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Roger Scruton writes about “Cities for Living” …

American visitors to Paris, Rome, Prague, or Barcelona, comparing what they see with what is familiar from their own continent, will recognize how careless their countrymen often have been in their attempts to create cities. But the American who leaves the routes prescribed by the Ministries of Tourism will quickly see that Paris is miraculous in no small measure because modern architects have not been able to get their hands on it. Elsewhere, European cities are going the way of cities in America: high-rise offices in the center, surrounded first by a ring of lawless dereliction, and then by the suburbs, to which those who work in the city flee at the end of the day. Admittedly, nothing in Europe compares with the vandalism that modernists have wreaked on Buffalo, Tampa, or Minneapolis (to take three examples of American cities that cause me particular pain).

To be honest, I likely would have ignored a press conference yesterday some senators held to address rural poverty but, two days ago, when Canwest's political editor saw the notice for the press conference, he encouraged me to attend and his instincts were spot on. Our coverage ran in National Post, The Vancouver Sun , The Ottawa Citizen , The Edmonton Journal , The Saskatoon Star-Phoenix, and The Nanaimo Daily News.

OTTAWA – The federal government should send thousands of its employees to live and work in rural Canada, says a Senate committee studying the issue of rural poverty.

In a sweeping report with 68 recommendations aimed at revitalizing rural Canada, senators also said a new Department of Rural Affairs ought be created; that financial support for a host of rural programs should be increased; and that hedge funds and commodity traders be investigated to see what, if any, role they are playing in driving up fuel and energy prices.

They also recommend that FedNor, the federal government corporation set up to spur economic development in northern Ontario, take responsibility for economic development in the entire province.

“It is time to address rural-urban disparities,” said Alberta Senator Joyce Fairbairn, the chairwoman of the standing Senate committee on agriculture and forestry . . . [Read the rest]

One of the big concerns this committee of Liberal and Conservative senators had was that they believed that rural Canada had lost any political clout and that Ottawa was ignoring rural issues. I asked Liberal MP Wayne Easter about this. Easter was candid about the federal government's perceived inaction on rural issues but he also noted, quite rightly I think, that others need to pay attention:

I don’t mind admitting at all that I do think there should have been more emphasis by the previous government of which I was a part of on rural Canada and there certainly should have been by this government.

And I’ll say this very clearly as well, the media that are around here pay no attention to agriculture and rural issues. It’s a problem in the news centres in Toronto and other places that those major resource industries are not paid enough attention to in terms of their problems and solutions by the national media itself. So I think it spreads right through this town, not just with the political parties but also with the bureaucracy and the media.

Easter wouldn't have known this when I spoke to him but I was one of just two out of 300 or so members of the Parliamentary Press Gallery that attended that press conference put on by the Senate Standing Committee on Agriculture and Forestry. (Other out-of-town reporters had dialed in on a conference call) The committee had just wrapped up a two-year study on rural poverty (PDF) and the cost of farm inputs and was releasing their final reports.

The Supreme Court has begun hearing oral arguments in the matter of BCE Inc et al vs lots of bondholders.
Lawyer Guy Du Pont is leading off for Bell. He is getting quizzed by justices about the concept of “reasonable expectations” and whether the transaction as proposed puts unreasonable risk on bondholders.
Du Pont has the floor to 1040. After that, lawyer Benjamin Zarnett will argue on behalf of a numbered company that wants the deal to proceed.
Then at 10 am it will be Raynold Langlois for intervenor Matthew Stewart. Lawyers for the bondholders begin their arguments after that: Markus Koehnen at 1010 and John Finnigan and Avram Fishman at 1040. Then Christian Tacit for intervenor Catalyst Asset Management. Du Pont and Zarnett will each have 5 minutes for reply.
And then at 1130, the court will wrap up.
Legal beagles hanging around the court say it's possible the Supremes (minus Justices Fish and Rothsten who are not sitting today) will render a verdict today but if they do, it will likely be after markets close at 4 pm.

UPDATE: And sure enough, judgement has been “reserved”. It's anyone's best guess how long it will take the 7 justices to make decision.

It was just after 7:30 a.m. this morning when I arrived at the west end of the Parliamentary Precinct. This is the end of that few square blocks around Parliament Hill where you find the national archives, the Department of Justice and the Supreme Court of Canada.
The Supreme Court building, set well back from Wellington Street, is normally a quiet place but not today. BCE Inc., the country's largest telecom company, is fighting with its bondholders to sell itself to a group led by Ontario's retired teachers. This morning, their battlefield is the main courtroom at the Supreme Court and a few hundred are all lined up outside the court to watch.
The courthouse doors opened at 8:15 a.m. and the 200 or so lined up outside began moving through security.
Most of those in line were white men, well-groomed, wearing expensive-looking suits and ties. I asked a few in line who they were and why they were here. Sure enough, they were lawyers. Some readily conceded that fact while others had to be gently prodded into that admission saying they had been instructed not speak to the press and so, could not say more. Some of the lawyers watching were representing  groups of shareholders (they want BCE to win) or bondholders (they want BCE to lose).
The lawyers actually arguing the case — and there's an army of those — come in a separate entrance through another lineup and security screener.
One fellow in our line, though, was in jeans and carried a bike helmet into the court. In his late 50s, he was an actual BCE shareholder and he thought he'd come to see what was going on. He'll make a lot of money if BCE wins. The shares were trading yesterday at about $33 and if BCE wins, the Teachers will buy him out for $42.75 a share. “Plus,” he said, “I've lived in Ottawa for 30 years and I've never been to the Supreme Court!”

Shut out from the top job for more than a little while now, the Navy won the number two spot in the Canadian Forces with the announcement earlier today that Rear-Admiral Denis Rouleau (right) will become the vice-chief of defence staff (VCDS) when the incumbent, Walt Natynczyk, becomes the Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) upon Rick Hillier's retirement next month.

Both Hillier and Natynczyk are army guys — tankers, to be precise — and the guy who held the CDS job before those two was Ray Henault, an air force guy. The guy before that? Maurice Baril, an army guy. It was the guy before Baril, Larry Murray, who was the last navy guy to hold the CF's top job.

I'm told that the idea of rotating the top job among the services — army, navy, air force — is now a bit quaint. After all, the CF is mostly made up of ground forces and so wouldn't that be where you'd expect to find all the leadership talent?

In any event: Rouleau will be promoted to Vice-Admiral to take the number two job — a decent consolation job for the navy which is going through some issues of its own right now.

The change of command ceremony putting Rouleau into his new job will take place on June 24.

From today's papers ..

OTTAWA – The federal government has quietly outsourced the processing of visa applications to lighten the load at some of its busiest embassies around the world.

The latest one to hire some help is Canada's embassy in China.

The move to allow third-party service providers has raised concerns by some Canadian immigration consultants that foreign nationals who are applying for visas to visit or live in Canada may not enjoy the same privacy or security rights they would receive by applying through a Canadian embassy. Moreover, those who apply through these third-party firms may pay additional fees that they would not pay by applying directly through an embassy.

The federal government is outsourcing the processing of visa applications — including those from China — to lighten the load at some of its busiest embassies.

The federal government is outsourcing the processing of visa applications — including those from China — to lighten the load at some of its busiest embassies.

Last week, VFS Global Services Pvt. Ltd, a Mumbai, India-based subsidiary of Kuoni Travel Holding Ltd. of Zurich, Switzerland began accepting applications for temporary visitor permits on behalf of the Canadian Embassy in China. Immigration consultants in Canada say VFS Global was required to get a licence to operate from the Government of China.

“I see some real problems with this,” said John Ryan, a Toronto-based immigration consultant who operated an immigration consultancy in China. “You have no expectation of any kind of privacy.” … [Read the rest of the story]

You can check out the Website VFS Global has set up for its Canada-China operation.

Technorati Tags: Canada – Foreign Policy, immigration

I spent two years as a reporter for the Thunder Bay Chronicle-Journal, during which I had lots of time to explore Lake Superior's north shore — and communities like Marathon, Schreiber, Terrace Bay, and Nipigon. All of those towns are pretty much one-industry concerns and have been suffering terribly recently as mills and mines have been shut down.

I finally had a chance to talk about one of those towns — Red Rock — in a piece I filed earlier this week for Canwest News Service that takes a deeper look at some of the job numbers in Canada:

The tiny town of Red Rock, Ontario, will soon shutter its only municipal hockey arena, a direct result of the loss of its paper mill and major employer two years ago.When Norampac Inc. shut down its Red Rock facility in August, 2006, 350 people were thrown out of work, a very big deal when there's only 1,000 people in the town. And the prospect of replacing those jobs with nearby work were dimmed six months later when its municipal neighbour, Nipigon, a town of about 1,700 people a few kilometres away on Lake Superior's north shore, went through its own economic nightmare. Nipigon's employee-owned mill and major employer, Multiply Forest Products, burned down in a mid-winter fire so fierce, the town ran out of water trying to put it out. The mill is not being re-built and 100 people are out of work. There were sad stories like this throughout northern Ontario and Quebec in late 2006 and 2007. Montreal-based Domtar, alone, announced the closure of four mills, all on one day: October 11, 2006. Domtar mills in Matagami, Val d'Or and Lebel-sur-Quevillon, all in Quebec, and in Nairn Centre, near Sudbury, Ont., employing nearly 950 people were all quickly shuttered within weeks of Domtar's announcement. But none of those closures, or dozens like them in small rural towns across the country, ever generated the headlines or Parliamentary outrage that the threat of the shutdown of a General Motors plant in Oshawa, Ont. And yet, in relative terms, the manufacturing crisis in Canada's out-of-the-way corners, far away from television cameras, may be more alarming. And it's a crisis that's been mushrooming for years, well before GM ran into its problems. … It will be difficult, certainly, for the city of Oshawa and for the families of the 2,600 workers who may be laid off when General Motors shuts a pickup truck plant in 2009. But Oshawa will presumably still be able to operate its hockey arenas and provide other municipal services. And the 2,600 families facing a potential layoff may be comforted in some small way that the prospects for work in the Greater Toronto Area, with a population of nearly six million or so, are significantly greater than one-industry towns hundreds of kilometres away from the nearest large urban centre.Indeed, in the same week that GM said it was shutting a plant, Ford, on the other side of Toronto in Oakville, said it needed 500 workers for a new production line. But the workers in Red Rock, Matagami and other smaller dots on the map have few and sometimes no options for replacement work, imperilling the survival of entire towns … [Read the rest of the story]

This just popped in my inbox. I'm golfing so I didn't click through to the link, but I've got a pretty good idea of what I might find and who sent it …

—– Original Message —–
From: Stéphane <info@willyoubetricked.ca>
To: Akin, David (Canwest News Service)
Sent: Sun Jun 08 11:09:36 2008
Subject: Higher taxes are the answer!

Hi David,

Stéphane wanted to tell you…

Having trouble setting priorities? Friends don't know what they speak about? Billions of dollars of spending promises got you in a big debt hole? Well don't worry. If you answered yes to any of these questions, there is an answer. A permanent new tax on everything!

If you agree click here <http://www.willyoubetricked.ca/reachout.php?task=ec&u=53015KCK3409&v=320125fd9b2d43e340a35fb0278da235d> .

Scotia Capital economist Gorica Djeric looks at new data on spending by U.S. consumers and doesn't see a pretty picture:

Consumer spending, which accounts for two-thirds of real gross domestic product (GDP), isthe key growth factor for the U.S. economy. On annual basis, the contribution from realpersonal consumption expenditure (PCE) has been exceeding all other components (i.e., fixedinvestment, private inventories, net exports, government spending) since the 1930s, with theonly exceptions being just about every recessionary period. However, since 2004, householdshave been adding an increasingly smaller share to the U.S. economy, shrinking to 2.2% lastyear, the smallest contribution since 2002. Furthermore, in the first quarter of this year — amidweakening employment conditions, record-high debt-to-equity levels, restrictive lendingstandards and rising inflationary pressures — PCE added only 0.7% to GDP, the least since thesecond quarter of 2001, and considerably below the five- and ten-year averages (of 2.1% and2.3%, respectively) …

After years of profligacy, over-extended U.S. consumers are heading for bunkers, with leadingindicators pointing to more turbulence ahead. Consumer confidence continues to erode, withinflation expectations reaching “an all-time high” in May, further undermining purchasingpower. While ‘stimulus’ rebate check are expected to provide some offset, recent surveysreveal that Americans are planning to put only 40% back into the economy in 2008, with anincreasing share going towards basic necessities, predominantly food and gasoline.

Canada's top civil servant, Kevin Lynch, surprised the locals in Fort McMurray, Alta. when he and some buddies flew in by helicopter for a tour of some oilsands facilities there.

Lynch's buddies, as it turned out, were, like him, the Clerks of various privy councils from other Commonwealth countries. Every two years, Commonwealth clerks get together for a conference and this year it was Canada's turn to host. Every other year that Canada has hosted this meeting, they've met in dull, old Ottawa. So this year, Lynch decided to go West and show off the economic powerhouse that is northern Alberta and Saskatchewan.

Lynch, like his boss the Prime Minister and many Alberta cabinet members, have been keen to counter some of the messaging from environmental groups that oil sands development is 'dirty'.

The latest salvo in that war was fired today by a Washington-based group, the Environmental Integrity Project.

Here's the piece I and my colleague Mike De Souza filed on this issue this afternoon:

OTTAWA – Environmental activists are warning U.S. lawmakers and consumers that Canada's oilsands are an environmental disaster, the latest salvo in a pitched public relations battle over Western Canada's resource riches.

Most of the petroleum that comes out of the oilsands developments in northern Alberta and Saskatchewan markets ends up in American markets. So, environmental groups who are trying to limit or clean up oilsands developments are taking their message to the United States in the hopes that U.S. federal and state policy-makers will prevent imports of what they call “dirty oil” from Canada.

“The environmental costs of tar sand development are staggering,” says a report released Wednesday by the Environmental Integrity Project, a Washington-based group. The report says oilsands production results in the release of harmful pollutants such as sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulphide, sulphuric acid mist, nitrogen oxide as well as toxic metals such as lead and nickel compounds.

[Read the rest of the story]

Technorati Tags: oil sands, energy