Month: July 2009

For the record: Harper's misguided attack on Ignatieff

At his closing press conference in Italy at the G8, Prime Minister Stephen Harper was asked about the future relevance of the G8. Here is an unofficial transcript of the question Harper was asked and his English-language response. (He responded somewhat similarly in French). The attack on Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff came, unprompted by reporters I should point out, at the end of his comments to a question about the future of the G8:

Reporter: I would like to hear you speak about the future of the G8. What do you feel about the pressure that has been exerted by some countries to broaden the group to G5+1 to make it a G14 given the fact that year-in and year-out we see power from emerging economies and, with this in mind, how do you expect the Muskoka summit to unwind? Will there be as many participants there as there are here?

Rt. Hon Stephen Harper: The G8, in our judgment remains, an important forum. It is a forum of the major developed countries in which we get together, countries with much in common in terms of their economic structure, their values, their history. And we get together in a very intimate setting where we are able to discuss the major questions of the day.. that can drive a wider consensus. I think we reached at this particular g-8 meeting very important discussions on climate change and on Iran for example, things that I think will have a lot of impact going forward.

So I think it is an important forum. Some people say well the G8 is not a representative body in the modern world. It is not representative of the power. It's not representative of the economic realities of the modern world. It's not an appropriate forum for global governance. I agree with that. I don't think those of us who continue to support the importance of the G8 suggest that it is a body of global governance.

Obviously we have to have, we have to develop a wider body that will be more representative. What we've had recently, what we've had at this forum as I mentioned earlier — I counted at one point a G8, a G9, aG14 or 15, we had a G18. At one point a G19 and a G25 and finally ended with a G28 and of course we also have the G20 process going on around the world which is now up to G24 last time I counted. So I think our challenge for the year will be to try and use our presidency of the G8 to bring some coherence to this as we move forward.

I think it's important that the G8 continue to be a forum where we have the discussions among the major developed economies. At the same time, we do have to develop an institutionalized, more representative forum. We listened carefully at this summit to what other countries had to say and will be taking some decisions in this regard as we move forward towards Muskoka.

If you don't mind giving me a moment to address the comments of Mr. Ignatieff. The leader of the opposition suggested very recently in the last day or two, I gather, that it's possible — I’m not sure if he's saying it's desirable or should happen or could happen — that there will be a group come to the fore, a group of major countries that will exclude Canada. I don't know where he's getting this idea. Nobody but Mr. Ignatieff in the world has suggested excluding Canada from a meeting of major countries. Nobody. It's the first anybody has heard of it. I think it's an irresponsible suggestion, Mr. Ignatieff is supposed to be a Canadian. I don't think you go out and float ideas like this that are so obviously contrary to the country's interests when no one else is advocating them. So I would suggest that he look carefully at his comments and withdraw those. Frankly they would be irresponsible coming from anybody but particularly irresponsible coming from a kean Canadian Parliamentarian.

Immediately after those remarks were made, Dimitri Soudas, the prime minister's press secretary, told reporters that Harper's remarks on Ignatieff were incorrect and that he had misinformed the Prime Minister about them. The prime minister's staff said the remarks they misattributed to Ignatieff may have been made by an academic during a television interview.

For the record, Ignatieff, in London, England, earlier this week, said something about Canada's presidency of the G8 that was remarkably similar to what the prime minister said. Here's Ignatieff:”Huntsville should be a plce where we will make substantial progress redefining and refocusing the G8 itself.”

My colleague Peter O'Neil was at the press conference and filed this report.

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Canada's job picture surprisingly, um, un-weak

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Most economists thought the job numbers released this morning by Statistics Canada would be terrible, that they would show that the Canadian economy shed another 35,000 to 40,000 jobs last month.

In, fact, Statistics Canada found that just 7,400 people lost their jobs last month, the statistical equivalent of zero per cent change from May to June. The unemployment rate did rise from 8.4 per cent to 8.6 per cent but that's because more than 30,000 people entered the workforce. So while the number of jobs remained relatively stable, there was an increase in the number of people looking for jobs and that bumped the unemployment rate.

Here's a snippet of reaction from Bay Street to the numbers:

Doug Porter at BMO Capital Markets says: “Today’s job report, while hardly a walk in the park, compares favourably to the dire U.S. news from the same month. Still, even if the job losses are gradually easing, it’s obvious that recession has yet to let go its steely grip on the Canadian economy, with the squeeze remaining particularly intense in manufacturing. On balance, while this report is not as friendly as the headline would suggest, it’s also not shockingly weak—a relief.

Dawn Desjardins at RBC Economics Research: “The labour numbers are consistent with the economy continuing to contract in the second quarter, although the slowing pace of decline suggests that conditions are becoming less dire. We look for the unemployment rate to continue to drift higher, rising by 0.1% to 0.2% each month rather than the large 0.3% to 0.6% jumps recorded earlier in the year. We also expect the rate to peak at 9.2%, portending an easing in price pressures as the amount of economic slack grows. Against the backdrop of a rising unemployment rate, growing economic slack and lessening price pressures, the case for the Bank of Canada to keep to its conditional commitment of maintaining a 0.25% policy rate looks solid.”

Aron Gampel at Scotiabank, speaking on BNN this morning: ” It surprised everyone.. the trend shows the pace of job cutting has clearly slowed and that's the transition phase from recession to recovery. You know what? You could have a much bigger rate of growth and some renewed job creation by later this year in some key sectors. It may not prevent the unemployment rate from continuing to move higher, but employment is typically, at best, a coincident but probably a lagging indicator.”

I'll update with more as I see them to day …

Obama White House sings from the same communications hymn book, says WaPo

Politoco's Mike Allen gets a sneak peek at a column to appear Sunday in The Washington Post. The column, by Jim Hoaglund, concludes that when it comes to messaging and communication strategy on national security and foreign affairs, the current White House administration is doing a lot better job than the last one. Here's Politico quoting Hoaglund:

“I asked a visiting foreign minister how dealing with the United States has changed under Obama. His response: ‘Wherever we go — the White House, State or the Pentagon — we hear exactly the same message. That never happened with George W. Bush.’ This answer would no doubt please Jim Jones, Obama's national security adviser, who coordinates the president's foreign policy positions. Jones himself is said to have chilled a Middle East leader, who had asked for separate meetings with a wide array of senior administration officials, by saying: ‘Why don't I just get them all together around one table for you? You are going to hear the same thing from all of them.’

“The fact is, this is a cohesive administration. Jones and [Secretary of State Hilary] Clinton respect each other and understand each other's roles. Even though they were obviously not part of Obama's campaign team, they have adapted quickly to his rigorous style of managed communication, which is policed by an inner circle of Obama intimates — Rahm Emanuel, David Axelrod, Robert Gibbs and Denis McDonough, who are the most influential message commissars at the White House. That circle decides who gets interviewed on national television, when, and pretty much what they say (not very successfully in the case of Vice President Biden, but nobody's perfect). It was no accident that Clinton did not appear on a Sunday television talk show until June 7 — almost five months into the administration — when the secretary of state was finally interviewed by George Stephanopoulos on ABC's “This Week.”

“Convinced that Obama is a unique American communicator, the White House did not want anyone else diluting his aura as spokesman to the world. And, surprise, surprise, this approach maximizes the close-in advisers' clout. Their first-among-equals standing is also on display in quiet ways during the president's frequent overseas travels and leadership meetings, such as his trips to Russia and the G-8 summit in Italy last week. Officials abroad are struck by Obama's reflexive reliance on Emanuel, his chief of staff, even on foreign policy issues in these meetings. And one diplomat was surprised to learn that Axelrod, Obama's top political adviser, had been thoroughly briefed by Obama after a one-on-one meeting with the diplomat's president before Jones or Clinton were. [Read more at Politico]

Speaker Kinsella says the PM ate it

Senate Speaker Noel Kinsella jumps into the surprisingly heated debate about whether or not the prime minister downed the wafer — otherwise known to many Christians as the body of Christ, given for thee, to be washed down with a little wine, known in my church, as “the Blood of the new Covenant, which is shed for you and for many for the remission of sins”– at Romeo Leblanc's funeral:

The Speaker of the Senate of Canada, the Honourable Noël A. Kinsella, issued the following statement today:

There have been some media reports focusing on the Communion Service during the funeral of the Right Honourable Roméo LeBlanc last Friday in Memramcook, New Brunswick. These reports have questioned whether Prime Minister Stephen Harper consumed the host that was given to him at the funeral.

I would like to state that I personally witnessed Prime Minister Harper consume the host that was given to him by Archbishop André Richard. Sitting only a few seats behind him I had a full view of the proceedings and clearly saw the Prime Minister accept the host after Archbishop Richard offered it. The Prime Minister consumed it.

Canada being a multicultural society is by consequence a multi-faith society and it is a Canadian value to be respectful of all our faith traditions.

As a Catholic, I was therefore pleased to see the Prime Minister of Canada express his solidarity and Communion with all those present in the sanctuary as we celebrated the life of the former Governor General.

I reflect that it was only one year ago that Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Primate of all of Canada hosted the World Eucharistic Congress and was supported by Prime Minister Harper and his government. Together with Minister Jason Kenney we were pleased to host in Quebec City all of the Cardinals and Prelates from around the world who were in attendance at this World Eucharistic Congress.

The Harper Government's long history of funding gay and lesbian activities

Lots of fallout today from my file yesterday. A reminder, in case you missed it:

Tourism Minister Diane Ablonczy has been stripped of responsibility for administering a major tourism funding program after she signed off on a grant for Toronto's gay pride week.

Ablonczy, who retains her title as minister of state for small business and tourism, was in charge of the Marquee Tourism Events Program, an initiative to provide $100 million of funding over two years to the country's major festivals and tourist attractions like the Calgary Stampede, the Stratford (Ont.) Festival and the Montreal International Jazz Festival, each of which received at least $2 million in federal support.

But within days of her June 15 announcement that Toronto's Pride Week would get a $400,000 grant, Ablonczy lost control of the file to the senior minister in her department, Industry Minister Tony Clement.

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Conservative MP Brad Trost said Ablonczy was removed from the file because of her decision to fund Pride Week, which its organizers say, is to “celebrate the history, courage, diversity and future of Toronto's lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, transgender, intersex, queer, questioning, two-spirited” communities.

Trost was critical of Ablonczy for making that decision.

“The pro-life and the pro-family community should know and understand that the tourism funding money that went to the gay pride parade in Toronto was not government policy,” Trost said in article published Tuesday at LifeSiteNews.com. “Canadian taxpayers, even non-social conservative ones, don't want their tax dollars to go to events that are polarizing, or events that are more political than touristic in nature.”

The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix was among several papers which ran this story today but SP reporter Jeremy Warren made it better with this little twist:

But in his criticism of his colleague, [Trost] did not mention his government funds Saskatoon's Pride parade. The Saskatoon Diversity Network received $9,000 from Canadian Heritage this year for last June's Pride Festival.

Now, a little birdie helpfully provides the following list of gay and lesbian (and bisexual, etc.) events funded by the Harper government:

  • Recipient: Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives
    Minister: Hon. James Moore
    Funding received – $175,000.00
    Purpose: Arts in Communities
    Date: 2009-03-26
  • Recipient: Vancouver Out on Screen Film and Video Society, Vancouver, British Colombia
    Minister: Hon. Josée Verner
    Funding received: $32,000.00
    Purpose: Project: 20th Anniversary Vancouver Queer Film Festival, Programming
    Date: 2008-2009, March 4, 2008
  • Recipient: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, Transgender Pride Toronto
    Funding received: $21,000.00
    Date: ** Last modified, 2008-02-19
  • Recipient: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexual, and Transgenderal Pride Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Minister: Hon. Josée Verner
    Funding received: $35,000.00
    Purpose: Arts in Community
    Date: 2007-04-23
  • Recipient: Inside Out Lesbian & Gay Film Festival Inc. Toronto, Ontario, Canada
    Funding received: $20,000.00
    Purpose: Project: Toronto Lesbian and Gay Film and Video Festival, Programming
    Date: 2008-2009
  • Recipient: Winnipeg Gay & Lesbian Film Society Inc, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
    Funding received: 4,000.00
    Purpose: Project: Reel Pride Film Festival, Programming
    Date: 2008-2009
  • Recipient: Reelout Arts Project Inc., Kingston, Ontario, Canada
    Funding received: $7,000.00
    Purpose: Project: Reelout Queer Film & Video Festival, Programming
    Date: 2008-2009
  • Recipient: Queer City Cinema Inc, Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
    Funding received: $13,000.00
    Purpose: Project: Queer City Cinema 7, Programming
    Date: 2008-2009
  • Recipient: Inside Out Lesbian and Gay Film Festival Inc.Funding received – $26,000.00
    Date: 2008-2009 Last modified, 2008-02-19
  • Recipient: Darren McAllister, Ontario Canada,
    Minister: Hon. Peter MacKayFunding received – $550.00
    Purpose: To allow Darren McAllister to present his short film “Confessions of a Drag Queen” at the Outfest Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Los Angeles, California from July 6 to 17, 2006.
    Date: 2006- 2007
  • Recipient : Michael Mew, British Columbia, Canada,
    Minister: Hon. Peter MacKayFunding received – $900
    Purpose: To allow Michael Mew to present his short film “Peking Turkey” at the London Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in London, United Kingdom from March 28 to April 6, 2007.
    Date:2006-2007

As a reporter, I have no official opinion, of course, as to whether it was a good idea or a bad idea to provide funding for these organizations and individuals. It is surprising, however, that we are only now hearing from Trost that the Conservative caucus objects to public funds being used for these kinds of “polarizing” purposes.

Finally, I can report that the Prime Minister's Office recognized early on this issue was going to be controversial and so, less than two weeks after Ablonczy was photograhed next to – gasp! – transvestites in Toronto handing over a government cheque, MPs were issued their marching orders on the subject. Presumably, some constituents were confronting Conservative MPs angry that money went to fund an event , as LifeSiteNews.com put it “which is notorious for its inclusion of full frontal nudity and public sex acts by homosexuals”. Other constituents might be supportive of Ablonczy and angry that a minister was disciplined for funding a perfectly legitimate organization which happens to celebrate the worth and dignity of gay people. Whatever: MPs were told on June 26 told to shut up and call Tony!

From: Alerte-Info-Alert <Alerte-Info-Alert@pmo-cpm.gc.ca>

To: Alerte-Info-Alert <Alerte-Info-Alert@pmo-cpm.gc.ca>

Sent: Fri Jun 26 15:18:41 2009

Subject: Marquee Tourism Events Program / Programme des manifestations touristiques de renom

Recently many MPs have received an increasing number of constituent communications related to the Marquee Tourism Events Program.

The program is now directly the responsibility of Industry Minister Tony Clement. He will be conducting a review of the entire program to ensure that the funding is providing genuine stimulus to the economy.

The Minister's office and the PMO are working together to support Caucus members and help them respond to constituents.

For further information, please contact Regional Affairs in the Prime Minister’s Office:

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More fine-tuning of #ottawaspends on Twitter

For a while now, I've been 'tweeting' whenever the government issues a press release announcing that it is spending some money.

I'm making a couple of changes to the way I've been going about this.

1. First, whenever I tweet routine spending announcements, I'm going to tweet them from a new account I've just created: ottawaspends. You can follow ottawaspends and, if you do, all you'll get mostly are these, sometimes strange looking messages with rudimentary details of federal funding announcements. I do this because I've had more than a couple of people, including – gasp! – a senior member of the government — note that on days when there are lots of announcements, all of the ottawaspends tweets originating from my regular Twitter account davidakin can begin to look a bit like spam.

So, my suggestion: If you're interested in my contributions to the #ottawaspends hashtag, follow those contributions by following ottawaspends. You probably want to see other people's contributions to #ottawaspends (The Canadian Taxpayers Federation, for example, often chips in on that hashtag) and so you might wish to consider checking this Web page or picking up the RSS feed for #ottawaspends from that page.

2. Second: I'm going to separate different fields in my tweets with commas. Again, this change is based on requests I've had for those interesting in potentially harvesting this data and putting into some database for further analysis. A string of comma-delimited text is a lot easier for software engines to deal with and yet it's still not so hard on regular human eyes.

So that would turn this tweet:

Finley HRSDC Hiebert Pacific Community Resources Society to help 20 young people find work Surrey BC $236,376 BC #ottawaspends

Into this tweet:

Finley,HRSDC,Hiebert,Pacific Community Resources Society to help 20 young people find work,Surrey,BC,$236 376 BC,#ottawaspends

(You'll notice that the dollar amounts do not have commas but a space where a comma would normally be. This is an aid to those dumping this into some spreadsheet.

Now let me explain the field layout for that. It goes like this:

MINISTER,DEPT,MP,DESCRIPTION,MUNICIPALITY,PROV,AMOUNT,REGION,HASHTAG

  • MINISTER – Last NAME OF MINISTER RESPONSIBLE FOR RELEASE. Note that MOORE refers to JAMES MOORE, Heritage Minister and should not be confused with ROB MOORE, NB MP and Parl Secy to Justice Minister. Click here for a full list of Ministers and their portfolios . Note that as some ministers get on Twitter (like James Moore) I will use their Twitter handle. So Moore comes out as @mpjamesmoore .
  • DEPT – ACRONYM FOR DEPARTMENT RESPONSIBLE FOR FUNDING The list of acronyms can be found here for major govt institutions and here for smaller agencies and offices. I use the English acronyms. Some are missing and so here they are: (I've made these up)
    • Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency: ACOA
    • Canadian Heritage: PCH
    • Canada Economic Development for Quebec Region: CEDQR
    • Citizenship and Immigration: CIC
    • Foreign Affairs and International Trade: DFAIT
    • Sustainable Development Technology Canada: STDC
  • MP – Last NAME OF MP ANNOUNCING FUNDING (If no local MP makes the announcement, then the minister's name appears here again). Here is a full list of MPs. Again, if an MP is on Twitter then I use the Twitter handle. So Alberta MP Blake Richards would be identified here as @WildRoseMPBlake . Where two MPs have the same last name, they get differentiated with their LASTNAME_FIRSTINITIAL. So Rob Moore is Moore_R .
  • DESCRIPTION – A brief description of the initiative receiving funding.
  • MUNICIPALITY – The name of the municipality from which the announcement originated. This is not necessarily the same municipality where the spending will occur.
  • PROV – The province from which the announcement originated. Not necessarily the same province that will benefit from the spending.
  • AMOUNT – The total amount of federal spending involved in the initiative. I do not include provincial or municipal amounts that may be included in the press release. Also — and this is important — I use the overall figure whether the money is to be spent in one year, two years or 10 years.
  • REGION – The province or region that will benefit from the spending of this money. It usually is just a two-letter code for a province but could also be ATLANTIC, to mean the Atlantic provinces or WEST to mean most of MB, SK, AB and BC or NORTH to mean YK, NU and NT. It could also be NATIONAL which means all parts of the country ought to benefit from the spending.
  • HASHTAG – Will usually be #ottawaspends but could also include others. Check out my Directory of Political Twits for other Ottawa-related tags.

Some other important things to know about this on-the-fly database I'm creating:

• I'm only putting up the tweet on the day the announcement is actually made. So, for that reason, #ottawaspends will not be a complete list of all spending announcements. If I'm off the job for a day or two, I will not be putting up tweets with day-old or two-day-old announcements. So these will be “Fresh” tweets only.

• I don't care if it's new money, old money, recycled money. The point of this collection of data is that somewhere in Canada, a government politician (and it is always government politicians who hand out the money) has issued a press release paid for with public funds to announce and usually earn some political credit for spending public money. I maintain other databases (and you may too) that track new money, instrastructure money, training funds and so on. But this database, though it involves a field which has a dollars-and-cents value is really about tracking politicians.

• Some asked why do this: Beats me. Twitter is still new for all of us but it was my thinking that, as a reporter, I am never going to write a full story about a $5,000 announcement. I'm probably not even going to blog it. But give me 140 characters of space — sure, why not? And, as I and others have noticed, in reporting all the small announcements, some broader more interesting trends in government spending are emerging.

Of course, #ottawaspends belongs to no one. If you've got your own syntax or short forms you want to use, knock yourself out. If you want to let me know your rules, I'll be happy to post 'em here and, perhaps, create a separate Web page with them.

UPDATE: Adding in some indication of what riding the money is being spent in:

I've added some more information at the end of each tweet to give you an indication of where the money is being spent by riding. I have to look up each spending announcement by hand so I'd appreciate any correctives.

Let's go back to our example and see what the new stuff looks like:

Finley,HRSDC,Hiebert,Pacific Community Resources Society to help 20 young people find work,Surrey,BC,$236 376 BC,#ottawaspends #CPC riding Hiebert

That last bit after the '#Ottawaspends” hashtag indicates that the money is being spent mostly or all in a riding held by the Conservatives and that the name of the MP who holds that riding is HIEBERT, as in Russ Hiebert. CPC stands for Conservatives: LPC for Liberals; BQ for Bloc Quebecois; and NDP for New Democratic Party. If you see an “M” it means multiple ridings will benefit from this money.

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AECL seeks regulator approval to keep Chalk River chugging through 2021

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Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. is in the news today — confirming that the National Research Universal (NRU) reactor will be out of action at least until late 2009. That's a photo, left, distributed by AECL of workers on top of the leaky vessel plunging some inspection tool through the 12 cm wide access point to take pictures of the leak that is at the bottom of the tank, nine metres below from where they are standing. Here's my latest file on that topic:>

The federal government warned Wednesday of a “significant shortage” this summer of the medical isotopes used by thousands of Canadians every day to help diagnose and treat cancer, heart disease and other ailments.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt, in a joint statement issued Tuesday, said they were “disappointed” that Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. now says the National Universal Research (NRU) nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ont. will be offline at least until late 2009 while the Crown corporation makes complex repairs to fix a leak of radioactive water.

The NRU routinely produced about 40 per cent of the world’s medical isotopes before its shutdown, enough to help about 20 million people in 80 countries around the world each year. For a few months last year, while other reactors around the world were shut down, the NRU was producing the entire global supply of medical isotopes.

“We wish to be clear to Canadians,” the ministers said in their statement. “The unplanned shutdown of the NRU will result in a significant shortage of medical isotopes in Canada and in the world this summer.”

There are only five nuclear reactors in the world that make medical isotopes. Nuclear medicine specialists have been scrambling to find alternative sources or alternative treatments since AECL shut down the NRU on May 14. At that time, AECL said the NRU would be offline for at least a month. A few weeks later, it said it would be out of action until the end of August.

On Tuesday, AECL officials said the NRU will be down for much longer than that.

“The NRU will not return to service before late 2009,” AECL CEO Hugh MacDiarmid said in a conference call with reporters.

The NRU, though, does more than just produce isotopes. It's a research reactor and is used by scientists in Canada and around the world to do all sorts of work. AECL — or whoever ends up managing the facility once a federal government review of the Crown corporation is done — is putting those engineers not involved in the NRU repairs to work on a variety of other tasks for the future of Chalk River Laboratories.

Just got this notice from the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Canada's nuclear safety regulator, that AECL is seeking the CNSC's stamp of approval for some of those long-term plans:

The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) will hold a hearing in July to consider the proposed Scoping information Document (Environmental Assessment (EA) Guidelines) for Atomic Energy of Canada Limited’s (AECL) proposal to undertake a variety of projects associated with the long-term management of the National Research Reactor (NRU) at Chalk River Laboratories (CRL), Ontario.

The Commission has determined that a public hearing is not necessary to consider the proposed EA Guidelines as per the streamlined EA Process …

The Commission will consider the scope of the project and the scope of the assessment for the construction and installation of supporting infrastructure, as well as modifications to existing facilities to support the NRU Reactor operations until 2021.

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Enough politics: How about some Leafs jokes?

I can publish these because I'm a Leafs fan (living, I might add, almost next door to the arena where Dany Heatley and Alexei Kovalev will be playing their home games next year) and because of that, I'm happy to prove that I can take a joke by publishing the following, passed on to me today by an old friend:

Q: What do the Leafs and the Titanic have in common?

A: They both look good until they hit the ice.

Q: What's the difference between the Toronto Maple Leafs and a cigarette vending machine?

A: The vending machine has Players!

Q: What do the Toronto Maple Leafs and whales have in common?

A: They both get totally confused when surrounded by ice.

Q: Why are the Toronto Maple Leafs like Canada Post?

A: They both wear uniforms and don't deliver!

Q: Why doesn't Hamilton have an NHL team?

A: Because then Toronto would want one.

Q: What do the Toronto Maple Leafs, Toronto Argonauts and the Toronto Blue Jays all have in common besides being based in Toronto?

A. None of them can play hockey.

Q: What do you call 30 millionaires around a TV watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs?

A. The Toronto Maple Leafs.

Q: What do the Toronto Maple Leafs and Billy Graham have in common?

A. They both can make 20,000 people stand up and yell 'Jesus Christ'.

Q: How do you keep the Toronto Maple Leafs out of your yard?

A. Put up a goal net.

Q: What do you call a Toronto Maple Leaf with a Stanley Cup ring?

A. A thief.

Q: What do the Toronto Maple Leafs and possums have in common?

A. Both play dead at home and get killed on the road.

Q: How many Toronto Maple Leafs does it take to win a Stanley Cup?

A. Nobody knows … And we may never find out.

Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm here all week. Try the veal, I hear it's great …

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Merrill's new Canadian strategist sees clouds clearing but feds could keep Canada's future dim

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In her first forecast since becoming Banc of America Securities-Merrill Lynch's head of Canada Economics and Investment Strategy, Sheryl King surveys the numbers (King's chart is left) and finds the clouds clearing so far as Canada's ecnonomic outlook is concerned:

We have revised our GDP forecast up to -2.0% for 2009 (was -2.7%), and 2010 is now expected to post a 2.7% increase versus 2.3% in our previous forecast. By the end of the year, we think job losses will probably taper off and give way to some modest employment growth in the fourth quarter, allowing the unemployment rate to top out at a 12-year high of 9% this autumn.

But despite a slightly more optimistic outlook than the one her predecessor David Wolf (now at the Bank of Canada) delivered earlier this year, King believes the medium- and long-term outlook for Canada's economy is still not a good one and she believes that is because of the decisions that both the federal government and the Bank of Canada have made or are likely to make:

Summing up our forecast in just one phrase – we are not going to fight the feds. Both fiscal policy and monetary policy are in easy mode and the magnitude of the policy response should produce growth. While these are rather significant upgrades to the outlook, we remain bearish longer term. Restructuring and credit issues are going to be headwinds for the Canadian economy for the next couple of years, in our view, much like the Bank of Canada laid out in the last Monetary Policy Report. Nonetheless, signs of accelerating growth and the absence of any significant rollover in core inflation will prompt the Bank to overreact much as they overreacted to the downside risks to growth earlier this year, in our view. All of which suggest to us that the upturn in the economy will be very short-lived indeed.

King's forecast, incidentally, comes two days before the public release of another outlook from a key forecaster: The Parliamentary Budget Officer. This morning, Budget Officer Kevin Page distributed his forecast — which is widely expected to be much gloomier, particularly when it comes to the size of the deficit, than the official Department of Finance outlook — to all members of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Finance. MPs will get 48 hours to look over Page's numbers and then he'll release his forecast to the public on Wednesday.

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