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Flaherty's retreats: The invitees since Year 1

Following up on this post and this story, I asked the Department of Finance if they could provide the attendee list for all of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's annual summer policy retreats. They were quick to do so and here is the list:

The Minister of Finance’s Third Annual Summer Policy Retreat (Meech Lake Aug. 19-20, 2009)

Melanie Aitken, Commissioner of Competition, Competition Bureau of Canada
Theo Caldwell, President, Caldwell Asset Management
Mel Cappe, President, Institute for Research on Public Policy
Robert J. Deluce, CEO of Porter Aviation Inc.
Jim Dinning, Chairman, Western Financial Group
Wendy Dobson, Professor and Director, Institute for International Business, University of Toronto, Joseph L. Rotman School of Management
Samuel L. Duboc, President and Managing Partner, EdgeStone Capital Partners Inc.
Pierre Fortin, Professor of Economics, Université du Québec à Montréal
Roger Gibbins, President and CEO, Canada West Foundation
Donna Hayes, CEO, President and Publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited
Glen Hodgson, Sr. VP & Chief Economist, Conference Board of Canada
Peter Holle, Founding President, Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Andrew Jackson, Canadian Labour Congress, National Director of Social and Economic Policy
Jacques Lamarre, former President and CEO, SNC Lavalin
Bruce Little, former Globe journalist
Kenneth James McKenzie, Department Head Professor, University of Calgary
Carole-Ann Miller, President, CEO and Co-Founder, Maple Trade Finance Inc.
Mark Mullins, CEO, Veras Inc.
Heather Munroe-Blum, Principal and Vice-Chancellor, McGill University
Sally Pipes, President & CEO, Pacific Research Institute
John Richards, Professor, Simon Fraser University
H. Sanford (Sandy) Riley, President and CEO, Richardson Financial Group
William B.P. Robson, President and CEO, C.D. Howe Institute
Conrad Sauvé, Secretary General and CEO, Canadian Red Cross Society
Brian Scudamore, Founder & CEO, 1-800-GOT-JUNK?

Second Annual Summer Policy Retreat (Willson House at Meech Lake, August 19–20, 2008)

Peter Armstrong, Armstrong Group
Ken Battle, Caledon Institute of Social Policy
Stephen Blank, Arizona State University
Linda Hasenfratz, Linamar Corporation
Calvin Helin, Native Investment and Trade Association
Paul Jewer, Sobeys Inc.
Rebecca MacDonald, Energy Savings Income Fund
Andrea Mandel-Campbell, Author and Journalist
Becky McKinnon, Timothy's Coffees of the World Inc.
Ross McKitrick, University of Guelph
Jack Mintz, University of Calgary
Mark Mullins, Fraser Institute
Gary Polonsky, University of Ontario Institute of Technology (retired President)
Pierre Pomerleau, Pomerleau Inc.
Robert S. Prichard, Torstar Corporation
Manoj Pundit, Borden Ladner Gervais LLP
William B.P Robson., C.D. Howe Institute
Indira Samarasekera, University of Alberta
Christopher Sands, Hudson Institute
François Vaillancourt, University of Montreal
William Watson, McGill University
John Williamson, Canadian Taxpayers Federation
Nigel Wright, Onex Corporation

First Ministerial Retreat (Merrickville, Sam Jakes Inn, August 21-22, 07)

Mr. Tom Adams, Executive Director, Energy Probe
Mr. Andrew Chisholm, Managing Director, Global Head of Financial Institutions, Group Investment Banking Division, Goldman Sachs,
Mr. Jason Clemens, Director of Fiscal Studies and the Centre for Entrepreneurship, The Fraser Institute,
Mr. Brian Lee Crowley, Clifford Clark Visiting Economist, Department of Finance,
Mr. Dominic D’Alessandro, President and Chief Executive Officer, Manulife Financial,
Mr. Art DeFehr, President and Chief Executive Officer, Palliser Furniture,
Mr. Jim Dinning, Chairman, Western Financial Group
Mr. Shaun Francis, President and Chief Executive Officer, Medcan Health Management Inc.
Mr. Stanley Hartt, Chairman, Citigroup Global Markets Canada Inc,
Ms. Isabelle Hudon , Présidente et chef de la direction, Chambre de commerce du Montréal métropolitain
Ms. Laura Jones, Vice President for Western Canada, Canadian Federation of Independent Business,
Mr. Doug Lord, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Xerox Canada,
Mr. John H. McArthur, Dean Emeritus, Harvard Business School,
Ms. Andrea Mandel-Campbell, Author and Journalist,
Ms. Bonnie Patterson, President and Vice-Chancellor, Trent University,
Mr. Mario Pilozzi, Chief Executive Officer, Wal-Mart Canada Corp.
Mr. John Prato, Managing Director, Equity Capital Markets, TD Securities TD Securities,
Mr. William B.P. Robson, Senior Vice-President and Director of ResearchC.D. Howe Institute
Monsieur Raymond Royer, Président et chef de la direction, Domtar,
Ms. Krista Scaldwell, Director, Global Public Policy, Johnson & Johnson,
Mr. Andrew Sharpe, Executive DirectorCentre for the Study of Living Standards,
Mr. Ajit Someshwar, Chief Executive Officer, CSI Consulting,
Dr. Stephen J. Toope, President, University of British Columbia
Monsieur Luc Vinet, Recteu, rL’Université de Montréal
Mr. William Watson, Associate Professor and Chairman, Department of Economics, McGill University,
Mr. Charles White, QC, White Ottenheimer & Baker, ,

Glover v Holland

Just in from the desk of Shelly Glover, former police officer, and currently the Conservative MP for the Manitoba riding of Saint Boniface:

Today, Michael Ignatieff's hand-picked public-safety spokesman has crossed the line, by trying to play religious politics with the issue of air security.

Moments after Liberal MP Mark Holland unilaterally shut down a parliamentary review of media reports that some air passengers are not required to show their face, he said that the Conservatives would have to find another way to “take a run at the Muslim community”

This is a shameless attempt to play religion-baiting with what should be a non-partisan security issue. Even Muslim leaders have said that passengers wearing the niqab should allow confirmation of facial identity — a fact that the Ignatieff Liberals ignore in their shameless attempt to play politics with this issue.

This is a security issue, period. Not a religious issue.

Michael Ignatieff must drop his so-called “public safety critic” and replace him with someone who won't play politics with such an important issue.”

Flaherty seeks policy advice from CEOs, economists and a journalist

Finance Minister Jim Flaherty will hold his summer policy retreat this afternoon in Wakefield, Que. The 22 who have been invited are a select group. Some are CEOs, some are academics, some are economists, some have close Conservative Party connections — and there is one journalist: Andrew Coyne, the national editor of Maclean's.

Maybe I just haven't been following these summer retreats closely enough but did Paul Martin, for example, invite The Toronto Star's David Crane to give him advice? Does it seem odd that the national editor of a national newsmagazine who, one might reasonably expect, report on and write about federal fiscal policy from time to time gets to participate in a 'retreat' which, presumably, is designed to provide the finance minister with some policy advice?

The Minister of Finance’s Fourth Annual Summer Policy Retreat
Wakefield Mill Inn, Wakefield, Quebec
Aug. 10-11, 2010

1. Dominic Barton, Global Managing Director, McKinsey & Company

2. Bonnie Brooks, President and CEO, The Bay, Hudson’s Bay Company

3. Andrew Coyne, National Editor, Maclean’s

4. Kiki Delaney, President, C.A Delaney Capital Management Ltd.

5. Robert Gagné, Director, Centre for Productivity and Prosperity, and professor of HEC Montréal’s Institute of Applied Economics

6. Richard Harris, Telus Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University, and Senior Fellow , C.D. Howe Institute

7. Peter Heller, Senior Adjunct Professor of International Economics, Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, The John Hopkins University

8. Paul Hobson, Professor, Department of Economics, Acadia University

9. Susan Hodgett, Director, Canadian Studies Research Programme, Social and Policy Research Institute

10. David Laidler, Fellow in Residence, C. D. Howe Institute

11. Kellie Leitch, Chair, Ivey Centre for Health Innovation and Leadership, University of Western Ontario

12. Stefane Marion, Chief Economist and Strategist, National Bank Financial

13. Robert R. McEwen, Chairman and CEO, US Gold Corporation

14. David J. Mondragon, President and CEO, Ford Motor Company of Canada Limited

15. Lars Osberg, McCulloch Professor and Chair of the Department of Economics, Dalhousie University

16. John C. Risley, President and CEO, Clearwater Fine Foods Incorporated

17. Gavin Semple, Chief Executive Officer, Brandt Group of Companies

18. Jim Stanford, Economist, Canadian Auto Workers

19. Jamie Watt, Chair, Navigator Ltd

20. Michael Weil, Senior Vice President, YMCA of the USA

21. Galen Weston, Executive Chairman, Loblaw Companies Ltd

22. Tamara Woroby, Senior Adjunct Professor, School of Advanced International Studies ( SAIS) The John Hopkins University and Professor of Economics U of MD System (Towson University)

Khadr's revenge; Les Ti-Cats? – and the end of soap opera: Tuesday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Khadr Revenge Toronto Sun Khadr's threat; Les Ti-Cats? and end of a soap opera: Listen to my four-minute audio roundup of what's on the front pages of the country's newspapers plus highlights from Tuesday's political daybook by clicking on the link below.

Listen!

You can also get these audio summaries automatically every day via podcast from iTunes or via an RSS feed by subscribing to my AudioBoo stream. Both the iTunes link and the RSS link are at my profile at AudioBoo.fm. Look in the top right corner of the “Boos” box. <

Tony Judt on language and writing: If words fall into disrepair ..

Tony Judt

British historian Tony Judt (left) died earlier this week and The Guardian has one of his final essays, presented with the headline, “If words fall into disrepair, what will substitute? They are all we have “.

An excerpt:

… it is one thing to encourage students to express opinions freely, and to take care not to crush these under the weight of prematurely imposed authority. It is quite another for teachers to retreat from formal criticism in the hope that the freedom thereby accorded favours independent thought: “Don't worry how you say it, it's the ideas that count”.

Forty years on from the 60s, there are not many instructors left with the self-confidence (or training) to pounce on infelicitous expression and explain clearly why it inhibits intelligent reflection. The revolution of my generation played an important role in this unravelling: the priority accorded the autonomous individual in every sphere of life should not be underestimated – “doing your own thing” took protean form.

Today “natural” expression is preferred to artifice. We unreflectively suppose that truth no less than beauty is conveyed more effectively thereby. Alexander Pope knew better. For many centuries in the western tradition, how well you expressed a position corresponded closely to the credibility of your argument. Rhetorical styles might vary from the spartan to the baroque, but it was never a matter of indifference: poor expression belied poor thought. Confused words suggested confused ideas at best, dissimulation at worst.

The professionalisation of academic writing – and the grasping of humanists for the security of theory and methodology – favours obscurantism. This has encouraged a counterfeit currency of glib “popular” articulacy, exemplified in history by the ascent of the “television don”, whose appeal lies precisely in his claim to attract a mass audience in an age when fellow scholars have lost interest in communication. But while an earlier generation of popular scholarship distilled authorial authority into plain text, today's “accessible” writers protrude uncomfortably into the audience's consciousness. It is the performer, not the subject, who draws the audience.

[An aside here: I wish I knew the answer to this question — and pardon my ignorance if I'm wildly off-base — but is the “television don” to whom Judt is referring here, his contemporary Simon Schama, by any chance? How did Judt and Schama get on?]
The New York Review of Books, incidentally, has assembled a selection of Judt's essays in that publication. If you don't know Judt's work, pick one and see if you like it.

Sheila Fraser's re-birthing workshops; Khadr in court; a big day for a Blue Jay: Monday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Sheila Fraser Le Journal De Montreal Sheila Fraser's re-birthing workshops; Khadr in court; and a big day for a Blue Jay : Listen to my four-minute audio roundup of what's on the front pages of the country's newspapers plus highlights from Monday's political daybook by clicking on the link below.

At the theatre to see the charming terrorist

Just saw “Homegrown”, the one-act play by Catherine Frid which opened tonight at Theatre Passe Muraille in downtown Toronto, the first of 42 one-act plays to be presented as part of the 20^th edition of the annual Summerworks festival.

Tickets are just $10.

I’ll let you review this and this to get a sense of why a political reporter travelled from Ottawa to Toronto to watch this play. This post is an extension of the piece I filed for tomorrow's papers.

First of all, it was great to be back in a theatre with a notepad on my knee. In the early 90s, I spent four years covering the Toronto theatre season, Stratford, Shaw and the Ontario summer theatre circuit for what was then known as Thomson News Service.

I saw a lot of plays at TPM but, to be honest, the programming at Passe Muraille during my tenure as a critic never really lit me up. I was a bigger fan of what was happening at Factory Theatre or CanStage’s Berkeley Street theatre and almost always at Tarragon. (Tarragon, if memory serves, use to do Daniel McIvor’s work a lot and he’s one of my favourite Cancon playwrights.)

I mention that to say that I’ve seen a lot of indie, experimental theatre — which is a lot of what you’ll find at any Summerworks festival – and, for the record, I’ve seen a lot worse than Frid’s “Homegrown”. Actually, that's being too dismissive. Judged only on its performance and production values — leaving aside some content problems for now — it was pretty good.

It opens with four men on the floor in a prison in orange jumpsuits. One is Shareef Abdulhaleem, recently arrested on terrorism charges. Abdulhaleem is, in real life, a convicted terrorist currently awaiting sentencing. But the play opens before Shareef’s trial and we meet him, in some distress, on the floor of a prison. He’s worried. He’s stressed. He doesn’t know what’s going to happen to him.

Then we meet Cate who, in real life, is the playwright herself, Catherine Frid. Cate, played by Shannon Perrault, was practicing corporate law but, for reasons we’re never told, now writes plays. She’s come to Shareef’s jail because she wants to see what it’s like in a prison. It’s dirtier, for one thing, Cate says. She thought it would be cleaner, like a hospital. (I’m happy to pass on this tidbit: Touring the mother of all terrorist prisons, Guantanamo Bay Naval Station, a few weeks ago, I can tell you that the part of that facility that we were allowed to see looked pretty spotless.)

Why pick Shareef? Cate’s ex-husband was Shareef's favourite high school teacher.

We see their first conversation, using the prison telephones through a plexiglass window. Shareef, at this point, is a garrulous charmer. (And I will refer to the character in the play from here on out as Shareef and the real terrorist as Abdulhaleem) During the play he refers to scenes in Seinfeld, the old Colombo series and Scent of a Woman. He is about as far as one could get from a radical Islamist. There are only a cursory nods to his religion and no exploration of the ideology or the hate of the West drives Abdulhaleem and his co-conspirators to terror. Shareef is gamely played by Lwam Ghebrehariat, a third year law student at the University of Toronto and a graduate of Canada’s National Theatre School.

The first conversation quickly sketches out the thesis: Abdulhaleem is in jail because he is not a rat. He wouldn’t snitch on his co-conspirators and so, he’s going to take the fall. Moreover, he is here because of anti-terror legislation passed after 9/11. This anti-terror legislation is one of the villains in the piece because, as Shareef says, “the Crown is trying to charge us all with facilitating terrorism which can be done knowingly or unknowingly. I can unknowingly facilitate a terrorist act and get 14 years for it. That’s the law!”

The first conversation has a dramaturgical purpose: Giving us a bit of the back story of each character and laying down the foundations for the motivations that will drive each character through the next 75 minutes. It’s a one-act play so efficiency becomes more important here than an elegant or artful unfolding of these two, one reason that this conversation comes off a bit like a political pamphlet with someone’s resume at the end. Then Cate goes home to her boyfriend, Greg. Greg, for the duration of the play will pop up time to time to be the foil to what will become Cate’s obsession with Abdulhaleem’s case. He remains, through to the end, convinced that Abdulhaleem is guilty of something, probably terrorism.

From there, we’re introduced to some of the other players in this real-life drama, notably two informants that the RCMP and CSIS relied on to infiltrate the Toronto 18 and, later, convict many of them.

Frid wants to show us that, at the very least, there are ought to be questions about the reliability and credibility of these informants. They are bankrupts or drug-users who needed the money the cops were offering them to be rats. (One got $4 million!)

Cate is caught up in all of it and we get lots of windy lectures about the futulity of publication bans, the abusive power of the state, and how important it is that the story of Shareef be told. She gets Shareef to write a letter of recommendation for the play she is working on, a letter she submits to a festival in support of having that festival stage her work. (That really happened.).

She is naïve to the extreme but one of the pleasant surprises, I suppose, about this piece is that the playwright herself is, through Cate, admitting and often laughing at her naivete. In fact, if you ask me, the most interesting theme in this play is not the issue of Abdulhaleem’s guilt or the state’s war on terror, it’s her own obsession with this lost cause.

But if this play really is, as Frid and Summerworks advertise in their promotional material, about “separating fact from hype in the face of the uncertainty, delays and secrecy in his case”, then much more is needed from the playwright. The ‘state’ in this piece is represented by caricatures of the prison guards, security agents, and bureaucrats. They are stupid thugs that are easy to dismiss compared to the charming terrorist Frid presents to us.

And the difficult issues about Abdulhaleem's guilt are completely ignored. At one point, Cate asks Shareef if he bought the fertilizer for the bombs (the court found he did, in fact, buy enough fertilizer to make a bomb three times as powerful as the one used in the Oklahoma City bombing) but, as Shareef’s about to answer, he is interrupted and the play moves on without ever coming back to that point.

The play also has no reference to one of the most damning indictments of the motives of the real Abdulhaleem: He suggested to his co-conspirators that not only could they spread terror by blowing up the Toronto Stock Exchange but that they could make a lot of money doing it by shorting the stock market. Morever, he suggested to his co-conspirators that they could be more terrorful, if you will, if they blew up something like the Square One shopping mall in Mississauga, Ont.

By the end of the piece, Shareef has gone to trial and is convicted. He tries to have the conviction set aside by claiming “entrapment” by CSIS and the RCMP. A judge – just a monotone, disembodied voice in the play – rejects the argument.

The play closes with Shareef and Cate ‘embracing’ by placing both their hands together on each side of the plexiglass window that separates them. Cate leaves. A single spotlight leaves Shareef frozen and wondering if his cats will be ok.

MPs get letters: Stockwell Day's pushback on census jumps more than 200 per cent!!

Earlier this week, Treasury Board President Stockwell Day held a press conference where the subject of the census came up. Here's the transcript:

Mike De Souza (PostMedia): What kind of reaction have you been getting from your constituents and among caucus – within your colleagues on this decision over the summer? Can you describe what people are saying, what they’re saying to you?

Day: Well, I’ll give you just what I’m finding on the street and not just in my own constituency, in Vancouver where I’ve been having a number of days of meetings also in my constituency. I’ve got a fairly responsive constituency. People get in touch with me quite quickly when there’s issues that are upsetting to them. In all the meetings that I’ve been having, whether it’s one-on-one, whether it’s at the roundtables, in my constituency over the summer, and I’m out there a lot, I think I have heard directly from three people on this. In meetings, including roundtables in Vancouver on a variety of issues, it has come up twice. It came up once when I was in Kitimat and once in Prince Rupert. I’m not saying that’s the number of people who are concerned. You asked me what am I hearing and I’m telling you people are pretty responsive on issues that are bothering them and that’s what I’ve heard so —

De Souza: And those people, they are concerned about the decision?

Day: A couple of those were saying, yeah, how are we going to get certain types of information. They were raising from a point of concern about getting information and others were saying what is the stir all about here? So I’m just giving you the – now I’ve heard about a lot of other issues but that’s what I’ve heard on that one.

The Thompson family has responded to Day's comments and was kind enough to send a copy of them my way:

Dear Mr. Day,

While enjoying a day at the cottage today my family came across an article by Jane Taber which mentioned that that in a press conference today you have only heard from three complaints from Canadians over your governments decision to scrap the long-form census.

I would like to register an additional seven complaints from around our table (we are concerned there might be an issue with your e-mail – please let us know if you receive this if not I can send a hard copy).

Your governments decision to manufacture this issue is reckless and completely ideologically driven. I'm sure you have heard the many reasons that this is clearly an attack on reliable data that severely hurts minorities and those most vulnerable in our society. It also will make it much more difficult to create effective policy based on sound statistical evidence (but maybe that's not a big deal because your “sense” on crime rates and other things is probably better then the “census” that of our world-renowned statistics agency used to reliably produce). On top of all this despite your talking points which we have heard so much – no one has ever gone to jail for not filling out the census. Just thought I'd make sure you've heard that.

This is a serious issue and we would urge you to re-consider. This will have serious damaging effects on statistical reliability in Canada and there is simply no reason to implement this change. You know as well as everyone else that the outrage has been manufactured and even the polls are against you. Turn back this decision and protect fact based decision making in this country.

Sincerely,

Chris Thompson
Carolyn Thompson
Steven Thompson
David Thompson
Lynne Green
Susan Johnson
David Johnson

Canada loves cannabis; Will we love the Torch?; no love for health care: Wednesday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Ottawa Sun Front pot survey Canada loves cannabis; Will we love the Torch?; no love for health care: : Listen to my four-minute audio roundup of what's on the front pages of the country's newspapers plus highlights from Wednesday's political daybook by clicking on the link below.

Prison powder kegs; private health clinics in Quebec; and underground dentists: Tuesday's A1 headlines and political daybook

Winnipeg Sun Front Page Prison powder kegs; private health clinics in Quebec; and underground dentists : Listen to my four-minute audio roundup of what's on the front pages of the country's newspapers plus highlights from Tuesday's political daybook by clicking on the link below.