David Akin’s On The Hill

In the February issue of The Walrus, Gwynne Dwyer makes the case that Canada may well be a vaccine superpower. He does this in the context of a review of the world’s ability to avert/prepare for/deal with a pandemic outbreak of avian flu:

“In 2001, the Canadian government contracted with ID Biomedical, currently based in Vancouver, to develop the infrastructure to supply all Canadians with vaccines solely from domestic production and last year it asked the firm to raise it production capacity to eight million does of vaccine a month. Even allowing for two to three months to identify the pandemic virus, create the vaccine, and test it before going into mass production, the whole Canadian population could be covered in as little as seven months. What the British are planning to do over the next several years, Canada has already done.

Barring the development of new techniques for rapid vacccine production, Canada would be one of the few hopes poor countries have of getting early access to an avian flu vaccine since no government could export vaccine until its own population was inoculated … Canada would be able to start sending vacccines abroad only seven or eight months after the pandemic hit. But how gets it? How do you decide? . . .

The article is not online so you’ll have to pick up a copy of the magazine to read the rest.

 

 

An essay that is sad, angry, and horrible:

In Darfur genocide is taking place in slow motion, and there is vast documentary proof of the atrocities. Some of the evidence can be seen in the photo reproduced with this essay, which was leaked from an African Union archive containing thousands of other such photos. And now, the latest proof comes in the form of two new books that tell the sorry tale of Darfur: it's appalling that the publishing industry manages to respond more quickly to genocide than the UN and world leaders do . . .

 . . . the situation in the region has been getting much worse since about September 2005. The African Union has lost some of the first troops it stationed there, a growing portion of Darfur is becoming too dangerous as a place to distribute food, and the rebels have been collapsing into fratricide. The UN has estimated that if Darfur collapses completely then the death toll there will reach 100,000 a month. Just as worrying, the instability in Darfur has crossed over into neighboring Chad. There is a real possibility that civil war will again break out there in the next year or two, and that could be a cataclysm that would dwarf Darfur.

From Nicholas D. Kristof, “Genocide in Slow Motion”, in The New York Review of Books, Feb. 9, 2006

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that some pension fund managers are trying to do what they can to bring about some change in Sudan.

… A handful of state legislatures in the United States have passed laws that bar their public pension funds from investing in companies with ties to Sudan, which has been accused of extensive human rights abuses in a long-running civil war.

Craig Alexander, (left) the deputy chief economist for the Toronto-Dominion Bank, takes a look at how the new government might affect federal fiscal policy. He says, for example, that he does not expect the Conservatives to move forward with their campaign promise to introduce a deferral on capital gains taxes, believing that initiative to be too complex and too costly for what is a precariously positioned minority government.

In his brief, Alexander asks,

“…it is our hope that attention will be shifted to addressing Canada’s ailing productivity performance. The country needs a coherent and focused strategy to shift the economic culture away from consumption and borrowing and towards saving and investment. The challenge is that there does not appear to be much fiscal room to deliver much in the way of new policies. However, this issue is pressing and cannot be ignored. At a minimum, the new government is encouraged to do a comprehensive review of its existing programs and policies, with an eye to finding savings and creating opportunities to introduce productivity-enhancing initiatives. “

Alexander does a nice job of summarizing the spending and tax relief plans as presented by the Conservatives during the election campaign. Using figures released by the Conservatives to do his calculations, Alexander says that Conservatives spending promises would total just over $30–billion over the five years, nearly one-third of which can be chalked up to the Conservative “choice-in-child-care” grant.

Alexander calculates that Conservative tax relief plans, as promised by the Conservative but excluding the cost of the capital gains deferral plans, would reduce federal revenues by about $44–billion over five years. The biggest chunk of that is the GST cut — that will trim Ottawa’s revenues by more than $32–billion over five years.

Will the combination of increased spending and reduced revenue put Ottawa into defecit? Alexander does not think so, saying such fears are, in his view, “overblown.”

He goes on to conclude:

“The basic conclusion is that the Conservative government has the scope to implement the vast majority of its election platform and at the same time continue to run balanced budgets and pay down debt at a gradual pace…Having said that, the government has little fiscal flexibility to introduce significant new spending or tax relief. Accordingly, Canada’s punitively high marginal effective personal income tax burden will continue to constrain the ability of households to save and to act as a barrier for many low income Canadians trying to leave government income-support programs in order to enter the labour force. ”

 

Former Prime Minister Paul Martin is in Europe right now but just issued the following statement about the defection of David Emerson, who Martin himself once recruited as a star candidate for the Liberals in Vancouver:

“On February 6, after David Emerson became the Minister of International Trade in Stephen Harper's government, he announced that he would be making contact with me to explain the principle that led him to his decision to cross the floor. To date I have not received his explanation, nor have I heard from Mr. Emerson at all.

When I learned that he had been recruited to sit as a Conservative cabinet minister only days after his election as a Liberal, I was astonished. As we have seen, members do switch political parties when they feel their values are no longer welcome in the party they ran in. My government was the beneficiary of that phenomenon on a couple of high-profile occasions. But this situation is without precedent.
First, Mr. Harper engineered this switch after having criticized floor crossing heavily in the past.

Second, Mr. Emerson had campaigned only days earlier against the Conservatives – using language that can only be described as categorical in its condemnation of Mr. Harper and his positions. Now as a member of Mr. Harper's government, he will not only be required to defend the policies of his department – but all the policies of a government which he has attacked in an unequivocal way as being contrary to his own principles.

I am also troubled by the unwillingness of Mr. Harper and Mr. Emerson to confront the legitimate questions that Canadians have about this matter.

In both the case of Mr. Brison and Ms. Stronach for example, both they and I felt it was important to immediately face Canadians and the national media to defend the decisions taken and to take accountability for our actions.

As the person who recruited Mr. Emerson to public life, and given the lack of any articulated principle behind his decision, I certainly share the disappointment of so many Canadians in both Mr. Harper and Mr. Emerson. To date, neither has been willing to subject themselves to an appropriate level of scrutiny on this matter – a decision that I believe robs Canadians and the people of Vancouver Kingsway of a deserved explanation. In particular, it is to those voters that a greater measure of respect is owed.”

Jane Stewart (left), last seen in Jean Chretien’s cabinet as the Minister of Human Resources, has agreed to be be Chief of Staff to Bill Graham. Graham, of course, is the Liberal MP who is Leader of the Official Opposition to Stephen Harper’s government.

“Jane Stewart will be a fantastic anchor for the Liberal team in the OLO”, said Graham in a statement released today by the Liberal party. “In addition to her tremendous experience as Minister in three portfolios, as a caucus chair, and as an MP who understands the demands of Parliament, she is familiar with and has the respect of the Liberal caucus. I am delighted that she will be joining us once again in Ottawa.”

Stewart will be responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Opposition Leaders' Office, and the principal advisor to Bill Graham.

 

NDP Leader Jack Layton announced his caucus (caucus pictured left) critics for the start of the 39th Parliament.  Bill Blaikie is Layton’s deputy and Libby Davies is his House Leader, reprising roles they had in the last Parliament. Judy Wasylycia-Leis was re-elected by her caucus colleagues to the position of Caucus Chair and has been re-appointed as her party’s Finance Critic. (She was the one whose very successful complaint to the RCMP sparked the income trust investigation that contributed to the Liberal downfall in the last election.) Yvon Godin keeps his job as the party’s Whip.

The party has published the full list of critics as a PDF file on its Web site but here are some key assignments:

• Dawn Black – Defence and Peace Advocacy
• Joe Comartin – Justice
• Tony Martin – Human Resources and Social  Development
• Alexa McDonough – Foreign Affairs
• Peggy Nash – Public Works
• Penny Priddy – Health

 

Ezra Levant decided to publish in his newsmagazine The Western Standard the cartoons that many Muslims around the world have found offensive. Late today, Prime Minister Stephen Harper had this to say about the issue:

“Free speech is a right that all Canadians enjoy; Canadians also have the right to voice their opinion on the free speech of others. I regret the publication of this material in several media outlets. While we understand this issue is divisive, our government wishes that people be respectful of the beliefs of others. I commend the Canadian Muslim community for voicing its opinion peacefully, respectfully and democratically.”

 

Nearly 37,000 people dropped by this blog in January, a decent figure but well down from the all-time high of about 55,000 that visited last August (oddly enough those numbers came while this blog was in hibernation.) The blog was reactivated with the recent Canadian federal election and, since then, most items here were also mirrored at CTV's Election Blog. With the election over, it's more likely posts will show up here only.
As for the most popular posts at this blog, a geek tip to help an early version Apple's Airport Extreme wi-fi card to talk to a LinkSys router continues to make the top ten and I posted it in 2003! Just three of the top ten most popular posts were published in January.
Here are the ten most popular posts that readers in January clicked on followed by the date they were originally published.

1. A Porsche moment [Mon 10 Jan 2005]
2. The new Dodge Charger [Mon 17 Jan 2005]
3. The Liberal attack ads — and they don't mince words [Tue 10 Jan 2006]
4. The New Air Canada uniforms [Mon 01 Nov 2004]
5. Air Canada and a new Celine Dion video — right here! [Mon 01 Nov 2004]
6. Blogger snags preview of Liberal attack ads [Thu 22 Dec 2005]
7. Finally!! Airport Extreme and my LinkSys router are talking! [Sat 13 Dec 2003]
8. Michael Ignatieff on liberalism and the Canadian Liberal Party [Fri 04 Mar 2005]
9. Harper on governing [Mon 02 Jan 2006]
10. A howler from Harper [Thu 19 Jan 2006]

Finally getting around to some of the stuff in my inbox not related to the election and was pleased as punch to find this from Philipa Lawson's group at the University of Ottawa. She heads up a group called the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic — a group that's fighting the good fight on behalf of Canadian Internet users everywhere.
CIPPIC has just announced the first Acess to Information User Manual for citizens. Here's their release:

On the Identity Trail releases Access to Information User Manual

Many Canadians are unaware of their rights to access information, including their own personal information, from governments and private companies. Yet these rights are fundamental to open government and individual privacy, says Philippa Lawson, Executive Director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC). Ms. Lawson directed a team of students who researched access to information laws across Canada and have now produced a Manual explaining those laws.

The Manual fills a gap in public education on issues of government accountability and privacy rights, says Lawson. “While many of the agencies responsible for access to information and privacy across Canada provide guides and Q&As on their websites, these are generally incomplete. And the legal manuals designed for professional lawyers provide more detail than the average user needs. Our User Manual is written for citizens and researchers who aren't legally trained, but who still want to exercise their legal rights.”

After an election campaign that focused in large part on issues of government accountability, this Manual is a timely addition to the growing body of online information for citizens. “We hope that other groups and agencies will link to our Manual and that people will use it to pursue public interest issues and to protect their own privacy in both the public and private spheres”, adds Lawson.

The Manual is freely available and easily downloadable from the website www.idtrail.org . It is an initiative of “On the Identity Trail”, a multidisciplinary research project led by University of Ottawa law professor Ian Kerr and funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's “Initiatives on the New Economy” program. According to Kerr, “This multi-sectoral initiative provides a powerful tool for citizens and illustrates perfectly the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council's vision of interactive partnerships between universities, industry, governmental and non-governmental organizations.”

When Garth Turner first blogged about David Emerson,  he talked about his constituents and invited them to a town hall meeting to to deal with “some justified emotion at what happened this week”.

He wrote that post late Wednesday night. When I saw him outside a meeting of the Conservative caucus on Thursday morning, I asked him why he thought there was “justified emotion” and his response was widely reported across the country. [CTV report here — click on “David Akin on the softwood speculation” under the Video links down the right-hand side of the page to watch Turner’s reaction]

That scrum — and the fact that many media organizations broadcast or published his comments from it — resulted in what Turner described as a “sombre session” with Harper. (On his blog on Wednesday, before Turner ran into “a wall of reporters”, he wrote — “I drove back to Ottawa tonight … because I am meeting with the Prime Minister tomorrow” — which raises some doubts that he was called in to Harper’s office specifically because of his comments.) 

We know that because Turner blogged about that as well (here, here, and here)

On Friday, in Touchdowns and Fumbles, a weekly commentary on various news events from a communications and branding viewpoint published by  Veritas Communications, Veritas vice-president says Turner scored a “Touchdown” with his comments and subsequent reaction. “Turner is strategically addressing his brand as an outspoken maverick, one honed over years as a newspaper columnist and TV and radio commentator.” Michael Fortier, on the other hand, fumbled the ball, says Walker, for his comment earlier this week to reporters that he didn’t want to run in the election. “There was better messaging for Fortier to stick to, namely that he planned to run in the next election or a by-election should one occur,” wrote Walker.