David Akin’s On The Hill

While International Trade Minister David Emerson heads east to forge trade ties in China, Mongolia and  Hong Kong, International Cooperation Minister Bev Oda will head south to Peru and Columbia and, we’ve just learned, Foreign Affairs Minister will fly to the Middle East to meet top leaders from Saudi Arabia, India, and Israel.

All of this happens over the next couple of weeks.

Bernier, who will travel with his parliamentary secretary Deepak Obhrai, will be in Riyadh on January 9 to meet with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz. He then flies to New Delhi for meetings on Jan. 11 and 12 with representatives of the government of India, including its foreign minister.

He then turns west again for meetings on January 13 and 14 in Ramallah and Tel Aviv.  He will meet with Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, United States Security Coordinator, and Palestinian officials, including President Mahmoud Abbas, Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and Foreign Minister Riad Malki. In Israel, he will see Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni.

It is Bernier’s first trips to all of those places.

 

If General Rick Hillier was thinking of moving on, the federal government is taking away what would be for him a likely lucrative career. Treasury Board President Vic Toews today published proposed new regulations for the Accountability Act that would make it illegal for top generals and for some of the Prime Minister’s closest advisors to cash in their connections for top lobbyist jobs.

Toews has asked for a 30–day comment period on the proposed regulations but presumably, shortly after that, it will be illegal for the Chief of Defence Staff (that’s Hillier’s job right now)the Vice-Chief or the chiefs of the maritime, air force, and land staff along with other generals to become registered lobbyists for at least five years after they quit the Forces.

Given the money that the Defence Department gets to spend, ex-generals are highly sought after by the lobbying industry.

Let me just pick on one firm as an example: CFN Consultants, one of the bluest of blue-chip lobbyist firms in Ottawa. It’s senior partner is Patrick (Paddy) O’Donnell, a former vice chief of the air staff, and the firm’s members are lobbyists for, among others, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon. There are plenty of folks in that firm who once commanded ships, squadrons, and tanks for Canada.  Many more once worked on the civilian side of the department as high-ranking procurement officers (there are two former assistant deputy ministers – materiel working for CFN, for example).

CFN’s roster boasts Gary Garnett who was Vice Chief of Defence Staff from 1998 to 2001 and George Macdonald, another former Vice Chief of Defence Staff (2001–2004). Under the proposed new rules, Macdonald, who represents Lockheed Martin, Sikorsky, CAE, Bombardier and others, would still be barred from lobbying.

Also barred from lobbying for five years are people appointed “Senior Advisor to the Privy Council” and the Comptroller General of Canada.

 

 

The national Liberal caucus is set to meet in Kitchener, Ont. on January 21 and 22, just ahead of the resumption of the goings-on in the House of Commons.

Liberals, no doubt, will be talking about electoral strategy. Should they push for an election this year?  This spring? If so, on what issue? And even if they wanted to go, how do they push the government over? Personally, I think that, no matter what Stephane Dion says, this Parliament will get to its fixed election date in October, 2009. It all has to do with the algebra of the seat breakdown in the House of Commons. All the government needs is the support of any one opposition party. And that means all three opposition parties have to agree to force the Conservatives out. That seems like a tall order right now. During the first two years of this government, there has always been at least one opposition party that did not want an election. For a long time, that was the Liberals. Now, even if the Liberals started clamouring this spring for an election, the general feeling is that the Bloc Quebecois is a little gunshy and would look for a way out of an election this spring.

International Trade Minister David Emerson will become the first Canadian minister in more than a decade to visit Mongolia when he heads overseas next week. Emerson will be travelling with fellow British Columbia Conservative MP James Moore. Moore is, among other things, Parliamentary Secretary for the Pacific Gateway.

The pair will travel to China and Hong Kong in addition to Mongolia.

Emerson is one of the biggest advocates in cabinet of the ideas that you can bring about political change in China along with improved human rights when there is liberalized trade relations.  This view is often at odds with some of the China ‘hawks’ in cabinet, such as Stockwell Day and Jason Kenney who think Canada ought to take a tougher attitude towards human rights abuses there.

While he’s in China, Emerson will be talking about the Olympics.

 

Sherry Cooper (left) is a transplanted American who now works in the heart of Bay Street as the chief economist for BMO Nesbitt Burns. She has a note this morning about Barack Obama’s victory in the Iowa caucuses last night. Cooper believes that if November’s run-off is Obama vs. Huckabee, Obama wins. In this excerpt, she takes a brief look at Obama’s trade and economic policy:

In a remarkable turn of events, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois pulled off a rousing victory at the Iowa caucuses last night, leaving John Edwards, and most surprisingly, Hillary Clinton in the dust.  … In the modern era, we have seen only two such decisive events, the 1932 election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the 1980 election of Ronald Reagan, both of which ushered in an era of dominance for their respective political parties. While these are very early days, and a big mistake in the near future could derail Obama’s campaign, the record Democratic turnout and the dominance of Obama in the Independent vote might portend a real sea change in American politics.

… So what does this mean for U.S. economic policy? … Obama’s economic platform is basically pro-middle class, anti-tax benefits-for-the-rich and big on government spending for social programs. He is pro-jobs and proposes to renegotiate NAFTA: Obama believes that NAFTA and its potential were “oversold to the American people. Obama will work with the leaders of Canada and Mexico to fix NAFTA so that it works for American workers,” according to his website. The Senator is an economic populist with a 21st Century bent towards protecting the openness of the Internet, deploying next-generation broadband and boosting renewable energy.  While he has consistently opposed the war in Iraq, he proposes a phased withdrawal with a remaining peace-keeping contingent. He is pro-labour and pro-family, but decidedly not anti-business, as his overflowing coffers and considerable business support attests. 

Obama's current economic advisors are Austan Goolsbee of the University of Chicago and Jeffrey Liebman of Harvard University. Goolsbee has been an advisor to Obama since his Senate campaign and is the lead economic advisor to his presidential campaign.  He is a known centrist and his research focuses on the Internet, the new economy, government policy and taxes. Liebman is an economics professor at the JFK School of Government and is also a Research Associate at the NBER, the official judge of American economic cycles. Liebman’s research includes tax and budget policy, social insurance, poverty, and income inequality. Recently he has examined the impacts of government programs such as Social Security, the Earned Income Tax Credit and housing vouchers.  From 1998 to 1999, he worked for the Clinton Administration, serving as Special Assistant to the President for economic policy and coordinated Bill Clinton’s Social Security reform technical working group.

In a recent speech, Obama called for “a renewed trust in the market and a renewed spirit of obligation and cooperation between business and workers… employees at companies like Google don't mind the vast success of their CEOs – because they share in that success.”

… Any President’s power over economic policy is controlled and limited by the Congress and the Federal Reserve.  A Democratic sweep of both Houses of Congress would strengthen any Democratic President’s hand.  November 4, 2008 is still a long way away and the race will no doubt remain exciting until after the votes have been tallied.

 

Douglas Rushkoff is down on the Internet:

I thought that it would change people. I thought it would allow us to build a new world through which we could model new behaviors, values, and relationships. In the 90's, I thought the experience of going online for the first time would change a person's consciousness as much as if they had dropped acid in the 60's.

… For now, at least, it's turned out to be different.

… The businesspeople running Facebook and MySpace are rivaled only by the members of these online “communities” in their willingness to surrender their identities and ideals for a buck, a click-through, or a better market valuation.

The open source ethos has been reinterpreted through the lens of corporatism as “crowd sourcing” — meaning just another way to get people to do work for no compensation.

… Sadly, cyberspace has become just another place to do business. The question is no longer how browsing the Internet changes the way we look at the world; it's which browser we'll be using to buy and sell stuff in the same old world.

I think it's an indicator of maturity and wisdom when you are able to revise or reject a position you might have held for a long time. Take Freeman Dyson, for example. He's certainly mature and I find him wise. Over at The Edge, the “annual question”, is:

When thinking changes your mind, that's philosophy.

When God changes your mind, that's faith.

When facts change your mind, that's science.

WHAT HAVE YOU CHANGED YOUR MIND ABOUT? WHY?

and here's the beginning of Dyson's response:

When facts change your mind, that's not always science. It may be history. I changed my mind about an important historical question: did the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki bring World War Two to an end? Until this year I used to say, perhaps. Now, because of new facts, I say no. This question is important, because the myth of the nuclear bombs bringing the war to an end is widely believed. To demolish this myth may be a useful first step toward ridding the world of nuclear weapons . . .

Now this sounds promising …

A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests. The discovery's first application will probably be in treatment of the severe sleep disorder narcolepsy.

The treatment is “a totally new route for increasing arousal, and the new study shows it to be relatively benign,” said Jerome Siegel, a professor of psychiatry at UCLA and a co-author of the paper. “It reduces sleepiness without causing edginess.”

Orexin A is a promising candidate to become a “sleep replacement” drug. For decades, stimulants have been used to combat sleepiness, but they can be addictive and often have side effects, including raising blood pressure or causing mood swings.

The military, for example, administers amphetamines to pilots flying long distances, and has funded research into new drugs like the stimulant modafinil and orexin A in an effort to help troops stay awake with the fewest side effects . . .