" emails he'll be getting:

Please send your letters of encouragement and support to [email address deleted]. The time has come to get Stephen Harper's strongest opponent into the right position. The tims [sic] has come to get a true Liberal who is supporting our Party during our period of transition into the right position. The time has come to get someone fair and just and respected by all into the right position. The time has come to elect a real leader who can see beyond personalities and work towards the strong progressive Canada the Liberal Party envisions.

This last paragaph is the important one. If you read this and you're paying attention, you'll realize that if it is "tims [sic] has come to get a true Liberal who is supporting our Party during our period of transition into the right position", then you need to find true Liberals, who are not going to be found in the Martin camp. He says that the "time has come to elect a real leader who can see beyond personalities". A message to look beyond the caucus itself?

I think Kinsella is having one over on us, but at the same time sending a carefully constructed message.

If that's true, good one, Warren! But maybe a bit too subtle for most people.

Update:

It appears that it isn't Kinsella:

March 16, 2006 - Funny. Glad to see some members of the Board are making creative use of their severance period, as well.

Still, I can't help but think that the message I described is in that post. Otherwise, the person who wrote it completely misunderstood just about everything Kinsella said about Brison and so forth. Or possibly something else -- the person who wrote it does not expect people to check the details and figures that he can get away with what seems to be an endorsement by Warren Kinsella for the current membership of the Liberal Party.

Does this guy even know any kids?

Some people are pointing out that Prime Minister Stephen Harper seems to enjoy soft drinks, and that he has a bit of a bulge:

On Tuesday, the front pages of Canadian newspapers featured a photograph of Harper as he looked at his food tray holding a can of pop, while most others drank water when he sat down to a mess hall meal with Canadian troops in Kandahar. Other candid pictures showed his shirt straining against the visible spare tire around his middle.

Well, apparently this is serious!

Dr. Paul Boisvert, co-ordinator for educational activities for the Merck Frosst/Canadian Institutes of Health Research chair in obesity at Laval University, said it's difficult to gauge the prime minister's eating habits and what affect they have on his weight, but that his image could have a negative impact.

"It's not a good example,'' he said.

Evidence that pop and other sweetened drinks are a significant factor in weight gain has been mounting in recent months. A Boston-based study published in Pediatrics last week showed that teens who drank a can of pop a day gained up to 6.4 kilograms a year compared to those who didn't.

OK, I don't know that many teens, but all the ones I do know in the neighbourhood are:

1. Entirely unaware that Stephen Harper has a spare tire
2. Entirely unaware of Stephen Harper

Frankly, I'm more worried about the second point than the first point, but in any case, teens are not likely to be affected whatsoever by the prime minister's choice in beverage, unless, that is, Stephen Harper became a finalist on some rock star reality show.

For that matter, if you want reality, here's some reality. The prime minister is a middle-aged father of two, and he's a bit squishy in the middle. Most middle-aged fathers are. Not all of us have been blessed with my rock hard abs so well-defined you could grate cheese on them.

Is it Stephen Harper's job to promote a healthy lifestyle?

Boisvert said it's clear Harper has an image to protect and that Canadians need politicians or other high-profile figures to promote healthy lifestyles, similar to the work done by former U.S. president Bill Clinton after he underwent heart surgery.

"I'm sure if we have more politicians that come as an icon, that will certainly help,'' he said. "That is a good example. That is something that we need.''

Of course some liberal-types believe that the government should use its coercive power to do even more:

Results of the study prompted British Columbia's Childhood Obesity Foundation to launch a campaign against sugary drinks and other junk food. The group wants the government to treat junk food like tobacco and place a tax on it to deter people from consuming it.

"We need to get that message out and to convince government that they can't passively hope that people get the message,'' Dr. Tom Warshawski, head of pediatrics at the Kelowna General Hospital, and chair of the foundation, told the media.

Why should the government treat soft drinks as junk food? The government doesn't drink. People do. Parents understand that a soft drink consists of empty calories. It shouldn't require punitive taxes to cause them not to give these drinks to young children.

Obviously for a lot of people, the urge to go to the government for solutions is still very strong. Hopefully a few firm but polite refusals to get involved by this governemtn will teach these people to solve the problem themselves.

Ben Chin defends himself

Bloggers are getting beat up by Ben Chin, though it's not not just bloggers despite what the article says:

Toronto-Danforth Liberal candidate Ben Chin, angered by bloggers, has taken out a newspaper ad to defend his family history.

"I hope we can move past anonymous, mean-spirited smears," he said.

The ad ran in a community paper on Saturday.

Chin is going up against the NDP's Peter Tabuns in a byelection to fill the seat vacated by Marilyn Churley when she ran federally.

Bloggers questioned Chin's connection to the riding and whether his last name was Korean or Chinese. They also accused him of painting a false picture of himself as a poor refugee. Other entries suggested Chin's diplomat father was once linked to a fascist regime in South Korea.

As far as I know, the question of Chin's name was not brought up by bloggers, but by the rabble crowd on their message board.

However, it is true that bloggers were trying to sort out the question of Chin's family history (without any silly, perhaps even racist, nonsense about names).

I know because I participated. I plugged a story by Stephen Taylor. I assumed that if a Korean was a victim of political persecution, then he must be North Korean.

Of course, South Korea has not always been a proper democracy. Indeed, it went from an autocracy under Syngman Rhee until 1960, then a dictatorship under Park Chung-hee until 1978, when Park was assassinated. Another general took over, and the country is still shifting to a proper democracy.

Chin says in the newspaper ad that his father was incarcerated by the Korean CIA in 1975 and accused by military dictator President Park Chung Hee of being a communist.

Chin was sent at age 13 to live in East York after he was told he would not be allowed to continue his education in South Korea.

Goes to show that not everything is black and white. I knew South Korea had only recently become a democracy in our sense of the word, and that before that it was authoritarian country. I would have thought a high-level diplomat would have been in a safe, even privileged, position, but then you know what they say about tallest weeds being the ones cut first...

Exploring the solar system on a dollar a day

Scientists at NASA are angry that there is not enough money to do, well, everything:

One hot-button topic, for example, is a funding cut for a mission to Europa, a moon of Jupiter, with possible high value in term of exobiology. "The Europa line is gone because we don't have the money to do it now. We didn't say that we're never going to do it. It's just that we don't have it within this budget framework," [NASA Associate Administrator for Science, Mary Cleave,] responded.

"If you want to do Europa, the money is going to have to come from somewhere," Cleave said.

The scientists are upset because they weren't consulted before the cuts were made. I can't be sure that was true. I suspect some scientists were consulted, but not all scientists.

Well, there is no satisfying everyone.

But as Mary Cleave said, the money has to come from somewhere. I wonder if the private sector could step in. Why not offer a group of pharmaceutical and bio-engineering companies exclusive rights to exploit the practical applications of any biological discoveries made in such a mission? Pick an extremely long timeframe, say 100 years, to recognize the potential difficulties in bringing any potential products to market.

Similar offers could be made to natural resource concerns to help fund a trip to an asteroid or to the moon to mine for resources.

The money they put up might be enough to tip the balance and get the mission back on.

Maybe the costs are too high to realize a profit, but I don't see why NASA can't float an idea like this. Or maybe it's obvious that it can't work. Anyone have other ideas?

The trial lasted longer than the war

From the National Post editorial on Slobodan Milosevic:

Finally, Milosevic showed up international humanitarian law for the fragile -- often vain -- project it is. When Milosevic was hauled to The Hague in 2001, the event was hailed as a welcome landmark: For the first time in history, a head of state and government had been brought before a war crimes tribunal to answer for his actions. But outside the Balkans, the world lost interest as the proceedings ground tediously onward. As John O'Sullivan notes on these pages, rather than bringing closure to victims, the trial merely gave a soapbox to Milosevic so he could rant at the West. This spectacle, too, is being repeated in Baghdad.

I haven't written anything on the death of Milosevic until now, because I've been trying to focus on the big picture. I'll let others weave conspiracy theories about whether Slobo was murdered, committed suicide, or died a natural death.

For me, it was remarkable that he was still in the middle of this absurd court case when it happened.

The National Post captured my distaste perfectly.

So what do we do about it? My thinking is that it is a mistake to treat these sorts of crimes as if there are crimes in the first place. The law courts, in particular in the West, are not suited to the prosecution of these crimes, as the Milosevic debacle clearly showed.

A war is fought, a war criminal is caught, but then he is tried as if he held up a convenience store. Lawyers try to weave a direct connection between the dictator and the deaths of this or that particular group of victims. Another group of lawyers file motion after motion in order to stall for time.

Why stall for time? Because war crimes are political and ideological crimes, committed for political or ideological reasons. A collapsed political system or a discredited ideology lose their grip on the public interest quickly as they are replaced with a new system and a different ideology. So stalling succeeds when it puts the ex-dictator past the point when the public cares any more.

As horrendous as Nazi crimes were, when an aging man is pulled in front of a judge accused of being a German prison guard at a concentration camp, more than a few people always wonder whether the past should just remain in the past. When the majority of people think like that, the dictator's defence lawyer knows he has a good chance of winning.

Maybe we need to remain in the realm of political expediency and ideological purity instead of shifting into the world of judicial minutiae in a situation in which we have captured a dictator like Milosevic or Sadaam.

• Were war crimes committed? Yes.
• Were they widespread, over a large area, over a long period of time, and involving an overwhelmingly large organized group of government employees, military and civilian? Yes.
• Did the dictator give speeches, both those aimed at a domestic audience and those presented to the world community, in which he encouraged those crimes against a particular and identifiable group? Yes.
• Did the retinue of cabinet ministers and hand-picked security people surrounding the dictator exclude those in the targeted groups? Yes.
• Is there reason to doubt that free and fair elections were held in this country? Yes.

Answer yes to these questions, provide and evaluate the evidence, and the dictator is found guilty. Over in less than a month.

This approach doesn't demand a direct link between the dictators desk and the crimes, but then a dictator might not have left one. But the political and ideological links remain, and they are not easily dismissed or discredited.

Speaking of minding your own business

You know Kevin Chalmers, the former campaign coordinator for David Emerson, and now the leader of the effort to "de-elect" Emerson for having the temerity to join cabinet.

Well, on the donation page on the de-election website he writes the following:

Send to:

Suite 359 - 3495 Cambie Street
Vancouver, BC V5Z 4R3

Any questions please contact us by email or phone at:

Email: info@emersoncampaign.ca

Notice that no actual phone number is provided.

Well, I checked the registry for emersoncampaign.ca, and Kevin Chalmers used the phone number (604) 924-9212. That turns out to be his home number at 145 Keith Road West in North Vancouver. Interestingly, that is in Don Bell's riding North Vancouver.

Kevin Chalmers does not live David Emerson's riding of Vancouver Kingsway. David Emerson is not Chalmer's member of parliament. Chalmer's is represented by Liberal MP Don Bell. Judging from the lack of a de-election campaign, Chalmers is pleased by his representation by an opposition MP first elected in 2004, and who has never held a cabinet post.

Maybe Kevin Chalmers can explain why he feels the need to de-elect someone else's member of parliament. Apparently just as he is happy with his representation by Don Bell, he knows that the people of Vancouver Kingsway would be happy to have a new member of parliament. But then why isn't there someone in David Emerson's own riding who is leading the charge to de-elect David Emerson?

Can't those Vancouver-Kingsway people organize their own town hall meetings?

As a Vancouver-Kingsway grass roots driven organization we would like to extend a formal invitation to Mr. Emerson to attend and participate in a town hall meeting with his constituents.

I think he meant "a North Vancouver-based Vancouver-Kingsway grass roots driven organization".

A "carpetbagger" is an outsider, especially a politician, who presumptuously seeks a position or success in a new locality. I guess that makes Chalmers some sort of anti-carpetbagger, an outsider who seeks the failure of local politician.

Maybe Chalmers can explain which is more dangerous to the parliamentary system: that an elected member of parliament joined the cabinet at the request of the prime minister, or that people might be able to force by-elections in ridings that aren't their own.

Imagine a riding in BC that is heavily NDP running de-election campaigns targeting a Conservative MP in Alberta. Or vice versa. Then you will understand why we have a riding system in which members are responsible to their own constituents.

Update: Apparently this was revealed by Norman Spector on CKNW radio today. Darn.

Brilliant? Looks like

In my post on Prime Minister Stephen Harper's visit to Afghanistan, I said the following:

I bring this up because with Stephen Harper's brilliantly executed visit to Afghanistan, I see a sign of that sort of division building.

The phrase "brilliantly executed" generated a bit of controversy. You can read opinions in the comments.

I haven't defended my choice of words, in part because I knew I wouldn't have to:

Just weeks ago, most Canadians said they wouldn't personally vote in favour of putting troops in Afghanistan. But a new poll finds a majority of Canadians back the mission even if they don't fully understand it.

The poll conducted by the Strategic Counsel for CTV and The Globe and Mail found that a modest but clear majority of Canadians -- 55 per cent -- now support the decision to send troops to Afghanistan. Only 41 per cent oppose the deployment.

An earlier poll conducted by the Strategic Counsel on Feb. 23 found that 62 per cent of Canadians would opt against sending troops to Afghanistan should a vote be held in Parliament. Only 27 per cent said they would vote in favour of the mission.

Furthermore, 73 per cent of respondents said the decision to send troops to Afghanistan should require parliamentary approval, while 20 per cent said it should not.

Of course, one visit doesn't explain this remarkable shift. But the change happened since February 23, a month after the election, at a time when the Conservatives were settling into government. The cabinet had already been in place for more than two weeks. Ministers were begining to respond to issues coming up in their portfolios, and the media was dutifully reporting and analyzing. This included the message from the Conservative government about their support for the troops and for the mission, and how it plays into the bigger picture of Canada re-asserting her sovereignty and defending her interests, at home and abroad

The poll itself was taken from March 9 through March 12, meaning the effect of Stephen Harper's visit on March 12 could have had a reinforcing effect at the end of the poll.

Now you see why I called the trip "brilliant". Not only was it a bold leadership move for a new prime minister leading a minority government to focus (in a very personal and public way) on an issue that is very controversial, politically, Stephen Harper seems to have picked exactly the right time to make this move.

He did it ahead of the poll. He is leading Canadian opinion, but at the same time, in tune with it. A certain former prime minister was well known for waiting for the polls to come out before deciding what to do.

Now the poll shows some problems. It seems that 70% of the respondents think the Canadian troops are there as peacekeepers. In the formal sense of the word, they are not. Peacekeepers are in place to keep apart two sides who have agreed to a cessation of hostilities. The Taliban have agreed to nothing, and the Canadian troops are in place to support one side over the other. In fact, the Canadians are hunting the Taliban down.

Nevertheless, the positive shift means that further refinement of the message so that Canadians are fully informed is not an impossible task. And with that, a productive and meaningful debate in Parliament can take place, if that's what ends up happening.

Grassroots, you say

Kevin Chalmers, David Emerson's former campaign coordinator, is spearheading the effort to have the floor-crossing cabinet minister "de-elected".

At his website, we learn that this is not motivated by partisan politics:

We are a non-partisan, grassroots campaign. We are not aligned with any political party.

They accept donations:

We welcome donations of all sizes -- every contribution helps.

Please make cheques out to:

Campaign to De-Elect David Emerson

As far as I can tell, this is not a registered political organization, or a charity. It is not a publicly traded company with shareholders. We're not in an election, so I'm not certain whether the so-called "third party" rules apply to restrict the amount of money spent. Kevin Chalmers is not registered as a lobbyist, so we don't know who he is talking to about this issue.

The bottom line is that we have his word for it that this is a non-partisan grassroots campaign. It might have started out that way, or maybe this Liberal Party organizer got the idea from somewhere else. He might be getting his money from somewhere else, too. Heck, the NDP came second in the riding -- who is to say money isn't being moved into this campaign from there.

We don't even know if Chalmers is making any effort to restrict donations so that only David Emerson's constituents are putting up the money, or if he is happy to accept money from any Canadian living anywhere in any amount who wants to meddle in the politics of Vancouver Kingsway.

Actually, if I were Chalmers, I'd probably want to keep that a secret too. Though partisans might be happy to accept help from any source as long as it advances their agenda, people who are not so sure about what to think about Emerson's move into cabinet would probably feel a bit angry if they learned that some outsiders were trying to force the issue and turf their candidate.

I wonder if anyone is looking into this.

Rank stupidity, realistically speaking

I've checked, and I can't find any stories of vandalism aimed at Belinda Stronach's riding office by angry conservatives:

Two men are in custody facing mischief charges after Vancouver police caught protesters dumping manure outside embattled MP David Emerson's constituency office early Monday.

Recall that recently four people were arrested for assault by trespass for staging a sit-in. This included Kevin Chalmers, David Emerson's former campaign coordinator and currently the CEO of White Tiger Consulting. White Tiger had two major contracts with Canfor, the lumber concern for which David Emerson was formerly the CEO. I'm guessing no new contracts will be going to White Tiger anytime soon. I wonder how the other partners at White Tiger feel about that?

Enough about those arrests. Back to the today's batch of arrests.

The names of the manure dumpers weren't reported.

Conservatives aren't devoid of passion. I bet plenty of people who felt betrayed by Belinda's defection to the Liberals in order to sell her vote for a cabinet post had petty revenge fantasies.

But then one of the things that seems to identify a liberal is being "liberated" from the bonds of common decency, or even the requirement to act within the law. Do you feel strongly about an issue, especially if it's just feeling against something without clearly for anything else? Then you aren't confined to letter writing, or peaceful protests, or personal boycotts, or exercising your vote at the next election. You're a liberal! You are allowed to do whatever you please.

As long as it makes you feel good, right?

Don't worry about the police and the law. Just call whatever you did direct action, physical political intervention, or even street theatre. Plenty of ways to spin vandalism and assault in such a way as to suggest that the appropriate response is applause and adulation instead of a hefty fine and possibly a criminal record.

Maybe it's the conservative way of seeing the world -- realisitically -- instead of the liberal way -- idealistically -- that prevents conservatives from engaging in this sort of thing. Call your "direct action" whatever you want -- it's still a petty crime committed by petty criminals for petty motives. Nothing like a healthy dose of realism to reveal stupidity for what it is.

The value of divisiveness

It is a given that after an election campaign, the winner must unite the electorate.

That is, for the most part, true. In Canada, Stephen Harper has to lead a country where there was no clear majority vote for any one party. That means he must fashion coalitions in order to lead.

Having said that, Stephen Harper must also be true to himself and his party platform. That is difficult if your potential coalition partners have allied themselves to pull in a common direction.

Of course, Stephen Harper's Conservatives won the single largest block of votes, so they should have the most pull. But if the other parties unite...

So it is key to keep the opposition off-balance and fractured. And one way to do that is to drive the opposition party to their extreme positions. Whereas the Liberals, the Bloc Quebecois, and the NDP have some common ground, there are plenty of things they disagree on. If Stephen Harper can keep them focused on their differences, the better his chances at successfully pursuing his agenda.

I bring this up because with Stephen Harper's brilliantly executed visit to Afghanistan, I see a sign of that sort of division building.

Recall that Canadian troops are in Afghanistan because the Liberals sent them in. The key is to force Jack Layton and the NDP to occupy a position which rigorously opposes that mission, and in doing so, create a source of serious friction that can play a role in the way the Liberals and the NDP are able to coordinate constructive opposition on other issues. Jack Layton is a politician, so he is certainly able to compartmentalize irritants for political expediency if he is allowed to. But true believers have it in their power to deny Jack Layton that latitude. For these people, that the Liberals put troops in Afghanistan means that the NDP should not make common cause with the Liberals.

Do these true believers exist? Here's a sample of comments about the visit from rabble.ca:

Let's hope that "support the troops" line of propaganda doesn't work here. I don't think it works with the military either as (using all the people in the military I know as a sample) most of them vote Liberal. [Euhemeros]

I fear for the morale of our troops. Imagine having that goop slobbering platitudes in your face, and you stifling a gag reflex. Back in the day, the troops referred to guys like Harper as "plugs". [nister]

No, this repulsive clown is simply aping his moron-mentor to the south, with his militaristic proclivities. Bush, it seems, is always addressing cadets or fresh recruits or marines or Westpoint graduates and seems to enjoy hanging around the engines of war, he must get some vicarious buzz of it...making up for earlier lost opportunities I suppose. Why doesn't Harper go visit a daycare center? An Innu community? Something a little more central to the Canadian identity than Victorian era colonialism? He's just a puke. [Merowe]

He invoked 9/11 early in the speech, moved to “we won’t cut and run… That’s not my way” and finished it all up with a “God bless Canada”. All Harper needs is the Texas drawl. [caliope]

He is a freak. [Cueball]

Jesus. Time to move to Europe. [Michelle]

Oh well, at least he's honest about it. Unlike the Liberals who did all their pro-Bush regime stuff behind closed doors and kept us happy with a well-spun lie about how we're "peacekeepers" and somehow only benignly imperialist. [kuri]

I like the last comment in particular. As much as these people hate the Conservatives, the Liberals have earned a special disdain. The Conservatives are a clear antithesis, but the Liberals steal NDP votes by posing as liberals but acting like conservatives (from the point of view of the NDP folks). Many would have been willing to hold their noses and work with the Liberals, but now...?

If the true believers can be kept in full "Hate Harper" mode, that will compromise the ability of Jack Layton to work constructively with the Liberals. The Liberals are not ready to go into an election. They need to tread carefully in this minority government. With the right level of pressure, working in unity with the NDP or the Bloc Quebecois, the Liberals might be able to influence this minority government, even blackmail it, without going to far as to trigger an election.

Working with the Bloc is fraught with political peril for any party, but especially for the Liberals who still portray themselves as Canada's only true party of national unity. That leaves the NDP, but if Jack Layton is unable to make pragmatic compromises when required if it means being seen to take the lead from the evil Conservatives or the duplicitous Liberals...

Unwilling to pull the pin on the election grenade, and faced with a seething and irrational NDP base handcuffing Jack Layton, and unwilling to work with the politically unpalatable Bloc, the Liberals may be forced to support the Conservatives (at least by not voting against the Conservatives) just to maintain the status quo until the Liberals have a new leader (a year away, if not longer). The bizarre situation might even inspire more Liberals to cross the floor.

I know this is an elaborate chain of reasoning, but in the end, in a minority situation, the pragmatic will win over the ideologue. Ironically, the pragmatic Conservatives will have to act like ideologues into order to draw the NDP into behaving the same way, and so give the Conservatives the upper hand.

But if George W Bush said the same thing...

OK, quick test. I'm going to name two presidents. Which one would you associate with venereal disease?

• Bill Clinton
• George W Bush

If you are honest, you will say Bill Clinton, whatever your political leanings. The facts of the Lewinski scandal are beyond dispute. His reputation as a rake precedes him. I'm not saying he actually has a disease, but if you were going to reference that condition with any president, past or present...

And yet if Anne Coulter said Bill Clinton was a syphilitic president, she'd be excoriated. Even if it was a metaphor.

So why does Kurt Vonnegut get away with it?

On a cold, cloudy night, the lines threaded all the way around the Ohio State campus. News that Kurt Vonnegut was speaking at the Ohio Union prompted these "apathetic" heartland college students to start lining up in the early afternoon. About 2,000 got in to the Ohio Union. At least that many more were turned away. It was the biggest crowd for a speaker here since Michael Moore.

"Well," says Vonnegut, "I just want to say that George W. Bush is the syphilis president."

The students seem to agree.

Apparently it was a metaphor. One that required no explanation, though no one quite understands what Vonnegut meant. I suppose it was supposed to sound like a clever insult, without actually being clever. A multisyllabic version of "You're stupid!"

But Vonnegut said it, so it must be genius.

Here's another example.

George W Bush stands up and says that when a young person declares that he or she is a homosexual, the parents are inevitably hurt by the news.

Did he say that? No, but if he did, the hue and cry would be deafening. Bush and his social conservative cabal hate homosexuals and assume that a declaration of homosexuality can only be met with pain and not with love and acceptance. Maybe that's the way things are in Jesusland, but not in enlightened places of America (who voted for John Kerry, by the way).

But guess what? Kurt Vonnegut said exactly that in the same speech:

"If you really want to hurt your parents and don't want to be gay, go into the arts," he says.

Then he breaks into song, doing a tender, loving rendition of "Stardust Memories."

By now the packed hall has grown reverential. The sound system is appropriately tenuous. Straining to hear every word is both an effort and a meditation.

Meditation? Reverential? He likens homosexuality to something universally repellant, and the crowd reveres him? He was making a joke, of course. Fine. But I thought we weren't allowed to make jokes like that. Imagine Stephen Harper or Jason Kenney saying something like that in Canada, or George W Bush or John Ashcroft in the US, even in jest.

As he accepts the students' standing ovation with characteristic dignity and grace, not a few tears come from young people who are wise enough to appreciate what they are seeing. "If this isn't great," they seem to say, "what is?"

How can a crowd of university students be so bereft of the gift of critical thinking?

Turning the other cheek

Sad news out of Iraq. Tom Fox, a non-violent Christian worker from the US, firmly on the side of the insurgents, was murdered by those same insurgents, his body left to be found as a message. The message? That the US abandon Iraq to the terrorists and the genocidal maniacs and the Islamic fundamentalists, so that they can continue to murder and kill and enrich themselves.

Now it is one thing to stand for your principles. Even to be killed for living by your principles. For that Tom Fox has to be given a measure of respect.

Too bad his own people aren't giving him that respect.

Will You Stand Up for Choice in Childcare?

[An email I received today]

Brent Colbert has invited you to join in supporting Stand Up For Choice In Childcare. Opposition MP and Senators have threatened to vote down the new Government's Choice in Childcare proposal. Please take a moment to let them know that you want the Choice in Childcare benefit and forward this on to your friends and family.

Opposition MP and Senators have threatened to vote down the new Government's Choice in Childcare proposal. During the election parents across Canada voted for change and part of that change was for a government that respected all parents and the choices they make for their kids. Canadians voted against an eleven billion dollar bureaucratic scheme that would only provide limited help to less than 30% of Canadian families that choose institutional care for their kids. Canadians voted for the $1200 per year per child benefit promised during the election. Parents want the freedom to invest that money in the childcare that best suits their children. Perhaps it's classes for their stay-at-home kids or money to pay for extra help for a special needs child. Some parents will use the benefit to offset the costs of a nanny, a relative or the fees at a day care center. But in the end, it will be their choice not the governments. That is why Canadian parents need to stand up and tell the opposition politicians to pass the Choice in Childcare benefit. What you can do:

1. E-mail the Senators and demand they pass the Choice in Childcare Benefit. To e-mail all 100 Senators send your message to email.senate@gmail.com. You must include your name and mailing address to receive a reply.
2. Call E-mail or write your MP and tell them that you support the Choice In Childcare Benefit. Visit The House of Commons website to look up your MP. (Remember you do not need a stamp to send a letter to your MP)
3. Visit http://brentcolbert.com/blog/parents-links/ for a list of websites with information about childcare and more information about how to contact your MP.
4. Call your local radio phone-in show and send a letter to the editor of your community newspaper.
5. Pass this e-mail on to your friends and family and tell them to do the same. Make sure to include school/daycare parents, "moms 'n tots" groups and any other parents you know. Together we can make our voices heard.

Click here to join this campaign and pass it on to your friends. One individual can make a difference.

http://www.brentcolbert.com/childcare/campaigns/childcare/accept/d8452ab26e70f10dc808e027b64fe962/

Thank you for your support.

Tightening up on immigration

Illegal immigrants seem to think they have a right to be here, and a right not be subjected to the law. The same goes for the United States. Perhaps more so:

Tens of thousands of immigrants from all over the Chicago area, many carrying U.S. flags, marched into downtown Chicago on Friday in a show of support for immigrant rights.

Shouts of "Si se puede" (Yes, it can be done) could be heard throughout city streets as the mostly Latino marchers descended upon the plaza across from the Dirksen Federal Courthouse, where they listened to speeches voicing support for pro-immigrant legislation and opposition to a measure that would toughen penalties for illegal immigrants.

The rally came as the U.S. Senate struggles with a bill to stiffen border enforcement and a new report estimates the illegal immigrant population has grown from about 8.4 million in 2000 to nearly 12 million.

You would think legitimate immigrants would support cracking down on illegals.

In any case, I love this quote:

"What are Americans going to do without the Latin people? We do the jobs white people don't want to do." - Mario Leguizamo, 21, of suburban Cicero.

Of course, this is nonsense. It also shows that the US should tighten up immigration rules such that successful immigrants have to have a basic understanding of capitalism.

There are job people don't want to do. Arguably, there is no job anyone wants to do -- that why we call them jobs and not hobbies.

But jobs are done in exchange for pay and other compensation. That pay is typically rated against the tightness of the labour market. Not too many people can do brain surgery, so brain surgeons are paid handsomely to reflect the rarity of brain surgeons. Mopping floors? Well, most of us can mop a floor, so the pay is lower.

But what if people don't want to mop floors? Then the money needed to be paid to a floor mopper in order to entice someone to take the job would rise. At some point, the compensation would attract sufficient numbers of floor moppers and the market stabilizes.

Labour is a commodity like anything else.

Like all commodities, we have anti-dumping laws. Dumping occurs when you sell a commodity at an unreasonably low price. Illegal immigrants who pay no taxes can charge less for their labour. Not paying taxes is unreasonable. So they set their labour rates unreasonably low. The potential for a vibrant and decent paying floor mopping market to provide employment for citizens and legal immigrants never forms as a result.

Mario has it wrong. Illegal immigrants don't do the jobs while people don't want to do. Illegal immigrants make it so the jobs won't pay enough to support a citizen or a legal immigrant (I won't go into that "white" thing -- this isn't about race).

Of course, the rate of pay is so low that it doesn't pay for an illegal immigrant to become legal. Once on the tax roll, the floor mopping job won't pay enough to meet the new financial obligation. All the other illegal immigrants who are still illegal will keep the pay rate for that job low.

Hence the resistance to any law to flush out illegals or otherwise deal with the situation -- one of the reasons, anyway. It's not all about families and being in America and "we're all immigrants" and so on and so forth. It is about keeping your expenses low and your job market protected.

Hardly inspirational reasons. Probably why they don't talk about it all that much.

Paul Martin's tenure as Prime Minister? Fuhgetaboutit!

Something I just happened across.

At the Liberal Party website, Paul Martin is still listed as the leader of the party, and so he is. But the biography, which runs over 500 words, makes no mention that he was ever the Prime Minister of this country!

Paragraph 1: Member of Parliament for LaSalle-emard. Came in second in the leadership race in 1990.

Paragraph 2: Finance critic from 1991 to 1993. Helped author the Red Book.

Paragraph 3: Finance minister from 1993 to 2002.

Paragraph 4: Gained "unprecedented support" during his leadership bid in 2003. No mention if he won, or who won.

Paragraph 5: Great finance minister, blah-blah.

Paragraph 6: Great finance minister with international respect, blah-blah.

Paragraph 7: Helped developing nations.

Paragraph 8: Family stuff.

Paragraph 9: Paul Martin's father was an influential member of Liberal Party under four prime ministers.

Paragraph 10: Junior went to school.

Paragraph 11: Junior ran some companies.

Paragraph 12: Family stuff. The end.

Amazing.

It's like history stopped just prior to the leadership race in November 2003. Paul Martin led the Liberals in two elections. No mention of either. No mention of any accomplishments as prime minister.

Were there any? Apparently not. Hey, that's not my partisan opinion. Read Paul Martin's official Liberal Party biography. The man disappears once he becomes prime minister. Not that the party even admits that he became prime minister.

Compare this with Bill Graham's biography under the title "Leader of the Opposition", available immediately after Paul Martin's "The Leader" piece:

Following the 2004 election, Mr. Graham was appointed Minister of National Defence. As Defence Minister, he has introduced the new Defence Policy Statement which represents the most significant change to Canada's military in fifteen years.

It goes on in this vein. Clearly Bill Graham did stuff worth mentioning after the 2004 election. I wonder who was the prime minister at the time. Bill Graham's biography does not mention who appointed him minister.

Remember how they** said Paul Martin's tenure as prime minister would be relegated to a footnote? Looks like if the Liberal Party has its way, he'd be lucky to have footnote.

If you're interested, "they" include Charles Adler, Allan Bonner, Warren Kinsella, Campbell Clark, Arthur Weinreb, and Peter Worthington. There may have been others.

Double standards

It appears that the NDP has had enough of being told that they have two sets of standards, one for right-wing parties and one for left-wing parties. Or perhaps one for temporary allies and another for everyone else.

Whatever.

In any case, while the NDP was calling for an ethics investigation into former cabinet minister David Emerson crossing the floor to join the Conservatives and so join Stephen Harper's inaugural cabinet, not a word was heard from the NDP about neophyte MP Belinda Stronach crossing the floor to join the Liberals and enter cabinet on the eve of a confidence vote.

The fact is, as I've argued before, neither are really matters of ethics, but of political calculation. Politics can be ugly, but in the end, it is up to the voters to pass judgment.

Still, it appears that the NDP is now trying to be retroactively consistent:

The NDP is asking ethics commissioner Bernard Shapiro to expand his investigation into parliamentary floor crossing to include Liberal Belinda Stronach.

Shapiro is already looking into the decision by David Emerson to leave the Liberals for a Conservative cabinet post just after the January election. Stronach crossed the other way last year, abandoning the Tories to sit in Paul Martin's cabinet.

New Democrat MP Pat Martin says the two incidents are so similar, they cry out for a joint investigation.

Joint? Does that mean a joint judgment too?

I'd say there is a 50-50 chance that Shapiro will refuse to investigate the Stronach situation. He'll come up with some excuse, like that it happened too long ago, or that the election cleans the slate, or that since she is no longer in government and no longer in cabinet, the issue was rendered irrelevant.

Part of me hopes he does come up with an excuse. Just one more reason not to trust him. On the other hand, things could get interesting if he does investigate Stronach.

Consider this. Stephen Harper is refusing to cooperate because, frankly, choosing ministers is the prime minister's prerogative. It is a matter of his judgment, not of his ethics. If Shapiro agrees to investigate the Stronach case, will Paul Martin agree to cooperate? Will Belinda Stronach? Which is more important -- keeping the Stronach situation under wraps and in the past, or putting Harper on the hot seat?

Since Belinda Stronach is vying for the leadership of the Liberal Party, you know that she would rather give Emerson and Harper a pass than submit to an investigation. Of course, a few Liberal contenders for the leadership might see this as a way of taking out the potential front-runner, and might join the call for the investigation to include Stronach. It'll be interesting to watch what happens.

Anyone from Burnaby-Douglas who can give the rest of Canada a hand?

Update: Looks like the NDP had enough of people pointing out the double-standard.

Are any of you constituents in Burnaby-Douglas? Is your member of parliament Bill Siksay?

Then go read this. When you are done, write to Mr Siksay, and tell him this:

Dear Mr Siksay,

As one of your 100,000 constituents, I appreciate the effort you make to represent me. One of those efforts should be to maintain and even improve the quality of government. Mr Dave Platten has written to you asking you to explain how David Emerson's move to the Conservatives is worthy of an ethics investigation while Belinda Stronach's was not. Your response was that if he wasn't a constituent, he was not owed an answer.

He is a Canadian, sir, and I believe any Canadian is owed an answer to such a question. But consider this to be a request from one of your constituents for an answer to exactly the question he posed. Here is his original email to you:

I have written to several NDP members and the NDP web site but have yet to get a response to the following question, the NDP are asking the Ethics Commissioner to look into the floor crossing of David Emerson, are the NDP asking the same for Belinda Stronach? If not, why not?

It would be nice if someone in the NDP Party could stand up for their actions and give me an answer, or is there not one to be found? Was there nothing for the NDP to gain by acting in the Stronach crossing?

The email was dated March 5.

It would be nice if you responded to Mr Platten directly, but if you consider typing his email address to be too much time spent away from focusing on the needs of your constituents, send the response to me, and be assured I will forward a copy to Mr Platten.

Mr Platten asked a very relevant question, and your response suggested that you would rather not answer it, perhaps because you don't have an answer. I hope this is not true, and I look forward to your explanation of the subtleties of what the NDP caucus considers to be ethical behaviour.

Please be sure to include an explanation of the NDP response to both the Emerson and Stronach situation and how they are somehow different, and so requiring a different response. Also let me know if your response is merely your opinion, or the working principles of the NDP for situations such as this one.

Make sure you include a full address so that Siksay knows you are one of his constituents and thus a worthy recipient of his vast wisdom.

The rest of us, apparently, are not counted worthy, so we're depending on you. Don't let us down. Let me know how it goes, and post comments to this entry with any responses you get.

The problem with rules

Just some thoughts on ethics and rules.

They're called principles -- look it up in the dictionary

Consider this a sign of things to come:

The Boston Archdiocese's Catholic Charities said Friday it would stop providing adoption services because state law requires them to consider gays and lesbians as parents.

The social services arm of the Roman Catholic archdiocese has provided adoption services for about a century. But it says state law allowing gays to adopt runs counter to church teachers on homosexuality.

The state's four Catholic bishops said earlier this month that the law threatens the church's religious freedom by forcing it to do something it considers immoral.

The stance is not a popular one. The 42-member board of Catholic Charities had voted to adopt out to gay parents. Eight have resigned over the shutting down of the adoption service. But what in the end was the Church going to do?

"But now, we have encountered a dilemma we cannot resolve," [Rev. J. Bryan Hehir and trustees chairman Jeffrey Kaneb] said.

Expect the same dilemma here. But where in the US the Church's right not to do something will be respected, I expect that in a similar situation in Canada, the Church will be taken to court or hauled in front of a human rights tribunal in an attempt to compel it to comply.

But the Church has principles, and they aren't up for negotiation or debate. Here's hoping the forces of modernity don't make the mistake of trying to force the Church into doing something she simply will not do.

The absurdity of looking into someone's soul

The Prime Minister has the duty to form a cabinet. Tradition dictates that cabinet ministers are selected from among the members elected to parliament. Politics makes it clear that the cabinet members be selected from among members of the Prime Minister's party.

Every MP looks to belong to cabinet. Of course, they do. They believe they have something to offer. They wouldn't run for elected office otherwise. But what of the pay and the perks that come with the job?

Is it a crime to look forward to those as well?

David Emerson was elected to Parliament. He was selected to be a member of Stephen Harper's cabinet. No one doubts his skill -- he was an effective cabinet minister in the last government.

But the NDP has called in the Ethics Commissioner because they allege that Emerson was enticed by the benefits of being a cabinet minister to take the job.

Well, d'uh. Being a cabinet minister is a lot harder than being an opposition MP. Of course, few NDP members will ever experience the difference. In a capitalist system, we routinely compensate for the extra work with extra pay, based on the perceived value of the work. A cabinet minister is seen as contributing significantly more than an opposition MP, so he gets paid more.

Enticement or compensation?

And even if Emerson took the offer so that he could get a limo, how are you going to know? Will Bernard Shapiro, the Ethics Commissioner, look into Emerson's soul, to make sure he was sufficiently motivated by selflessness?

This is why the Conservatives under Stephen Harper did not demand an ethics investigation into Belinda Stronach's defection. In that case, the MP involved was not suited to the portfolio, had no experience as a cabinet minister, and clearly was being offered a position in order to save the government from a non-confidence vote.

Well, when I say clearly, I mean it seemed obvious. But then, a cabinet post is not a new car. It's not like she was offered money to cross the floor. Belinda was assigned a job that had lots of headaches, and that would make her a major target during Question Period. The compensation -- the pay, the perks -- are hardly all that important to a multi-millionare like her.

In the end, the only perk that Paul Martin could offer to put her a step closer to the centre of power, and to put her in a position from which she could one day make a play for that power. Is that ethical? No. But then how do you prove motivations?

You can't, and so there was no ethics investigation demanded. Paul Martin had the right to make the offer, and Belinda Stronach has the right to accept it. It is simply beyond the power of any human to evaluate what motivates a person. The scope of the ethics commissioner is to evaluate whether an MP is using his position and his powers to earn some sort of personal profit.

Bernard Shapiro refused to investigate the way Tony Valeri personally profited from a land-flip deal with a businessman that made no economic sense, but that put thousands of dollars into Valeri's pocket, money from the bank account of a person who profited from government contracts. But he wants to investigate whether David Emerson's motivations were sufficiently pure when he took on a job the Prime Minister had every right to offer him, a job that will be difficult and is compensated appropriately.

No wonder Stephen Harper has no time for Bernard Shapiro.

Big NASA announcement? [Updated]

From Drudge:

NASA is planning to make a huge announcement today, about possible life in our own solar system. Exact details of what we can expect to hear have not been released. We do know that evidence has been found that could point to life relatively close to the earth....

Though little is known about the single-celled lifeform right now, scientists studying the genetic code of dozens of organisms have discovered the same pattern that appears once in each organism. Note that this analog to Terran DNA utilizes many dozens of base-pairs compared to the four base-pairs we are familiar with:

American scientists admit they are puzzled.

Update:

Apparently this was a mistake:

NASA will not be making a "huge" announcement regarding evidence of life somewhere else in our solar system Thursday, as reported on a local news Web site and repeated by some broadcasters, according to Local 6 News partner Florida Today.

The space agency is releasing a study Thursday at 2 p.m., that is being misinterpreted by some people, according to an Internet posting by Florida Today's John Kelly.

A story posted earlier on a Web site of a local cable news outlet in Central Florida said, "NASA is planning to make a huge announcement today, about possible life in our own solar system." It is simply incorrect, Kelly said.

The station is asking that all further requests concerning this incident be directed at the new public affairs department:

They are eager to meet with anyone who harbours a notion that alien life is out there. They can be very persuasive in convincing people otherwise.

Stop worrying about EMP

From a reader, posting a bit off topic on the issue of gun control:

A BIG GUN

Steve, read this:

EMP

Well, I read it, and I wasn't impressed. I wasn't impressed the first time I read about War Footing: Ten Steps America Must Take to Prevail in the War for the Free World by Frank Gaffney.

I haven't read the book myself -- I want to make that clear. From what I've seen written by others, the other nine steps make sense.

But hardening against EMP? Probably not. Well, Christian Broadcast News wrote up a scare piece, the link provided by my reader, that tries to emphasize the importance of the threat:

Frank Gaffney is president of The Center for Security Policy, a conservative think-tank in Washington, D.C. Gaffney said, “Electromagnetic pulse is an effect of nuclear weapons that has been known for a long time.”

True.

“If that pulse hits the electrical grids of the United States,” Gaffney explained, “if it hits electronic devices, computers, chips of various kinds--the things, in other words, that power our society--they're likely to be severely damaged, if not destroyed.

True.

So how would an EMP attack work? The detonation of a single low-yield nuclear weapon at a high altitude above the United States would send powerful electromagnetic pulses down to the Earth's surface. These EMPs could potentially knock out America's power grid.

Not entirely true (you need a high yield device) and certainly not very likely (lifting a high yield device into high altitude is a tough proposition).

He added, “Iran is very close to having a nuclear weapon. I would say a matter of months--at the most, a few years. If Iran can marry up a small nuclear warhead with that Shahab missile system--and we know they've tested their missile systems on boats--and they put that on a freighter off of our coast, they have the capability to shut down our economy from the East Coast to the West Coast without harming--directly--any human being.”

Do the math, and understand the requirements of generating an EMP, and you see that they don't have this capability.

Don't take me on my word. Expand this post and read my analysis. I've reposted my discussion about EMP from November 22, with an update about Iranian and North Korean capabilities. You'll realize two things.

First, the likelihood of an EMP attack is low to nil.

Second, the media needs to hire more engineers and scientists who want to make a career change to journalism. Depending entirely on liberal arts majors means that the media is simply not equipped to make a critical evaluation of the facts of this sort of story.

A note to the reader who provided the link: Thanks for the link, and don't think for a second I'm criticizing you. Anyone would read that article and think the worst. Fortunately, I've already considered this very threat, and your comment gave me the excuse to repost it.

Dangerous guns or dangerous gun registry?

Remember how Paul Martin promised an outright ban of all legally owned handguns in this country? How that would put a dent in gun crimes, since a major source of handguns used in crimes are stolen from legitimate owners?

It is a fact that gun owners have lost their handguns as a result of break-ins. On February 4, an Oshawa man had a large collection stolen:

Forty handguns including tiny Derringer-like pocket pistols discovered stolen from an Oshawa house yesterday could have disappeared anytime within the past 12 days, says the man who spent a lifetime collecting the weapons.

Durham Regional Police Det. Const. Ron Kapuscinski said there was nothing to set Foster’s house apart, or to distinguish it as a gun collector’s home.

“It doesn’t appear to be targeted, and it’s not the typical, `Look at me, I have handguns’ kind of residence,” Kapuscinski told the Star’s Alwynne Gwilt. “And he’s not the guy who’d go around telling people he had them.”

The guns were properly stored in locked steel cabinets. Someone came with equipment to bust open those cabinets. Someone knew the guns were there.

By the way, six of the forty guns have been recovered so far, and charges have been laid against gang members, including tampering with serial numbers on a firearm.

So the handguns were stolen by gang members who wanted the guns, and who were prepared to rework them to sell on the street.

Was Paul Martin right? Should all handguns be banned? Is it too easy for gang members to figure out which one average looking home out of fifty is the one with a locked steel cabinet somewhere in the basement with a trove of working handguns inside?

You could try to read ammunition purchase logs without getting chased out of a store. You could try to follow people home from the store and not get caught.

Ironically, of all the ways to figure out who to target, the easiest and least risky way is using the gun registry itself.

Someone spiked Scott Brison's leadership bid

Who torpedoed Scott Brison's Liberal leadership bid?

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has turned over an e-mail received from Liberal MP Scott Brison to police and regulators as part of a probe into the income-trust controversy that dogged the Liberals in the recent election campaign, The Globe and Mail has learned.

Sources said the former public works minister, a potential contender for the Liberal leadership, sent an e-mail to one of CIBC's employees the day before Ottawa announced its much-anticipated policy on income trusts last November, in which he suggested the recipient would likely be pleased by the decision. [emphasis added]

It wasn't the bank and it wasn't the RCMP. I say that because people in either of those organizations have little to gain from the leak and a lot to lose if they were revealed to be the source.

So that leaves someone in the Liberal Party itself. Presumably a few key Liberal cabinet colleagues were made aware of Scott Brison's meeting with the RCMP on January 18. The Prime Minister, House Leader Tony Valeri, Public Safety Minister Anne McLellan perhaps, since the RCMP was leading the investigation. Key people in the Prime Minister's Office. But no one else -- the election was only days away, and as bad as things were, a revelation like this could have destroyed the Liberals.

The Liberals end up losing the election on January 23 (though not as badly as some had expected), Paul Martin announces that he will step down, and major Liberal figures (Brian Tobin, John Manley, Frank McKenna, etc) announce that they will not run.

Suddenly second-stringers like Belinda Stronach, Ken Dryden, and Joe Volpe are leadership contenders. Include in that list Scott Brison.

So we have suspects -- Stronach, Dryden, etc -- with motives but no means. Certainly they are motivated to eliminate a potential leadership run by Brison. But how would they have known about his involvement in the Income Trust Scandal?

As I said, I can't believe that the knowledge of Brison's RCMP interview was widespread. Indeed, I expect the circle of people who knew was almost certainly kept very small.

That means one of these key people decided to spike Brison's bid. Is this person trying to help one of the other potential leadership candidates, or is this person just out to get Brison? Or did this person conclude that Brison would damage the party as leader, or even by running for leader? And more intriguing -- is this person acting alone, or with the knowledge of the power players in the former PMO, or even under the guidance of Paul Martin himself?

Or maybe the source of the leak was the bank or the RCMP after all.

And here's a very speculative and very unlikely scenario. What if David Emerson knew? I doubt he did, but let's say he knew or found out. He joins the Conservatives and brings this little nugget of knowledge. Next thing you know, it's splashed all over the papers. Why would the Conservatives have done this, if indeed they did, as unlikely as it is? Well, there could be better a time to reveal this, like during a leadership campaign itself, but that might be so far off in the future that it's impact would be minimal. In any case, Scott Brison might not even run. On the other hand, reveal it now, and suddenly you have a story competing for attention with the Emerson thing, which is good news for the Conservatives. Moreover, you bring the focus back to what the Liberals have been accused of doing (in this case, insider trading) which makes the Emerson thing look like small potatoes.

Just musing out loud.

Income Trust Connections

How can we link Ralph Goodale and Scott Brison?

It matters, because we are trying to understand how it was the Scott Brison would have known about the decision not to tax income trusts ahead of the November 23 announcement. The Globe and Mail is reporting that Scott Brison sent an email to someone at the CIBC on November 22 revealing that secret decision.

I left my post wondering how Scott Brison, Public Works minister, would have known.

Here's a working theory.

Good decisions or bad decisions

From the CBC:

More than 60 former politicians, business leaders and retired bureaucrats are warning Prime Minister Stephen Harper that implementing some of Justice John Gomery's reforms may do more harm than good.

The letter, delivered to Harper on Monday, was signed by former politicians from all political stripes. They include former Ontario NDP premier Bob Rae, John Manley, deputy Liberal prime minister under Jean Chretien, former Conservative cabinet minister Barbara McDougall and Tory Senator and one-time Brian Mulroney aide Hugh Segal.

Thankfully, Stephen Harper only promised to look at the report's recommendations and accept those that align with his view of how to re-establish accountability in government.

Contrast that to Paul Martin's promise to implement the Gomery recommendations, sight unseen.

Another bullet dodged, it seems:

The letter says some of the reforms will help, including better parliamentary oversight of government spending.

"Unfortunately, the report also includes some other recommendations that do not take adequate account of how governments actually function, and thus could do a good deal of harm."

They single out a recommendation that would reduce the influence wielded by the clerk of the Privy Council. They also object to a reform that would take away the prime minister's power to appoint deputy ministers.

The letter says that as the head of the government, Harper needs the ability to "organize it in ways that best respond to your objectives."

The prime minister should be able to name deputy ministers and have a close relationship with the clerk of the Privy Council, the letter states.

Interesting that these people representing such a spread on the political spectrum all agree that prime minister has to have to ability to achieve his goals. That's refreshing change from those who believe that Stephen Harper has no right to actually lead, such as in this recommendation from Democracy Watch:

“To end patronage and cronyism in appointments, opposition party leaders should be given the power to approve or reject the Prime Minister’s nominees with reasons for rejections made public, especially for appointments to law enforcement positions,” said Duff Conacher, Coordinator of Democracy Watch.

How does crippling the ability of the prime minister to make appointments make those appointments any better?

What people seem to confuse is leadership and opacity. What we want is more transparency in government. Decisions to be made publicly. We should know who made the decision. We should know why they made the decision.

But we still need to allow the prime minister and his government to make and implement decisions. For example, what matters is not that the Sponsorship Program was a bad idea. It was that it was a bad idea implemented in secret by people who then denied their responsibility in its implementation. That lack of transparency is why the program festered for so long and reached the proportions that it did.

The solution to these problems is not to make it impossible for the prime minister and his ministers to make decisions and implement them. They have to be able to make those decisions, even at the risk of making bad decisions. The solution instead is to make certain that there is an accounting of the decisions made, good or bad.

Question Period should be reversed

The Income Trust Scandal has touched yet another senior Liberal:

The former Liberal government insisted that details of its Nov. 23 plans for income trusts were tightly held and that its staff kept details secret until the announcement was made.

[Former Liberal Finance Minister Ralph Goodale] disclosed during the election campaign that two other cabinet ministers knew in advance about the Nov. 23 announcement: former revenue minister John McCallum and then-House leader Tony Valeri. The campaign began Nov. 29.

Mr. Goodale also said that three of the then-prime minister's senior aides were aware of the substance of the income-trust announcement in advance, but he didn't name them.

Of course, we all know that the suspicion is that someone spilled the beans, that income trusts, which were under threat of taxation, would not be taxed. That afternoon, before the announcement, there was some seriously weird trading on income trusts, as if someone knew that an announcement would be made soon that would pump up the price of these depressed stocks.

Apparently the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has an incriminating email:

The Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has turned over an e-mail received from Liberal MP Scott Brison to police and regulators as part of a probe into the income-trust controversy that dogged the Liberals in the recent election campaign, The Globe and Mail has learned.

Sources said the former public works minister, a potential contender for the Liberal leadership, sent an e-mail to one of CIBC's employees the day before Ottawa announced its much-anticipated policy on income trusts last November, in which he suggested the recipient would likely be pleased by the decision.

The bank did not learn of the e-mail until after the federal election campaign began, but when it did, it launched an internal review of its trading activity in the lead-up to Ottawa's announcement. The sources said the review did not turn up anything unusual, but CIBC still decided to bring its report to the attention of the RCMP and the Ontario Securities Commission.

Of course, Brison is denying everything, which is bizarre, if only because the email is actual hard evidence. This isn't someone recalling a conversation. This is an email with headers and whatnot. The email was sent on November 22, a suspicious date indeed.

Even if the CIBC did not act on the information, and it insists it did not, the fact is that there is evidence that a senior cabinet minister sent a nudge-nudge-wink-wink email to a financial house about impending tax law changes.

People go to jail over stuff like this.

If the email turns out to be legit, I wonder exactly why Brison knew about the tax decision. I can't see why he should have known. McCallum as revenue minister and Valeri as House Leader made sense. Public works minister? Don't see it. How did he know about the decision? Paul Martin, Ralph Goodale, John McCallum, and Tony Valeri all insist that they confided only in immediate senior staff, and that no one leaked the information any further.

Someone else is lying.

You know what the bizarre thing is? When Parliament resumes sitting, Question Period will make no sense. The Conservatives, as the governing party, will be asked all the questions. But the answers to all the interesting questions still lie with the Liberals.

Canadian style politics

Fatah leads the Palestinians for years. Now Hamas takes over. Will any Fatah politicians consider crossing the floor?

During the voting, a dozen Fatah gunmen walked near the parliament building in Gaza City, firing into the air. The gunmen eventually headed to a nearby meeting of Fatah leaders, demanding that their party not join a Hamas government, with one masked gunman saying any Fatah politician who did would be killed.

I suppose David Emerson should be grateful. On the other hand, expect the Liberals to take credit for our more peaceful way of politics, citing decades of strict gun control.

Call me

Apparently, there is work to be had in Ottawa:

They are usually highly coveted, influential backroom jobs but as the Tories mark their first month since gaining office, many of the seats of power remain unoccupied.

Of the 27 cabinet ministers, three have yet to hire chiefs-of-staff — several key ministries, like defence and finance, named theirs in the last week — and more than half don't have communications directors or parliamentary affairs advisers.

Top government officials maintain the key positions have long been filled, which is the case in Prime Minister Stephen Harper's office. But in the ministries, some senior staff grumble that the new government is anything but a well-oiled machine.

A high-ranking ministerial official, who, like others interviewed, didn't wish to be named, said there is still a lot of indecision, and the slow pace of hiring means ministers are sometimes finding it hard to accomplish even basic tasks, like setting up meetings with colleagues to align departmental priorities.

As a project manager, I've had lot of experience in combining and coordinating disparate teams, often geographically dispersed.

A chief-of-staff for a minister can earn as much as $160,000 per year. Communications directors and senior policy advisers top out at about $120,000.

"I don't know if it's a power play thing or trying to keep the resources for the front-line ministries, but there are some differences (in budgets)," said an official who advises a minister in one of the priority areas.

Hey, I'd work for somewhat less.

Call me. I can start within days. No kidding.

The Abotech Affair: It was a smokescreen!

From my post on November 18:

As you recall, Liberal MP David Smith, who sits in Parliament for the riding of Pontiac and claims to be an aboriginal, ran a company called Abotech, a computer consultancy firm, out of his home. Now the company is run by his wife, a nurse. Smith insists he has no idea what is going in Abotech.

Abotech has been caught up in a KPMG audit at PWGSC. Several contracts between Abotech and the federal government have been terminated. Why? No one is saying. Also, a bureaucrat named Frank Brazeau has been suspended without pay in connection with the audit. Frank Brazeau is also David Smith's cousin. Why was he suspended? No one is saying.

The reports we have from the media state the problem has to do with sole-sourcing contracts. In other words, this is a problem of process, not of quality of work. Abotech itself is innocent, or so it is implied. In fact, it is the victim in this drama. It is being punished because it accepted contracts from an incompetent or corrupt government official, a certain Frank Brazeau, who did not follow the rules.

Is the sole-sourcing problem for which Abotech is being punished, and that was so breezily dismissed by Minister Brison as really an opportunity to improve on the quality work provided by Abotech, just a smokescreen? Is it a way to deal with a potentially embarrassing problem in a quiet way, especially with a minority government in the balance? Is Frank Brazeau guilty of being a convenient scapegoat? Does he even know what is really going on, or has he been simultaneously promised a reward for his silence and threatened with retribution if he talks?

Is this about protecting David Smith and one extra Liberal seat so crucial for the survival of the minority government? Is this about trying to avoid one more multi-million dollar scandal, a scandal that might prove fatal to the scandal-ridden Liberal Party if it becomes public just prior to an election? Is my theory about aboriginal set-asides being diverted by Frank Brazeau to David Smith just plain wrong, or at best, a side show?

Apparently, my nagging suspicions were right on the money.

Ultimate Ethics

When the story came out of a class action suit being filed in response to David Emerson's decision to cross the floor, I wrote what I thought to be a very important post on why this was wrong.

The suit sought to somehow invalidate the election results on the basis that this guy didn't like what Emerson did:

"Based on my understanding of Section 3 of the charter, and the publicly available evidence respecting the context and timing of the 'crossing,'" he says, "it is my opinion that the post-election actions of David Emerson, and perhaps the prime minister, as well, nullified the rights of the citizens of Vancouver Kingsway to play a meaningful role in the election of their elected representative and it further denied them the right to "effective representation" by the party of their choice (Liberal) and their party-affiliated representative."

I pointed out that this is fundamentally an unacceptable tactic. Fundamental because it is irrelevant what Emerson did or does when it comes to whether to votes of the constituents were counted. The election happened, the rights of the citizens to cast a vote was upheld, there was no evidence of fraud or a miscount, and David Emerson won. That win cannot be erased by a court order.

Nothing can "nullify" that vote -- nothing Emerson does, nor any order from the court.

My argument was that a fair election result can never be ignored or erased. It is beyond the reach of the courts to pass judgment. At best, going forward, people who don't like what Emerson did can argue that he is somehow not fit for office, forcing another election, but that does not change the fact that the previous election happened.

The difficulty is that Emerson can easily argue that he is still a fit representative for his riding in the House of Commons. The decision of the people for him to be the representative has not been ignored. Any argument based on party platforms and voter intent is going to be very hard to prove, not to mention that the parliamentary system does not recognize these concepts, but only that a specific individual receiving a plurality of the votes becomes MP. I would think no judge would want to touch it.

My point is that any argument that says the election of Emerson should be somehow nullified is a non-starter. No fair election result should ever be subject to judgment by the courts.

Having recapped this, there appears to be another attempt to dump Emerson, this time using the Ethics Commissioner. In response to this news, Warren Kinsella has some thoughts, and they seem to align reasonably well with mine:

Oh, for the two correspondents who have asked, yes: I condemn what David Emerson did - just like I condemn what Belinda Stronach, Keith Martin and Scott Brison did - but this Bernard Shapiro investigation thing isn't just crazy, it's on crack. The ultimate ethical oversight is a general election, or it should be.

Note that we don't agree on the need to condemn Emerson in the same way that Stronach should have been condemned. I see them as very different situations, but Kinsella seems to see all floor crossings in the same way. I can respect that -- it has the strength of being consistent.

But we seem to be on the same wavelength on believing an ethics investigation is wholly inappropriate. Again, Emerson was elected, and he then acted within the boundaries of parliamentary tradition (as did Stronach and Brison and so on). That act should be judged by the voters, and in our system, that opportunity will come in four years or so, or sooner if the government falls. Is that fair to wait so long? Some would say it isn't, but then the strength of our system is that having relatively long times between elections means that a riding election is fought on the quality of the representation provided over several years, aggregating the high and lows of that term to come to what is hoped to be a balanced decision on the quality of that MP.

The voters selected David Emerson. They will have a chance to reconsider that selection in due course. Any attempt by any one individual to alter that in some way is where the intention of the voters is in danger of being nullified, not by anything David Emerson has done or can do.

Another useless ethics investigation

Stephen Harper has told the Ethics Commissioner that his interest in the case of David Emerson crossing the floor is misplaced, and frankly inappropriate:

There's a possibility Stephen Harper's first act as prime minister may have breached the parliamentary ethical code for MPs, the federal ethics commissioner indicated Friday.

But Bernard Shapiro's decision to launch a "preliminary inquiry" into Harper's controversial appointment of former Liberal David Emerson to the Conservative cabinet met with a furious rebuttal from the Prime Minister's Office.

"The prime minister is loath to co-operate with an individual whose decision-making ability has been questioned and who has been found in contempt of the House," Harper's communications director, Sandra Buckler, said late Friday.

In a release, the PMO added, "this Liberal appointee's actions have strengthened the prime minister's resolve to create a truly non-partisan ethics commissioner, who is accountable to Parliament."

The Ethics Commissioner, Bernard Shapiro, has repeatedly been ridiculed for his work.

In this case, the Ethics Commissioner is investigating the fact that David Emerson crossed the floor, which is a long-standing parliamentary tradition, but refused to investigate the case of Liberal MP Tony Valeri's extremely profitable land-swap deal, citing the fact that Parliament was not sitting at the time.

Of course, Parliament is not sitting now, but apparently that rule is flexible.

The fact is, Bernard Shapiro is essentially useless. The rules under which he works were written up by Jean Chretien and Paul Martin. The Liberals are hardly the poster boys for ethical behaviour. But more than that, I've been shocked at his sloppy work.

With his "investigation" into the Abotech affair, Shapiro only questioned the two people in the story, David Smith and Frank Brazeau, who had reasons to lie in order to save each other. He did not ask questions of David Smith's wife, for example. He allowed the two men to define the nature of their relationship, and they conveniently ignored to mention that they were first cousins. Did Bernard Shapiro challenge them on this? Of course not. Did he know about the familial relationship? Well, I told him via email at least twice.

But Shapiro wanted the Smith investigation to go away, and it did.

On the other hand, sticking it to Stephen Harper seems to be in his game plan, and suddenly the comments of ordinary citizens matter:

But the ethics czar said "numerous requests from the public" helped convince him to investigate Emerson's behaviour as well.

I'm willing to bet, though, that Shapiro will clear Emerson. The fact is, Shapiro seems to have real problems finding unethical behaviour anywhere he looks. In the Abotech case, Smith continued to sign contracts even after leaving Abotech, a clear ethical violation. But Smith told Shapiro that the signatures were "inadvertant", and so he got a pass. As noted, Shapiro never asked Smith's wife, who was supposed to be running the company, why she did not react to signatures appearing inadvertantly on contracts that would have had her name on them.

If Shapiro couldn't spot unethical behaviour that appeared written on a piece of paper, what chance is he going to have of finding something unethical where, frankly, nothing unethical happened?

But then again, who knows what's going on inside his head?

Perrault fails the blogging test [updated]

François Perrault, the spokesman for the Gomery Commission, has just released his tell-all insider's view of the inquiry, called Inside Gomery.

The book has generated some criticism, notably from Warren Kinsella, who has raised some serious concerns about the propriety of a lawyer on the government payroll simultaneously writing a book for profit about the drama of the case in which he is involved. There is something to that argument -- over the course of the inquiry, did Perrault make decisions, or offer advice, based on whether it would read better in the book and generate more sales?

But in Kinsella's column in the National Post, he brings up a very specific example, and I found it fascinating, and tried to think how I would have approached it. I think it is very enlightening.

The Laws of Physics: Conservation of Responsibility

The universe conserves certain properties. Energy is conserved. Momentum (linear and angular) is conserved. Electric charge is conserved. Probability (in the quantum mechanical sense) is conserved.

Beyond the realm of physics, responsibility is conserved as well. You can't make it go away no matter how hard you try. Canada has been trying to do just that since 1984, with the Young Offenders Act, and the updated version brought into effect in 2002, the Youth Criminal Justice Act:

Children under 12 who engage in criminal acts would no longer escape the long arm of the law under a revamped youth justice act.

Calling the current legislation a "failure," Conservative Justice Minister Vic Toews said the legal system should have some jurisdiction over even the youngest law-breakers.

"I'm not suggesting that we put them in prison or do anything. But the fact that (the courts) have no jurisdiction, the street gangs understand that very clearly," he said in an interview with Sun Media.

"These young children are being used for break-and-enters, for drug couriers. So they're becoming involved in a life of crime at a very early age, and becoming seasoned criminals even before they become eligible to be charged or disciplined under the Youth Criminal Justice Act."

Under the old system, the prosecution of these criminal acts was not the responsibility of the criminal justice system. But as I explained, responsibility doesn't just go away. It has to go somewhere.

Should the criminal justice system take some of the responsibility? Well, given that the laws created by that system had the perverse effect of encouraging children to become criminals, some of that responsibility certainly belongs there.

As it was, child welfare agencies would take responsibility for these young criminals, but these agencies weren't equipped to handle a responsibility that really wasn't theirs:

Toews said proposed changes will reflect the fact children under 12 who commit crimes should no longer be left to child welfare agencies.

"Child welfare authorities are not equipped to deal with issues of criminal conduct by young children.

"We need to reassert our responsibility to ensure we have mechanisms to deal with young children who are becoming entrenched in a life of crime."

So the responsibility has been given back to the criminal justice system, but that's not where it ultimately belongs:

The Conservative election platform vowed to hold youth criminals to account to their victims and community, provide "effective punishment" for adolescents who commit serious crimes, instill a sense of responsibility and give them a better chance at rehabilitation.

Under the old system, the responsibility ended up with child welfare agencies who were held responsible for the welfare of the criminal children assigned to them. From the point of view of the children, the responsibility essentially disappeared. Of course it didn't, but from their vantage point, there would be no reason to change their behaviour.

If the Conservatives implement these changes, the responsibility ends up in the lap of the children who committed the crimes. Makes sense to me.

Or maybe he didn't want to be part of this party

Frank McKenna, the outgoing ambassador to the United States, and former premier of New Brunswick, bowed out of the Liberal leadership race, citing the commitment that was required, a commitment he was not willing to make:

Mr. McKenna, who was seen as a front-runner to replace Mr. Martin as Liberal leader, said he decided not to run for the job because he was unwilling to make a 24-hour-a-day commitment to politics over the next eight to 10 years as the party rebuilds itself.

Though I believe this to be the primary reason, I wonder if Frank McKenna also decided that he did not want to be associated with this party. He has some harsh words for the Liberals:

On his last day in the job, Canadian Ambassador Frank McKenna took his former Liberal bosses in Ottawa to task yesterday for their "gratuitously offensive" anti-U.S. rhetoric during the recent federal election campaign.

Mr. McKenna said officials in Washington are prepared to deal with Canadians who assert their national interests but "when we're judgmental and almost sanctimonious, I find that they take offence -- and quite rightfully so."

Mr. McKenna said he had "literally been muzzled for the last couple of months" of his posting because of the election campaign. With the muzzle removed, he lit into former prime minister Paul Martin's entourage for its characterization of a meeting he had in December with the White House's top environment official.

An account of the meeting leaked to the news media said the White House had called in Mr. McKenna and chewed him out over a speech Mr. Martin had made criticizing U.S. policy on climate change.

Mr. McKenna acknowledged that the White House was upset by Mr. Martin's comments, but he said he had actually requested the meeting to discuss the climate-change talks that were then deadlocked in Montreal. He said the Prime Minister's Office took the memo that had been written about the encounter, "gave it to the press and torqued it as us having been called in and spanked, which was not the right characterization."

He said the White House had been "disconcerted" by this incident.

Mr. McKenna also chastised Mr. Martin's officials for making public the details of an earlier phone conversation between Mr. Martin and Mr. Bush which he said had broken the confidentiality needed to create trust between world leaders.

Now McKenna himself has made some startlingly harsh comments about the US, but let's look at this from his point of view, and gloss over his own part in the America-bashing over the last year.

Many of the people being chastised by McKenna might remain in the Liberal Party hierarchy even as Paul Martin moves on, and in any case, Frank McKenna might be worried that the rot runs deep, and that Carolyn Parrishes are everywhere. As a leader hoping to establish a fundamentally sound and respectful relationship with the United States, he would be fighting internal battles on a constant basis. His efforts would be undermined by anonymous leaks from minor party members and public statements from powerful ones.

Who needs that kind of aggravation?

I think every major contender for the Liberal Party (Frank McKenna, Brian Tobin, John Manley, etc) has dropped out simply because, for different reasons probably, each sees the Liberal Party as desperately sick, and none of them are interested in being leader during a long recuperation and convalescence, assuming the patient will even get better.

The banana boat is filled with sour grapes

Harry Belafonte continues to rant:

Bush-basher Harry Belafonte blamed President Bush for the calypso singer’s no-show at Coretta Scott King's funeral.

Belafonte, a friend of Martin Luther King Jr., had been scheduled to speak at the funeral in suburban Atlanta on February 7.

But he told reporters that Bush influenced the King family to withdraw his invitation, and he was told about the decision the day before the funeral, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports.

"I received a phone call which told me that since the president of the United States made the statement that he was coming to the ceremonies, the invitation that was extended to me would be withdrawn," Belafonte said.

Harry Belafonte has been rabid when it comes to George W Bush. George W Bush is the world's greatest terrorist. The Department of Homeland Security is the new Gestapo. Colin Powell is a house slave. Hitler had Jews in his government in the same way that Bush has blacks like Colin Powel and Condoleezza Rice. America is to blame for 9/11.

If Belafonte really wanted to attend the funeral, he could have made it clear to the King family and to the White House that he would not turn the funeral into a platform for his political views. But while Belafonte accuses the President of arrogance, no such gesture of respect was forthcoming from Belafonte.

Did the Bush people tell the King family not to invite Belafonte? I doubt it. I do think it likely that they made it clear that given his extreme views, the President would have to reconsider appearing if Belafonte was present. Not because the President was afraid of Belafonte, but as a gesture of respect to Dr and Mrs King and the King family, since the President was concerned that his presence would entice Belafonte into one of his rants, and so ruin the event.

Given the choice, Belafonte or President Bush, the King family went with George W Bush. A good choice too, since by all accounts, the President was calm and respectful, even as other guests used the solemn occassion to engage in politicized mudslinging (though clearly not as harshly as what Belafonte would have done).

So Belafonte gets the bum's rush from the family of the greatest black civil rights leader the United States has ever known so that the Republican president from Texas could appear without fear of the dignity of the event being ruined. I bet Belafonte went from rabid to volcanic over that.

Honest costs

Those Code Pink women are going to stop the war in Iraq with a petition.

Yeah, I know. But let's take it seriously for a moment.

The petition reads in part:

We've watched in horror as our precious resources are poured into war while our families' basic needs of food, shelter, education and healthcare go unmet.

As always, there seems to be a basic misunderstanding of the way these budgets are managed, in addition to the relative sizes. But then why let facts get in the way of a cute publicity stunt?

Still, I like facts. Let's look at the facts with regards to education specifically. In this case, I'm cutting the Code Pink ladies some slack, since if I included food expenditures, housing, and medicine, their argument gets even weaker.

But then I am a gentleman.

Who died and made Dalton McGuinty king of Alberta?

And this is why we need to give every premier in this country a dictionary so thay can look up "federalism":

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein on Tuesday revealed details of his controversial plan, which includes allowing patients to pay for faster access to some medical procedures.

Under the reforms, doctors would also be able to work in both the private and public sectors simultaneously, and patients would be allowed to skip to the front of the line by paying for knee or hip surgeries.

"It's not our way," [Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty] told reporters on Wednesday. "I think when it comes to reducing wait times . . . we should do that for everybody -- not just for those who can afford to jump to the front of the queue."

It's not our way.

Well, as duly elected premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty has the privilege of defining Ontario's way.

But since when can he refer to Alberta's way as "our way". The only "our" McGuinty can speak to in his capacity as premier is Ontario's.

Will Alberta's scheme work? There are some who say it won't, and some have made compelling arguments. But the elected representatives of the Alberta people want to try this out, and they ought to be allowed to. One of the strengths of federalism is that ideas can be tried out in relative isolation. If it doesn't work in Alberta, well, Alberta will have to fix it. If it does work, bully for them. But even if it does, it doesn't necessarily mean it will work in other provinces. Dalton McGuinty can make that argument if he likes, but besides that he should keep out of Alberta's business.

But then the sky is falling, so maybe this is why these politicians see the need to meddle in other people's business:

Ontario Health Minister George Smitherman took the criticism further. He said the health-care reforms could lead to the collapse of medicare for all Canadians, no matter what their income, and called the plan a "pretty deliberate'' violation of the Canada Health Act.

Alberta implements a variation of what Quebec has been doing for years, and suddenly medicare collapses everywhere?

So which is it? Medicare is a strong and robust solution for Canadians, far superior to any other scheme? Or Medicare is a house of cards, ready to topple at the slightest jolt, deliberate or not?

Humble beginnings?

Stephen Taylor has the tear-jerker story of Ben Chin, Liberal candidate running to represent Toronto-Danforth in the provincial legislature, and how he had to leave his parents behind in Korea where they would face political persecution.

Damn North Koreans! I swear, if I could snap my fingers and make Kim Jong-Il disa...wait...Chin's parents aren't from North Korea? They're from South Korea?

What persecution is he talking about?

Because of my dad's position we always had a chauffeur. The first job I wanted growing up was to be a chauffeur.

Dad was a South Korean diplomat. Go read the whole thing.

Inside Gomery

I haven't read the book, but I found this quote from the Globe and Mail piece on Inside Gomery, the tell-all book written by inquiry spokesperson François Perreault, interesting:

A strain of suspicion and animosity toward bureaucrats runs through the book. It recalls, for example, how the inquiry turned down offers from the Department of Public Works to co-ordinate printing and translation of the report for fear of leaks.

That's not the only interesting quote I've seen:

Francois Perreault's "insider" book about Gomery is out and, according to one Ottawa reporter who has contacted me, it is - and I quote - "a joke." Another one told me it "vindicates" the criticism I had - and Jean Chretien - had about this judicial circus, its bias, and its utter disregard for fairness.

The spin we've heard to date is generally one of the Gomery Commission striving against the tide of bureaucratic intrasigence. But it would appear that this problem spins both ways. If this political staffer or other seemed suspicious of the proceedings, and critical of them after, you have to wonder if they felt like they had been judged and found guilty long before they were called to testify.

Ironic, isn't it? The government program that was supposed to knit the country together not only drove the country further apart, but in its aftermath created fractures within the government too.

Angry in the Great White North by Steve Janke is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. Based on a work at stevejanke.com.