So, last night's outburst was pretty uncharacteristic of me.  Chalk it up to a combination of shock at the quickness of the results, and frustration at biting my tongue for eleven months of being told that ordinary people like me are actually horrible downtown elites who suck.  Sorry about that.Anyway, we'll see what comes next.  My guess is that it will be pretty similar to what the city of Ottawa has been through over the last few years, and end in more or less the same way.  I'd also guess that buyer's remorse is going to kick in pretty fast: give it a year, …
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Angela Merkel's remark that multiculturalism has failed in Germany has led to the usual set of shriekers in the Globe's comments board, claiming that it has failed in Canada also.You will, of course, search the board in vain for any concrete reason for thinking so.  There is, as usual, lots of blather about how different cultural groups never get along, how history is full of examples of violent ethnic clashes, and so on.  Yet, the obvious fact that Canadian experience is historically different from that continues to escape these guys.Seriously, the next person who trots out this …
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Annalee Newitz's "Why the Singularity Isn't Going to Happen": a salutary bucket of cold water, dumped over the overly optimistic.[T]he future isn't the present on steroids. The future is a mutated bacteria that you never saw coming. …
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Oh, for pity's sake:After losing its bid for a coveted seat on the UN Security Council to Portugal on Tuesday, the Conservative government responded by defending its campaign and blaming Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff.In a sane world, Harper and his government would be too humiliated to show their faces for weeks -- not for losing the UNSC seat, but for coming up with an excuse so transparently moronic as that.Also, what Paul Wells said:It’s pathetic that the prime minister is pausing from his two-year campaign of belittling and ignoring everything Michael Ignatieff says to decide, in late …
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Chris Selley:In the Globe, Rick Salutin … oh no, that’s right, he was too fun so they canned him. Instead, his replacement, Irshad Manji … doesn’t seem to have written anything today. Well, then.Heh. …
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Holy crap:The Supreme Court of Canada in a split 5-4 decision has reined in the constitutional right to a lawyer during interrogation that dissenting justices believe gives police all the cards.In a ruling Friday on three companion cases about the nature and limits of the right to counsel provided under s. 10(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the majority on the country's highest bench sided solidly with law-enforcement.The issue was whether a suspect who has been properly accorded his or her rights at the outset has the constitutional right to further consultations with …
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I suppose we shouldn't be surprised by Maxime Bernier's latest bout of something like honesty.  The disgraced former minister has come as close as he probably ever will to admitting that the government just made up all of that guff about getting tons of complaints about the long-form census.  When he says that it's about "principle," not complaints, what he's implying is that it doesn't actually matter what citizens think or have said.The reason we shouldn't be surprised by this is that, of course, nobody had ever really thought about the long form census.  In case we've …
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What could possibly go wrong?  Oh:A local neighborhood is furious after firefighters watched as an Obion County, Tennessee, home burned to the ground.The homeowner, Gene Cranick, said he offered to pay whatever it would take for firefighters to put out the flames, but was told it was too late. They wouldn't do anything to stop his house from burning.Each year, Obion County residents must pay $75 if they want fire protection from the city of South Fulton. But the Cranicks did not pay.The mayor said if homeowners don't pay, they're out of luck.This was absolutely predictable.  It is …
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Dude, I've got money. I totally belong at this paper. …
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You may remember the story of the TTC worker who was tackled and arrested, in full uniform, at the G20 when he was on his way to work.  His name is Elroy Yau, and he tells his story here.  His account speaks for itself; in a nutshell, he was held in detention in abominable conditions for thirty hours, and has not been able since then to go back to his life.  He can't work; he can barely leave the house.  He's got long-term damage to his spine and shoulder, and is suffering from panic attacks and insomnia.  Naturally, he's also getting the bureaucratic …
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This time it's the feds who are doing it.Confidential medical and financial information belonging to an outspoken critic of Veterans Affairs, including part of a psychiatrist's report, found its way into the briefing notes of a cabinet minister.[...]“There is a culture in that department that thinks that they have the monopoly on deciding what veterans – disabled or not – and their families deserve, and they believe they do not have to take any recommendations, consultation whatsoever from the veterans,” Mr. Bruyea said in an interview.“This arrogance, this paternalism – that they …
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Tories invoke sponsorship scandal to defend record ad spending Seriously, they need some new jokes. …
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Peaceful dissent is the lifeblood of democracy, which is why the prosecution of Betty Krawczyk is so very important.  Alison explains the situation at the Galloping Beaver, and Ms Krawczyk tells her own story here, but the short version is that this senior citizen, who has done nothing other than peacefully demonstrate over the years, who has harmed no one and damaged nothing, and who has already served a previous sentence in full, may be thrown in prison for the rest of her life, not for committing any new offense, but simply for being a chronic inconvenience.That would be bad …
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As many have noted, and as if it weren't clear already, the upcoming bill to kill the long-gun registry really is a private member's bill in name only.  This targeting of rural MPs, along with the media press by John Baird et al., means that this is just a government bill in disguise; how could it not be, since this has been the government's intended policy all along?There are arguments to make pro and con the registry, and I don't want to get into that here; this is just to note the patent dishonesty and, frankly, the cowardice of the process that the Harper government is …
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Go read.  Here are the crucial points:Ford defined the premise of the debate in a way that contradicts reality. Despite his assertions to the contrary, we are not a city in decline. [...]But here’s the most disturbing truth of all: it’s not worth going into detail about the city Rob Ford promises because it’s pure fantasy. Mayor Rob Ford has absolutely no chance of enacting his agenda and will, as a result, grind the city to a halt, undoing seven or more years of progress and creating a situation much like the one he claims he’s addressing now. …
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As Impolitical and BCL note, the most interesting development in the Sun TV saga is not Kory Teneycke's sudden departure from Quebecor per se, but rather that George Soros is, apparently, suing the company for defamation, and that the column that most likely led to the reported lawsuit -- the one that accused Soros of being a (literal, not metaphorical) Nazi -- has been suddenly removed from SunTV's web site.  It shouldn't surprise anyone if Soros really has taken this action.  You just don't go around spreading malicious tales about powerful people.  It's not only wrong; it's …
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Yep, Ian Davey did a dumb thing and it's just as well he's not working for Michael Ignatieff any more.  Making cracks about the supposed intelligence, or lack thereof, of voters is just a bad idea.  It's political malpractice, even if his intention was to slag the Sun papers and not their readers.Nevertheless, this really is too many pieces in too short a time about how mean people are being to Sun Media.  It's getting sort of embarrassing to watch.  Look at this:We speak the way average Canadians speak, and do not force our readers to run for their thesaurus.[...]This …
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Susan Riley of the Ottawa Citizen gets the Harper Conservatives almost exactly right:It is possible (though unlikely) there is no agenda, secret or otherwise, only impulse, the venting of well-marinated resentments and an acid-tipped communications strategy run by a cadre of hyper-partisan boy-men. Only one theme (you can't really call it a vision) recurs: destroy the Liberal Party.Get rid of the "though unlikely" part, and that's it. …
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Also, when he does it, it's not illegal.What a brat. …
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Paul Wells says pretty much all that needs to be said regarding the government's muzzling of the RCMP's intended remarks about Insite.  What's depressing to me is the way that this so obviously fits into a larger pattern: when you don't like the facts, make some up.As Dr. Dawg notes, comments under Wells's post include a number of the "who can really say what the truth is?" variety.  My favourite is the one that says,Firstly, it's not lies if you believe it to be true, or if you know what the truth is. Secondly, if other people -- mainly left-wing elitist types -- can come up with …
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If Lawrence Martin is right, then Stephen Harper's mania for message control is reaching a fever pitch:Do the CRTC board members actually think they can get away with delaying or denying Mr. Harper’s wishes on Fox News North? Do they really believe they have some kind of independent power?The CRTC chair is Konrad von Finckenstein, and his term doesn’t end until 2012. But insiders report that Mr. Harper now wants him out well before that date and replaced by a rubber stamper.Harper's Conservatives are always complaining about the CBC's alleged Liberal bias, so one might think that their …
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Just wow.Col. Pat Stogran, a retired infantry officer, has spent the last three years advocating better treatment for Canada’s wounded veterans.But the federal ombudsman only realized the enormity of the battle he was fighting after a recent conversation with a civil servant who watches over the government’s purse.“I was told … that it is in the government’s best interests to have soldiers killed overseas rather than wounded because the liability is shorter term,” Stogran said.Can we finally all admit at last that as far as the government is concerned, "support the troops" is no …
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Andrew Coyne is feeling pretty depressed about the state of political intellect in Canada these days, and for good reason.  In Maclean's today, Coyne laments the loss of intellectual credibility in the Conservative Party -- worse, the positive hostility to it:It isn’t just that the Tories habitually ignore the expert consensus on a wide range of issues—crime, taxes, climate change—it’s that they want to be seen to be ignoring it. It’s the overt antagonism to experts, and by extension the educated classes, that marks the Tory style. In its own way, it’s a form of class war.You …
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Typical:Several veterans, representing different interests, were planning a news conference Tuesday in Ottawa to protest the Conservative government's decision not to appoint retired colonel Pat Stogran to a second term as the voice of injured soldiers and RCMP members.[...]Col. Stogran [is] a former ground commander in Afghanistan whose appointment three years ago as the first-ever veterans' ombudsman was hailed by Conservatives as the beginning of new era in the treatment of retired soldiers.Col. Stogran was notified early last week that his appointment will not be renewed, according to …
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“They don’t bother us. It’s just that they are annoying.” -- An unnamed Conservative spokesman, referring to, well let's face it, to Canadian citizens.Kind of says it all, doesn't it? …
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