Month: April 2006

Ontario’s Minister of Education, Gerard Kennedy, joined Martha Hill Findlay and John Godfrey as the declared candidates for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. Here’s his release:

STATEMENT BY GERARD KENNEDY, MPP

April 5, 2006      

I have come here with the Premier to announce my decision today to step down as Minister of Education.  

Over the past two and half years, I have had the tremendous privilege as Ontario Minister of Education, to serve students and help develop our society’s future.  I am very grateful to Premier Dalton McGuinty for the opportunity to have done so.

My reason for resigning such a valuable post is to organize my candidacy for Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. However, that effort is not my focus for today.

Today, my concern is to ensure that the many important policies and projects for students through the Ministry of Education and its education partners are not adversely affected by this decision.  Far more than an $18 billion Ministry, education is a cause to this Premier and this government.  

I want every one of our students, too many of whom went through difficult learning conditions before we came to government, to know that an entire province wants them to reach their full potential.  

I want parents to know that we are on track to deliver the improved education excellence that they are expecting: smaller class sizes, improved reading, writing and math, massive building renewal, increased speciality learning in phys ed and the arts, new student success options in high school, and a declining drop out rate are but some of the measures fully underway.   I thank them for their patience and their increasing participation in their children’s education.

I want educators, support staff and school boards to know that while I am leaving, the same attitude of respect and problem resolution, which I believe has marked all of my relations with them, is held by the entire government.  Your efforts and sacrifice and the success you are achieving with students are starting to be noticed by the public at large and, I believe, a new appreciation of publicly funded education has begun.

 I want everyone to know that this government will continue making the prudent investments in education that make a big difference. Your dollars will continue to be handled carefully, with an eye to affordability and the incredible return on investment society gets from public education.

 I know that this revitalization of education is still in process and much more needs to be done.  At the same time, I firmly believe that the groundwork for a long lasting education partnership is in place and I know that the entire government is committed to see it go forward, no one more so than Premier McGuinty who has been intimately involved every step of the way.   

I believe in this so strongly, I have arranged to continue to contribute as a Special Transition Advisor to the Premier and the new Minister, even as I set off in a new direction. 

Similarly I believe strongly in this Premier and this government as whole, whose accomplishments in health care, economic development, the environment and education are now becoming evident.

While the momentum for education in Ontario is still growing, I view my contribution as a catalyst for bringing people and ideas together to get results. I am confident this turnaround will continue to grow in my absence, thanks to the new positive outlook of the sector and the tremendous strength of our Liberal caucus.

While I did not seek it, I now see the need for that kind of enabling leadership in the renewal of the Liberal party of Canada.   While on many levels this has been an extremely difficult decision for me, I know that this is the right thing for me to be doing at this time.

I will have much more to say about my reasons for choosing this new direction in the days ahead.   Today, I simply want to assure all concerned that the students in Ontario are headed in the right direction and their ‘education advantage’ will continue. 

The election of the Speaker this week has some important implications for the calculus of this minority Parliament. In order to win a vote on any particular issue, the Conservatives will need some support from the Opposition parties. But where are the deals likely to be made? The short answer is — wherever Prime Minister Harper can find them.

The election returned the following number of MPs:

• Conservative 125
• Liberal 102
• BQ 51
• NDP 29
• IND 1

That adds up to 308 MPs. But for voting purposes, the Speaker — who is Liberal Peter Milliken – will not vote. And that means, that there are 307 votes that could be cast on any given issue.

Therefore, any vote that wins 154 votes passes.

So how do you get to 154? These are the scenarios:

• Every Conservative MP plus every Liberal equals 226 votes. Vote passes.
• Every Conservative MP plus every Bloc Quebecois vote equals 176 votes. Vote passes.
• Every Conservative MP plus every NDP MP equals 154 votes. Vote passes.

As a result, Harper must make a deal only with any one of the three Opposition parties. For the NDP, the election of a Liberal speaker gives them the power to sustain the government — presumably giving the NDP some leverage at the bargaining table — although the NDP alone with one other Opposition party cannot bring down the government.

For the Liberals, they can be slightly more aggressive in their voting, knowing that it will take all three parties and not just two parties to bring down the government.

“In support of building a stronger Canada, the Government’s agenda will be clear and focussed. It will clean up government, provide real support to ordinary working families and strengthen our federation as well as our role in the world.”

That’s from this afternoon’s Throne Speech, as read by Governor General Michael Jean. I’ve attached the rest of the 28–minute speech.

 

Garth Turner, (left) the Conservative MP for the Ontario riding of Halton, decided to help Finance Minister Jim Flaherty with his budget preparations. So Turner held a series of town hall-style meetings in his riding and prepared a thick report for Flaherty to read. He recently delivered that report and has now made it public. Among other things, Turner urges his own government to: – Scrap the capital gains deferral plan – Adopt income splitting, whereby a higher-income earning spouse can dump some income and the tax liability on the lower-income earning spouse. I've attached the highlights as handed out by Turner.

Elizabeth May, (right) who received the Order of Canada recently for her work as an environmental advocate, is leaving her post as executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada, the group announced today. Here’s the release:

(Ottawa) The Board of Directors of Sierra Club of Canada (SCC) announced today that Elizabeth May, its Executive Director of 17 years, is stepping down from her position effective June 2006. The Board has reluctantly accepted her decision.

“Elizabeth has led the Club at the national level from its infancy to the enormously effective entity it is today,” said SCC Board President, Louise Comeau. “She was also instrumental in launching the Sierra Youth Coalition and the Atlantic Canada Chapter and supporting development of other chapters and local grassroots groups.”

Elizabeth May became national Executive Director in 1989 at the invitation of the existing board of directors. She has gained a reputation for fearless advocacy on behalf of the environment, a contribution which was acknowledged in late 2005 by her designation as an Officer of the Order of Canada.

Under Elizabeth's leadership, Sierra Club of Canada played a key role in convincing the government of Canada to sign and ratify the Kyoto Protocol, enact a law to protect species at risk, and ensure a public panel review for the cleanup of the Sydney tar ponds, among numerous other accomplishments.

“The environment has never had a better friend than Elizabeth May,” said Ms. Comeau, “and nor has the Club! We will miss Elizabeth's leadership greatly, but she has assured us that she will maintain close ties to Sierra Club of Canada. The Board understands her decision to move on to face new challenges, and wish her the greatest success as she tackles them.”

Sierra Club of Canada's mission is to develop a diverse, well-trained grassroots network working to protect the integrity of our global ecosystems. SCC focuses on five overriding threats: loss of animal and plant species; deterioration of the planet's oceans and atmosphere; the ever-growing presence of toxic chemicals in all living things; destruction of our remaining wilderness; and spiraling population growth and over-consumption.

Active in Canada since 1963, Sierra Club of Canada has chapters operating in every region of Canada, with offices in Ottawa, Victoria, Sydney, Corner Brook, Halifax, Edmonton, Montreal and Toronto.

Party whips are responsible for assigning seats in the House of Commons, in consultation, of course, with their party’s leadership. Their work is completed, now, and, as a result, the seating plan for the 39th Parliament was released yesterday.

Sitting in the Commons’ press gallery (the press gallery in both the HoC and the Senate is right behind the Speaker), it was strange to look down and see Conservatives on the right and the Liberals on the left. The NDP have remained in their place from the last Parliament — they are on the government side but far away from the Speaker. The Bloc Quebecois, too, is in the spot it had for the 38th Parliament – on the Opposition side, away from the Speaker.

The lone independent MP Andre Arthur is seated in the back row on the Opposition side at the Spesaker’s end.

Some other random notes:

• Agriculture Minister Chuck Strahl and Immigration Minister Monte Solberg are roommates and good friends. They are also seatmates, four seats away from the PM in the front row.
• Rod Bruinooge, the Conservative who felled Liberal stalwart Reg Alcock, appears, based on his seating assignment to be Most Favoured Tory Rookie who is not a cabinet member or parliamentary secretary. Bruinooge is in the second row midway between Speaker and PM. That’s a lot better than, for example, putative Harper favourite James Rajotte who find himself in the two rows behind Bruinooge and one seat further away from the PM.
• Lawrence Cannnon is the Prime Minister’s seatmate, visual confirmation of his status as Harper’s number two. Lucienne Robillard rides shotgun for Opposition Leader Bill Graham. Jack Layton and Libby Davies are the NDP’s lead seatmates and Gilles Duceppe is next to his House Leader Michel Gauthier.
• Garth Turner is hidden away underneath the Press Gallery overhang, next to the Speaker.
• There are two Conservatives on the Opposition side. Mike Wallace and Chris Warkentin are to the Speaker’s left and are surrounded by Liberals Andy Scott, Tom Wappel, John McKay and independent Andre Arthur.
• Michael Ignatieff is way in the back — sitting in the fourth row where it will be difficult for him to be seen in just about any television shot unless he’s the one actually speaking. His seatmate is Tina Keeper.
• Stephen Harper could reach out and touch: (clockwise from Harper’s right) Cannon, Jay Hill, Rob Nicholson, Josee Verner, Jim Prentice.
• The Four Corners: The members holding down the corners of their respective party’s seating blocks are, for the Tories: Jim Abbott, Deepak Obhrai, Dave Van Kesteren, and Jeff Watson. Liberals: Paul Martin, Geoff Regan, Blair Watson, Yasmin Ratansi. BQ: Real Menard, Mario Laframboise, Robert Carrier, Claude Debellefeuille. NDP: Bill Blaikie, Pat Martin, Paul Dewar, Denise Savoie.

 

Colleagues of mine have spent time working in and reporting from Baghdad. The descriptions of that work provided by Orville Schell in his recently published essay “Baghdad: The Besieged Press” seem to dovetail with many of the accounts I have heard from reporters and ENG technicians who have worked there.

Foreign news bureaus are either in or near the few operating hotels such as the Al Hamra, the Rashid, or the Palestine. Like battleships that have been badly damaged but are still at sea, these hotels have survived repeated bomb attacks and yet have managed to stay open. A few hotels like the Rashid, where once there was a mosaic depicting George Bush Sr. on the floor of the lobby, are sheltered within the Green Zone. A few other bureaus have their own houses, usually somewhat shabby villas that have the advantage of being included inside some collective defense perimeter that makes the resulting neighborhood feel like a walled medieval town.

Wherever in the city the news bureaus are, they have become fortified installations with their own mini-armies of private guards on duty twenty-four hours a day at the gates, in watch towers, and around perimeters. To reach these bureaus, one has to run through a maze of checkpoints, armed guards, blast-wall fortifications, and concertina-wired no man's lands where all visitors and their cars are repeatedly searched . . .

The price of staying in Baghdad is to have Iraqi surrogates perform more and more tasks, from driving and shopping to getting exit visas and plane tickets —and reporting. This situation deeply frustrates Western journalists, who pride themselves on their independence; but they know, as the Committee to Protect Journalists reports, that some sixty-one reporters (many of them Iraqis) have been killed here, and many others wounded, since the 2003 invasion …

New additions to my “books-to-read” list:

Non-fiction:

• John G. Geer, In Defence of Negativity, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006
• Malise Ruthven, Islam in the World (3rd Edition), Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006
• Eddie Goldenberg, The Way It Works, Toronto, McLelland and Stewart, (Sept.), 2006
• Olive Patricia Dickason, A Concise History of Canada’s First Nations, Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2006

My non-fiction list now numbers: 2,077

My fiction list now numbers: 2,105

 

The publishers of the science journal Nature had a good idea. Take sections of the Encyclopedia Britannica — long regarded by many in just the way the encyclopedia’s publisher believes it ought to be regarded, i.e. as the ultimate reference tool — and take sections of the online-only reference source, Wikipedia, which is authored in a volunteer, collaborative sort of way and see if one is significantly better than the other.

The results were surprising:

Nature's investigation suggests that Britannica's advantage may not be great, at least when it comes to science entries. In the study, entries were chosen from the websites of Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica on a broad range of scientific disciplines and sent to a relevant expert for peer review. Each reviewer examined the entry on a single subject from the two encyclopaedias; they were not told which article came from which encyclopaedia. A total of 42 usable reviews were returned out of 50 sent out, and were then examined by Nature's news team.

Only eight serious errors, such as misinterpretations of important concepts, were detected in the pairs of articles reviewed, four from each encyclopaedia. But reviewers also found many factual errors, omissions or misleading statements: 162 and 123 in Wikipedia and Britannica, respectively.

Britannica’s publisher was furious:

… almost everything about the journal’s investigation, from the criteria for identifying inaccuracies to the discrepancy between the article text and its headline, was wrong and misleading. Dozens of inaccuracies attributed to the Britannica were not inaccuracies at all, and a number of the articles Nature examined were not even in the Encyclopædia Britannica. The study was so poorly carried out and its findings so error-laden that it was completely without merit. We have produced this document to set the record straight, to reassure Britannica’s readers about the quality of our content, and to urge that Nature issue a full and public retraction of the article.

Late last week, the editors of Nature responded to Britannica’s attack and are standing by their study.

 Our reviewers may have made some mistakes — we have been open about our methodology and never claimed otherwise — but the entries they reviewed were blinded: they did not know which entry came from Wikipedia and which from Britannica.