Month: June 2007

Not surprisingly, the uproar over the Atlantic Accords is all the rage on Parliament Hill. I'm taking a day off but the BlackBerry has been humming nonetheless with news of this and that on this issue. Thought I'd put up a quick post for a couple of reasons. First, Prime Minister Stephen Harper says he's ready to have the courts rule that his government's budget does not alter the Atlantic Accords. Someone ought to get a judge to rule quickly because, according to The Canadian Press, Nova Scotia Conservative MP Gerald Keddy is about ready to jump ship.

Meanwhile, my colleague Graham Richardson, hanging around the House of Commons foyer this afternoon, just ran into Nova Scotia MP Bill Casey — he's the one who did vote against his own government's budget and got kicked out of caucus for it. — who says that if Harper put it before the courts, the provinces would win.

And finally, there's this, from Carolyn Stewart-Olsen, the press secretary to the Prime Minister, who, in response to many press inquiries today, had the following distributed by the Parliamentary Press Gallery:

Nova Scotia is saying we are not respecting the Atlantic Accord. We say our Government is respecting the Accord.

This is an argument of fact.

While we would prefer to continue talks, we are not willing to leave the accusation out there.

Nova Scotia must either act on their accusations or drop them. We will wait and see what they will do.

As a reporter, my first followup on this would probably sound like this: “Mr. Harper, your Finance Minister, in a letter to the editor in some weekend papers, seemed pretty unequivocal: He said, “Our government is not in the process of making any side deals for a few extra votes.” So what do you mean when you say you would prefer to continue talks? What is there to talk about if your Finance Minister says there can be no “side deals”?

The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias tells her Facebook friends that she's packing it in as media critic for the Star.

No, your cable did not crap out. That was the ending of The Sopranos.

And this is the end of me as media columnist for The Toronto Star. I am moving on Boys and Girls, still at 1 Yonge, but in another capacity.

It's a job I have repeatedly lobbied for since 2003 — and, thanks to our recent redesign and related factors, I finally got it!

So no conspiracy theories please.

Stay tuned for details …

Good luck, Antonia, with that new assignment!

Technorati Tags: craft

The Canadian Council for Policy Alternatives is out this evening with a study that looks at the gap between rich and poor in Canada. Some of their findings:

• The concentration of wealth at the high end continued to grow from 1999 to 2005.
• The wealthiest 20% of families held 69.2% of the total net wealth in Canada, up from 68.5% in 1999. That increase in share was entirely at the expense of the middle 20%, whose share dropped from 8.8% to 8.4%.
• The net worth of the 20% of families at the bottom of the wealth scale was negative again in 2005.
• Debt increased at a faster rate than net worth. More than 6.5% of families literally operate under water, with negative net worth.
• Between 1999 and 2005, the median debt load for families rose 38%, from $32,300 in 1999 to $44,500 in 2005.

International Trade Minister David Emerson is announcing a spate of activity in his portfolio today. At a speech to mark International Trade Day, Emerson says that Canada:

• Has concluded free trade negotiations with the European Free Trade Association (EFTA), Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland
• Has opened free trade negotiations with Columbia, Peru, the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean community (CARICOM)
• Is exploring the idea of free trade agreements with South Korea and Singapore
• Is working on investment protection agreements with China and India. Exploratory talks in this area are underway with Vietnam and Indonesia.

In his speech, Emerson notes that his big push has been to diversify Canada’s export markets. He says exports last year to non-U.S. countries was up 14.6 per cent. In 2002, 87 per cent of Canada’s exports went to the U.S. Last year, that was down to 82 per cent.

Overall exports last year hit an all-time high of $524–billion.

Here’s an excerpt from the speech he was to give this afternoon:

Today, I can announce that we are launching free trade negotiations with Colombia and Peru, and with the Dominican Republic. I've instructed officials to begin talks over the next few weeks.

In addition, we intend to initiate free trade discussions with the Caribbean community (CARICOM) and hopefully conclude negotiations with the CA4.

But as we build a stronger and more competitive hemispheric platform, we're also reaching out to our traditional partners in Europe.

Today, I'm very happy to announce that Canada has concluded free trade negotiations with the members of the European Free Trade Association (EFTA): Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland.

This is Canada's first FTA in six years, and our first FTA with European countries.

These are four sophisticated and wealthy economies in which technological innovation is a driving force. Taken together, they offer substantial market potential for Canada. Already, we have $11 billion in two-way trade and over $22 billion in two-way investment. In fact, the Swiss are the fifth-largest investor in Canada.

This agreement will create opportunities for Canadian businesses in a wide range of sectors, including building materials, forest products, auto parts and agriculture-all sectors in which Canada has demonstrated strengths.

Most importantly, this agreement is a major directional statement. It's a statement that Canada is back in the game. For the first time in six years, we have an agreement that begins to level the playing field for Canadian companies by giving them preferential access to a key market.

A lot of work went into reaching this agreement. Through the nine years of discussion and negotiation, we kept industry involved. The result is a deal that offers unprecedented flexibility.

On ships in particular, the agreement provides for a generous phase-out of our tariff over a 15-year period, with a grace period of three years before any cuts begin. This will give the industry a significant period of time to adjust to the new market conditions.

Our free trade agreement with EFTA also represents an important step towards trade and investment intensification with the broader EU market.

The European Union is Canada's second-largest trading partner, our second-largest source and destination of foreign investment, and our second-largest source of new technologies.

Enhancing our commercial relationship with the EU is something many of you have been advocating. I share this goal. And I think the study to examine the costs and benefits of closer economic integration, which was announced at the Canada-EU Summit earlier this week, offers a solid basis from which to start.

Responding to calls from the private sector in both markets to reduce red tape, Canada and the EU committed to concluding an agreement on regulatory cooperation as soon as possible. 

We also endorsed the Regulatory Cooperation Roadmap, which sets out an ambitious list of results-oriented sectoral cooperation initiatives.
 
Also important is a comprehensive Canada-EU Air Services Agreement, which we will start negotiating this fall.

We look forward to reviewing progress in these areas at next year's Canada-EU Summit.

Looking beyond the Americas and Europe, we're moving forward on a robust Asian trade strategy.

We're pursuing free trade agreements with South Korea and Singapore-two vital links to the Asian marketplace-which we hope to conclude in the near future.

We're negotiating investment protection agreements with China and India. Exploratory talks with Vietnam and Indonesia are also underway.

Nova Scotia MP has been sitting among Conservatives of one kind or another in the House of Commons since 1988. But a few minutes ago, he took his new seat among Liberals and separatists.
Casey was booted from the Conservative caucus after voting against his own government's budget.
Casey has Joe Commuzzi – kicked out of the Liberal caucus for voting for the government's budget — is on Casey's right in the fifth and final row on the opposition side of the House.
The seat to Casey's left is vacant. Liberal MP Yasmin Ratansi sits in front of him.
As Casey took his seat before Question Period, many Liberals came over to shake his hand.

That all MPs and their families travel for free on VIA rail?

I didn’t know that.

A program on the The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) interviews Newfoundland-born military analyst Gwynne Dyer who has some interesting forecasts for the endgame in the Middle East. (ABC calls Dwyer a “U.S. military analyst”, which to most might mean he's an American who analyses the military rather than a Canadian who analyses the world's armies, but I digress …)

Dwyer believes the terrorist threat to the West may, ultimately, be eliminated if the Americans lose the war in Iraq and are forced out of the Middle East. Here's his logic, as he laid it out yesterday on an ABC program:

The World Today – Friday, 1 June , 2007 12:27:00

Reporter: Eleanor Hall

ELEANOR HALL: A US military analyst who's served in the armed forces and has written on international affairs for more than two decades, is issuing a warning today about the collapse of the United States as a superpower.

In his latest book, The Mess they Made: the Middle East after Iraq, Gwynne Dyer says there's no doubt that the US will withdraw its troops from Iraq once President George W. Bush leaves office.

But he predicts that already that war has set in motion events that will radically transform not only the Middle East but the role of the United States in the world.

Gwynne Dyer is in Sydney this week and he joined me earlier in the World Today studio.

There've been a series of conflicts in the Middle East over the last 40 years, why do you see this latest war in Iraq as likely to be so transformative for the region?

GWYNNE DYER: Well the Americans actually have never committed troops in the Middle East, never actually fought a war in the Middle East, the United States, before. I think this is having an impact on the American public, comparable to the impact on the American public in the Vietnam War though the casualties are far lower this time. So now, there is developing, a Middle Eastern allergy in American public opinion, rather similar to the South East Asian allergy that you had by the end of the 1960's.

That is transformative because if America is not there enforcing the status quo, the status quo probably collapses. It is very old and shoddy. The regimes of the Arab world, with zero exceptions, except for Iraq, where the Americans overthrew Saddam, have all been in power for at least forty years.

They're all dictatorships or absolute monarchies, most of them are corrupt beyond imagining. So this is a very unstable status quo, maintained by American subsidies, American troops, American guarantees, and when those are withdrawn, I think that there will be very large changes in the Middle East.

ELEANOR HALL: You're certain that all of those will be withdrawn, not just the US troops, but the US subsidies as well?

GWYNNE DYER: Not all and not right away, but enough to create a momentum, in which Congress will be reluctant to vote new funds, Congress will be very suspicious about new commitments to support Arab regimes, and meanwhile the momentum in the streets in the Arab world will be moving very rapidly in the favour of the revolutionaries. And that's what they are, after all, the Islamists, after all, are political revolutionaries, they're not just religious fanatics.

ELEANOR HALL: So what will be the shape of the Middle East at that point?

GWYNNE DYER: I think that you're going to see some, I can't tell you which ones, but some Arab regimes fall in the next five years, fall to Islamists of various variety. Some of them perhaps very radical, some of them less so.

ELEANOR HALL: So what would this mean for terrorism in the West

GWYNNE DYER: I think it would drop. I mean the terrorism in the West has two sources, really, first of all the actual 9/11 attacks were a strategic move by a revolutionary Arab organisation, al-Qaeda, to trick the United States into invading Muslim countries. If you pull the troops out of the Middle East, and the West is no longer occupying Muslim countries, I think the wind goes out of the sails of that particular interpretation.

ELEANOR HALL: There's not a danger that having Islamist republics in the Middle East might inspire terrorism around the world?

GWYNNE DYER: No, I don't see why, because I mean, once they're in power, what do they need to bother us for?

Of course, the 'revolutionary regimes' that spring up in the Middle East may not be the greatest thing for the people in those countries but at least we might be safe …

Technorati Tags: defence, security