Month: November 2007

Here’s the opening statement from Prime Minister Harper later this afternoon, as delivered in the National Press Theatre:

Once again, federal lawyers have been reviewing the new affidavit sworn by Karlheinz Schreiber related to his dealings with Brian Mulroney before, during, and after his time in office.  The new allegations in the affidavit stem from a private lawsuit currently before the courts and do not involve the federal government. 

Although these new allegations are unproven and untested in a court of law, they will be the subject of much public discussion and interest.  There are, however, two issues which go beyond the private interests of the parties in the lawsuit. 

First, some of these new allegations touch on the former prime minister's time in office.  And, second, whether these allegations, if true, have any bearing on the settlement reached in January 1997. 

Under these circumstances, I'm announcing today that I will be appointing an independent and impartial third party to review what course of actions may be appropriate given Mr. Schreiber's new sworn allegations.

In the government's review of the affidavit, I was also surprised to learn that my own name was mentioned.  In the affidavit, Mr. Schreiber alleges he gave a letter to Mr. Mulroney which was intended to be shown to me at a meeting at Harrington Lake in July 2006. 

Let me just say my family and I did host the former prime minister and his family for a social occasion at Harrington Lake in August 2006 at our invitation.  We did not discuss Mr. Mulroney's dealings with Mr. Schreiber during that visit nor did Mr. Mulroney present a letter from Mr. Schreiber.  In fact, Mr. Mulroney has never spoken to me on behalf of Mr. Schreiber nor has he ever presented me with any documents for Mr. Schreiber. 

I can assure you we will move quickly on this matter.  We will begin by naming the independent third party as early as next week.

Just out from the Office of the Leader of the Official Opposition:

Statement by the Honourable Stéphane Dion, Leader of the Opposition, on the Need for a Public Inquiry into the Mulroney-Schreiber Affair

Prime Minister Harper's decision to appoint an independent third-party to advise him on what to do next in the matter of Karlheinz Schreiber's allegations about Mr. Mulroney's involvement in the Airbus affair does not satisfy our calls for a public inquiry into the matter.

Now that Mr. Schreiber's affidavit has been made public – now that it names Prime Minister Harper himself as an alleged actor in some of the events in question – Mr. Harper seems desperate to look like he is taking action, while actually offering nothing but delay.

The affidavit leads to some troubling questions. When did Prime Minister Harper and his cabinet first become aware of Mr. Schreiber's allegations? Why was the Justice Canada investigation into this matter stopped? Do these new allegations explain why they are still so reluctant to call a public inquiry?

Most importantly, now that the Prime Minister is himself named as an actor in some of the activities alleged by Mr. Schreiber, he is saddled with at least the appearance of conflict of interest. As such, his impartiality could come under question as further decisions on how to proceed are taken.

That is why the announcement of an independent third-party advisor to the Prime Minister is insufficient. The Prime Minister must take decisive action now, and call a full judicial inquiry with all the independence and powers of the Inquiries Act, to allow others to get to the bottom of this in a transparent and accountable process.

This is the only way to ensure that he fulfills his obligation to preserve the integrity of the office of the Prime Minister.

The press release from Ispos Reid about their latest poll tries to emphasize the positive news — Canadians have an increasing awareness of some historical facts about our country’s military past — but the overall news is embarrassingly awful: Canadians know squat about some of the most basic facts of their country’s history.

The Dominion Institute, which sponsored the survey, screams out the bad news in a banner at its Web site: Only half of Canadians can name our first Prime Minister.

Here’s some of the other dismal results, which my colleague Craig Oliver, reported on our newscast yesterday:

• Who was Canada’s first francophone Prime Minister?
• A. Pierre Elliott Trudeau (27 % picked Trudeau)
• B. Wilfrid Laurier (56 % got it right)
• C. Rene Levesque (13 % thought Levesque was PM once)
• Who was Canada’s first Prime Minister?
• Macdonald – 46%
• Laurier – 3 %
• Trudeau – 2%
• Don’t know – 37 %
• What year did Confederation occur?
• 1867 – 26 %
• 1918 – 1 %
• 1960 – 1 %
• 1950 – 1 %
• Other – 43 %
• Don’t know – 29 %

 

Washington beltway newsmagazine The Hill reports that Lockheed Martin Inc. has put forward an unsolicited proposal to the Pentagon to sell the U.S. a pile of Hercules 130Js, the same plane that the Canadian government is almost certain to buy for its tactical airlift requirements. Canada, it seems to me, will be (or ought to be) watching this proposal closely because Lockheed's pitch apparently assumes a certain level of international sales. From The Hill story:

In an effort to avert having to shut down its Georgia production line in three years, Lockheed Martin is lobbying the Air Force to buy an additional 120 C-130J aircraft under an offered multi-year contract worth more than $6 billion . . .

Lockheed’s offer assumes the Air Force and Marine Corps would buy 24 airplanes a year for five years. International customers would purchase an additional six airplanes a year, under Lockheed’s plan.

Lockheed currently builds about 12 C-130Js a year at a cost close to $60 million per plane for Air Force and Marine Corps versions.

Lockheed projects on average that a combat delivery variant would cost $50.4 million a plane; a shorter, more mobile version would cost $47.8 million; and an air refueling tanker would cost $51.8 million, in current dollars.

Adjusted for inflation and prior to contract negotiations, Lockheed’s proposal would cost $58.9 million to $63.7 million per plane between 2011 and 2015, according to Pentagon officials.

…Lockheed’s price target also assumes strong international interest in the C-130J, said the official, who described that assumption as high-risk.

While we're keeping an eye on prices — the Norwegian Air Force has just signed up to buy four C-130Js at a maximum price of about $304-million U.S. Norway has much the same problem Canada does: An aging Hercules fleet that desperately needs attention. Lockheed announced the contract late yesterday afternoon:

The Norwegian Super Hercules will be the longer fuselage, or “stretched” variant of the C-130J, similar to those being delivered to the U.S. Air Force. Deliveries to Norway will include one aircraft in 2008, one in 2009 and two in 2010.

The first two aircraft for Norway are already in production and were originally destined for service with the U.S. Air Force. As a result of Norway's urgent need to replace its nearly 40-year-old C-130s, the Norwegian government arranged with the U.S. government for early delivery. The second two aircraft will be built specifically for Norway.

Meanwhile, a writer at Defense Industry Daily picks up on Lockheed's new push at the Pentagon and adds a little more context to the story:

The USAF has about 20% of its C-130E/H Hercules fleet on the ground or under significant flight restrictions right now, and has been pleading to be able to retire them instead of spending time and maintenance dollars on aircraft that will probably never fly again. This percentage will continue to grow as the hours continue to pile up. Meanwhile, the C-130Js are performing well in Iraq and Afghanistan, where their performance suffers much less from the heat and high altitude than C-130E/H versions. US Special Forces are also looking to renew their aging C-130 specialty aircraft and gunship fleet, but they worry that platforms like the C-130 won't be survivable 15 years from now.

Both groups have made noises lately about a competition that could involve Airbus' recently-delayed A400M, which breaks through the 20-ton cargo barrier that has stymied several US armored vehicle programs. Those rumblings, and the delay, may have handed Lockheed both motive and opportunity to make its proposal…

The important thing, from Lockheed Martin's perspective, is to raise the size of the USA's C-130J fleet high enough that competitive alternatives become too expensive due to the scale of duplication required for training, logistics, maintenance, et. al. An additional 120 aircraft would almost certainly achieve this goal, locking in a much larger volume of long-term orders, while keeping the production line open long past 2015 for other international customers.

The 20-ton space is likely to become rather crowded by 2020, however, with the Indo-Russian MRTA, Embraer C-390, and Chinese Y-9 all vying for market share, and the possibility of the American AJACS program as an additional complicating factor. Meanwhile, Airbus will be offering a competitor that offers major performance advantages, while remaining within the financial reach of existing customers like Chile, Malaysia, and South Africa.

For all of these reasons, the C-130J has little chance of duplicating its predecessors' international success. Regardless, Lockheed Martin has invested $1 billion of private funds in the aircraft's development, and wishes to recover them. To do so, however, it must remain in the competitive game. Offering substantial discounts now is a smart way to do it.

No, really, they're serious:

The solution we're creating is simple: an open-source filter software that can detect rampant stupidity in written English. This will be accomplished with weighted Bayesian analysis and some rules-based processing, similar to spam detection engines. The primary challenge inherent in our task is that stupidity is not a binary distinction, but rather a matter of degree. To this end, we're collecting a ranked corpus of stupid text, gleaned from user comments on public websites and ranked on a five-point scale.

Eventually, once the research is completed, we plan to release core engine source code for incorporation into content management systems, blogs, wikis and the like. Additionally, we plan to develop a fully implemented Firefox plugin and a WordPress plugin.

The Stupid Filter Project is the brainchild of Albuquerque's Gabriel Ortiz and Honolulu's Paul Starr. Do read their FAQ, in which they confront the issue of irony in online comments:

What about ironic uses of “stupid” diction?

The StupidFilter is blind to irony. Our intent is that one or two instances of “lol” or “ur dum” in several paragraphs of otherwise-cogent text won't result in a false positive. However, we consider the StupidFilter's irony-ignorance to be a feature, insofar as even if an allegedly-smart person makes a short, stupid comment, their smartness doesn't make the comment any less stupid. If your mom had designed the StupidFilter, she might say “If you can't say anything smart, don't say anything at all.”

To Gabriel and Paul, I say: Good luck, men!

The Conference Board of Canada is out today with its forecast for growth of Canada’s regional economies. Not surprisingly, it believes growth will be strongest in the West while economic activity in Ontario and Quebec will slow, a result, it says, of trouble in the manufacturing sector.

Nationally, the Conference Board’s forecasters are looking for Canada’s real Gross Domestic Product (GDP) to grow 2.6 per cent this year and 2.8 per cent in 2008. Here’s their forecast.

	Increase in Real GDP (%)
	2007	2008	2009
NF	6.8	1.5	0.6
PE	2.4	2.0	2.0
NS	2.0	2.2	2.3
NB	2.2	2.2	3.4
QC	2.0	2.6	2.7
ON	2.4	2.6	3.2
MB	3.7	3.5	2.7
SK	4.3	2.8	2.6
AB	3.4	3.6	3.6
BC	2.6	2.8	3.1
CANADA	2.6	2.8	3.1

On Tuesday morning, Canada’s Atomic Veterans will announce that they are suing the federal government.

Canada’s Atomic Veterans is a group of Second World War veterans that “played war games less than 1,000 yards away from detonated test [atomic] bombs.”

Below is the press release from this veteran group but, before that, here’s an eyewitness account from Lt. Col. Strome Galloway, a Canadian observer who was in Nevada on July 5, 1957 when a test bomb was exploded. This account forms part of a Department of National Defence briefing note that was prepared for then Defence Minister Gordon O’Connor in June,  2006. I received that briefing note through an Access to Information Request. The recommendations to O’Connor about proposed compensation were blacked out in my note but The Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese reported Friday that these veterans have been offered and are rejecting compensation of $24,000 per person.

Here’s Galloway, writing in 1957:

“I was with the observer group at 11,000 yards from Ground Zero. A US Marine Combat Group were in trenches 5,500 yards from Ground Zero. I understand that the Director General Military Training and the Commander of 4 Cdn Inf Bde were in the trenches with the Marines. The observer group to which I was attached took up their positions on the reverse slope of a small hill …. This group was precluded from looking at the fireball due to the fact that goggles were not available. We were cautioned to close our eyes, cover them with our hands, and to remain in that attitude until instructed over the wireless to view the mushroom … The well known mushroom shape of the cloud was observed about 30 seconds after the detonation …. It was estimated that this bomb was about 60 to 70 kiloton. An impressive adjunct to the explosion was the turbulence caused on the ground; huge dust clouds extending from [ground zero] to a radius of about five miles …. It was reported that the bomb was relatively clean and that the fallout equalled an estimated lgetime dose of 45/1000 of one roentgen … Following the detonation, the US Marines carried out a vertical envelopment exercise using helicopters. In effect this was merely the lifting of the Marines from their trenches by helicopters and the placing of them on their objectives. It had very little tactical connection with [ground zero] but did show that troops could be entrenched 5,500 yards from a 60 or 70 kiloton [explosion] and could in about two hours time be lifted out of their positions by helicopter.”

Fifty years and a few months after Galloway wrote those words, Canadian veterans from that era issued this release:

Ottawa – November 5th, 2007 – The Atomic Veterans Association is holding a press conference on Parliament Hill (Charles Lynch Room) on November 6, 2007, at 10:30 am.

«In the spring of 1957, we were the young Canadian soldiers sent to Nevada to serve as guinea pigs for the military in a nuclear test field. Trusting the Canadian Forces and our Government, we played war games less than 1,000 yards away from detonated test bombs four times more powerful than the one dropped on Hiroshima. We were told «not to worry about radiation».

But most veterans fell victim to radiation, and children were born with birth defects. The men who died of cancers and other radiation related diseases left their wives without support.

In 1995, a few survivors founded the Atomic Veterans Association. We’ve been trying ever since to get recognition and compensation from the Canadian Government. We’ve been made several promises along the years. The last one was made by Minister Of National Defense Gordon O’Connor, who promised a resolution for us by May 2007. We’re still waiting.

Today, 50 years after being exposed to dangerous nuclear radiation, we are still fighting for justice and we want all Canadians to know what happened to us. …

Now, we also have no choice but to sue the Government. …

I was in my second year at the University of Guelph when the Guelph Gryphon football team won its one and only national title, taking the 1984 Vanier Cup in a thriller on the turf at old Varsity Stadium in Toronto against the Mount Allison Huskies. After that, though, the program had a long slow decline.

But with back-to-back upset playoff victories over the last two weekends, the program is back! Two weekends ago, the Gryphs upended the higher-seed McMaster Marauders and then, a few days ago, the Gryphs overcame a 24–0 first quarter deficit to score 38 unanswered points against the Wilfrid Laurier Golden Hawks to get a date in the 100th Yates Cup championship. The Hawks had lost just once all year and my guys were a very pedestrian 4–4.

Guelph had the second lowest seed in the OUA playoff pool but, despite that, gets to host the Yates Cup championship at Alumni Stadium next week. That’s because the University of Western Ontario Mustangs, who were seeded last in the playoff pool (they also went 4–4), beat the unbeaten number one-ranked University of Ottawa Gee-Gees, to continue their own Cinderalla playoff run.

So that’s my first and most ardent football loyalty.

Number two for me are those sad-sack Buffalo Bills who — don’t look now — just evened up their record at 4–4. They’ve now now won three  in a row and four of their last five.

And my other football fave — the Green Bay Packers — kept rolling right along this weekend, as well, beating the Kansas City Chiefs.

It’s pretty rare that a football fan gets that kind of trifecta.

And now, for those football fans who really want do some deep thinking, there’s a new study out by an economist at the University of California named David Romer

… who has concluded that football teams are far too conservative in play calling in fourth-down situations.
 You don't have to be particularly interested in sports to find Romer's conclusion intriguing: His hunch about human behavior in general was that although people say they have a certain goal and are willing to do everything they can to achieve it, their actual behavior regularly departs from the optimal path to reach that goal.

In his analysis of football teams, Romer specifically looked at a single question — whether teams should punt or kick the football on fourth down, or take a chance and run or throw the ball. Romer's calculations don't necessarily tell teams what to do in specific situations such as yesterday's game. But on average, teams that take the risk seem to win more often than lose.