Monthly Archives: July 2014

Jul 18 2014
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Business, Politics

Narrow-mindedness: A dish best served to go

 

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I have no personal beef with Rothesay, New Brunswick, Mayor Bill Bishop. I don’t know the man. But I am exquisitely acquainted with his particular brand of parochialism.

It is the sort of mean-minded, distrustful fear-mongering that undermines diversity, shuts down business opportunities before they have a chance to bloom and gives small, semi-urban communities a bad name from coast to coast to shining coast.

Food trucks. Really, Mr. Mayor? That’s the current and urgent threat to the good people of your Saint John bedroom neighbourhood?

To be clear, hizzoner’s britches are bunched over the Funky Monkey Sandwich Shop – a Traveling Willbury of grilled paninis, which has been operating for several months in the vicinity of Mr. Bishop’s municipal back door.

As this enterprise comes from the foreign country of Quispamsis, about 11 minutes distance from noble Rothesay by car ride, you might (or might not) understand the good fellow’s objection:

“You have to know Rothesay, it is not your regular community,” he rather lamely told the CBC this week. “We people here have been here for decades and they have very firm beliefs, and needs and wants and the word change in Rothesay is not a welcome word.”

Indeed, according to the CBC report, “Bishop said he has nothing against Dan Landry, the Funky Monkey’s owner, but a mobile restaurant is ‘not the type of enterprise that we welcome in Rothesay.’”

Meanwhile, Mr. Landry can’t figure out what the mayor is talking about.

“We’ve had a great summer so far and the community is, very much so, coming out and supporting us. So we don’t have any fears of about whether the community wants us here,” he told the CBC. “I think the people are looking for new food trends, I think the people are looking for new food options and they are looking for real food instead of processed food. I think that these small businesses give people the opportunity to get out there in the market and sell that product without having the costs involved with the brick and mortar investments.”

In fact, the very requirement to defend himself in the court of public opinion, against a fossilized notion of community values, is not the shame of Funky Monkey’s main man; it’s ours. We let this garbage happen all the time, everywhere in this benighted region of ours. We have for years, for decades.

Halifax doesn’t pit itself against Moncton for concerts and sporting events. It fights cage matches for such opportunities against Dartmouth, Bedford and Sackville. 

Sydney would rather witness Cape Breton become a theme park for Chinese technocrats fascinated by the possibilities of a coal-fired, mag-lev monorail than see Glace Bay obtain one, new, pathetic store opening.

We are, in this sea-bound region, our own worst enemies; forever imagining that the town just down the pot-holed road is waiting to pounce, preparing to storm the gates  of our own, oh so very special, burg. After all, don’t you know, Anytown, Atlantic Canada, is “not your regular community.” 

Indeed, “We people here have been here for decades” and we “have very firm beliefs, and needs and wants and the word change”. . .well, friend, it’s just not a welcome word at all.

Parochialism, thy name is Atlantic Canada. 

From our inter-provincial trade barriers to ancient regulations governing skills qualifications and labour mobility – from restrictions on provincial exports of wine to sign posts about honey bee imports – we are a lonely, miserly, short-sighted lot fated, it seems, to suffer all the consequences of our provincialism, insularity and localism.

I have known far too many men and women in this region who have closed their fists, when they might have opened their hands. I have seen them shut their eyes from seeing and block their ears from hearing.

I have also seen and heard these same patriarchs and matriarchs make appalling, disingenuous speeches about the inestimable value of the East Coast way of life, about the incomparable standard this region provides to those lucky enough to have a way to make a living. 

Unless, of course, they happen to run a food truck into a burgermeister’s territory, just down the road from economic perdition.

 

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Jul 17 2014
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Communications, Idiocracy

On the Internet, what’s old is new again

 

Whaaassuup?

Whaaassuup?

Once upon a time in the cybersphere, I awoke many mornings to tidings from a Nigerian prince in dire need of my inestimable services as a funnel for his improbable wealth. “Dear sir,” the missive would begin, “I write to you today concerning a large sum of money. . .”

That booty was his and I stood to earn a big chunk of it the moment I forked over my personal banking information. 

It was, of course a scam, and, interestingly enough, not an especially novel one.      

Says one Lauren O’Neil writing in “Your Community Blog” on the CBC News website in 2013: “Also known as a ‘4-1-9‘ or ‘Advance Fee Fraud’ scheme, according to Snopes.com, millions of these emails are sent each year by spambots. So many people receive them, in fact, that the concept of the ‘Nigerian prince’ has itself become an internet meme.”

Ms. O’Neil consults knowyourmeme.com for this fulsome explanation: “This style of scam has been recorded as early as in the 19th century with a confidence trick known as The Spanish Prisoner, but the modern Nigerian 419 scheme began as a postal scam during the corrupt years of the Second Nigerian Republic between the late 1970s and early 1980s. 

“During this time, numerous variations of the scheme were discovered for the first time, many of which claimed to have been written by wealthy members of the royal family, businessmen or government officials soliciting for personal financial information such as bank account numbers.”

Still, I have often wondered why, if the fraud is so transparently obvious and ancient, those behind it even bother. Then, the other day, I came across the following “comment” in my own blog site’s spam folder:

“I see a lot of interesting content on your page. You have to spend a lot of time writing. I know how to save you a lot of work. There is a tool that creates unique, Google- friendly articles in couple of seconds. Just search in Google: k2 unlimited content.”

Intrigued, I followed the link and promptly entered the domain of “article spinning, text rewriting” and “content creation”.

To say that I was gob-smacked is only to say that I am an old fogey who doesn’t get around much in the truly hip neighborhoods of the webbed world of wonder. But apparently and increasingly much of what we read and imagine to be original word-smithing on the Internet is nearly as old as a 200-year-old Spanish-prisoner-cum-Nigerian-prince grift.

Here’s what k2seoservices.com helpfully informs:

“You don’t have to lose many hours writing content on your blog, you can rewrite articles from other sites and pass copyscape test.”

For those readers who, like me, are broadly unfamiliar with most online tools, copyscape is a plagiarism detector. By using k2seoservices.com’s promoted product, WordAi, “Google will love your new unique articles.”

As the good folks at WordAi, itself, declare, “Unlike other spinners, WordAi fully understands what each word content means. It doesn’t view sentences as just a list of words, it views them as real things that interact with each other. This human like understanding allows WordAi to automatically rewrite entire sentences from scratch. This high level of rewriting ensures that Google and Copyscape can’t detect your content while still remaining human readable!”

The website even provides an example of the software in action.

“Original sentence: Nobody has been arrested by the police officers, but the suspect is being interrogated by them. Automatic Rewrite: Law enforcement are interrogating the defendant, although they have not detained anybody.”

What’s more, says another service, Spinbot: “For you blog users, the newly added ‘Post Spun Text to WordPress or Blogger’ feature will save you from having to take the additional steps of copying and pasting your spun content into a separate (authenticated) web browser tab/window. You can now post whatever rewritten article you have created directly to your WordPress or Blogger blog from the same page you used to rewrite the article.”

Hey presto! Something for nothing over and over again. 

All of which, I suspect, explains why so much Internet content – apart from that which resides safely behind pay walls and the equivalent – is so numbingly familiar. Does this apply do various iterations of Nigerian princes?

Who knows, but here’s what just popped into my inbox:

“Dear Madam, I communicate with you on this fine morning regarding a fortune with which I would like to make you acquainted.”

Where have I heard that before?

 

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Jul 16 2014
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Democracy, Politics

How Ottawa minds our own business

 

What are these posts for? Shut up, government says, sit on 'em

What are these posts for? Shut up, government says, sit on ’em

What do 33 dejected foreign workers, denied positions in New Brunswick, and low blood sugar have in common?

If you said it’s the bevy of busybodies beavering away to make a general nuisance of itself in Ottawa – otherwise known as the Government of Canada – give yourself a pat on the back. But stay away from the sweets.

Apparently inspired by a Globe and Mail investigation earlier this year, Harpertown is all set to poke its proboscis into the pantries of the nation.

“In recent months, the Globe and Mail documented the links between sugar and harmful health concerns, and called on the federal government to set a recommended daily sugar limit,” the newspaper reported, in one of the most pompous displays of self-serving grandiosity it has been this ex-staffer’s pleasure to witness, earlier this week. 

“Our reporting revealed the extent to which the food industry adds sugar to many products in various forms, the extent to which labelling requirements don’t sufficiently inform consumers about this practice and the broad range of health problems that stem from the amount of sugar in the daily diet.”

Now, galvanized by this magnificent example of public service journalism, we are asked to believe that Ottawa is about to require food producers to finally play it straight with Canadians and tell the truth about the degree to which they are poisoning the general populace. 

Accurate labelling, it seems, is the answer. So is a federally-sanctioned “recommendation” for the amount of sugar Canadians should consume in any given 24-hour period.

Bully for the federalistas, but methinks the chances that this famously recalcitrant crew of onetime reformers and oftentimes media mashers takes its marching orders from Canada’s self-appointed, self-important, “national newspaper” are perishingly small. 

The more likely explanation (which may be weirder still) is that despite its right-wing, small-government, anti-Liberal, nanny-state-hating political pedigree this particular crew of Tory MPs and their fellow-travelling bureaucrats just can’t resist telling people – any people – what to do.

And that extends far beyond the sugar bowl.

As the Moncton Times & Transcript reported recently, Canadian consular officers in Vietnam rejected 33 applicants from that country for jobs at Captain Dan’s Seafood and Pecheries GEM Ltee despite the fact that the two employers had “valid labour market opinions at the time of the application and had paid all due fees while the Vietnamese applicants took additional measures to improve their candidacy.”

Those measures included “weeks of intensive English-language courses and specific seafood processing training.”

The Moncton lawyer representing the two local firms is flabbergasted. “The employers have been let down without an adequate workforce,” Martin Aubin told T&T reporter Kayla Byrne. “They have paid good money, done everything by the rules and received permits to hire people. We had openings for 33 people, we found 33 people, but all of them have been denied. . .To fail completely is a new experience for me.”

Get used to it. 

No one – but, no one – gets around these dogs once they’ve got several bones clenched between their incisors. Consider, if you will, one more choice example of latent control freakishness: Bill C-24, which passed quietly in June.

Also called the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act, this legislation moves its patron, Minister of of Citizenship and Immigration Chris Alexander, practically to tears. 

It will, he said recently, “protect and strengthen the great value of Canadian citizenship, and remind individuals that citizenship is not a right, it’s a privilege. . .It is in honour of those who protected this city, in honour of those who have served and serve today, in honour of all who have made the sacrifice of war, and those who have contributed in their own way to building this great country, that we are further strengthening the value of Canadian citizenship.”

It will also do a couple of other things, according to one news report – notably provide the federal government with sweeping new license to share information about Canadian immigrants with foreign powers almost indiscriminately.

Of course, that’s all in a day’s work for a government whose main business is fast becoming minding other people’s.

 

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Jul 15 2014
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Climate, Environment, Politics

How to make poor-weather friends in eastern Canada

 

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The temptation to assign blame for Mother Nature’s tempests is, at times, overwhelming – especially when you’ve been without power for a week. 

According to New Brunswick’s electrical utility, on Friday as many as 18,000 people in this province were still in the dark, both literally and figuratively, after post-tropical storm Arthur slammed into the Maritimes on July 5. 

A rising chorus of those affected are asking tough questions. 

Why is it taking so long to restore service to everyone? Why are some homes reconnected while their neighbours across the street remain blacked out? Have our famously verdant urban streets become states of emergency just waiting to happen?

Naturally, a matching deluge of politics falls steadily on the capitol these days. 

The provincial Liberals have criticized the Tory government’s weather preparedness, suggesting that NB Power was, once again, caught with its pants down around it ankles. “It’s a total embarrassment,” charged Rick Doucet, Grit MLA from Charlotte-The Isles, last week. “How many events do we have to go through before we’re going to learn? . .This is the third major weather event to hit New Brunswick in the past seven months. We should be getting better at this, but it appears that’s not the case, unfortunately.”

The critique prompted an immediate and sharp rebuke from provincial Energy Minister Craig Leonard, who barked: “For them (Liberal opposition members) to come out and criticize the preparation work done by this utility, in the middle of the restoration work, is just the lowest of the low. . .It just highlights their ignorance.”

But, in at least one respect, we are all ignorant. To what extent should we, on the East Coast, expect increasing and increasingly severe weather? And how should those calculations inform the decisions we make about preparedness?

Clearly, what we currently have in place in this province and in Nova Scotia (where hundreds also remain without power) are insufficient to withstand the new normals climate change metes out. 

For, make no mistake, this is what we are beginning to experience. 

Last winter’s brutally long winter on this continent was, most experts think, the ironic result of a steadily warming planet. Higher temperatures in the polar region played havoc with the traditional gradients in air pressure which, in turn, sent the jet stream literally all over the map.

This produced wild swings between iron cold and almost balmy conditions sometimes within a matter of mere hours. The result: Ice, rain and snow storms within single 24-hour periods with the predictable effects of downed power lines, blankets and games of Old Maid by candlelight.

That was last December in New Brunswick. It’s harder to blame climate change for this month’s storm. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States predicts a near-normal Hurricane season for the Atlantic coast.

Even so, it takes only one of these violent tumults to exacerbate, through storm surges, another demonstrable effect of global warming: rising sea levels. According to NOAA: “There is strong evidence that global sea level is now rising at an increased rate and will continue to rise during this century. While studies show that sea levels changed little from AD 0 until 1900, sea levels began to climb in the 20th century. The two major causes of global sea-level rise are thermal expansion caused by the warming of the oceans (since water expands as it warms) and the loss of land-based ice (such as glaciers and polar ice caps) due to increased melting.

“Records and research show that sea level has been steadily rising at a rate of 0.04 to 0.1 inches per year since 1900. This rate may be increasing. Since 1992, new methods of satellite altimetry (the measurement of elevation or altitude) indicate a rate of rise of 0.12 inches per year. This is a significantly larger rate than the sea-level rise averaged over the last several thousand years.”

For New Brunswick and every coastal area of Canada, these are real nuts and bolts, dollar and cents, issues. Every time a tempest storms into our environs, we can measure the economic costs in the millions and tens-of-millions of dollars – costs that will, in time, only escalate.

It’s now time, if it wasn’t before, for closer regional cooperation on protecting and managing our respective power grids.

After all, Mother Nature doesn’t observe provincial borders. Why should we?

 

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Jul 15 2014
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Politics, Privacy

New shenanigans for spy versus spy

 

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Leave it to a once and likely future candidate for leader of the free world to admit what was previously inadmissible in polite company. Yes, Virginia, the world is full of creeps, spooks and spies, and we here in the West employ a goodly number of them.

This, from former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in an interview with the German newsweekly Der Spiegel last week: “I don’t want to give a general answer (about the morality of international spying). There’s so much that goes on in intelligence circles. If we were to say no, under no circumstances, that you shouldn’t do that to us, we shouldn’t do that to you, what if a circumstance arises where it is conceivable that it would be in your interest and ours?” 

Furthermore, she said: “The United States could never enter into a No-Spy agreement with any country – not you, not Britain, not Canada.”

Mrs. Clinton made her remarks just as German officials ousted the CIA’s super-secretive station chief from his (or her) digs in Berlin. According to a BBC report last week, “The German government has ordered the expulsion of (the) official. . .in response to two cases of alleged spying by the US. The official is said to have acted as a CIA contact at the US embassy, reports say, in a scandal that has infuriated German politicians. A German intelligence official was arrested last week on suspicion of spying.

An inquiry has also begun into a German defence ministry worker, reports said.”

 In fact, nowadays, it is inconceivable that even friendly nations will resist the temptation to snoop in each other’s sock drawers and medicine cabinets. According to some research – and thanks to the timely revelations of former National Security Administration (NSA) operative Edward Snowden – since the end of the Cold War, spying hasn’t been declining, as one might reasonably expect. It’s been on the rise.   

“Hacking for espionage purposes is sharply increasing, with groups or national governments from Eastern Europe playing a growing role, according to one of the most comprehensive annual studies of computer intrusions,” Reuters reported from San Francisco last month. “Spying intrusions traced back to any country in 2013 were blamed on residents of China and other East Asian nations 49 per cent of the time, but Eastern European countries, especially Russian-speaking nations, were the suspected launching site for 21 per cent of breaches, Verizon Communications Inc. said in its annual Data Breach Investigations Report.”

How worried should we be about our own, personal information? Surveillance experts routinely dismiss public concerns about the electronic sieves through which choice tidbits of individual identities pour. There’s now so much information floating around in cyberspace, they argue, that the odds of any one hapless schlub falling prey to Internet evil-doers are far greater than ever before.

That’s cold comfort, however, when we are also confronted with headlines like this one in Friday’s Globe and Mail: “Ethical concerns raised by workers at spy agency.”

Apparently, workers at Communications Security Establishment Canada (CSEC) – this country’s version of the NSA – are more than a little disturbed by the conduct of some of their colleagues and supervisors. Indeed, reports the Globe, “some have also tried to blow the whistle about ‘improper contractor security screening’, questionable contractor invoicing’, ‘unauthorized disclosure of sensitive information’, and ‘con-compliance with CSEC’s values’.” 

Meanwhile, the institutional hunt for better and greater sources of personal information continues unabated. Now, Statistics Canada wants people to fork over their Social Insurance Numbers as it tries to improve the accuracy and relevance of the data it collects. “The agency is trying to find out if people will reveal a key identifier they’ve been so often warned to protect,” a Canadian Press story observes.

Of course, back in 2011, the federal government’s privacy hawks abolished the mandatory long-form census, claiming it poked its nose in where it didn’t belong. Evidently immune to irony, Ian Macredie, a former StatsCan paper-pusher, told the CP, “We may have a population that, because of the (U.S.) National Security Administration, has a heightened awareness of Big Brother collecting data about us.”

Sure we do. These days, all of our creeps, spooks and spies hide in plain sight.

 

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Jul 11 2014
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Economy, Trade

Want more jobs? Drop the trade barriers

 

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Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall is proving that oil is not the only commodity in which the west is awash these days. Some pretty nifty ideas are also in long supply in Big Sky country where Maritimers go to, among pother things, retire their debts.  

Consider Mr. Wall’s concept of a “Canada Free Trade Zone”, in which goods, services, people, skills and professions move effortlessly across provincial borders, goosing the national economy by as much as $50 billion a year.

According to a report in the Globe and Mail this week, British Columbia and Alberta Premiers Christy Clark and Dave Hancock think it’s a grand idea and signed a letter to that effect, “urging their counterparts” in other provinces “to agree to modernizing the 20-year-old Agreement on Internal Trade (AIT) when their meet in Charlottetown in August for the Council of the Federation.” 

As Mr. Wall tells the Globe, “AIT is pretty anemic as a trade agreement. . .We start from the premise that everything is open.”

Evidently, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island Premiers Stephen McNeil and Robert Ghiz are enthusiastic. And while there’s no official word on New Brunswick Premier David Alward’s sentiments, the chances are excellent that Mr. Energy East Pipeline will endorse anything that threatens to enrich Canada’s second-least populous province, where 750,000 souls shoulder an annual public deficit of $500 million and a long-term, structural debt of $12 billion.

In fact, dismantling inter-provincial trade barriers in this country has been an ongoing home improvement project for provincial premiers since at least 1995, when the AIT first came into effect to “reduce barriers to the movement of persons, goods, services and investments within Canada.”

Effectively, according to an Industry Canada blurb, the agreement establishes “general rules which prevent governments from erecting new trade barriers and which require the reduction of existing ones in areas covered under the Agreement; specific obligations in 10 economic sectors – such as government purchasing, labour mobility and investment – which cover a significant amount of economic activity in Canada; the streamlining and harmonization of regulations and standards (e.g. transportation, consumer protection); a formal dispute resolution mechanism that is accessible to individuals and businesses as well as governments; and commitments to further liberalize trade through continuing negotiations and specified work programs.”

The problem is, as Mr. Wall observes, it’s worn out and obsolete. Recent international trade agreements provide foreigners, in many cases, with readier access to Canadian markets than Canadians, themselves, enjoy.

In an interview with the Halifax Chronicle-Herald last year, Corinne Pohlmann, vice-president of national affairs for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said a study her Halifax office conducted “indicated that nearly half of all small business owners want apprenticeship changes. . .It seems ironic that we are approaching a trade deal with the European Union while we have so much regulatory variation between our own provinces and territories. . .All these often conflicting restrictions on interprovincial trade and movement of skilled workers and products must seem petty when viewed from outside Canada.”

They do, indeed. Still, there is precedent for enlightenment in this country. There is, for example, the Trade, Investment and Labour Mobility Agreement (TILMA) between Alberta and British Columbia. 

Signed in 2006, its purported benefits include the scaleable opportunities (in terms of both GDP growth and job creation) possible in a fluid marketplace of nearly eight million people and an economy of more than $400 billion.

Moreover, says the Agreement, “A tradesperson such as a plumber or a welder, or a professional such as an architect or a nurse, can move to Alberta from British Columbia or vice versa and have his or her certification recognized in the new province of residence. . .Duplicate business registration and reporting requirements as well as residency requirements have been removed.”

Meanwhile, “Allowing goods, services, capital and labour to flow more freely across the Alberta-BC border (boosts) trade, makes it easier for businesses to expand into the other province, and lower costs for businesses and taxpayers. . .Open procurement policies with low thresholds help ensure that people get the best value for tax dollars. They also create more opportunities for businesses to bid on public contracts at dollar levels where small and medium-sized enterprises are able to compete.”

Perhaps, this time, Mr. Wall’s modest proposal is an idea whose time has come. 

 

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Jul 10 2014
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Education, Workplace

Building a skilled workforce begins with early education

 

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When an organization dedicated to fluffing the pillows of the country’s most pampered calls for a trans-Canada strategy for improving public education and skills training for the comparably disadvantaged, then, gentle reader, you know the worm has turned.

The barbarian one-percenters have crashed the gates that keep the remaining 99 per cent effectively penned and let slipped the dogs of democracy.     

The Canadian Council of Chief Executives is not normally prone to outbreaks of egalitarianism, but it is doing a fair job of public scolding on behalf of the working stiff these days, as its president and CEO John Manley (he of former federal, Liberal government fame) ably demonstrated in a statement earlier this week.

“As Canada’s economy evolves and grows, employers face an increasing need for highly skilled and qualified workers,” he wrote. “What is required is a broad national effort to strengthen our country’s education and training systems. Canada’s business leaders encourage the federal, provincial and territorial governments to find creative solutions to the labour market challenges that confront employers, employees, students and future generations.”

Indeed, in places, Mr. Manley sounded almost quaintly optimistic: “We urge all levels of government to work together to expand and align our country’s labour-market information systems in ways that will help more people find rewarding and fulfilling careers. Equally important is the need to harmonize apprenticeship programs, a key step in building a more balanced, highly qualified Canadian workforce.

“To ensure a high quality of life for all citizens, it’s time for a new approach and an honest conversation about what’s working and what isn’t working in Canadian education and skills training.”

He’s not wrong, of course. But neither is he original. For such a putatively great country, Canada’s various education systems and skills development programs (which are, incidentally, almost accidentally coincidental) are a national disgrace. Everybody knows it; nobody does anything about it.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development has even made a institutional project of clucking its tongue over this country’s incomprehensible approach to education. “In 2010, only one per cent of three year-olds and 48 per cent of four year-olds were enrolled in early childhood education programmes (OECD average in 2011: 67 per cent and 82 per cent, respectively),” it recently reported.

That’s only one finding of many that leads to the inescapable conclusion that almost everybody else in the developed world does a better job educating its young people. Certainly, Sweden does.

“The system of pre-school education is outstanding: (a) in its fidelity to societal values and in its attendant commitment to and respect for children; (b) in its systemic approach while respecting programmatic integrity and diversity; and (c) in its respect for teachers, parents, and the public,” the OECD declares in one of its frequent country reports.  

Then, there’s Finland, about which the OECD observes: “The early childhood education workforce has several strengths, such as a high qualification level of staff with teaching responsibilities, advanced professional development opportunities and favourable working environments. 

“Staff with teaching responsibilities are well educated and trained with high initial qualification requirements. There is broad provision of initial education, with full-time and parttime programmes provided publicly and privately. Professional development is mandatory for all staff; and training costs are shared between individual staff members, the government and employers. Working conditions in terms of staff-child ratio are among the best of OECD countries.”

Note the emphasis on “early childhood education” as opposed to primary, secondary or post-secondary schooling. That’s because almost everywhere in the OECD, except Canada, a national strategy exists to inform public policy on pre-school. Take care of that, in a structured and play-based fashion, and all the research says the rest takes care of itself. 

Some programs are are better than others, of course, but few countries limp along utterly devoid of a plan, let alone a system, for their children.

Mr. Manley and his privileged ilk are right to sound the alarm. 

But if they want real results, they ought to marshall whatever influence they possess and entreat this country’s political class to establish a trans-Canada network of early childhood education centers that integrate seamlessly into existing public school systems.  

That’s how you begin to build a truly skilled, job-ready workforce.

 

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Jul 09 2014
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Politics

Shaking off these pre-election blues

 

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For the second time in the space of six months, thousands of luckless New Brunswickers will sojourn a week or more without power. This is, without a quibble, the story of mid-summer, knocking almost everything else off the front pages of The Fourth Estate.

Sooner than we care to admit, however, the days will shorten, the shadows will lengthen and the sun-kissed air will begin to present a familiar chill. 

Suddenly, the lights are back on, the kids are toddling back to school and the rest of us are heading straight for that temporary purgatory known as a provincial election campaign.

The race for the ballot box will undoubtedly dominate the headlines day after breathless day. But, in the absence of any new, bold ideas, any workable solutions for the province, I wonder if it should. 

In fact, despite my well-worn sandwich board broadcasting my disdain for anyone who actually chooses not to vote, I’m wondering if I should sit this one out. In this respect, at least, a recent Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development survey puts me in ignoble company.

On a scale of one to 10, with 10 being the best, New Brunswick scores 5.2 relative to other regions in the country in its residents’ intention to vote. P.E.I. ranks 6.6; Quebec, 4.5; Nova Scotia, 4.3; Ontario, 4.2; British Columbia, 4.0; Manitoba, 3.8; Alberta, 3.0; Northwest Territories, 2.6; Newfoundland and Labrador, 2.3; and Nunavut, 0.9.

It’s depressing. But no more so than the stunning lack of imagination available to our various political classes – a circumstance, I hasten to add, that is not unique to New Brunswick.

Unquestionably, in this province the big issues of the past two years and foreseeable future are economic malaise and dissolution, and the commercial development of natural resources, including shale gas and pipeline construction.

Premier David Alward’s Progressive Conservative platform does address these rather concrete matters but, given the stakes, somewhat flabbily. 

“We choose to take advantage of the opportunities before us – to develop our natural resources, to promote innovation and to put in place the economic strategies that will allow business to grow and provide jobs,” his party’s website declares. “We’re saying yes to bringing our people home and building a stronger future for our province.”

Well, of course, they are. Who isn’t “saying yes” to in-migration for a change? The question is: how?     

 “Our goal is to increase the tax base in New Brunswick, so we can better fund needed public services,” the site continues. “With additional investments in healthcare, social programs and infrastructure, we’ll strengthen the quality of life for all New Brunswickers, but particularly for families, seniors, and the most vulnerable.”

That’s laudable, but, again: how? 

The provincial Tories “believe New Brunswick has an incredibly exciting and prosperous future. By putting all our resources to work here at home we can build the kind of province where we want to live, and the kind of province we want to leave our children and grandchildren. This is our time. This is New Brunswick’s time.”

In largely faux contrast Liberal Leader Brian Gallant’s messages include becoming the “smart province. . .We will revitalize our economy, create jobs and ensure that everyone has the opportunity to succeed. We Liberals believe that, properly governed, the province can offer good jobs and a good standard of living, so we can keep our people right here in New Brunswick.”

Good and proper government, it seems, means becoming “the smartest province in the country. We need to invest in education, training, and literacy. By making strategic investments in education, training and literacy. . .We can fill the skills gap. . .We can grow New Brunswick’s traditional industries. . .We can grow emerging industries. . .We can create a healthier, more socially-just province.”

In every election cycle, there is a time for grand generalizations and lofty pronouncements. In New Brunswick, that time is just about up. 

Specificity must, at some point, enter the political arena. Innovation, ingenuity and worthwhile risks must, one day, play central roles in the affairs of government. 

Call it a hurricane of decidedly welcome change this time, but it, too, would be a headline worth reading.

 

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Jul 08 2014
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Law

Ottawa to the courts: Don’t be so judgy

 

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If certain Tory Members of Parliament are beginning to suspect that the bull’s eyes painted on their backs are not, in fact, figments of their fevered, paranoid imaginations, they might be right.

Never in recent times has the gulf between the executive and judicial branches of government been so cavernous as now. Consider the latest trouncing of the Harperites by the courts, as reported recently by the Globe and Mail’s justice writer Sean Fine:

“The Conservative government’s latitude to choose its own policies was curtailed yet again on Friday when a (Federal Court) judge called health-care cuts for failed refugee claimants a form of ‘cruel and unusual treatment’ and ruled them unconstitutional.”

What’s more, he observed, “So rare is the use of Section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – ‘cruel and unusual treatment or punishment’ – that neither the government nor the refugees’ representatives were able to identify a single successful claim outside of criminal cases.”

Hardly able to contain his glee, Lorne Waldman, the lawyer for the Canadian Association of Refugee Doctors told Mr. Fine, “It’s huge – it opens up a whole new claim that we can make when we want to challenge government conduct.” 

For its part, the government remains undeterred. True to form, Immigration Minister Chris Alexander stiff-upper-lipped his reaction to the ruling, insisting he will appeal. “Failed claimants and those from safe countries like the U.S. or Europe should not be entitled to better health care than Canadians receive.” 

This is, of course, utter nonsense. Decent health care for refugee claimants (failed or successful) does not preclude similar service and treatment for citizens and immigrants. It never has.

But it is a response that’s typical of this government when it has been thwarted in pursuing its sometimes incomprehensible social agenda. And the whining, it seems, is growing louder with each passing day. 

In April, the Supreme Court slapped Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s hand by ruling that, no, he can’t just go ahead and make the Senate an elective body without the consent of the provinces, because that, dear boy, would be patently unconstitutional.

“The Senate is a core component of the Canadian federal structure of government,” the ruling read. “As such, changes that affect its fundamental nature and role engage the interests of the stakeholders in our constitutional design – i.e. the federal government and the provinces – and cannot be achieved by Parliament acting alone.”

To which Mr. Harper rejoined, just a wee bit petulantly, “(it is) a decision for the status quo, a status quo that is supported by virtually no Canadian. . .(the country has no interest in) “a bunch of constitutional negotiations. We know full well that there’s no consensus among the provinces, there’s no willingness to reopen the Canadian constitution.”

Only the month before, the Supreme Court ruled, in a precedent-setting decision, that Ottawa had no right to retroactively annul the early-parole entitlement of three federal inmates in British Columbia.

The government’s March 2011 legislation effectively, “deprive(d) the three respondents of the possibility of being considered for early day parole, which was an expectation they had had at the time they were sentenced (and) had the effect of punishing the respondents again,” the court found.

Again, the Tories were unrepentant. “Our Conservative government has been clear,” Jason Tamming, a spokesman for Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney, declared. “We do not believe that white-collar criminals and drug dealers should be released after a mere one-sixth of their sentence.”

Then, there were the kerfuffles over imposing longer prison times (nope, no can do), closing a B.C. drug clinic (we’d rather you not) and even a sketchy appointment to the Supreme Court, itself (nice try, pal, but no cigar).

In all of this, the preponderance of evidence yields one of two possible conclusions: That the various levels that comprise Canada’s justice system has it out for the sitting government and the merry pranksters it calls its cabinet ministers; or that the federal Tories know more about the ideological preferences of their voting base than they do about the actual law.

I might wish for the former, and all the court-issued bull’s eyes; but I fear that the latter is closer to the truth.

 

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Jul 07 2014
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General

The quiet joy of a smart summer read

 

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I approach The Atlantic magazine’s annual “Ideas Issue” the way a fan of Beatles’ music approaches a vintage vinyl of the “White Album”, which is to say: reverentially, lovingly and oh so carefully. 

After all, in both, there’s so much to appreciate, comprehend and, of course, misapprehend. 

Truly, consider the fun that can be had by all in the breaking nights of a martini-soaked summer by arguing the significance of Helter Skelter’s lyrics (“When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide/ Where I stop and I turn and I go for a ride/Till I get to the bottom and I see you again”) and the fact that this year’s “Ideas” edition of The Atlantic features line drawings of both John Lennon and Paul McCartney on its front cover. 

It’s kismit, baby. 

And so, apparently, is innovation, even in magazines these days.

Explaining why he chose not one but three covers to grace his publication this month (one after another), The Atlantic’s creative director, Darhil Crooks, writes, “The theme of The Atlantic’s annual Ideas Issue this year is creativity – which is a hard concept to define, let alone to illustrate. We could have gone with an illuminated lightbulb, or photographed Brad Pitt painting at an easel, but those options didn’t seem very. . .creative. Most of the time, we derive our cover image from one specific story. But this time we thought, why not produce a collection of covers, using each one to showcase a different approach to examining and conveying creativity?”

Why not, indeed? 

Cover Number One features the iconic songwriting duo from the sixties and asks whether genius is a solitary encumbrance, or a shared misery. Cover Number Two examines the science of creativity and whether mental illness and IQ are inextricably linked (something I’ve wondered for just about my entire life). Cover Number Three recounts “tales of creativity”, the “breakthroughs, borrowings, revisions, and bold decisions behind the work of highly creative people, from Beyonce to the lead designer of Google Glass.” 

In a monolithic media industry that believes it enhances itself by repeating itself (think Toronto Star and Rob Ford), The Atlantic manages its originality almost defiantly.

Here, there’s James Parker on “The Twee Revolution. . .a terrifying aesthetic” that is “taking over America.” thanks to the likes of filmmaker Wes Anderson, actress Zooey Deschanel and “Brooklynites on bicycles”.

Here, there’s a piece by Joe Pinsker on “punctuated equilibrium” in which he asks whether “autocorrect” will “save the apostrophe, and slow language’s evolution. . .(because) our brains seem to become less vigilant when we know a grammatical safety net will catch us.”

A somewhat more sober article by Gordon Goldstein, a former member of the U.S. delegation to the World Conference on International Telecommunications, asks whether the Internet, as we know it, is fated to go the way of the dinosaur. 

“The World Wide Web celebrated its 25th birthday recently,” he writes. “Today, the global network serves almost three billion people, and hundreds of thousands more join each day. If the Internet were a country, its economy would be among the five largest in the world.”

On the other hand, he notes, “fierce and rising geopolitical conflict over control of the global network threatens to create a balkanized system – what some technorati, including Google’s executive chairman, Eric Schmidt, have called “the splinternet.’”

That would be a shame. Without the free research and weird facts and figures literally at my fingertips, I’d probably have to stop scribbling for a living and do something honest if as equally unremunerative, such as farming.

Still, The Atlantic always manages to put me in touch with my inner reader, the one I knew well as a kid growing up without the benefits ample screen time. 

The Internet has taught us how to scan for information quickly. We’ve forgotten how to drink deeply from the well spring of ideas that a good, slow summer read offers. Thank God, we still have a few old-fashioned, paper-bound magazines like The Atlantic to remind us. 

 

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