Tag: Non-partisan blog posts

CBC Election Roundtable

Well, it is up now. I have been invited to join the CBC Election Roundtable of five bloggers from across Canada. It sits on the analysis and commentary page of Canada Votes 2006 at cbc.ca. So, yes, my words now sit in the same server farm as Le Brent.

We are to give our views on the events of the day, updating fairly regularly. Have a look and if you have any ideas or comments please feel free to post here. The roundtable is not structured as a blog so comment here freely – as if you wouldn’t…

Moment of Disclosure: real term gig with the entitlement equivalent of a 1989 student summer job. I am hoping to save up enough for a bike.

Day Sixteen: Foreign Policy

I was not going to write this every day but the gods do conspire and this is a pretty good election we have going in terms of ideas. I can’t believe I wrote that. I can’t believe I could actually write that with some basis in fact. Do you remember foreign policy? That means that your government considers what its role in the world is. All of a sudden, after almost years of some action but not much thinking about what we should be, the stumps are hearing some thoughts about what we might be to others and not just ourselves.

First, the Prime Ministers has gotten into a shouting match with the US over global warming policy. This was inevitable. Maybe the administration just realized that Rick Mercer was making fun of them on the government’s own broadcaster. Hey! There is nothing wrong with making a few pence off the CBC and having something to say as well I’ve always said. Anyway, it is a good bit of finger-pointery over issues that the Liberals do disagree with the Bush administration so why not have an argument. And I don’t mind if the US ambassador to Canada says something like this:

“It may be smart election-year politics to thump your chest and criticize your friend and your No. 1 trading partner constantly,” Wilkins said, “But it is a slippery slope, and all of us should hope that it doesn’t have a long-term impact on the relationship.”

as long as we get to say back that in under a year there is a very good chance that the relationship will be with a very lame duck president given the polls in the US.

Apart from the US relationship, the Conservative party has announced the first bit of its defence policy. The Babbling Man, Canada nicest and best informed amateur military commentator, has a good review of the four proposals all of which I agree with except for the resurrection of an airborne group. As far as I can tell, it is our superduper secret commando capacity of JFT2 that has been most effective in the war on terror. I’d say add another 650 of them rather than make a political move like paratroopers. What next? An aircraft carrier? Better also to consider simply another 3,000 to 5,000 infantry like the kind we are relying on in NATO’s work in Afganistan.

Then, the Haavaad man considers the sensible position of Michael Ignatieff, Liberal Star candidate and brain…such a brain, as to when it is right to use these sorts of troops. People thinking about foreign policy. Amazing.

North Korean Photos

A rare view of life in rural North Korea is shown at the BBC where pictures an anonymous western business person was allowed to take are posted:

I could travel more or less where I pleased for my work, and even though we always had translators and minders, I was rarely prevented from taking photographs. I am under no illusions about the nature of the state. What I saw was how North Koreans live and work.

Day Ten: Act Two

OK. It is now act two. We have passed the first act, established a whole bunch of stuff, the main players have made their best opening statements and we have a sense of where the story is going. And we know we are nowhere near act four because the stage is not yet littered with bodies.

The election has gone well for everyone ten days in and we now that because nothing much has changed. No one has made a huge gaffe and the polls have not really shifted much except to indicate that the population is conspiring to maintain a Liberal minority.

  • Jay has staked his reputation and maybe a few ales on the conservatives ending up with about 50 seats, roughly half of what they have now and thinks that he is seeing that already coming to be. Other conservatives are not so bleak but one Grit is even strong on an announcement for stronger gun laws. That is confidence.
  • Jay also has found a great site keeping track of the polls called nodice.ca. The last poll they note shows:

    Liberal – 40%
    Conservative 28%
    NDP – 17%
    Bloc – 11%
    Green – 14%

    This is Liberal majority territory. Stephen Taylor is sifting for clues. It will be interesting to see if this is a blip from the subtly different world of 36.5, 29, 12, 18 and 4.5, to see if there is a recoil back from the brink to ensure another minority.

  • No one has gotten dirtymouthed yet and I think that no one will for now. If anyone starts saying bad things about others before the holidays it will only hurt them and nothing will be gained. So the NDP does not slam private medical clinics, both Layton and Martin will not say Harper is evil and Harper is rolling out large-ish spending like on childcare, reviving the baby-bonus in a way to the interest of some, even when he is cutting 4.5 billion or more from the budget with the GST cut and now another cut for small business. I think that the comment from a Liberal “handler” that the Conservatives were announcing too much for their own good is probably the most honest assessment of where we are. A word to the wise and an admission in one. Some call it hiding but if the polls are dropping why would you rock the boat?

Act two. In some plays it is like the second period of hockey, when you go away and do something else expecting either something interesting and different or the boringly same when you come back. No one wants to be the butt of Christmas party jokes, the only thing that the not so funny guy said that is remembered by everyone.

Canadian Satellite Radio

As you all know all too well, I am a radio nerd. I was a member of the Radio Prague Listeners Club, have received reception report confirmation cards from many nations, held a trans-Atlantic reception record for a while when I heard local East German radio in my old Nova Scotian home, listen through buzzing and clicking interference on poor reception nights to catch a moment of Steve Somers of WFAN and shared with you my joy at hearing California from eastern Lake Ontario a year and a half ago.

I have radio nerd cred and, though I am not hardcore, I would think that I would be the guy that satellite radio is aimed at. But when I have a look at what Sirius Canada is offering – now that the CRTC mandated puritanical technology delay is almost ready to be lifted – I just don’t know. I have a computer at home and one at work. Both play a bazillion stations and even some amateur nutcases making really bad radio to bring down the man, being in this case the corporate structure of global media, with their iPod (charmingly unaware of the irony all others see given that iPod is todays jewel in the crown of a corporate communication empire.) And yes, I have a bitchin’ Sony 2010 which has healed itself nicely which is my real window on the world. Plus I have a car with that wonder of wonders an AM/FM radio with which I can enjoy the exciting exploration of the unknown as I travel.

So what does paying $14.95 plus tax to get a subscription to Sirius Canada get me? Is it just that it will be the same wherever you are? How dull and dulling. More stardardized delocalized Omnitopian fare. Are you planning to sign on? Is anyone?

Cricketing Powerhouse

Odd that the Pakistani bowler Shoaib Akhtar should celebrate victory over England by running through a crowd of his teammates, flinging them into the air. But it is a different game and, as the BBC reports:

Inspired by Kaneria’s exploits, Shoaib then summoned up all his energy to deliver a destructive spell of his own.

No wonder I don’t really get this sport.

Day Three: What Phoney Campaign?

You didn’t think I was going to do this every day, did you? I couldn’t imagine pretending there was something of interest in every day of the campaign. But yesterday there was.

The Conservative’s call for a public prosecutor is very interesting. It places the accountability argument into the procedural realm which ought to be a yawner but it makes the issue of scandal not about what occurred but how it was treated. Nova Scotia has had a public prosecutor since the need to keep the Progressive Conservative Buchanan government in line became so obvious after so many of them were charged for this crime or that while in office. One wonders if the Saskatchwan Tories of Grant Devine might have better kept their hands out of the cookie jar had a public prosecutor been in place.

The idea also need not be limited to alleged crimes by those in office. In Scotland an office exists called the Procurator Fiscal which I understand is independent of both the police and the prosecutors and which determines if a criminal charge is warranted or not. They also handle complaints against the police. Similarly in the US there are grand juries, consisting of members of the public, who have to be told by the prosecutors of the charges and convinced that a proceeding should go on.

So Harper’s idea of an intermediary between the police investigation and a bringing of an accused to trial is both useful, tried and true and essentially neutral. Politically it is inordinately astute. How can you argue against it?