Month: November 2007

MTV boss Judy McGrath jokes to Reuters that she considered therapy after she discovered she had fallen asleep on her BlackBerry and Arianna Huffington predicts that the next big thing to hit the digital generation will be logging off. “Everybody's so overloaded,” Huffington tells a reporter at MediaPost Publications. Our “inner lives” are failing to be nourished in the digital age. “We are incredibly sleep deprived.”

Natural Resources Minister Gary Lunn just announced that Canada has joined the Global Nuclear Energy proejct — much to the dismay of the Green Party — and has also decided to look at all options for Atomic Energy Canada Ltd.

Here’s the release from NRCAN:

Canada to Join Global Nuclear Energy Partnership
Structure of Atomic Energy Canada Limited to be reviewed
 
OTTAWA, ONTARIO–(Marketwire – Nov. 29, 2007) – The Honourable Gary Lunn, Minister of Natural Resources, and the Honourable Maxime Bernier, Minister of Foreign Affairs, announced today that Canada has accepted an invitation to join the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).

GNEP is an international partnership that promotes a safer, more secure and cleaner world through the responsible development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

“As the world's largest producer of uranium and a country taking steps to tackle climate change through the development of clean energy technology, Canada's responsibility is to help shape the safe and secure development of nuclear energy worldwide,” said Minister Lunn.

GNEP will focus on enhanced safeguards, and cooperative research in developing advanced technologies.

“Canada is recognized for its commitment to safety and non-proliferation,” said Minister Bernier. “By joining this partnership, we are making sure Canada can continue to be an effective advocate for those ideals.”

Minister Lunn also announced that, as part of its commitment to good governance, the Government of Canada will conduct a full review of the structure of Atomic Energy Canada Limited (AECL).

“It is time to consider whether the existing structure of AECL is appropriate in a changing marketplace,” added Minister Lunn. “This review will give us the information we need to make the right decisions for AECL and the right decisions for Canadians.”

The review of AECL will be led by Natural Resources Canada, with the support of the Department of Finance and full collaboration of AECL, and with the assistance of outside expertise. 

And here’s the Green Party:

September 14, 2007

Green Party urges Canada to stay out of Global Nuclear Energy Partnership

OTTAWA – The Green Party today called on the Conservative government to reject an invitation to join the US-led Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP).  Countries in the GNEP will meet in Vienna on Sunday but Prime Minister Stephen Harper has yet to reveal to Canadians whether his government will sign on.

“Stephen Harper must be honest with Canadians on his intent to participate in this initiative,” said Green Party leader Elizabeth May.  “The GNEP operates under the guise of anti-proliferation by requiring countries to take back highly radioactive waste, but its true purpose is to act as a security blanket for the nuclear industry by increasing export of uranium and reactor technologies.  In reality, the GNEP will increase proliferation by further spreading nuclear energy, increasing plutonium reprocessing and speeding up the arms race.”

“Canada’s inability to deal with the nuclear waste we produce domestically is proof that we cannot possibly repatriate nuclear waste from other countries,” added Andrew Lewis, Natural Resources Critic for the Green Party.  “The current nuclear waste management plan amounts to little more than sitting on the waste until we find a community willing to store it.  In fact, there will never be a safe way to dispose of radioactive waste.  We must end subsidies to the nuclear industry and shift to renewable energy.”

Ms. May added that repatriation of radioactive waste is currently contrary to Canadian policy.  She underscored the significant threat to security posed by the transport of nuclear waste and plutonium, stating that moving plutonium around the world is an inherently dangerous activity that increases the risk of terrorist attacks and nuclear accidents.

Prime Minister Harper will be in Newfoundland and Labrador tomorrow where he and Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams look end the biggest spat in Confederation since Eddie Shack looked the wrong way at John Ferguson.

Williams, of course, has been throwing a tantrum/defending his province when it comes to Harper and the federal  government. Williams has given to derisively referring to the Prime Minister as ‘Steve’ but, since he won a landslide re-election and has been cutting deals with oil companies, the PMO figures they’re going to have to deal with him somehow and, so, tomorrow, the two men (but mostly Harper) will begin a rapprochement. Here’s a statement issued this afternoon by the Premier’s office:

Premier Williams said he is pleased to have the opportunity for a face-to-face discussion with the Prime Minister on issues of importance to Newfoundland and Labrador.

“I will take the opportunity to discuss with the Prime Minister the numerous commitments that have been made by the Federal Government to our province,” said Premier Williams. “Primary among these will be the issue of non-renewable resource revenue, 5-Wing Goose Bay, the fishery and also the impact of the strong Canadian dollar on many of our industries. I will also outline for the Prime Minister the aggressive agenda for growth and prosperity our government has been successfully implementing for Newfoundland and Labrador.”

The only thing we have so far from the Prime Minister’s Office is this itinerary:

St.George’s, Newfoundland

1:30 p.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will make an announcement. He will be joined by Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians, Chuck Strahl and Minister of Fisheries and Oceans, Loyola Hearn.

The Federation of Newfoundland Indians Museum
Main Road
St.George’s, Newfoundland

Holyrood, Newfoundland
7:00 p.m. – Prime Minister Stephen Harper will deliver a speech at a Conservative Party of Canada members event. He will be joined by members of the Conservative caucus.

Royal Canadian Legion – Branch 64
Conception bay highway, Rte 60
Holyrood, Newfoundland.
 

My friends Campbell Clark and Brian Laghi have a good look at the political imperatives behind this meeting in today’s Globe and Mail.

Liberal MP Mike Savage, who represents the Nova Scotia riding of Dartmouth-Cole Harbour, got an e-mail from one his constitutents today. The correspondent’s spouse is serving on HMCS Toronto, which is steaming for its home port of Halifax right now after a mission with NATO's Standing NATO Maritime Group 1 (SNMG1), where Toronto and her crew helped with a search–and-rescue operation of nine missing Yemeni soldiers after a volcanic eruption on Jabal al-Tair island, about 140 kilometres off the coast of Yemen in the Red Sea. Toronto rescued one man and located the bodies of two more.

The correspondent’s spouse said that the ship’s captain, Commander Stephen Virgin, has advised the crew that Toronto will be two days late arriving in Toronto for no other reason that he has been ordered to drive slow and save gas.

The correspondent who wrote Savage and who hasn’t seen his or her spouse since July 1, is upset at the penny-pinching ways of the admirals who are delaying the reunion of families so that Canadian taxpayers can save a few thousand dollars.

Meanwhile, Defence Minister Peter MacKay, Chief of Defence Staff Rick Hillier, and new defence deputy minister Robert Fonberg will appear before the House of Commons Standing Committee on National Defence in about 40 minutes to go over the department’s budget for the year. The Navy’s chronic shortage of money to buy basic things like fuel may come up here.

Fred Pearce, in The New Statesmen, warns about water shortages:

Water consumption has tripled in the past 30 years and there's a growing danger that disputes over the most necessary of resources could erupt into violence.

Water is rapidly becoming one of the defining crises of the 21st century. Climate change is making its availability increasingly uncertain. And we are using ever more of the stuff.

In the past three decades the human population has doubled but human use of water has tripled – largely because, tonne-for-tonne, modern ‘high-yielding’ crop varieties often need more water than the old crops.

A typical Westerner consumes, directly and through thirsty products like food, about a hundred times their own weight in water every day. That is why some of the great rivers of the world, such as the Nile, Indus, Yellow River and Colorado, no longer reach the sea in any appreciable volume. All their water is taken…

Meanwhile, in the current issue of The New York Review of Books, Chinese activist Dai Qing looks at the 'thirsty dragon' that is Beijing as it prepares to host the Olympics:

Perhaps if this spectacle had been held three hundred years ago, or even a hundred years ago, the environment of Beijing might have been able to sustain it. After all, the city is surrounded by mountains on three sides, has five major water sources, and once had numerous lakes and marshes with underground springs constantly welling up and disgorging crystal-clear water. It was a rich and fertile place, and was home to five imperial capitals. But today Beijing is entirely different. Its reservoirs are 90 percent dry, and all of its rivers flow at historically low levels. The aquifer under Beijing has been drastically lowered by long-term overuse . . .

Liberal Pablo Rodriguez is one of a handful of MPs to have tabled a private members bill in the House of Commons and watched it become the law of the land. So it was, though, with Rodriguez's C-288, the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act which received Royal Assent on June 22, 2007.

That bill required, among other things, that the Minister of the Environment to do the following:

9. (1) Within 120 days after this Act comes into force, the Minister shall prepare a statement setting out the greenhouse gas emission reductions that are reasonably expected to result for each year up to and including 2012..

The Friends of the Earth — and many others, I should add — believe that the Minister of the Environment, John Baird, has not done what the KPIA required and has broken the law of the land by failing to do so. And so yesterday — 159 days after the KPIA received Royal Assent — The Friends of the Earth filed a lawsuit in the Federal Court of Canada asking for a judicial review of the conduct of Baird and cabinet. The ultimate goal for FoE would to have a judge issue a court order stipulating that the governnment obey the directives in the KPIA.

You can review the FoE brief filed with the court here (PDF).

Baird, incidentally, appears today before the House of Commons Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development where the Committee expects him to outline the government's intentions with regards to the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Bali next week. The world's governments are expected to use that meeting to lay the framework for a treaty that will succeed the Kyoto Protocol when that expires in 2012.

For the first time since 1913, the Speaker of the House of Commons, acting on the authority of the House, has ordered an individual, through a Speaker's Warrant, to appear before a committee of the House. And so, today, Karl-Heinz Schreiber was transported from a Toronto jail to Ottawa so that he may testify in front of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics.

Pat Martin (Winnipeg South) is the NDP member of that committee and he answered questions from several reporters outside the House of Commons today:

Reporter: What are the questions you want Mr. Schreiber to answer tomorrow?

Martin: Well, the top-of-mind questions for most Canadians is, was the $300,000 payment to Mr. Mulroney in any way connected to a kickback associated with the Airbus purchase. Those are the obvious ones. Then of course we can go into more depth and detail to find out the extent of Mr. Schreiber's list of friends in Ottawa. We believe Mr. Schreiber had a list of contacts that spanned both of the major parties over many different governments. The obvious top-of-mind questions would be what was the $300,000 for and why cash? And what did you expect from Mr. Mulroney in return for that $300,000? I think we have to keep our line of questioning fairly simple and straightforward to get to those main top-of-mind issues that most Canadians — that's bothering most Canadians.

Martin: …. Really, we were charged with the responsibility of looking at whether public office holders breached ethical standards and whether our current codes of conduct are robust enough to prevent that from happening again and I think it would be wise for the committee to limit itself to that course.

Martin: No, I think one of the things that we're looking at is perhaps [the committee's legal advisors] should open up and set the tone for the meeting by introducing the witness, perhaps giving some council and advice to the witness about his rights and responsibilities. For instance, not everyone's aware that you do not have the right to remain silent in this setting whereas witnesses in court do. So I think it would be good for Mr. Walsh to set the tone, perhaps swear the witness under oath to make it clear what his rights and responsibilities are.

Reporter: Do you know whether it is illegal or unethical under the code in 1993 for an MP to accept money while in office?

Martin: Well, I don't think Mr. Schreiber would be an expert to ask that question to but I do intend to ask that question to Mr. Mulroney before Christmas. Mr. Mulroney, the obvious question is why did you swear under oath in 1996 that you had only a passing acquaintance with Mr. Schreiber when you were meeting privately with him in 1993 and 1994 accepting big envelopes full of cash? That would be a logical question to ask Mr. Mulroney.

Reporter: You're asking the question, right, not the parliamentary lawyers, right?

Martin: Oh absolutely. The MPs ask the witnesses in our normal rotation as agreed to – the Liberals first, the Bloc next

Reporter: (Liberal MP and committee chairman Paul) Szabo suggested perhaps lawyers could ask the questions.

Martin: No, Mr. Szabo is toying with ideas to make sure it's run in an orderly way but all we've talked about so far is that the lawyer would begin the meeting by setting some ground rules and some parameters. The order of questioning is still as per a normal committee meeting, limited to seven minutes plus each turn for the parties in each of their turns.

Reporter: (Schreiber) may not say anything if he comes up here. What do you make of that?

Martin: Well, Mr. Schreiber does not have the right to remain silent and that will have to be made known to him and how that's enforced remains to be seen but his rights and his obligations are different as a witness before a parliamentary committee than they are under a court of law.

Martin: …. I'm having a meeting as soon as I walk away from this mic with the Speaker on behalf of the committee to urge the Speaker to allow Mr. Schreiber to stay in his own home with access to his own papers and his own clothes. We want a well-rested, cooperative witness, not an angry, hostile witness who has been up all night listening to drunks be dragged in and out of the Ottawa Detention Centre. That's not conducive to a productive exercise. Let's remember, Mr. Schreiber's never been convicted of anything and I don't believe he's a flight risk. He should be allowed to stay in his own home where his papers are and where his clothes are and sleep in his own bed so he's well-rested and cooperative.

Reporter: Has that been agreed to?

Martin: That has not been agreed to. I'm going to urge the Speaker. He's in the custody of the Speaker. It's completely within the rights of the Speaker to dictate the terms of his custody. That's the approach I'm going to make on behalf of the committee in two minutes now.

Reporter: The issue of decorum, the issue of decorum. Quickly, grandstanding often happens when the cameras show up. You're a pretty dramatic fellow. Are we going to see a lot of grandstanding?

Martin: No. We've all stipulated ourselves to the highest standards of conduct because of the importance. We don't want to blow this. This is really important to all Canadians and I resent those who say it's going to be a circus and a gong show. We're the elected representatives of the people asking questions on behalf of the problem and we're going to do it properly and with the dignity that a parliamentary committee deserves.

Andrew Cline, a journalism school professor at Missouri State University, puts out the challenge to professional journalists: When we get a chance to ask politicians something, we should be asking questions that tend to elicit information that actually matters to somebody:

Citizen journalists, bloggers, people who go to town hall meetings, usually ask substantive questions because–SUPRISE!!!–they are interested in governance–the stuff that affects their lives. When you're worried about health care or the moral direction of the country, it's damned hard to work up any interest at all in which candidate has raised more money this quarter or who's ahead in the polls in Iowa.

… professional political journalism isn't ready for this concept I call “critical reporting.” The pros won't be ready until they learn to do the very basic task of asking the kinds of questions that get the kind of information people actually want and need.