Month: February 2007

Nearly half of America's top-selling magazines suffered circulation decline

More People. Less Cosmopolitan. And while it may still be a Woman's World, you might soon say good night to Woman's Day.
Of the top 25 best-selling magazines in the United States, 12 lost circulation, with Woman's Day leading the way with a decline of nearly 20 per cent in the second half of 2006 compared to the second half of 2005, according to an analysis of data collected by the Audit Bureau of Circulation.
People magazine was the number two seller at the back end of 2006, with 1.6 million sales per issue, a circulation figure that was up just over two per cent. The number one seller, Cosmopolitan, sold 1.9 million copies per issue, but that number was down nearly six per cent.
Woman's World was the best-selling women's magazine but, at 1.4 million copies per issue, circulation was down 2.8 per cent. But that was nothing compared to the drop in sales of Woman's Day. It was selling an average of 685,250 copes in the back half of the year which was nearly one-fifth fewer than than the 856,125 copies it was selling in the year-earlier period.
The biggest gainer of the period was Life and Style Weekly, which saw sales jump by more than 25 per cent to 744,453 an issue.

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"Renewable Energy Sources and the Realities of Setting an Energy Agenda"

Notes from an article in this week’s Science, which describes recent progress in Europe toward achieving goals for renewable energy use as well as the new Strategic Energy Package. The author, Janez Potoènik,  is the European Commissioner for Science and Research:

The strategic energy package sets a target of 20% of Europe's energy coming from renewable sources by 2020. If successful, this would mean that by 2020 the European Union (EU) would use about 13% less energy than today, saving €100 billion and around 780 metric tons of CO2 each year. For this to be realistic, significant strides need to be made, technologically speaking .  . .

The Seventh Framework Programme increases the annual funding available to energy research at the European level to €886 million a year, compared to €574 million a year in the previous program. But this is not enough: more combined effort is needed.

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"Ethanol for a Sustainable Energy Future"

The current edition of Science focuses on energy and sustainability with a terrific online collection of notes, comments, and essays. Some notes from an article in this week’s edition of Science. The article is titled “Ethanol for a Sustainable Energy Future” by Jose Goldemberg. Some notes:

…exhaustible fossil fuels represent ~80% of the total world energy supply. At constant production and consumption, the presently known reserves of oil will last around 41 years, natural gas 64 years, and coal 155 years (2). Although very simplified, such an analysis illustrates why fossil fuels cannot be considered as the world’s main source of energy for more than one or two generations.

Today, ethanol production from sugarcane in [Brazil] is 16 billion liters (4.2 billion gallons) per year, requiring around 3 million hectares of land. The competition for land use between food and fuel has not been substantial: Sugarcane covers 10% of total cultivated land and 1% of total land available for agriculture in the country. Total sugarcane crop area (for sugar and ethanol) is 5.6 million hectares.

Subsidies for ethanol production are a thing of the past in Brazil (Fig. 2), because new ethanol plants benefit from the economies of scale and the modern technology available today, such as the use of high-pressure boilers that allow cogeneration of electricity, with surpluses sold to the electric power grid.

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Science: "Don't Forget Long-Term Fundamental Research in Energy"

The current edition of Science focuses on energy and sustainability with a terrific online collection of notes, comments, and essays. Some notes from an article in this week’s edition of Science. The article is titled “Don't Forget Long-Term Fundamental Research in Energy” by George M. Whitesides and George W. Crabtree.

The energy problem is often phrased in terms of developing a strategy that roughly doubles the global production of energy by 2050 (from 13 to about 30 terawatts) . . .

Catalysis by design has periodically been embraced as a grand challenge, and periodically abandoned as too difficult, but nanoscience and surface science offer new approaches to this problem. The fundamental study of catalysis must be reanimated across the full spectrum of processes involved in energy and the environment…

We need new ideas, and we need to know which of the current smorgasbord of unexplored
and unproved ideas will work.
Developing affordable technologies for removing carbon from the atmosphere (for example, by growing biomass and converting it to a stable form of carbon) must be explored now, if they are to be options in the future. Changing the albedo of Earth, stimulating photosynthesis in the oceans by the addition of essential trace elements such as iron, developing new nuclear power cycles, a hydrogen economy, new methods for separating gases (such as CO2 from air) and liquids, room-temperature superconductivity to carry electric power without loss, biological H2 production, new concepts in batteries, and nuclear fusion—all must be explored fundamentally and realistically.

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German Leopards to Canada?

Back in October, I reported:

Army might buy surplus tanks from Germans, Swiss

Updated Tue. Oct. 31 2006 11:27 PM ET

David Akin, CTV News

OTTAWA — Canadian army officers are negotiating the purchase of as many as 100 surplus tanks from the German and Swiss armies, CTV News has learned.

The deal may yet fall through but, even if it does, the fact that army officers are contemplating a purchase that could more than double the number of tanks in the Canadian Forces represents a significant strategic shift, military analysts say . . . [Read the rest]

The next day, the Department of National Defence said we had it all wrong:

Military nixes plan to buy German, Swiss tanks

Updated Wed. Nov. 1 2006 11:36 PM ET

Canadian Press

OTTAWA — The Canadian military recently considered but ultimately rejected buying slightly used tanks from the German and Swiss armies, a spokesman said Wednesday.

A team of staff officers, who monitor the military surplus-equipment market, did talk to both European countries last June about purchasing little-used A-4 and A-5 versions of the Leopard-2 tank.

“They were checking prices that were out there, but that staff check did not go any further,” said Lieut. Adam Thomson . . . [Read the rest]

Well, maybe we didn’t have it all wrong. The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel will be reporting tomorrow  that:

Canada to buy German tanks for Afghanistan duty
(AFP)

10 February 2007

BERLIN – Berlin Saturday confirmed reports that Canada is to buy German Leopard tanks to equip its forces serving with the NATO multinational force in Afghanistan….[Read the rest]

And this morning, the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese follows up ::

Military eyes lease deal with Germany for new tanks

20 state-of-the-art vehicles could be in field by spring  

David Pugliese, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Sunday, February 11, 2007

As it prepares to deal with another spring offensive by insurgents in Afghanistan, Canada is trying to lease state-of-the-art Leopard tanks from Germany.

Defence sources told the Citizen yesterday that Canada wants to lease 20 Leopard A6M tanks from the German army…[Read the rest]

 

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How about an "energy efficiency" market?

Did I mention that CTV just handed me the 'green' beat? No? Well, now you know. In addition to be covering some defence-related procurement issues, some ongoing issues at the federal departments of Finance, Industry, and Public Works, I'm now going to be covering the federal departments of the Environment (prop. Mr. John Baird) and Natural Resources (prop. Mr. Gary Lunn). My political beat continues to be the national Conservative caucus.
Speaking of which — some Conservative ministers speak of their policy focus as 'Triple-E' — as in Energy, Environment and the Economy. And, since the most important reason for this blog's existence is to act as my online notebook, you will notice or will soon notice more items here with a triple-E flavour.
And with that, here is something that, to me, is a new idea: An Energy Efficiency Trading System
Lisa Margonelli of the New American Foundation writes about it at washingtonpost.com:

…Utilities and vehicle manufacturers that can't meet their targets can buy “efficiency credits” from the government, or from other companies. And companies that exceed their targets can sell the credits they generate.
Rather than dictating how companies meet their goals, this strategy allows the market to decide the best mix of efficiency and price. Big pick-up trucks, for example, may cost more simply because the manufacturer has to “pay” for their inefficiency. Will the new trucks be worth the price? That's up to consumers, and the market, to decide. This isn't 1970's command and control regulation, with its forced downsizing. The goal is to change the competitive focus of auto makers, utility companies and manufacturers to work creatively to use less fuel, rather than expecting society to pick up the costs of their waste.<

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The Robert L. Stanfield International Airport

So we have the The Lester B. Pearson International Airport, the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport, the John G. Diefenbaker Airport, the Macdonald-Cartier International Airport — all named after Prime Ministers or a Father of Confederation. Now we have the The Robert L. Stanfield Intertional Airport in Halifax named after someone who often ends up in polls as the best prime minister Canada never had. Stanfield, of course, was the Opposition Leader when Pearson and Trudeau commanded the government.

So was it Stephen Harper’s plan to name a federal building after an important Conservative politician? You bet your bottom dollar it was.

As Ottawa Citizen reporter Tim Naumetz dug up earlier this year, the Conservatives are keen to name as many federal buildings they can after Conservatives if only to even up the score with the Liberals. Rob Nicholson, the MP from Niagara Falls who is now the country’s justice minister gave an impassioned speech on this subject at a (closed-door) caucus meeting earlier this year. From Tim’s story:

A record provided to the Ottawa Citizen by the Public Works Department of all federal buildings the government owns outright or has leased to purchase confirms names of prominent Liberals from the past outnumber Conservatives 27 to nine.

… Only two past leaders of other parties have federal buildings dedicated in their names, while 43 other buildings have been named after prominent explorers, settlers and distinguished Canadians whose accomplishments did not involve politics.

Of the total of 369 buildings the government owns or is leasing to purchase and two others under construction or planned, 81 have been dedicated to honour political figures and other Canadians.

Mr. [Rob] Nicholson also objected to the Liberal predominance in federal statues — monuments to Liberals on Parliament Hill outnumber Conservatives eight to four — insiders say. Mr. Nicholson reportedly complained the legacy of the old Progressive Conservative party is being lost.

The handful of Conservative political names on federal buildings includes Diefenbaker — with the Saskatoon airport named in his honour — John A. Macdonald, John Thompson, a justice minister under Macdonald, George Etienne Cartier, Macdonald's co-leader of the Great Coalition at Confederation, former prime minister Arthur Meighen, and Harry Stevens, a Conservative MP who opposed Asian immigration at the turn of the 20th century.

In contrast, former Liberal prime minister Lester Pearson, Diefenbaker's arch-foe, has been honoured by a building on Sussex Drive, which acts as headquarters for the Foreign Affairs Department, as well as the international airport in Toronto, Canada's busiest airport.

Louis St. Laurent, the Liberal prime minister who succeeded Liberal wartime prime minister Mackenzie King, has been honoured with his name on two buildings as well, one in the National Capital Region and one in Quebec City, as has Pierre Trudeau. Montreal's Dorval Airport was recently re-named the Pierre Elliott Trudeau International Airport while a proposed new Federal Court building in Ottawa that will not be constructed for years has already been named after Trudeau.

Paul Martin Sr., the late father of recent former prime minister Paul Martin, has been honoured with his name on a building in Windsor, and a new federal building under construction on Prince Edward Island has also been already dedicated to a prominent Liberal historical figure in the province.

Margaret Trudeau's father, James Sinclair, was honoured by dedication of Vancouver's Sinclair Centre in his name.

A string of Cabinet ministers who served under Pearson have been honoured with building dedications, as have two prominent Liberals who became governors general — Vincent Massey and Jeanne Sauve.

The only political figures outside Liberal and Conservative circles who were honoured with building dedications were Stanley Knowles of the CCF and the NDP and Real Caouette, who led the Quebec Social Credit party that helped defeat the Diefenbaker minority government in 1963.

Early in their current term, the  Tories decided to name a new federal government building in Vancouver after a Diefenbaker-era Progressive Conservative. only to have that backfire after Japanese Canadians there said the minister, Howard Green, had racist views and had tried to exclude Japanese Canadians from Canada before and after World War II.

Hard to see anyone objecting to Stanfield getting his airport.

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Polls galore

A couple of new polls are out for everyone to chew over for those trying to figure out when the next federal  election campaign might happen.

Here’s the national picture from SES Research:

  • Conservative Party – 33%
  • Liberal – 33%
  • NDP – 17%
  • BQ – 10%
  • Green Party – 7%

SES polled 913 Canadians by phone between February 2nd and 8th, and says the national results are accurate to within 3.3 percentage points 19 times out of 20.

And here’s the view from Leger Marketing. Their sample is a little bigger and, as a result, their margin of error is a little smaller:

  • Conservative Party – 33%
  • Liberal – 27%
  • NDP – 12%
  • BQ – 7%
  • Green Party – 6%

Leger polled 1,500 Canadians between January 30 and February 4, 2007 and says that their results are accurate to within 2.6%, 19 times out of 20.

Now both pollsters took a look at support in the two most populous provinces, Ontario and Quebec. These results are less accurate but here they are nonetheless. (N=Number of people survedy; MoE=equals margin of error, 19 times out of 20, the number in parentheses () indicates the change since pollster’s last survey)

SES:

Quebec (N=234, MoE ±6.5)
BQ – 39% (-11)
Liberal – 27% (+2)
Conservative Party – 20% (+8)
NDP – 8% (-2)
Green Party – 6% (+2)

Ontario (N=262, MoE ±6.1, 19 times out of 20)
Liberal – 38% (-6)
Conservative – 36% (no change)
NDP – 19% (+3)
Green Party – 8% (+3)

Leger:

Quebec (N=337, MoE ±not provided)
BQ – 31%
Liberal – 32%
Conservative Party – 24%
NDP – 6%
Green Party – 5%

Ontario (N=500, MoE – not provided)
Liberal – 35%
Conservative – 40%
NDP – 16%
Green Party – 8%

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Meanwhile: The Canadian economy ROCKS!

The employment numbers are out this morning and while the headline number is unsurprising — the unemployment rate in January edged up to 6.2% — economists are positively effusive about the details:

Here’s Dawn Desjardins, senior economist at RBC Economics:

Canada blows out the lights and creates 88,900 jobs in January

Canada’s job engine kept chugging in January generating 88,900 new jobs, continuing the string of very healthy gains started in September. January’s increase was twice the average monthly gain of 42,500 jobs in the fourth quarter. … The details showed strength across most industry groups with a small 3,600 rise in manufacturing employment, marking the third consecutive monthly gain. Along with gains in natural resources and construction, goods-producers added 21,200 to their payrolls. The services sector recorded another strong increase with employment surging 67,700. The gains were split between full-time employment which rose 45,900, and part-time employment which rose 42,900. 

Despite the unemployment rate holding near the 30-year low (6.2%), there was limited evidence of wage pressures …

The Western provinces continued to be the driving force in Canada’s labour market with Alberta’s economy creating 24,000 new jobs and British Columbia’s employment rising by 31,700. Central Canada’s share of job gains was more muted than in December with Ontario posting a meager 7,600 increase although Quebec saw a 14,700 rise.

After another banner year for job creation in 2006, the economy was able to generate another astonishingly large gain in January…

Here’s Doug Porter, deputy chief economist at BMO Capital Markets raves:

…jobs are on fire while GDP growth is on ice. Canadian employment stunned the consensus yet again, with payrolls surging by a stunning 88,900 in January, following a revised 52,500 gain in the prior month, and follows a four-month string of robust readings. As much as one would like to point to a weather distortion in the latest data — due to the balmy weather in the first half of the month — it’s just not obvious in the figures. The gains were spread across most sectors, and a number of provinces.

And over at Scotia Capital, senior financial markets economist Carolyn Kwan sends out this dispatch:

The stunning display of resilience in the jobs market extended into 2007 with an additional 88.9k jobs created in January. One month does not make a trend, though five months of uninterrupted upside surprises in the jobs report nationally certainly has that feel. Over that period, the average monthly job gain has been a stellar 47.5k. Further strength in the labour markets was evident in the number of entrants to the jobs market this month. Given the perceived strength in the market, 110k more people entered the jobs market (the largest number of additions to the labour market since 1981), thus pushing up the unemployment rate one notch to 6.2%. The employment rate, in fact, hit a record high 63.4%

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Ablonczy's take on Holland's comments

Diane AblonczyHere’s Diane Ablonczy (left), the Conservative MP for a Calgary area riding in the House of Commons today:

Ms. Diane Ablonczy (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Finance, CPC) :
Mr. Speaker, a Liberal has slipped up and given Canadians a glimpse of the Liberal's secret agenda.
The member for Ajax—Pickering made a direct attack on a success story of our nation's economy that just so happens to be located in a region the Liberals have written off for the next election.

The member let it out of the bag that the future Liberal government would be ordering oil energy companies to just simply stop it; they could put their plans on hold because if it cost too much energy to get out of the ground, to get it out of the oil sands, then so be it. In fact the member said if the energy companies do not cooperate there will be consequences.

Bullying, threats, pitting one region against the other in a shallow trade-off for votes, that is the Liberal way.
However, Canadians know that the strength of one is the strength of all and the whole is important. Our governments wants all sectors of Canada's economy to grow and prosper, for the benefit of all Canadians.

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