Open to uncertainty

We're still not sure whether or not most of Bushco will take "I don't know" for an answer. (For that matter, anything other than "Thank you sir, may I have another?" seems to be problematic.) But American intelligence services are being instructed to say just that when appropriate:

John D. Negroponte, the new director of national intelligence, has imposed strict safeguards intended to ensure that the government's National Intelligence Estimates are based on credible information instead of the kinds of unsubstantiated claims that were the basis for prewar intelligence on Iraq, his top deputy said Thursday...

General Hayden acknowledged Thursday that the new precautions were likely to result in estimates that proved much less definitive than in the past. But he said he and Mr. Negroponte would embrace "a higher tolerance for ambiguity" than had been accepted and would encourage analysts to be forthright about what they did not know...

Other government officials said the standard had already been applied, to a recent highly classified intelligence report on Iran, producing findings that the officials described as infused with considerable uncertainty about the status of Iran's nuclear weapons program.

It's especially interesting to hear this applied to Iran specifically; the explicit doubt (make a note of it for later) should make it much tougher for Bushco to try to force a war there later on.

There's no word yet on whether Bush already regrets appointing Negroponte. But if this order is actually going to be acted upon (and some skepticism is called for at this point), then reality may play a significantly larger role in Bush's lame-duck years than it's played so far in the administration.

From the Department of the Blindingly Obvious

According to the Washington Post:

Efforts to rebuild water, electricity and health networks in Iraq are being shortchanged by higher-than-expected costs to provide security and by generous financial awards to contractors, according to a series of reports by government investigators released yesterday.

(I)n March, the U.S. Agency for International Development canceled two electric power generation programs in order to provide $15 million in additional security elsewhere. On another project to rehabilitate electric substations, the Army Corps of Engineers decided that securing 14 of the 23 facilities would be too expensive and limited the entire project to nine stations. And in February, USAID added $33 million to cover higher security costs on one project, which left it short of money to pay for construction oversight, quality assurance and administrative costs...

Despite $5.7 billion committed to restoring electricity service in Iraq, power generation was still at lower levels as of May than it had been before the U.S. invasion in 2003. In one case, the GAO reported, the United States led an overhaul of an Iraqi power plant but then did not adequately train the Iraqis how to operate it. A widespread power outage resulted.

Crude oil production has also dropped in the past two years, even with more than $5 billion in U.S. and Iraqi funds available for rebuilding. Oil export revenues are needed to fund more than 90 percent of the nascent Iraqi government's 2005 budget, the State Department has said.

None of this should be particularly new. But the excessive amount of money being put into contractors' pockets (whether security or otherwise), combined with resources being cut from the actual programs which could help Iraqi citizens, is only cementing negative perceptions of the occupation. This may not be a problem for an administration which so easily ignores its detractors, but it'll only make life worse for whoever gets to clean up the mess.

Don't write this one off

Scott Piatkowski has some good advice for anybody applying to become Paul Martin's new speechwriter:

Hyperbole is a good substitute for action. For example, the more that the Prime Minister seems paralyzed by the thought of actually making a decision, the more important it is that his speeches trumpet phrases such as “transformative change.” Achieving actual transformative change is not your department...

Recycling can save time. Martin made some great promises on housing in 1990. He made some great promises on combatting global warming in 1993. He spoke bravely about fighting two-tier health care in 2003 and 2004. Since these and other promises have not been honoured, it's completely permissible to dust them off and make them again.

All too true. Give it a read.

Elections and legitimacy

Unlike in one conspicuous neighbouring country, any known problems with elections in Canada have fallen short of completely altering the end result. But that doesn't mean there isn't a need to make sure the process is handled carefully, if B.C.'s recent provincial election is any indication:

Mayencourt’s 11 vote victory, Stevenson argued, was the result of a screw-up by elections officials that had left 71 absentee ballots improperly certified and thus uncounted. On June 20 Stevenson asked the BC Supreme Court to throw out the election and call a new one...

Eleven of the uncounted ballots were from incomplete certification envelopes. According to Porayko the envelopes had names, addresses and everything else, but hadn’t been signed. Whether that’s because the voters forgot to sign, or were never told to, we’ll never know.

The other 60, however, were never put in envelopes in the first place. On May 17, 60 misplaced voters turned up at St John’s United Church on Comox and Broughton, in the heart of the West End. Rather than have them fill out certification envelopes, an official working at the station stuck their ballots in with the rest from St John’s. When the District Electoral Officer found out, he immediately had the ballots taken out and set aside.

Because the mystery 60 had never filled out certification envelopes, there was no way to verify that they are who they claim, that they live in the riding and that they hadn’t already voted. On this point, the Elections Act is clear, a non-certified ballot cannot be counted, Porayko said. “As administrators we didn’t write the Act but we have to follow it,” she said. And following the act meant not counting the 60 ballots.

Stevenson has dropped his challenge in order to run again for City Council. And the Liberals won by enough of a margin that it wasn't a life-or-death struggle for the parties involved.

But imagine if the same scenario were to come up in an election with a configuration similar to the last federal one (or for that matter the last Saskatchewan one). While it's always tough to see the need for action when nobody's contesting the last results, it's imperative that election workers are impeccably trained to avoid errors like the one in Vancouver-Burrard - because eventually, it will make all the difference.

Complicity through silence

From the Halifax Herald, a startling discovery:

Craig Botterill, the Crown attorney who handles such prosecutions for the province, said banks report only a fraction of debit and credit card crimes.

They are reluctant to jeopardize the hefty profits they earn from diverting business to electronic services from tellers, the prosecutor said.

"They're quite content to cover the losses in-house and not report most thefts..."

Canadian banks claim debit card scams cost them about $60 million last year, and credit card scams $163 million. But Mr. Botterill suspects the actual figures are much higher. He has heard of banks trying to keep quiet about single scams amounting to as much as $80,000.

The long-term effect of the failure to report these incidents is of course harmful for both the banks and the customers. Offenders are less likely to be caught by the bank investigation alone, and won't face criminal sanctions even if caught. Hence there's less cost to engaging in this type of fraud, and less deterrence against it. And in addition to the harm to additional victims in the future, there's also less than full recompense to the individual victim, who is effectively told that the breach of privacy is irrelevant.

If this story breaks strongly enough, then banks won't have much to gain by failing to report incidents. The public will be on notice as to the scope of the crimes, and any suspicions as to the scope of undisclosed crime will make for a strong incentive to show that all losses are being reported. Concerns over public fear would then turn in favour of reporting rather than against it.

So, pass the story along...and be all the more careful with your own information, because for now, your bank may not see its theft as worth reporting.

NHL attention down south

The good news: prominent Americans are publicly paying close attention to hockey.

The bad news: those prominent Americans are congressmen determined to impose a draconian and ineffective drug-testing regime in the NHL along with other leagues.

A bill introduced in May by Davis, Waxman and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain would suspend offending players for two years for a first offence and ban them for life if they fail a second drug test...

While Davis and Waxman also criticised the NHL's drug program because it doesn't consider "designer" steroids — created in a lab specifically to evade detection — it's unfair to suggest that the league could create a program free of loopholes, Collins said.

"Human-growth hormone has been a popular performance enhancer for two decades but a reliable test to detect its presence in urine remains elusive," he said.

The fact all too often left out of articles on steroid testing is that the tests themselves are based on ratios of naturally-occurring substances within the body, meaning that some players with a naturally-high testosterone level (or who have merely trained particularly well) will test positive despite having not taken a performance-enhancing substance. And thanks to the NFLPA, the required level for a "positive" finding is dropping - making the punishment of innocent players all the more certain.

Combined with government-mandated suspensions of the proposed length, the end result of a stricter testing regime in any sport is to bar players for life who have done nothing but train to the best of their ability. If avoiding that situation is reason for criticism, then good on the NHL for being criticized.

Wilful blindness

Not surprisingly, the EPA tried to avoid releasing a study on the fact that fuel efficiency has actually dropped since the 1980s. The surprise here isn't the effort to suppress the truth, but the fact that the truth made it into the open:

With Congress poised for a final vote on the energy bill, the Environmental Protection Agency made an 11th-hour decision Tuesday to delay the planned release of an annual report on fuel economy...

The contents of the report show that loopholes in American fuel economy regulations have allowed automakers to produce cars and trucks that are significantly less fuel-efficient, on average, than they were in the late 1980's.

One more glaring example of how miserably voluntary-compliance models are bound to fail. But fortunately, in this case the public (and the decision-makers) are able to see the facts before the final call is made - not that it'll likely make too much difference to the Congressional negotiators who make a career out of ignoring inconvenient facts.

The same Times front web page also highlights a less-than-surprising story where just the opposite was true:

Senior military lawyers lodged vigorous and detailed dissents in early 2003 as an administration legal task force concluded that President Bush had authority as commander in chief to order harsh interrogations of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, newly disclosed documents show...

The confidential government deliberations over permissible interrogation techniques that ranged from August 2002 to April 2003 were prompted by a request from officers at Guantánamo. They said traditional practices were proving ineffective against one detainee, Mohamed al-Kahtani, believed to have been the planned 20th hijacker on Sept. 11, 2001. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved a series of techniques in December 2002, only to rescind them temporarily after military lawyers complained...

Mr. Rumsfeld subsequently learned of the military lawyers' objections and that became a factor in his decision on April 16, 2003, to limit the permitted interrogation techniques.

The lesson here is that even as thorough a Bush lackey as Rumsfeld can occasionally be driven to make more reasonable decisions when presented with a better set of principles and options. Too bad that happens so rarely.

Making use of information

With terrorism back on the front pages this month, here's a little reminder that the Bush administration's focus on Iraq is diverting attention from real intelligence issues:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation's backlog of untranslated terrorism intelligence doubled last year, and the time it takes the bureau to hire translators has grown longer...

(T)he F.B.I. "has no assurance" that some 8,300 hours of untranslated material does not include information that could be critical to terrorism investigations.

In addition, the bureau told the committee that its long-delayed effort to overhaul its computer system and allow agents to search terrorism files more easily would not be completed until 2009 at the earliest...

The F.B.I. met its hiring targets in fewer than half of 52 languages examined, and the average time it takes to hire a linguist grew from 13 months to at least 14 months, according to the bureau's data. The inspector general's office said its assessment showed that the average time was 16 months, with much of the delay blamed on applicants "waiting in queue" because of bureaucratic slowdowns.

Almost makes you wonder whether the FBI could have made any use of people fired because of prejudice. Or whether $200 billion could have been used to reduce the hiring backlog.

Freer information

Saskatchewan's information commissioner proposed in a ruling today that information requests should be free where made for a "compelling public interest", a standard currently present in most provinces.

I'd agree with that step, but the progress shouldn't stop there. Ultimately, information should generally be available for free unless there's particular expense or difficulty involved in putting it together.

Effectively, the "compelling public interest" should be presumed: a province or country is best off where its citizens look carefully at the government's activities, and there shouldn't be a financial penalty for reasonable efforts to do so.

The ongoing inquiry

The Arar inquiry is back, and it's getting interesting again:

The assistant commissioner of the RCMP instructed staff to withhold key information from Canada's foreign minister about their investigation into a Canadian citizen allegedly tortured in a Syrian jail...

Former foreign affairs minister Bill Graham asked for a thorough briefing by RCMP after then-U.S. ambassador Paul Cellucci suggested Maher Arar's deportation by U.S. authorities to Syria was based on Canadian intelligence.

But in an Oct. 18, 2002 memo that was read at the Arar inquiry, Richard Proulx informed the RCMP commissioner "there will be no information of an operational-tactical nature released to (Foreign Affairs)."...

The RCMP's deputy commissioner for operations, Garry Loeppky, defended the decision, saying day-to-day operational decisions, tactics employed and evidence are of no concern to Foreign Affairs.

Now, it may have helped to actually listen to Foreign Affairs in making that decision. In Graham's earlier testimony, he said that he believed the RCMP and CSIS when they each denied any involvement in Arar's rendition, but that he was frustrated in trying to get information.

The released memo makes it clear that this was the result of deliberate policy rather than a mere oversight. Heads should be rolling over that call; we'll see how long it takes for that to happen.

Nutrition and the environment

The Tyee points out one of the less-recognized effects of global warming, as our food now may be less nutritious as a result of the air around it:

A small but growing body of research is finding that elevated levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, while increasing crop yield, decrease the nutritional value of plants. More than a hundred studies, for example, have found that when CO2 from fossil-fuel burning builds up in plant tissues, nitrogen (essential for making protein) declines. A smaller number of studies hint at another troubling impact: As atmospheric CO2 levels go up, trace elements in plants (such as zinc and iron, which are vital to animal and human life) go down, potentially malnourishing all those that subsist on the plants...

The less-nutritious plants of a CO2-enriched world will likely not be a problem for rich nations, where "super-sized" meals and vitamin supplements are a dietary mainstay. But things could be very different in the developing world, where millions already live on the edge of starvation, and where the micronutrient deficit, known as "hidden hunger," is already considered one of the world's leading health problems by the United Nations.

Food for thought. This is one more way in which the environment is fundamentally a health issue - and one more way in which that link has been sorely neglected.

And it begins...maybe

Just last month, Bush and Jaafari decried the possibility of a quick U.S. pullout.

Now, with Rumsfeld at his side, Jaafari is planning for just that:

Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said at a joint news conference with U.S. Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld that the time has arrived to plan a co-ordinated transition from American to Iraqi military control throughout the country.

Asked how soon a U.S. withdrawal should happen, he said no exact timetable had been set. “But we confirm and we desire speed in that regard..."

Meanwhile, the U.S. is setting one problematic condition on withdrawal:

General George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, said he believed a U.S. troop withdrawal could begin by spring 2006 if progress continues on the political front and if the insurgency does not expand.

If the apparent size of the insurgency will be the determining factor as to whether the U.S. stays, there are two possible results, neither of them a positive. Either insurgents could pick up the pace of attacks now to try to ensure that their best basis for recruitment remains in the country, or they could call off activity for now (perhaps infiltrating the Iraqi police forces even further) and be able to cause all the more mayhem once the U.S. pulls out.

Essentially, the U.S. has said that it'll allow the insurgents to set the timing of a pullout. Needless to say, that's a power that won't be used for good.

Rule of lawlessness

Maybe blind support for U.S. troops isn't deserved after all:

A company of the California Army National Guard has been put on restricted duty and its battalion plunged into disarray amid allegations that soldiers engaged in misconduct in Iraq, including mistreatment of detainees and extortion from shopkeepers, according to military officials and members of the battalion...

Among the allegations now under investigation is that at least six soldiers from the battalion took part in a scheme to extort money from Iraqi shopkeepers, apparently in exchange for protection from insurgents.

The payments allegedly exceeded $30,000, two sources said, and were made in U.S. currency, according to one member of the battalion who has been briefed on the investigation. Another soldier said the scheme allegedly was carried out during night patrols in the Baghdad area.

I suppose it's ultimately the result of the U.S. exporting its governance systems. But this can't be doing any good for Iraqis' collective view of the occupiers, or for their motivation to try to build a corruption-free society in the long term.

Public-Private Parity

Whenever there's a privatization movement afoot, much of the claim in favour focuses on how it's supposed to involve less expense - particularly when public-sector workers are replaced by private-sector ones with less effective unions. That has its downside too, when the less desirable job conditions lead to concurrently weaker workers.

The OPSEU is managing to avoid the expected results:

Correctional officers employed at Canada's only private adult jail have rejected the employer's final offer for a new collective agreement. Members of the Ontario Public Service employees Union Local 369 voted 95 per cent to reject the offer. Over 88 per cent of the employees turned out for the vote, held July 21...

Currently, workers at the facility run by Utah-based Management and Training Corporation earn two per cent less per hour than their public sector counterparts and receive fewer benefits and less time off. Sean Wilson, chair of the union bargaining team, says his members are united in this fight.

"The status quo is unacceptable," Wilson said. "We want the same as public sector correctional officers - period."

An excellent move by the union members to avoid a race-to-the-bottom situation - the province will surely make the same demand in the opposite direction (under penalty of further privatization) if the workers accept less now. And it's impressive to see such high numbers of members involved given the supposed malaise surrounding the union movement.

The ball is back in Superjail's court now. Stay tuned...

Resource discovery

Great news from northern Saskatchewan:

Northern Saskatchewan could soon be home to one of the first "rare earth" mineral mines in North America.

The 15 minerals considered "rare earth" are used in numerous products in the electronics industry, including MRIs, TV screens, rechargeable batteries and hydrogen-powered cars...

Industry analysts say this could be the beginning of a growing industry for Saskatchewan.

What has them excited is that all 15 minerals have been found together in abundance at a site just north of Uranium City.

The article notes that 80% of the world's current production of these minerals comes from China. A Saskatchewan deposit would be more convenient to the North American and European markets, making it a potential boon both for Saskatchewan itself, and for Canadian, American and European industries needing the supplies.

This is early going - but it's a very promising start.

Vote Canada: Now More Than Ever

Canada puts forward an interesting idea on Security Council reform:

Canada tabled a proposal Tuesday to create 20 temporary spots for elected members, in addition to the five permanent ones established after the Second World War. Holding elections would make the world organization more accountable and democratic, Canada's UN ambassador argued.

Rock said "permanence is the polar opposite of accountability." Instead, he proposed creating 20 regionally based memberships and allowing countries in each region - Africa, for instance - to regularly elect their representatives.

I doubt this proposal will get very far; the emerging powers won't want to lose the possibility of a permanent seat, the current SC members won't want to risk an organized and hostile majority on the Council, and smaller countries probably won't see it as the most desirable possible reform based on the obvious risk that their anticipated voting bloc wouldn't win out.

But I'd be very curious to see how such a system would work if implemented. Presumably one of two things would happen: either the current regional powers (India, Germany, Japan, Brazil, Nigeria, etc.) would strong-arm their way to effectively permanent seats; or, the regional powers would consider that to be less than the best possible use of their international capital, leaving softer powers (likely including Canada) to fill the spots.

Either way, this would be the most interesting election process on the face of the planet. For that reason alone, the proposal is worth a look.

Learning lessons

It wasn't part of U.S. policy when it came to Iraq, but where North Korea is concerned sovereignty is assumed:

Six-party nuclear disarmament talks opened Tuesday after a 13-month boycott by North Korea, and the communist nation's envoy said his country was ready to work on eliminating atomic weapons from the Korean Peninsula....

North Korea agreed to return to the talks following a meeting earlier this month between Kim and the main U.S. envoy, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Hill, who assured the North that Washington recognized its sovereignty.

On Tuesday, Hill repeated those pledges.

"We view (North Korea's) sovereignty as a matter of fact. The United States has absolutely no intention to invade or attack" North Korea, Hill said in his opening remarks.

It's great to see some progress being made. Funny how it's easier to make gains through diplomacy when there's actual conversation rather than a series of demands and threats.

On encouraging progress

This is precisely the type of new idea that governments should be encouraging on the road to sustainable development:

All Marcelo da Luz wants is to drive his solar car across the country.

His dream car, designed and built with the help of a few professionals over the last six years. The one he mortgaged his house for and spent $200,000 on; the one that proves -- to himself anyway -- that any goal is attainable...

Mr. da Luz...has taken the last two years off work to complete the "Power of One'' solar car, a low-riding, flying-saucer-like vehicle powered by the 893 solar cells that cover most of its surface. It's five metres long by 1.8 metres wide and 90 centimetres deep. It can reach speeds of up to 120 kilometres an hour on the same amount of energy that powers a toaster.

The problem is that Ontario refuses to license the car, and other jurisdictions (with the exceptions of Saskatchewan and the Yukon, both of whom have granted permits) are following its lead.

The explanation is that a student was killed in a traffic accident as part of a solar car tour. The article doesn't mention whether there were differences in engineering between the different types of solar cars, and there's no indication at all that Ontario has made an effort to determine what could make da Luz' car fit to be licensed. Instead the (already stringent) conditions previously set on solar vehicles are under review.

For now, a great idea sits idle simply because it isn't the norm. With any luck, the public attention will force Ontario to look at how to let da Luz go forward; if not, then we'll have been told all definitively that Ontario isn't willing to do its part to help its citizens innovate.

Did someone feel a chill?

From the Boston Globe:

The U.S. Democrats show an unusual amount of backbone...

Democrats, who have urged Bush to fire Rove or revoke his classified clearance, stepped up political pressure on Republicans on Monday by calling for a formal congressional investigation of the Plame leak.

"The United States Congress has a constitutional responsibility to provide oversight of the executive branch, whether a law has been broken or not," the 26 senators said in a letter.

...and are rewarded with self-serving Republican politicking sinking to remarkable depths:

(Pat Roberts spokeswoman Sarah) Little said the Senate committee would also review the probe of special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who has been investigating the Plame case for nearly two years.

While the committee will ostensibly be investigating the behaviour of the White House as the primary goal, it isn't hard to see where this is going.

Will Republicans Fitzgerald and Larry Johnson be slammed for partisanship against Bushco? Will the "national security" angle be used to tighten up legitimate flows of information rather than to demand accountability from political leakers?

And are the answers so obvious that it's not even worth asking the questions?

(Via Daily Kos.)

Edit: The Suburban Guerrilla points out a comment on Kos suggesting that the Republicans will grant full immunity to the White House staff under investigation. Rove may well have some tricks up his sleeve yet.

New poll results

Harper's summer swing doesn't appear to be doing much for the Conservatives. From Decima Research:

Nationally, the poll placed the Liberals at 39 per cent of decided voters, compared with 24 per cent for the Conservatives and 19 per cent for the NDP.

The national numbers are based on Decima's weekly national poll of 1,000 Canadians conducted July 14-17.

While the Star focuses on the Quebec results (which show the Liberals making up some ground against the Bloc with both the NDP and the Cons in single digits), the national numbers are the more interesting ones from my standpoint.

There's little doubt that the Liberals have a solid lead on all comers at this point; however, this is one more poll to add to the pile where the NDP is within striking distance of the Cons. Of course there are others which have included double-digit gaps.

But at this point, a fluid electorate is probably the best situation for the NDP, particularly if it's based on dissatisfaction with Harper and company. Based on the new numbers, the electorate is both fluid, and flowing (slightly) in the right direction.

A strong opinion

The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has issued its opinion on the cattle injunction - and it doesn't leave much room for discussion:

The high court said Cebull should have respected the judgment and expertise of the agriculture department about safety risks instead of blithely accepting the word of R-CALF.

R-CALF, said the three judges, didn't show a likelihood of success on the merits of its case, which centred on arguments that Canadian cattle pose extensive risks to U.S. herds and human health, as well as "irreparable economic harm."

"The record does not support the district court's alarmist findings (of harm) from the stigma of Canadian beef will actually befall the American beef industry," said the Court of Appeals...

"Instead of evaluating the (mad cow) safeguards as part of a larger system, the district court parsed the regulations and faulted USDA for any risk that a given step failed to remove," said the opinion.

R-CALF doesn't want to give up, but it's tough to see how there could be any merit to a hearing on a permanent injunction at this point.

(I'll keep an eye out for an HTML copy of the opinion for further commentary - drop a comment if you spot one.)

Corporate censorship

Via The Coast of Bohemia, Boing Boing points out an appalling move by Telus:

The Telecommunications Workers' Union of Canada has been locked out by Telus, a large phone company and ISP. Two of TWU's sites (including Voices for Change, a message board where union members can discuss issues such as being without a contract for 1666 days and last having received a general wage increase 2031 days ago).

Telus is playing very dirty -- they're blocking access to the union's website so that their workers and the general public are cut off from legitimate debate about this action. This is inexcusable: imagine if this phone company chose to block all calls into union headquarters.

Indeed. The Coast of Bohemia offers links to the CRTC and Telus' complaints page - stop by and make it clear that the censorship won't be ignored.

Taking control

There's ample coverage of the dispute between Canada and Denmark over Hans Island. But before asking whether Canada should be making claims to new territory, let's ask whether Canada has done all that well handling another relatively recent addition. A new film suggests otherwise:

In 1944, Iceland, a desperately poor place, became independent from Denmark. Five years later, Newfoundlanders went in the opposite direction and voted to join Canada...

Debate ensues on the issue of provincial autonomy and how natural resources such as fish, oil and nickel have been exported to other places for processing and refining. Manufacturing of finished goods, consequently, also takes place elsewhere.

Iceland, with its similar terrain, is shown as having a lifestyle quite to the contrary. Small shops owned by Icelanders are shown vs. the big box stores of Canada. No mansions or great displays of wealth are seen. Three hundred thousand tourists visit each year. With a population of 280,000 people, Iceland publishes 1,000 books per year.

Of course, Newfoundland chose its course, and hopefully it will take some steps economically thanks to the Atlantic accord. But there should be no doubt that Canada's parental attitude has had a negative effect - and that we're still a good ways away from doing the most possible for the territory we already have.

Non-thinking caps

A new movement is afoot in the U.S. to try to tie the hands of governments - even though the one current example has been a miserable failure:

A spending restraint initiative is also expected to appear on the November ballot in Ohio, where a signature gathering effort is wrapping up. By 2006, Maine and Oregon residents probably will vote on similar proposals.

Meanwhile, in Georgia, Missouri, Tennessee and Wisconsin, spending cap bills are picking up significant support in legislatures. And as lawmakers elsewhere continue to balk at such proposals — they have come up in 23 state legislatures this year but have not passed in any of them — activists are planning to go directly to the ballot in many of those places...

Colorado is bucking the trend. There, a decade-old cap threatens to squeeze state spending so much that Republican Gov. Bill Owens and leaders of the state's business community are imploring voters to pass an initiative on the fall ballot that would lift the cap for five years.

The evidence from Colorado supports what seem to be obvious intuitive problems with measures like these. Rather than paying the slightest bit of attention to the needs within a state, the caps set out an arbitrary top level, leaving all interests within the state to fight against each other for funding. It doesn't matter if a one-year investment at the right time can lead to a better long-term fiscal situation (say, a large infrastructure expense in support of expected development) - the government simply doesn't have the choice.

Never mind running government like a business; instead the government runs like a business which knows that it's prevented from expanding or investing. Which is another phrase for a business that's in trouble.

The cap movement is led by groups which effectively assume that any government spending is too much; this is never a safe assumption. But even where excessive government spending exists, the proper means of dealing with it is through a better government making better decisions with an eye to the long term, not through artificial caps which necessitate governance based on surviving the short term. Colorado has learned the hard way, and it may not be long before more states do the same.

As for Canada, we lack much of the basis for such restrictions in any event: most Canadian budgets are already under much better control than those to the south, and there's more political will for careful budgets thanks to the parliamentary system. But we should learn from the U.S.' mistakes, and make sure not to let any efforts for similar measures get near the Canadian political scene.

Boilerplate

Let it never be said that the Iraq war hasn't led to some progress. For example, the U.S. military's PR department is getting much more efficient:

Following a car bombing in Baghdad on Sunday, the U.S. military issued a statement with a quotation attributed to an unidentified Iraqi that was virtually identical to a quote reacting to an attack on July 13...

Sunday's news release said: "'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the ISF and all of Iraq. They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified."

The July 13 news release said: "'The terrorists are attacking the infrastructure, the children and all of Iraq,' said one Iraqi man who preferred not to be identified. 'They are enemies of humanity without religion or any sort of ethics. They have attacked my community today and I will now take the fight to the terrorists.'"

In fairness, we shouldn't rush to conclusions. Sure, it looks like the military is inventing quotes, or at least reusing them. But there's at least some chance that both quotations are from Chalabi associates who merely remembered their lines a little too well.

It doesn't take a rocket scientist

NASA's new line: the same unexplained problem that put off the last planned Discovery launch now isn't worth worrying about.

At an evening news conference, Hale and other NASA officials found themselves defending the decision to launch with a fuel gauge failure. They stressed that they will proceed with a liftoff only if the problem is well understood and involves the gauges in question - anything else will result in a postponement...

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin said he supports the decision and even hopes the problem recurs to further pinpoint the source of the trouble. He acknowledged that the public might perceive that the space agency is rushing to launch, but insisted it was the right technical judgment.

If NASA wants the problem to recur so as to be able to better figure out its nature, wouldn't that suggest that it's something less than well understood?

At the moment, the administrators are trying to justify going ahead against public pressure to the contrary. But how much stronger will that public pressure be if Discovery meets the same fate as Columbia? This may well be the end of the line for the current shuttle program - and with that at stake NASA seems willing to launch on hope rather than anything approaching knowledge.

Humanitarian program at work

Tales from the UK's Home Office:

Asylum seekers were being rejected if they had not sought medical treatment after alleged brutalities, even if they lived in war zones where it was impossible to get medical help, she said.

One applicant was told that an attack they had suffered, in which others had died, was so bad that 'it is not believed that you would have been able to survive'. Others were turned down on the basis of assumptions of what officers thought they might do themselves in the circumstances...

'The examples cited in the report of refusals made by Home Office caseworkers are jaw-dropping, but what is truly shocking is that the report contains so many of them,' said a spokeswoman. 'The report paints a picture of a system dominated by a "culture of disbelief", in which refusals are the norm and stories of persecution are only ever accepted grudgingly.'...

For some nationalities, such as Somalians and Eritreans, more than a third of those rejected have the decision overturned on appeal. The Refugee Council spokeswoman said that unless decisions were made clearly and fairly in the first place, the government would struggle to reduce delays in the system and speed up removals.

The article notes that the public debate over immigration has helped to poison the immigration process. It's easy to point out an individual refugee who wound up harming a society - it's much more difficult to point out the potential contributions of would-be refugees who were turned away, or the suffering of somebody who ends up being persecuted after being sent back to a repressive state. But the latter two factors far outweigh the former, and it looks like the UK has been turning away deserving arrivals due to a lack of understanding of that point.

Let them eat cake

Conservative MP Helena Guergis demands that Canada stop giving aid to China, based primarily on the fact that China itself has enough wealth to build up a large army and a space program.

There's an obvious counterbalance to those considerations:

(T)he Canadian International Development Agency says aid to China is necessary because, despite its progress, it still contains 20 per cent of the world's poor and "some of the earth's most severe environmental problems."

Inequality between rural and urban areas, particularly in western China where women and ethnic minorities are "disproportionately affected," means "targeted measures are needed to address these imbalances."

While China probably does have enough resources to take care of its own if it so chose, it should be plainly obvious that the priorities of the Chinese regime lie elsewhere. Canada's choice is thus between either neglecting the Chinese poor entirely, or offering enough aid to allow them to at least survive, and potentially to have a role in reshaping the state in the longer term.

One would think that if reform is our goal, then our policy should ensure that potential reformers have the means and opportunity to be heard. One would then be thinking a lot more clearly than Helena Guergis.

Shocking

It's official. Tehran is now home to more accountability than Washington:

In an unprecedented report, Iran's hard-line judiciary Sunday acknowledged widespread human rights violations in prisons, including use of torture and solitary confinement, state-run media reported Sunday.

The report, which was broadcast by state-run radio Sunday, said prison guards and officials in detention centers have ignored a legal order banning torture. It also said police have made several arrests without sufficient evidence and held suspects in undeclared detention centers.

The report also made the front covers of both state-run and privately-run newspapers. It's pleasantly surprising to see what seems to be a fairly spontaneous move toward letting the truth out.

Of course, the "not following orders" defence is suspicious, but at least it's not accompanied by the "only enemies want to expose our crimes" view of the Bush administration.

On recognizing the problem

Gerard Latortue may extend Haiti's voter registration deadline due to low turnout. But he figures the problem is late registration, rather than the obvious explanation:

Latortue said he was optimistic at least one million people would register by the end of July, adding his goal is to see at least 2.5 million registered.

"My experience in Haiti is that people always wait until the last moment to register," he said...

Aristide supporters have also suggested many citizens are not interested in voting because his Lavalas Family party has so far not agreed to participate, an argument the interim government has dismissed.

The reality is that the last man repeatedly elected by the Haitian populace is now in exile, and his party successor is now in jail based on demonstrations by his opponents rather than on anything resembling evidence:

Rev. Gerard Jean-Juste, who has emerged as a possible Lavalas presidential contender, was sent to prison and told he could be charged in connection with the slaying of a prominent Haitian journalist...

Authorities said they detained Jean-Juste for questioning because of a "public clamour" for his arrest by angry demonstrators at the journalist's funeral Thursday.

To Latortue's credit, he hasn't acted on the insane suggestion that Lavalas be formally banned. But it should be obvious that whatever comes out of the next Haitian poll, it won't in any meaningful way resemble "fair and representative elections". By Latortue's own standards, failure is inevitable - and extending the deadline won't change that.

Deconstruction

Here's how well Iraq's constitutional process is working at the moment:

The now 14-person Sunni delegation suspended its participation in the constitution draft process after a 15th committee member, Mijbil Ali Hussein al-Sheikh Issa, was shot and killed in Baghdad earlier this week. Two other people, including a consultant to the committee, were also killed.

The delegation wants better security and an international probe into the deaths, said the Western official, who told reporters the Sunnis have expressed doubts about the credibility of an Interior Ministry probe.

Does anybody seriously think that genuine agreement on a constitution is close to happening when the entire Sunni delegation doubts the credibility of the current regime which is happily getting into bed with Iran? There may well be an "agreed" constitution by the deadline, but it's obvious that there's no real trust between even the major factions, and that's with both former Baathists and religious extremists mostly left out of the process. The mess keeps getting worse, and will keep doing so no matter how long the U.S. chooses to stick around.

Fair and balanced

Not that there's any surprise, but CanWest goes off the rails again. The National Post concludes that what Canada needs is a love letter to conservatism in general, framed around questions about Stephen Harper's leadership.

While a good chunk of the article is spent fawning over Harper or giving him tons of unopposed quote space, the more remarkable angle is that the article manages to include multiple dissenting voices against Harper without giving a word's worth of mention to non-Conservatives. Critical quotes come from Harper's recent biographer, a Conservative member saying that Harper hasn't mentioned policy enough, and another party member who notes that Harper managed to drive his wife and daughter out of the party. The undercurrent is that Harper's views are to be taken as correct; the only question posed is whether Harper can successfully impose those views on Canada.

But nowhere is there the slightest hint that there could be another alternative to the Liberals...nor even that the Liberals themselves are anything more than a placeholder waiting to be removed as soon as the chosen Con leads his party to victory.

Of course, if there's any party trying to fight against "stubborn polling numbers", it's the party which hasn't risen much in the polls despite having the country's most credible leader and a track record of accomplishing its goals in Parliament, not the one which has dropped in the polls because it's been embroiled in scandal while accomplishing nothing. Somehow I doubt the NDP will get the chance to make its case through the NP's featured story.

Foreign policy contradictions

Via Rabble, This Magazine has a rundown of Canada's allegedly two-faced foreign policy:

Situation: Vietnam War
What we said: Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson publicly called for a pause in bombing and a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam War.
What we did: The Canadian military participated in the conflict and also profited by supplying US forces with a range of lethal and non-lethal supplies, from boots and bombs to berets and Agent Orange.

The analysis is simplistic (as would tend to be the case given a ratio of two sentences per foreign policy issue), but the concept is one worth considering in more detail.

The most significant problem with the article is that it makes no distinction between government policy and private actors. In some cases such as Vietnam and Iraq, the hypocrisy was genuinely within the government itself; the same is probably true for South Africa where the calls for a boycott weren't backed by policy.

That said, there's no inherent contradiction in seeking to change a state's human rights record while at the same time allowing (or even encouraging) trade - particularly where the effect of that trade is to open up the society to at least some degree, which is a possibility in at least some circumstances.

Of course we shouldn't be looking to boost trade where the effect will be to prop up apartheid-type regimes or to fuel a civil war - and the article is able to mention a few such cases. But we should be aware of the potential for freer trade to bring with it a freer flow of ideas, and seek out opportunities to encourage both, through both our government and our private sector.

Points for brazenness

Now Bushco isn't even pretending to be the least bit accountable for anything:

The White House on Thursday threatened to veto a massive Senate bill for $442 billion in next year's defense programs if it moves to regulate the Pentagon's treatment of detainees or sets up a commission to investigate operations at Guantanamo Bay prison and elsewhere.

The Bush administration, under fire for the indefinite detention of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and questions over whether its policies led to horrendous abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, put lawmakers on notice it did not want them legislating on the matter.

The Bush strategy is now clear: hire Halliburton to provide the world's largest rug on a no-bid, cost-plus basis, and start sweeping as frantically as humanly possible.

But with prominent Republicans refusing to play along (and neither McCain nor Graham was buying the White House line), this isn't going to work. As well it shouldn't.

(Via Kos and Digby.)

Flying under the radar

For those wondering whether coordination with the U.S.' no-fly list would be that big a deal from an information standpoint: yes, it would be:

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration violated privacy laws by secretly collecting personal information on at least 250,000 people, congressional investigators said Friday.

The Government Accountability Office sent a letter to Congress saying the collection violated the Privacy Act, which prohibits the government from compiling information on people without their knowledge...

The GAO letter noted the TSA also said originally it wouldn't use and store commercial data about airline passengers. It not only did that, it collected and stored information about the people with similar names.

The information-gathering might well have been reasonable if disclosed in advance, though the "similar names" part of the project seems like a ready recipe for a lot more Brandon Mayfields based on even less evidence.

More importantly, though, do we really need more examples of how much contempt the current U.S. administration has for both individual privacy and proper process in general?

Transit use

This press release doesn't give details of the nationwide increase, but this deserves some attention:

BC Transit's Municipal Systems Program carried a total of 18.6 million passengers in 2004/05, an increase of 841,000 (5%)over the previous year. This is more than double the 2.4% increase in ridership posted by transit systems across Canada. The program includes 69 transit systems across British Columbia outside Greater Vancouver and Victoria.

I'd be interested to see the source of the nationwide numbers, and of course a breakdown of where the increases were the greatest. In any event, it's great news that (even before the added money for transit this year) people are making better use of an environmentally-friendly option.

Just wondering...

Billmon slams the new and all-the-more-depraved Patriot Act. A good read.

In light of Harper's endorsement of every other current U.S. initiative, has anybody asked him whether he thinks Canada should follow this one?

About time

Ontario announces funding to allow for $4 billion in school repairs:

Under the "good places to learn" program, the province will provide $280 million over three years for school boards. That money will allow them to obtain $4 billion in loans to repair, upgrade and replace old schools.

The initiative and the funding was announced in February. Yesterday, Kennedy outlined how this year's money — $75 million from the province, to obtain $1 billion for repairs in 1,400 schools — would be spent.

But the funding doesn't come close to covering the backlog of needed repairs.

Toronto Catholic board chair Oliver Carroll recently told the Toronto Star that it would take $5 billion to $6 billion over 15 years just to make Toronto's 750 public and separate schools state-of-the-art buildings.

As important as it was to balance budgets in the '90s, this is the fallout, as needed capital expenditures are over a decade behind schedule. Fortunately, some provinces are using the spoils of good fiscal management to catch up on these projects. Kudos to McGuinty for joining the list.

The road behind

Jim Reed puts together a concise history of the Middle East, featuring reminders like this:

It was the British Empire that set the Muslim/Arab world on its course toward authoritarian, centralized rule. Powerful governments, under kings, emirs or tribal chieftains, were thought by the British to be easier to control than popular movements that might have given rise to some form of democracy.

The very idea of democracy in the Arab world was anathema to the British and, later, the Americans; any popular movement was seen as a potential threat to Western hegemony. This held especially true after the discovery of oil in the region.

The British government and its Colonial Office supported, we might even say invented, these centralized governments – Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States – and often maintained them in power through a combination of military support and financial subsidy.

Sadly, the policy has changed only to the extent of the U.S. and Britain trying to claim democratization while controlling governments in new ways. Needless to say, this isn't going to give the locals any reason to trust the new imperialists.

Not in anybody's backyard

Scott Piatkowski slams the NIMBY principle:

(N)o one should be expected to have to live with a toxic waste incinerator, a six-lane highway or a coal burning power plant in their backyard. Indeed in the case of the latter three examples, it doesn't matter whether the pollution is being spewed into the air from your own backyard. As we know from the seemingly permanent blanket of smog that has plagued Southern Ontario for the past few summers, pollution knows no boundaries.

Very well put. Read it.

Edit: to actually include the link.

Tobin taxed

I'm a huge fan of Talking Points Memo, but Josh Marshall's approval of a post mocking the Tobin tax concept shows that it isn't just the right in the U.S. that sees no place for world standards. From the Note:

Just an hour ago, I mentioned that Frank Gaffney made a wrong-headed linkage between the Gaza pull-out and the London bombings.

Now, Gaffney is asserting that we are all at risk from the United Nations imposing a global tax on unsuspecting citizens everywhere. Talk about playing to the black helicopter crowd!

As bad as the post is, some of the comments are much, much worse:

"The "global tax" is Bonkers. How would such a thing happen? it's completely insane. There is no reasonanble theory in existence about how such a thing could even be done, or anyone who even might suggest so other than residents of State Instutions and the Center For Security Policy..."

And:

"The idea of any "global tax" would have to take the form of a treaty, negotiations for which would never even start, because it's too lunkheaded to waste time on."

So who does support a Tobin tax? The Canadian Parliament, for one. France and Belgium, for others. The AFL-CIO and World Council of Churches, among other NGOs.

And the idea is based on a perfectly sound principle: that a small tax on currency trades can serve two key purposes - preventing currency speculation which can lead to economic meltdowns, and raising money for global goals such as third-world development.
Naturally, there are difficulties in getting such a tax organized, and nobody can realistically expect the current American administration to listen to reason.

None of the above is to say that Gaffney's anti-UN hysteria is anything but laughable. The point missed by the Note is that the position is laughable because it's so wrong-headed, not because it's reacting to an implausible policy suggestion.

Trying to hide the leaking elephant

Bush did his best to bury the Rove story - but the effort has failed miserably:

A classified State Department memorandum central to a federal leak investigation contained information about CIA officer Valerie Plame in a paragraph marked "(S)" for secret, a clear indication that any Bush administration official who read it should have been aware the information was classified, according to current and former government officials...

The paragraph identifying her as the wife of former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV was clearly marked to show that it contained classified material at the "secret" level, two sources said. The CIA classifies as "secret" the names of officers whose identities are covert, according to former senior agency officials.

As Kos points out, this is the Washington Post's top story today.

The interesting part will be to see Bush's strategy from here on in. The administration tried spinning, but the press wouldn't take "I won't talk about that" for an answer. Now the best diversion available has proven ineffective - and frankly the Dems deserve credit for not overblowing Roberts as an issue such as to distract attention from Rove.

Is there anything else in the Republican arsenal, aside from trying to discredit the entire CIA as well as Fitzgerald personally? And are they crazy enough to give that a go?

Spiralling into control

Reasonably good news from StatsCan:

Statistics Canada report says Canada's crime rate fell a marginal one per cent last year...

Except for an increase in 2003, the crime rate has generally been falling since it peaked in 1991, StatsCan said. Police reported about 2.6 million offences in 2004, resulting in a crime rate that was 12 per cent lower than a decade ago.

Even if progress is slow, the crime rate continues to go in the right direction - no matter what your friendly neighbourhood wingnut has to say.

Reason for optimism?

If nothing else, Rich Coleman deserves credit for looking on the bright side now that softwood lumber talks have (predictably) gone nowhere:

B.C. Forests Minister Rich Coleman, whose province accounts for half of Canadian softwood lumber exports to the United States, said he was encouraged another meeting has been tentatively set for Aug. 22 in Ottawa.

But based on a report from B.C. delegates at the Washington session, it's clear the Americans didn't come prepared to talk, he said.

While I admire Coleman's effort to find a bright side, I'm not sure that more meetings where the U.S. refuses to talk are necessarily the best means of making a deal. Unless Coleman is counting on their being so bored about saying nothing that they'll sign a new deal just to avoid further non-talks.

Come to think of it, that may not be any less productive than the past strategy to deal with this mess.

Settling claims

While this article criticizes Manitoba more than it praises Saskatchewan, let's note that Saskatchewan has at least managed a good start to getting land claims dealt with:

The Southern Chiefs Organization in Manitoba is calling on the federal and provincial government to help First Nations get the land they are owed.

The province owes more than 400,000 hectares (1 million acres) of land to 27 First Nations, but less than 2,500 hectares of land has been converted to reserve land so far.

The Southern Chiefs issued a report Tuesday comparing Manitoba's track record on settling treaty land entitlements (TLEs) with Saskatchewan's record. Saskatchewan, the report says, is "much more efficient" at settling claims, noting that more than half First Nations with treaty entitlements in that province have obtained the land owed to them.

Obviously there's a good ways to go in Saskatchewan as well. But Calvert and company are headed in the right direction.

Worth cooperating

It's been mentioned on a few other blogs, but the daylight savings time issue seems to be the day's big one, so here's my two cents' worth.

While it's odd for the U.S. to make the change without consulting Canada and Mexico (who are both very obviously affected by the move), this is one of the situations where there's no value in fighting the U.S.' move, and indeed if there are energy savings to be had then it's more than worthwhile for Canada to follow along as well.

Of course it'll be the provinces who have to decide, but the federal government should do its best to coordinate the move. There's no real benefit to maintaining a distinct policy on DST (and I'll acknowledge that this probably applies to Saskatchewan's avoiding DST as well), and tons of costs to having a less standardized system across the continent.

On thinking through one's plans

As little confidence as I had when the Liberals' Kyoto plan was first announced, this makes the lack of organization look many times worse than before:

Almost half the members of a team working on a national emissions trading system quit, rather than transfer to Environment Canada from the Department of Natural Resources, officials at the two departments say...

The now-depleted team is responsible for securing the reduction of emissions from 700 companies in mining and manufacturing, oil and gas, and thermal electricity, which account for almost half of Canada's greenhouse emissions...

Howard Brown, assistant deputy minister of natural resources, who built the team over the past two years, is one of those not moving to Environment.

Those who quit the team included two co-leaders with the rank of director-general, and "four or five" experts at the officer level, said Mike Beale, a director general at Environment Canada who now is in charge of the effort. He said the team originally comprised "15 to 20" people.

Ah yes, nothing like a team loaded with inexperienced members to make sure a new policy works. Supposedly there's been bureaucratic infighting for some time over the departmental switch - but shouldn't somebody be paying attention and coordinating to make sure these sorts of mass resignations don't happen?

More good news on beef

At the very least, Judge Cebull is paying attention to the appeals court ruling:

An order delaying the Billings hearing was received by the Montana district court Wednesday, said deputy clerk Heather McLean.

"They just vacated the hearing and didn't reset it," she said.

The order said the court and Cebull were awaiting the written comment from the appeal judges on their reasoning for reversing the preliminary ruling.

"To date, no opinion has been filed and therefore it is hereby ordered that the oral arguments be vacated until further order. After receipt of the court of appeals opinions, this court will determine whether further hearings are necessary," the document states.

As noted in the CP article, this has two main effects.

First, it confirms that Judge Cebull will take a close look at an appellate precedent which found that R-CALF's claims were insufficient for a lower class of injunction.

Second, it gives more time for Canadian beef to keep flowing across the border, and accordingly alters the definition of the status quo which formed a large part of Cebull's original reasoning.

This may not be officially over, and R-CALF never seems to give up, but the end appears to be in sight.

Will they never learn?

Buried in the current news item on Iraq is this gem:

(A)n official confirmed that nine staff members of the Iraqi special tribunal preparing to try Saddam Hussein have been dismissed because of links to the ousted dictator's Baath party.

The cases of 19 others, including the chief investigative judge, are under review.

The executive director of the Supreme National Commission for de-Baathification, Ali al-Lami, said the nine dismissed staffers held administrative jobs such as the witness security protection program and tribunal security.

Al-Lami said that the committee is preparing another list for 19 persons, mostly judges, for possible dismissal. They include chief judge Raid Juhi, he said.

The head of the government committee in charge of purging former Baath officials is Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Chalabi, a former Pentagon favourite.

So the puppet regime's means of bringing integrity to the court process is by putting a possible Iranian spy who encouraged cronies to lie about WMDs in charge of determining who's eligible to participate.

A confidence-inspiring choice indeed.

Tobacco Litigation II

So much for the old canard that you can't raise tobacco taxes for fear that it'll increase smuggling. Now several provinces are holding tobacco companies accountable for their role in smuggling in the past. First up is JTI:

Ottawa and the provinces are demanding about $10-billion in compensation from one of Canada's largest tobacco companies for tax revenues lost when cigarettes were being smuggled into Canada in the early 1990s.

The suit, which was originally launched by the federal government, claims taxes owed on both the smuggled cigarettes and additional money lost because governments had to lower taxes to compete with the smuggled smokes.

I'm disappointed to see that Saskatchewan isn't participating in this one, but it's a plus to see it going ahead.

On motivations

Pulled out of context, this would be great news:

The federal government has promised to spend $500 million over 10 years to address the socio-economic issues of the northern First Nations.

The only problem is that the money would never have been offered if the First Nations in question weren't now blocking construction of the MacKenzie pipeline:

The money will go into a fund to address socio-economic issues linked with the project. Ottawa announced the deal with the Northwest Territories and the Gwich'in, Kahsho Got'ine, Inuvialuit, Tulita/Deline and Dehcho First Nations late Monday.

It's great for some progress to be made on the living conditions of First Nations - but how many others are currently being neglected entirely (at least until the NDP budget is implemented) since they don't have a pipeline to block for leverage?

Bad faith negotiations

It doesn't look like the softwood lumber dispute is going away anytime soon:

Chances of a compromise resolution to the longstanding Canada-U.S. softwood lumber dispute appeared to dwindle on Tuesday after the U.S. side tabled a tough new proposal at talks in Washington, D.C.

The package includes a lumber export tax to replace U.S. duties, which Canada has previously accepted in principle. But it's pegged far higher than Canadian lumber-producing would deem acceptable, a source told The Canadian Press.

The U.S. proposal also puts a ceiling on lumber exports from British Columbia. American producers apparently fear their domestic market would be flooded with high volumes of wood from the B.C. Interior, where accelerated logging is underway to quell a massive pine-beetle infestation.

The Americans also have not budged on a previous demand to keep about half the $5 billion in lumber duties already paid by Canadian producers since tariffs were imposed in May 2002.

The U.S. proposal's so-called "exit ramp'' to get out from under tariffs permanently would require provinces to institute market-based reforms to their forest policies that would raise stumpage anywhere from 100 to 230 per cent, with no provision for future reductions in the Crown timber-cutting fee...

Just for a refresher: when it comes to softwood lumber, the U.S. wants mandated export taxes, import quotas, dictated changes to Canadian policy, and the ability to retain the spoils of past trade obstruction. And all this while American consumer groups want the tariff lifted since it's adding $1500 to the cost of a new house.

When it comes to CAFTA, the U.S. wants Central America to buy into free trade agreements in order to stabilize trade and open markets.

I wonder if the CAFTA partners are paying attention to what's coming out of the other side of the administration's mouth.

Reasonable demands

While the government's process goes nowhere, Canada's aboriginal leaders are making sure that victims of residential schools aren't forgotten:

The three-day conference brings together those who endured the residential school process, First Nations leaders and experts to talk about the political agreement on residential schools the Assembly of First Nations signed with the federal government in May...

In the keynote address Assembly of First Nations Chief Phil Fontaine laid out a series of conditions that need to be met to allow the remaining natives who were forced into the schools to forgive...

Fontaine said the horrendous physical and sexual abuse and the attempt to erase First Nations culture at the schools must never be forgotten.

But he warned that First Nations must "take the burden off ourselves so we don't place in our the shoulders of our children."

Fontaine called for a national truth-telling process so both natives and Canadians can learn of the "tragic chapter" in Canadian history.

He also wants a national apology from the prime minister to all of Canada.

"We're not talking about a statement of regret. We're not talking about a statement of reconcilation. . .we're talking about a full apology presented to the survivors."

This would seem to be an eminently reasonably request. And an earlier speech from Fontaine seemed to suggest that Martin had made such a commitment, though the article cited suggests that he was still publicly dithering. This needs to get done.

As an interesting aside, a Canadian Google search for "Martin residential schools apology" turns up both NDP Martins demanding an apology as the top two items, with only tangential references to PMPM later in the list. Just in case there was any doubt which party is standing up for Canada's First Nations.

Harper = Bush - Rove

The Calgary Observer noted earlier that Harper plans to defend Canada's distinctiveness through a Department of Homeland Security similar to that in the States. But in the department of "wanting to be Bush's lapdog", this seems even worse:

Opposition Leader Stephen Harper said he talked briefly Tuesday with President George W. Bush about trade and security issues, including his own willingness to consider the U.S. missile defence project rejected by federal Liberals.

"I've said all along a Conservative government's prepared to entertain discussions on that if the Americans make a proposal to Canada," said Harper.

Now while 34% support may be better than the Cons have generally had lately, it's still another example of Harper deliberately taking a stance contrary to that of most Canadian people.

Does he really think Fox News and Focus on the Family can give him that much of a bump before the next election?

Exporting sanity

Some good news from Iraq for once: the rest of the world is learning from the U.S.' mistakes:

Although couching criticism in diplomatic language, officials from the World Bank and the U.N. made it clear that the international community's $13.5-billion rebuilding effort would differ from the U.S. approach.

The United States in early 2004 awarded contracts to a handful of U.S.-based multinational firms such as Halliburton Co., Bechtel Corp. and Perini Corp. for massive infrastructure projects such as building power plants, hospitals and clinics and refurbishing water treatment facilities.

But many of the firms have had difficulty completing projects in the face of insurgent attacks, logistical difficulties and complicated U.S. contracting guidelines. At least one contractor, Contrack International Inc., has pulled out. Perini and Pasadena-based Parsons Corp. have had jobs taken away from them over concerns about rising costs.

The international officials said they had learned from the U.S. experience and would rely on Iraqi contractors. Besides being cheaper, Iraqi contractors often face fewer security concerns, said Michael Bell, a Canadian official overseeing part of the international reconstruction effort.

It's amazing that this late in the process, it takes international involvement to point out that reconstruction money is poorly spent when it:

- isn't providing local employment;
- isn't addressing immediate needs in a war zone; and
- is building megaprojects which Iraq can't maintain or operate on a long-term basis.

Amazingly, a U.S. negotiator commented that it was "a very successful day" without addressing the criticisms. I suppose the bad news is that if the U.S. sees other countries filling the need to spend money on useful projects, it can devote itself full-time to lavishing windfalls on American contractors.

But even if that's the U.S. position at this point, at least somebody's doing some good for a change.

Grinding to a halt

Apparently what we need first is a vaccine against shortsightedness:

A national network of researchers working on groundbreaking clinical trials of vaccines for such diseases as AIDS and SARS has had its federal funding pulled.

The Canadian Network for Vaccines and Immunotherapeutics, a group in the federal government's prestigious Networks of Centres of Excellence, learned last week it won't get the $34 million it was requesting from Ottawa next March.

"We could have been the first in the world with clinical trials with new vaccines for cancer, HIV-AIDS and hep C," said the vaccine network's chair, Dr. Michael Klein.

"That's gone. It's really damaging for Canada."

While the networks' head won't say why the funding was cancelled, Klein believes an independent review committee thought the vaccine network wouldn't generate enough profit to make the investment worthwhile.

I'm not sure where to begin on how bad a decision this is.

The article questions even the "lack of profit" premise - and with good reason, as it seems fairly intuitive that new vaccines would be in great demand.

But more importantly, there are other concerns here that could have far more impact that any profit (or lack thereof) off the vaccines themselves.

One of the network's upcoming projects was to be a study on SARS. Remember that disease whose outbreak may have cost $1 billion in tourism alone?

And then of course there's the added long-term cost to the health-care system of having to administer expensive treatments for diseases which could potentially have been prevented.

Apparently there isn't a formal appeal process - the court of public opinion may be the only means of changing the decision. This should be an easy one.

Well put

E.J. Dionne on how most of the programs that Bush wants to slash have done their job perfectly in lessening poverty:

The fact is that every year 27 million Americans are lifted from poverty by our system of public benefits. More than 80 million Americans receive health insurance through a government program -- Medicaid, Medicare or the State Children's Health Insurance Program, known as SCHIP. Without these programs, tens of millions would be unable to afford access to medical care. As the center notes, government programs reduce both the extent and the depth of poverty.

Does all this cost a fortune? Not by any fair reckoning. Federal spending on Medicaid and SCHIP represents 1.5 percent of gross domestic product. Federal financing for the rest of the low-income programs consumes just 2.3 percent of GDP. For a sense of comparison, consider that defense spending consumes 4 percent of GDP and interest on the national debt gobbles up 1.5 percent. President Bush's tax cuts -- which go in large part to the wealthiest Americans -- will consume roughly 2 percent of GDP.

So true. Read it.

(Edit: Typo.)

On the farm

There's been ample talk about how tough the past few years have been for agriculture in general - and not just for beef exporters. But, all jinxes aside, it looks like everything may be falling into place this year:

Despite the blustery weather of recent weeks, a bumper crop is shaping up, according to the latest crop report from the provincial agriculture department.

The weekly report says 90 per cent of fall and spring cereals are in good to excellent condition.

And 83 per cent of oilseed crops are estimated to be in good or excellent condition.

Naturally, the crops are never going to be perfect. But this sounds like a great start for this year. The centennial takes another turn for the better.

Reducing omissions

The Tyee points out a Kyoto strategy that would do a lot more good than the current plan:

Feebates are a novel combination of fees and rebates, designed to continuously tug the entire car and truck market toward better fuel efficiency. The basic idea is elegant in its simplicity: vehicles that are more efficient than average come to the showroom carrying a rebate for their buyers. Those rebates are proportional to the efficiency of the vehicle, so superefficient vehicles come with whopping big rebates.

Conversely, cars and trucks that are less efficient than average, come with a fee-a fee that, as you guessed, grows with the vehicle's inefficiency. Gas guzzlers, therefore, pay big fees. (Still, the fees are unlikely to be as large as the massive, $4,000 rebates car makers have lavished on purchasers of their largest trucks.) The fees pay for the rebates each year, so feebates are self-financing.

So far, Martin's willing to "consider" feebates. This should be something that moves well beyond the idea stage in a hurry - especially when it's already being done elsewhere.

Strong medicine

At the U.N., Maurice Strong has been let go for allegations of nepotism and tangential involvement in the Oil-for-Food scandal.

In the U.S., the president won't fire a crony who leaked information related to national security unless he's proven to have committed a felony.

Now which of these institutions has a right to demand reform in the other?

Priorities

What Iraqis are concerned with:

Some senior elected officials and civic and religious leaders spoke out on Sunday, condemning the attack, one of a wave of suicide bombings that has shaken the greater Baghdad area in the past eight days. Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the most revered Shiite cleric in Iraq, asked the government "to defend this country against the mass annihilation," according to Vice President Adel Abdul Mahdi, who led a delegation that visited the ayatollah on Sunday.

What the puppet regime is focusing on:

Iraq wants to launch a privatization program that would end state monopolies over industry, an Iraqi official said Sunday on the eve of an international meeting to assess reconstruction activities.

Call it a hunch, but might the government be seen as slightly more legitimate (and the insurgency seen as less so) if the cash grabs were a bit less blatant?

(Via Daily Kos and the Suburban Guerrilla.)

And now for something completely obvious

From the AP:

Britain's close alliance with the United States has put it at particular risk of terrorist attack, two leading think tanks said Monday...

The Royal Institute of International Affairs and the Economic and Social Research Council said the situation in Iraq had given "a boost to the al-Qaida network's propaganda, recruitment and fund-raising" and provided an ideal training ground for al-Qaida-linked terrorists.

The response from Defence Secretary John Reid was the usual blather about standing up to bullies. It's always reassuring to see foreign policy drafted on a second-grade level.

New poll results

From the Globe and Mail:

Canadians do not want their political leaders to undo historic legislation allowing gays to legally marry in the wake of a pledge from the Conservatives that they would do just that if elected.

In a new poll conducted for The Globe and Mail/CTV, 55 per cent of Canadians surveyed say the next government should let same-sex legislation stand, while 39 per cent would like to see an attempt made to repeal it. A further 6 per cent said they did not know.

Is it now time for a referendum just to stick it to the Cons?

What of the true North?

The CP reported today on Canada's failure to contribute both funds and leadership to international research on the Arctic:

Canada has already missed one target for announcing its intentions for 2007's International Polar Year, one of two years of global scientific focus expected to quadruple the number of international researchers in Canada's Arctic.

As a final September deadline approaches, officials admit they're trying to cobble together whatever funding they can, likely to be much less than originally hoped.

And they warn the delay is already hampering Canadian access to up to $1 billion in matching funds from international sources...

Canada's contribution will be nowhere near the $350 million scientists had hoped would be earmarked for research and infrastructure...

(Expected) spending could range from a low of $20 million to just over $100 million, he said.

The lack of involvement on this issue is bizarre from the federal government's standpoint. Canada is affected by the issues under study more than almost any other state; it has developments in progress to try to bring more people to its northern regions; and it's supposedly trying to push research and development generally. Yet scientists interested in Arctic research don't know how much money (if any) is available, and Canada is missing a chance to build up a good amount of infrastructure to encourage future growth in the North.

Reclaiming religion

The LA Times reports on how the AFL-CIO is pushing to bring religion and labour back into line:

Labor leaders are responding with programs to overhaul their image. They want unions to be seen as a dynamic force for social justice, not as a stodgy special interest.

That's where the seminary students come in.

For $300 a week, they're organizing security guards in metropolitan Washington, carpenters in Boston, hotel maids in Chicago, meatpackers in Los Angeles. Some spend their days with the workers, trying to give them courage to mobilize. Others visit local congregations to urge solidarity with the union cause.

This was probably an inevitable backlash against the current Republican coalition, and it seems to be an example of how unions can still be a leading force on the left. A job well started by the AFL-CIO...which will hopefully lead to much better things for both the union movement, and for progressivism generally.

Stifling dissent

The UK blocks publication of a book by its former ambassador to the UN:

Publication of The Costs of War by Sir Jeremy Greenstock, UK ambassador to the UN during the build-up to the 2003 war and the Prime Minister's special envoy to Iraq in its aftermath, has been halted. In an extract seen by The Observer, Greenstock describes the American decision to go to war as 'politically illegitimate' and says that UN negotiations 'never rose over the level of awkward diversion for the US administration'. Although he admits that 'honourable decisions' were made to remove the threat of Saddam, the opportunities of the post-conflict period were 'dissipated in poor policy analysis and narrow-minded execution'...

Greenstock's British publishers, Random House, were remaining tight-lipped but it is thought that the book is almost certain not to be published in the autumn as planned. It was also to be serialised in a British newspaper.

In fairness, the block on publication is based on the revelation of privileged conversations with Blair, Straw and others. The problem is that those conversations should tell precisely the story that we'll need to hear in order to figure out how the Iraq debacle was allowed to happen from the UK's perspective.

In contrast to Rove's leaks against a devoted CIA agent for political gain, this is precisely the kind of inner knowledge that actually improves the population's ability to evaluate its leaders. Hopefully the book will come out fairly soon one way or another, but if Blair wants to be any better than his partner in crime on Iraq, he needs to let Greenstock tell something resembling the whole story.

Agreeing only to disagree

Another reminder of why we should be skeptical about new free trade agreements:

Canadian officials want to keep down expectations about another round of talks aimed at resolving the endless Canada-U.S. softwood lumber trade war...

Lumber exporters are paying about 21 per cent in combined countervailing and anti-dumping duties, first imposed in May 2002 after the U.S. Commerce Department accepted American lumber producers' claims Canadian softwood was unfairly subsidized.

The figure was as high as 27 per cent but has been revised downward after a series of reviews.

Ottawa and the lumber-producing provinces have always denied exports are subsidized and challenged the duties under the North American Free Trade Agreement and before the World Trade Organization.

Canada has claimed victory in a series of WTO and NAFTA rulings but must still deposit the money with U.S. Customs until the issue is resolved...

Hanging over the whole discussion is a threat by the United States, based on a legal interpretation, to keep much of the money collected in duties so far no matter the outcome of Canada's legal challenges.

The reward for our current free trade agreements is that we now have a bunch of favourable rulings which the U.S. feels free to disregard for protectionist reasons. So now we're headed back into additional talks, with no realistic prospect of an agreement, and with the knowledge that the U.S. will likely end up with a financial windfall from its obstructionism.

And this is from the country that's supposedly one of the main proponents of free trade (at least when CAFTA is the topic of conversation).

Is there any reason to think that future agreements will be any more effective in removing trade barriers toward other markets? And if not, then why are such agreements supposed to be worth our time?

Creating Flies

As if the insanity of "flypaper" wasn't readily apparent, new studies show that the vast majority of the foreigners entering Iraq to fight against the U.S. were only radicalized by the war itself:

(I)nterrogations of nearly 300 Saudis captured trying to sneak into Iraq and case studies of more than three dozen others who blew themselves up in suicide attacks show that most were heeding calls to drive infidels out of Arab land, according to a study by Saudi investigator Nawaf Obaid...

An analysis of 154 foreign fighters compiled by a leading terrorism researcher found that despite the presence of some senior al-Qaida operatives, "the vast majority of non-Iraqi Arabs killed in Iraq have never taken part in any terrorist activity prior to their arrival in Iraq."

Note also that the two studies were both by U.S. allies - one by the Saudi government, one by an Israeli think tank. These are sources with a strong motivation to present accurate conclusions, not to make the Bush administration look bad.

But then, the truth does the latter job perfectly well on its own.

(Via the Suburban Guerrilla.)

Making medicine available

Based on this story, let's give due credit to Apotex for giving public need some role in its production levels:

Canada's largest generic pharmaceutical company, Apotex Inc., wants to produce a thyroid drug that is no longer available to cancer patients in Canada, even though it's made here. And Apotex hopes to put it on the market at half of its former price...

"We are wholly Canadian-owned and part of our philosophy is to do what's best for this country," said (Apotex's CEO)..."I don't expect the volume will ever be there for this drug but when (Dr. Paul) Walfish phones, I feel a duty."

Naturally, there likely will be some market benefits - the article points out that thyroid cancer (which the drug treats) is spreading faster than any other type of cancer. But those suffering from it now and in the near future could be a lot better off if Apotex begins production.