Month: May 2009

Ignatieff: "I'm not the issue"

Liberal attack ads strike back. First, leader Michael Ignatieff speaks to camera for 1:40, sounding reasonable and so on (left). Then, in some others, Liberals turn the Conservative attack ad grahics back at Harper. Instead of the Conservative's “Just Visiting” tag, they tag Harper with “Just Leaving”, noting how he's the first PM in history to avoid a confidence vote by proroguing Parliament.

Now, there's one important point here: The Conservative ads are airing on prime-time network television across the country. That ain't cheap but what you get for spending all that money is lots of eyeballs. The Liberal ads, clever as they might be, are only out there on YouTube. Many – perhaps hundreds of thousands of Canadians — will see them but, with $20 million or more in the bank compared to a Liberal party which is still struggling to pay off election and 2007-08 leadership race debts, the Conservatives are playing a war of attrition that they have every expectation of winning.

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Chalk River: End of the line for world's oldest reactor?

As radioactive water continues to leak from the nuclear reactor that produces more than half the world's medical isotopes, Canwest News Service has learned that technicians at the Chalk River, Ont., facility are privately wondering if the end has finally come for the world's oldest reactor.

… two engineers — one working at the Chalk River facility and one who spent years working there — said they doubt the repairs will be made even within eight months and, in fact, may never be complete.

“A month to repair is a dream,” said the engineer who works at the facility, and who asked for anonymity for fears he would be dismissed.

“Sounds to me as if good ol' NRU is gone for good,” said the other engineer, who, after working for AECL at several of its nuclear facilities including Chalk River, now works for the federal government. That individual also requested anonymity. [Read the full story]

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Access to information database resurrected

University of Ottawa law professor Michael Geist writes that he and some students have resurrected the invaluable (to me, anyhow) CAIRS database.

“Today I launched CAIRS.Info, a new site that provides access to searchable PDF copies of the same information that was contained in the CAIRS database. Requests are sent to most government departments each quarter for a list of the most recent access to information requests. The resulting documents are uploaded and can be searched by government department, date of the request, or keywords within the requests. All request documents can be viewed online or downloaded as a PDF file. “

Hurrah for Prof. Geist and his students. Great job!

Mulroney v. The Globe and Mail

On his second day on the stand at the Oliphant Commission, The Globe and Mail made Brian Mulroney cry.

On his penultimate day on the stand (yesterday), the former prime minister accused the newspaper of “suppressing” a fourth and final article in the series in which it was first disclosed that Mulroney took cash payments from Karlheinz Schreiber. This fourth article, Mulroney hinted yesterday, would have contained information which, if not favourable to him, would have diverted the spotlight to someone or something else. Under questioning from Justice Jeffrey Oliphant, Mulroney conceded he had no direct knowledge a fourth article was every prepared.

A few hours after that testimony, Globe and Mail editor-in-chief Edward Greenspon shoots back replying that, not only was there no fourth story, Mulroney actually called Greenspon directly and was so desperate to prevent the Globe from publishing details about the cash transactions that he offered up what he said was a juicier scoop if the Globe suppressed that story. The Globe turned down Mulroney's offer.

This morning, the public relations firm that has been retained by Mulroney says the Globe is hiding something.

To which I'd say:

You, me, and those who pay taxes on 100 per cent of their income every year are footing the bill for this inquiry and it is Mulroney's behaviour, not The Globe and Mail's, that we are interested in.

I won't get to ask Mulroney a question but I've got two:

  1. Mulroney said, on the stand, yesterday that he knows the name of a Cape Breton political figure for whom Karlheinz Schreiber set up the BRITAN bank account. Ok, who was it? There's a handful we can suspect and now they're all under cloud unless you might clear the air.
  2. If the Globe and Mail is hiding something, what is it? Why not table those documents to other news organizations? After all, we have a thriving, competitive media landscape in this country and there are many other reporters who, if offered such a scoop, would surely take more than a week to corroborate the “explosive information” you have. My contact details, as always, can be found here.

I'll have more on this shortly over at the sister site for this blog at www.canada.com/blogs.

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Chalk River shuts down: Reaction

The National Research Universal (NRU) nuclear reactor operated by Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. (AECL) at Chalk River, Ont. produces most of the world's medical isotopes used to diagnose and treat diseases like cancer. Isotopes have a short shelf life and therefore cannot be stockpiled. The Chalk River isotopes are sent to MDS Nordion of Kanata where they are processed and shipped to pharmaceutical companies worldwide for distributions to medical clinics and hospitals.

Last night, AECL announced that the NRU was going to be down for at least a month because of a heavy water leak. No heavy water or other radioactive material has escaped the facility, AECL said. The bigger crisis will be the health crisis, as doctors and technicians cannot get the material they need to treat patients.

Reaction:

From MDS Nordion:

MDS Nordion expects the impact of this shutdown to begin to be felt this week. The NRU produces approximately 30%-40% of the world's medical isotopes and approximately 50% of those used in North America, and is one of only four reactors in the world with the capacity to produce significant commercial quantities. While MDS Nordion is working closely with its supply network to source additional isotopes, based on AECL's information and global supply capability, the Company expects that the medical community and their patients will experience a significant shortage of isotopes worldwide.

From the federal government:

Immediately upon being made aware of this shutdown, the Government of Canada enacted the Isotope Early Notification Protocol, which includes notification to the isotope user community, of an extended interruption in the supply of medical isotopes from AECL.

“Our Government is fully engaged with Provincial and Territorial governments, and the health care community, who are being encouraged to take planned measures such as modifying patient scheduling and triaging to maximize the supply of medical isotopes available,” said the Honourable Leona Aglukkaq, Minister of Health.

A secure supply of medical isotopes is not only an issue for Canada; it is an international issue that is being addressed cooperatively by all isotope-producing countries. At the same time, the Government of Canada is engaging international isotope producers as well as companies such as MDS Nordion, Lantheus, and Covidien who all play key roles in securing medical isotope supply for North America.

From one of my sources on this story who I cannot name because s/he works for the federal government:

MDS Nordion could not survive such a prolongued shutdown of its only producer. I am sure by this time MDS-N are looking at moving their operations elsewhere, Europe, South Africa or Australia maybe. Few, if any organization in the world has the skills and experience of MDS-N in the critical processes of the Moly [isotope] supply chain, refining, packaging, shipping and distribution.

The reactor itself is kids' play…most fast-flux reactors can produce Moly [isotopes] if they are adapted for that. The rest is (expensive) bricks and mortar, glass and lead, gloves and fumehoods required for the construction of the universal (shielded) cells. The downside will be the ca. 1,000 jobs that will be lost in Kanata, and the huge cost of decommissioning the facility. Some of that cost may flow back to the feds as a legacy cost, given that MDS-N was once a Crown corporation (AECL Radiochemical)…depending on the terms of the privatization agreement in the early 90's

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What's a Twibe? I'm a Twibe. You're a Twibe. We're a Twibe.

Just ran across another Web service that is a derivative of Twitter – Twibes. A Twibe seems to me be closely related to a Twitter hashtag but I'm still trying to figure out the concept. To start — mostly to experiment with — I've created two Twibes — one for tweets, news, etc. by and about the House of Commons and one for the news by and about the Parliamentary Press Gallery.

What is a Twibe? Here, from Twibe's help page:

A twibe is a group of Twitter users interested in a common topic who would like to be able to communicate with each other. On each twibe's page, there is a list of twibe members. There is also a tweet stream that lists tweets from twibe members which contain key word tags. Tags are set by the twibe founder and are listed just above the tweet stream. You can browse through twibes that have already been created by going to www.twibes.com/twitter-groups.

Let's examine the 'Twibe' concept in practice from the point-of-view of someone who wants to generate content for the Twibe and someone who simply wants to monitor content by and about the Twibe.

Content generators:

This is simple. If want to tweet about the House of Commons — say with short bursts of info about the latest goings-on on Question Period — I would include the three digits HOC in my tweet. The case is important here: It must be three uppercase letters. That's it. Now, I've also got a hashtag going – #HOC. The content generation rule there is the similar: I need to put #HOC in every tweet for it to show up for those following the #HOC hashtag. (I should note that here at the Oliphant Commission we have a Twitter hashtag going that looks like this #oli). So far as I know, though, hashtags are case-independent. In other words, #HOC is the same as #hoc. The critical element is that hash sign.

There appears to be one important rule for Twibe tweets as opposed to hashtag tweets: You cannot tweet more than one Twibe URL at a time whereas you could have multiple hashtag references. In other words this tweet is legal for Twibe:

Iggy just asked Harper a question HOC

This tweet is bad for Twibe:

Iggy just asked Harper a question HOC ParlPressGallery

This tweet is fine for hashtaggers:

Iggy just asked Harper a question #HOC #liberals #roft

But Twibes do something, hashtags don't: If you sign up for Twibe (and you must have a Twitter account to do so), you can arrange to have Twibe content delivered to you via e-mail.

Content monitors:

You don't need to have a Twitter account to see content generated under a hashtag. Simply go to search.twitter.com , search on the hashtag and then, if you so choose, subscribe to the RSS feed for that hashtag. You can now monitor tweets on this particular hashtag in your favourite RSS reader like, for example, Google Reader or Bloglines.

You do need a Twitter account, though, to take advantage of monitoring content on Twibes, so far as I can tell. But the bonus is: You can then choose to monitor content via e-mail, via theTwibes home page, or through other options — including, if I read this right, a weekly update from your Twibe group. That flexibility sounds useful to me.

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Canadian businesses respond to recession by getting smaller but not by declaring bankruptcy

CIBC World Markets economist Benjamin Tal notes that the rate of business bankruptcies in this recession are a puzzler:

Given the current fragile state of the Canadian economy and the likelihood that first-quarter GDP will be the steepest drop on record, one would expect the number of business bankruptcies in the economy to skyrocket. The reality, however, is surprisingly different. Not only are business bankruptcies not rising, but they are, in fact, falling. This trajectory is completely inconsistent with both the experience seen in any other recession and the current situation in the US, where business bankruptcies are rising at a rate not seen since 1975. This abnormality suggests that, at least for now, downsizing as opposed to broadly based plant closures, is what defines the response of many Canadian firms to the current economic recession . . . [Read the report – PDF]

Under pressure to show they're spending, ministers hit the road to, er, spend

MPs are on a break this week from the House of Commons and that means, without the requirement to be present for Question Period or committee meetings, they are travelling about the country.

Government MPs, but particularly ministers, will be busy here and there making various funding announcements all week, as they try to demonstrate that any criticism that they've been slow to get stimulus funding out the door is opposition hogwash. As usual, we'll be tracking the spending announcements on Twitter under the hashtag #ottawaspends. Feel free to jump in there. (You can follow me on Twitter @davidakin or take a look at the left hand side of this page for my live-Twitter feed or, finally, simply point your browser at this site.)

On deck so far today:

  • In Calgary, Environment Minister Jim Prentice is up at noon local time at the Stampede Victoria Park LRT Station for an infrastructure announcement.
  • Revenue Minister Jean-Pierre Blackburn was in St. Hyacinthe, Que. this morning to announce funding for a food inspection agency lab.
  • Heritage Minister James Moore is in Quebec City at the Musee de la Civilisation for a 1 pm announcement to prove yet again that “Conservatives support culture!”
  • Labour Minister Rona Ambrose is in Edmonton for a 1430 funding announcement at the Rapid Fire Theatre Society.
  • Saskatchewan MP Andrew Scheer has an announcement in Regina at 1000.
  • Ontario MP Rick Norlock is in Kingston, Ont. this evening at 1930 to hand out some money.
  • Ontario MP Greg Rickford is in Dryden to give money to seniors at the Wabigoon Lake Ojibway Nation.