Cox And Forkum on Canadian health care.
On the current topic of the ties of organized crime to the Canadian government, this collection of articles on the topic. Be sure to read the Sidewinder information.
Beth thinks blogging pretty much sucks.
The Conservative Party of Canada submission to the Gomery Commission.
That should keep you busy for a while. I have stuff to do – post your own links in the comments.
While The Media Directs Our Attention To Harper’s “BBQ Circuit”
The Libranos are busy behind the scenes ridding themselves of pesky Information CommissionerJohn Reid to ensure that unfortunate events like the uncovering of Adscam are never repeated.
Mr. Tom Lukiwski (Regina–Lumsden–Lake Centre, CPC), June 14, 2005;
We on the access to information committee recognize that. When I say “we”, I mean all opposition members on the committee voted in favour of extending the appointment of Mr. Reid for another year. The only members of the committee who opposed the motion to extend Mr. Reid’s appointment were the members of the Liberal Party of Canada.
It is fascinating to me, when a former Liberal cabinet minister, someone who served for six consecutive elections and for close to 20 years in this place with great distinction, that members of his own party would be the only ones on the access to information committee to oppose his extension for one year.
We all have to ask ourselves why the Liberal members of the committee oppose such an extension. It cannot be because of his qualifications. He has served this Parliament well for seven years. It cannot be because of lack of experience. He probably has more experience as a parliamentary officer than anyone else. In addition, he has extensive experience in the field of access to information. His lack of experience just does not hold true. It has to be something else.
The only thing I can think of is that Mr. Reid has categorically stated that what he would like to see in new access to information legislation would be the increased level of information that would be available to all Canadians upon request.
Mr. Reid has stated that if his vision of a new act comes into being, we could probably safely say that incidents, such as the sponsorship scandal, would not have happened in the first place. Individuals, whether they be members of this place, members of the media or individual Canadians, would have the ability to receive information from government departments that would have triggered the fact that the sponsorship scandal was in full bloom.
Via Newsbeat 1, where there’s a lengthier exerpt and link to Hansard.
Libranos: The Prequel
A curious item in Business Executive from an address by mafia expert Antonio Nicaso to the Canadian Club in Hamilton;
Nicaso said there is no political commitment to fight organized crime in Canada.
“When I arrived in Canada, it was like arriving in a candy store, because they were all here,” said Nicaso, who has written several books on the subject and is best known for publishing for the first time the ‘Mafia’s Code.’
Nicaso said Canadians are too concerned with avoiding the cost of a long trial. So the criminals plead guilty and spend three, four or five years in jail. Meanwhile, they’re plotting their next crime.
“Even if we spend $1 million, it’s better to put traffickers away for 40 years,” he said.
“In 1991 there was no currency law here. It was harder to import cheese than cash. It was a country that attracted criminals.”
[…]
And Nicaso said Sam Bronfman was one of the major competitors to Canada’s most notorious bootlegger, Rocco Perri, who supplied booze to Joseph Kennedy. […] Just after the Temperance Act was passed, Perri, who was a construction worker and very poor, became a multi-millionaire. […] Nicaso said Perri created an empire with the help of police officers, lawyers, judges and government officials.
“They all wanted to have a portion of the profits,” he said.
“It’s the same with the sponsorship scandal,” he continued. “Nothing has changed.”
In 1939 Perri was charged with corruption and RCMP officers were ready to testify against him, but Nicaso said Perri hired a brilliant lawyer, Paul Martin, father of the current Prime Minister, and was acquitted.
My Lloyd, Why Hast Thou Forsaken Me?
First Coyne is sued by Tim Murphy, now the Libranos are targeting David Frum;
By that definition, Canadian politics these days might seem very comical indeed. But I am counting on Americans to be less callous than the mordant Brooks–and to recognize that the events now occurring in Canada are serious, even sinister. There is though one warning I’d better immediately deliver to readers: Along with at least four other public commentators, I have recently been served with libel papers by a leading figure in this story. Because National Review is distributed in Canada, and therefore can potentially be reached by Canada’s more restrictive libel law, I have to be a little circumspect in what I say here.
In any sane democratic country, a slap suit against an opinion columnist by a government operative would provoke outrage and non-stop editorials in the mainstream press. The item would be leading the newscasts, with punditry convening soberly on our TV screens. Reporter scrums would pepper government leaders to explain their actions in curtailling that most hallowed (in their eyes) of all freedoms – freedom of the press.
But of course, this is Canada – a nation of “natural governing” one-party rule in which a “living” constitution permits such limits on speech as are consistant with a Liberal Kleptocracy.
So, as the Liberals draft laws that push more and more areas of government operation outside the reach of Freedom of Information requests, weaken protections for whistleblowers, when they brazenly refuse to acknowledge the defeat of their government in non-confidence motions and ignore the Auditor Generals concerns about billions of tax dollars being funneled into unaccountable foundations – the Lloyd Robertsons and Peter Mansbridges busy themselves studiously studying Stephen Harper’s facial expressions and providing Canadians “Better News Through Polling” .
They remain virtually silent on the assaults on members of their own profession – silent, because for the most part, the majority of mainstream media in Canada functions as nothing short of a communications arm of the Liberal Party. In other words, they see themselves as nothing less than an unelected arm of government.
So, when the most compelling critics of the Liberal Party they hold dear face libel actions for simply speaking the truth, the majority of Canadian political punditry breathe a collective grunt of approval, and commission another poll to create new opinions to feed back to the electorate who ensure they stay near the top of all the right invitation lists.
100% Customer Satisfaction
Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, an abortion-rights advocate, vetoed the measure, saying medical professionals – not legislators – should set standards. “
Father Jackson
Now that you mention it, I wonder what the verdict might have been if Jackson were a man of the cloth, instead of a sequined man-thing of the closet.
Complaint Procedure
Upon reviewing the 1400+ emails that arrived while I was away, I regret to announce that I received two of a negative nature. The first was from one Roger M Roeder. Mr. Roeder had engaged in a debate with another reader and was so offended with his own comments thread that he’s publicly threatening to delink SDA because of it.
The second offered this critique; ” …when it comes to the substitutes you picked, I think you did a really poor job. Had they been politically otherwise oriented I could have lived with it [..] I really hope I don’t come as close as I did as this time to deleting your bookmark.”
Well, then.
Let it not be said that I am too stubborn to consider suggestions as to how I might improve or tweak the blog to fulfill the personal needs of each reader. I acknowledge it is no longer sufficient to entertain others for free in this day and age. Indeed, I’ve been inconsiderate in overlooking something that every blogger who writes for the pure enjoyment of doing so should offer their readers – a complaints department.
To that end, this afternoon I revised the previous complaints mechanism. The new and improved version is now outlined in the SDA Compaints Manual (3rd edition, approved June14, 2005). In order to have your complaint considered by the SDA Standing Committee for Complaints the following protocols must be adhered to. Not adhering to these protocols may result in a dismissal of your complaint without a hearing. The relevant portions are exerpted below;
a. In a business sized envelope, include a $50 deposit (which will be refunded if your complaint is upheld), your return address and phone number where you can be reached. Mail to the address provided.
b. Write the details of your complaint on plain white paper.
c. Fold the paper neatly in half, and then in half again.
d. With your left hand, press said paper against your forehead.
e. Using a hammer and four (4) 2″ galvanized nails, secure it firmly at each corner.
When you have submitted notarized documentation that establishes that the above procedures have been met, the SDA Standing Committee for Complaints may consider your concerns.
But not too f*cking likely.
Airborne
This takes me back to my childhood.
UNScam And The Smoking Memo
Bad news for Kofi Annan.
Investigators of the UN oil-for- food program said Tuesday they are “urgently reviewing” new information that suggests UN Secretary General Kofi Annan may have known more than he revealed about a contract that was awarded to the company that employed his son.
The December 1998 memo from Michael Wilson, then a vice- president of Cotecna Inspections S.A., mentions brief discussions with Annan “and his entourage” at a summit in Paris in 1998 about Cotecna’s bid for a $10-million- a-year contract under oil-for- food.
If accurate, the memo could contradict a major finding of the Independent Inquiry Committee – that there wasn’t enough evidence to show that Annan knew about efforts by Cotecna, which employed his son, Kojo, to win the contract. Cotecna learned it won the contract on Dec. 11, 1998, days after the meeting.
The statement from the Independent Inquiry Committee, led by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker, said it would “conduct additional investigation regarding this new information.”
That must suck, eh Paul?
Back To Fort Whoop Up
One would think that with all the newly announced billions and billions of funding for the RCMP and other security enhancements from the Libranos, that there might be an actual strengthening of policing in border areas of the western prairies – where it is possible to cross virtually anywhere by virtue of miles of unfenced fields, unarmed customs agents and a sparse rural population.
Today a letter has been leaked that the Calvert NDP (no doubt smarting from the electoral smackdown the rural region delivered in the last election) have approved RCMP detachment closures in Climax, Eastend and eventually, other small rural towns and RM’s in the Southwest and elsewhere. Buildings and offices will be closed and personnel will be redeployed and transferred elsewhere. (info via Rawlco radio)
The history that began with the NorthWest Mounted Police has come full circle. So, if you’re thinking of smuggling arms and other prohibited whatnot into Canada, the historic route to Fort Whoop Up has just been re-opened.
Liveblogging : Frank Quennell, Sask Justice Minister is now being interviewed – the reason for the closures is due to the primary concern of the RCMP for officer safety and unavailability of backup in one-person detachments in rural Saskatchewan. See the earlier comment about the disconnect between announced funding and staffing levels.
That’s reassuring for the people who live there, I’m sure.
He finally admits that his office gave approval to the RCMP request without any advance notice or discussion with any of the communities impacted. In other words, Saskatchewan Justice was planning to let the RCMP break the news locally.
Taxation With Representation
This Calgary Herald editorial argues that gay activists have “tipped their hand”;
One might suppose gay marriage extremists would wait for the Liberals’ contentious same-sex legislation to pass before uttering triumphalist comments about the next round in their battle with the churches.
Apparently, some can’t, and Toronto gay rights activist Kevin Bourassa has confirmed the suspicions of religious opponents to same-sex marriage. A partner in one of Canada’s first same-sex wedding ceremonies, he said churches opposing same-sex marriage — while free to be “promoting bigotry” — should lose their tax exemption.
“If you’re at the public trough, if you are collecting taxpayers’ money, you should be following taxpayers’ laws.”
It is curious to think of tax exemption as a gift from taxpayers. In any case, churches have been equal opportunity promoters of bigotry against adulterers, thieves and bearers of false witness for thousands of years. Why should the gays complain?
The editorial also notes something that didn’t get much mention in our oh-so-sophisticated media last week – that Paul Martin is again making promises he’s not empowered to keep.
Prime Minister Paul Martin last week promised dissident Liberal MPs increased religious protections in Bill C- 38.
But, he promises what he cannot deliver. No politician can control how courts or commissions will rule in the future. Gay advocates are well aware of that. That’s what enables Bourassa to boldly articulate what amounts to an anti-church strategy, without even the reasonable caution of waiting for Martin’s bill to pass.
I suspect that activists like Bourassa are making a tactical error when working to remove tax-exempt status from churches. Although they proceed under a theory that such a change would result in weakening church finances, and by extension, religious opposition to their agenda – in practice, a tax-exempt church is a politically hobbled church.
There’s a saying about being careful what one wishes for.
Removing tax exempt status would untether organized religions to fully engage in the political process – and in so doing, the ability of churches to raise money to fund their new, more powerful position in the public policy debate would expand exponentially.
In today’s current political climate, it could be the best thing that ever happened to them.
Thankyou
A huge thankyou to my guest bloggers – Sean of Pol:Spy; James Joyner, OTB; Jeff Goldstein of Protein Wisdom; Angry in the Great White North, aka “Danger Guy”; and my good friend and sysadmin “R”.
I’ve not had time to catch up on all their contributions here, but I see by the long comments threads that the boys kept things hopping, and that there were a few of you who were dismayed that they weren’t testosterone enhanced versions of me.
Well, that was the point of the exercise. There are a few others – I owe a great deal to James and Jeff for sending readers this way during the early days of SDA. They represent diametrically opposed approaches to blogging, and have influenced my “style” here a great deal, as has “R”, from the good old days on Usenet. (I wish he had had time to post more often – he had instructions to scare the bejesus out of you.) Sean is one of my favourite, smartest Canadian bloggers and went above and beyond in keeping the site refreshed. I was reminded of my invitation to guest at Wizbang in the earliest days of SDA, and decided I should include someone fairly new (and very promising) – so Angry got the call.
All in all, a very successful experiment – traffic actually rose a little. The sitemeter doesn’t lie.
I have a lot of deadline work coming up this week, and things will be slow here for a few days, so I encourage you to help me “thank” them by adding them to your regular reading.
One Thing I Like About America (Among Many)
Travelling in the US for a few days makes for a lovely break from blogging, despite the fact that I have so much catching up to do when I get back. It’s not just that there’s no news from Canada – whether the discussion is focused on the economy, foreign affairs, politics – there are no comparisons of America to Canada on any topic at all.
For all intents and purposes, Canada ceases to exist.
Which, all things considered, is about what this insipid little excuse for a country deserves.
Canadians believe U.S. President George W. Bush is almost as great a threat to our national security as Osama bin Laden, according to a government opinion poll obtained by the National Post.
Words fail.
Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, abridged 16
The secret is to stop thinking of them as pot holes and to begin thinking of them as unexpected opportunities to maybe catch some air and test out the effectiveness of your road leathers.
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previous
Too little, too late
Why couldn’t I get results like this back when I was in school? Oh, yeah, I was drunk most of the time. Whoops.
| Your IQ Is 135 |
 Your Logical Intelligence is Exceptional Your Verbal Intelligence is Genius Your Mathematical Intelligence is Genius Your General Knowledge is Genius |
h/t Andrew
Et Tu, Dalton?
Check out the latest scandal brewing in Oztario. Does it, um, seem familiar?
TORONTO — An angry Premier Dalton McGuinty lashed out against the tactics of his political rivals Monday after a Conservative staffer took surreptitious photographs of a Liberal cabinet minister in an attempt to catch him in a conflict of interest.
The Opposition Conservatives captured Transport Minister Harinder Takhar on film visiting a company he owned but had placed in a blind trust, an apparent violation of the legislature’s conflict-of-interest rules.
McGuinty accused Conservative Leader John Tory of “stalking” Takhar.
“He has members of his staff go out with telephoto lenses (and) lie in wait for my ministers to take pictures of them and their activities,” the premier complained in the legislature.
He compared the photograph to the recent scandal in Ottawa involving secret tape recordings of conversations between federal Health Minister Ujjal Dosanjh, Conservative MP Gurmant Grewal and Tim Murphy, Prime Minister Paul Martin’s chief of staff.
“I’d ask (Tory) as well to inform us whether or not he’s recording any conversations.”
Recipe For Disaster
So Canadian scientists have found that giving kids Viagra is an effective treatment for puliminary hypertension. But giving Viagra to teenage males? Erf. All I’m saying is, don’t be surprised when sword fights (link: NSFW) start breaking out in high school parking lots.
MICHAEL JACKSON NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS
…Suggesting (to me, at least) that it is all but impossible to convict a celebrity in a high profile case in the US.
The worst part in all of this? The accuser�s life is over. That, and we�ll be forced to listen to a bunch of preening, self-righteous defense attorneys lecture us about how justice was done here, and how the evil little cancer boy and his crazy mom who tried to use the justice system to sully the reputation of a blameless manchild (a manchild who once paid $20 million to make charges of molestation go away, mind) got exactly what they deserved — conveniently forgetting to mention that those are precisely the kinds of marks pedophiles go after when they troll for prey.
The problem, as I see it, is that jurors in these types of cases take the �beyond a reasonable doubt� mandate to ridiculous extremes when it comes to the prospect of being responsible for convicting celebrities, and high-priced defense attorneys have become quite adroit at concentrating on nothing other than raising doubts�even as they�re able to shield their clients from having to testify.
And there will always be doubt in a he said / he said molestation situation�particularly if the predator is careful about whom he chooses to prey upon.
But even so: not guilty of providing alcohol to minors? Please.
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Prominent Colorado-based defense attorney Jeralyn Merritt will have much more, I’m certain.
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update: The Western Standard’s Ezra Levant weighs in (h/t Mike P).
Cuukeeng zee heedleenes, Bourque Bourque Bourque!
(The title is a Swedish Chef joke for those who missed it.)
If you surf over to Bourque right now you’ll see that his main page is completely filled with breaking news about Jim Flaherty pushing out Stephen Harper as leader of the CPC. My only response is, “Jim who?”. I’ve never heard of the fella, and I thought I was somewhat familiar with the faces in Canadian politics.
What does everyone make of this? I’m thinking that Pierre is stirring the pot a bit to try and bring some life back into a slow news day. He probably would have been better off running old CPC press releases through The Dialectizer instead.
In which I attempt to curry favor with Canadians by carefully caressing their cultural sensibilities, 3
Stripes? I thought Candy stole every scene he was in, frankly.
Yep. Now there was a MAN, am I right?