Author Archives: brucescribe

Aug 20 2014
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Business, Politics

Shale gas lawsuit puts government credibility on the line

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The New Brunswick government ritually boasts it maintains the toughest, most circumspect regulatory standards for shale gas in North America. But that’s faint comfort if those responsible for enforcing them don’t actually know what they say.

No doubt to the grim satisfaction of opponents of the controversial drilling technique – who have always mistrusted officialdom’s supreme confidence in the structural integrity of its knowledge bank – a glaring case in point now plays out on the front pages of provincial newspapers.

According to Legislative reporter Adam Huras, documents obtained by Brunswick News show that the Department of Natural Resources was advised that an exploration company complied with the law (when it undertook seismic testing within the borders of the municipality of Sussex) before government officials issued a press release that stated precisely the opposite.

That announcement, on behalf of then-Natural Resources Minister Bruce Northrup, on November 9, 2011, read, in part: “I wish to inform the public that a complaint has been filed by the Department of Natural Resources with the RCMP alleging Windsor Energy Inc. of Calgary, Alta., violated the Oil and Natural Gas Act by directing a contracted company to conduct geophysical exploration within the boundaries of the Town of Sussex.

“Under regulation 86-191 of the Oil and Natural Gas Act, a municipality’s written permission is required before geophysical activity can be conducted inside the boundaries of an incorporated municipality.”

The epistle then concluded on a note of supreme sanctimony: “New Brunswickers can be assured that all companies exploring for or developing oil and natural gas reserves in our province are expected to observe our laws and that we will ensure these laws are upheld. The rules we have in place and those now being developed to strengthen our regulatory framework are intended to protect our people and our environment, and must be respected.”

Regrettably – if only for the government – it appears that Windsor violated no laws; that it was obligated to obtain permission to test from either the town (which it did not consult) or the Province (which it did), but not necessarily both.

Certainly, the company’s CEO, Khalid Amin, is sure Windsor did nothing wrong. Now, he’s suing the provincial government for $100 million alleging that Mr. Northrup’s comments in the November press release and the follow-up RCMP investigation (which produced no charges, naturally) were libelous.

There is much to ponder in all of this, starting with the investigative reporter’s credo: Who knew what, when?

The chain of correspondence at the end of October, 2011, clearly shows one Charles Murray, a lawyer attached to Communications New Brunswick, strongly advising Natural Resources to cool its jets: “It would perhaps have been good form or or polite of them (Windsor) to obtain the permission of both (the town and the Province). . .It was not, however, required under the provisions of the regulations. . .Given that, I am not at all in favour of the minister stating that Windsor violated the province’s Oil and Natural Gas Act.”

You can’t get any more categorical than that. So, then, why did government officials ignore the advice in its entirety? Did they believe they had a steadier grip on the relevant legislation than did the attorney they presumably paid to advise them on the one thing about which lawyers know more than anybody: the law?

According to Mr. Huras’s report, the emails he obtained “also show that government staff asked the RCMP not to publicly reveal the reason why the investigation into Windsor’s seismic work in the Sussex area would not result in charges.”

That’s predictable. Stupid, but predictable.

In situations like these, the only reason why the cops would not pursue charges  is that they believe the subject of their investigation committed no infraction.

In this case, expunging a talking point from a communications strategy isn’t going to prevent anyone from coming to that conclusion, or that the provincial government’s ham-handed stick-handling of the whole affair undermines public confidence in its ability to administer and regulate the shale gas industry in New Brunswick.

After all, why is the original, offending statement – the one over which Mr. Amin is suing the Province – still posted to the Department of Natural Resources’ website, still out there in the public domain in all its taunting glory?

Forget about this government knowing what its own regulations say.

Does it even know what it’s doing?

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Aug 19 2014
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Economy, Government

Crunching the numbers that don’t add up

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Perhaps it was in the air over at Statistics Canada, but an embarrassing misadventure underestimating jobs growth in the country this summer seems oddly appropriate for an agency that’s missing 20 per cent of its staff and $30 million of its budget.

Still, that was one doozy of a blunder.

Earlier this month, the federal numbers-crunching organization reported that the Canadian economy created a mere 200 positions in July, far fewer than economists had been expecting. Then, just last week, officials issued a statement confirming that the actual number was 42,000:   

“An error has been detected in the processing of the August 8 Labour Force Survey release. This error impacts only the July 2014 estimates. The source of the error has been identified.”

What’s more, “Statistics Canada takes this matter very seriously and is immediately launching a review of the data verification processes in place. This does not affect other statistical programs. A report on the results of the review will be published on the Statistics Canada website as soon as it is available.”

It’s not then end of the world, of course. But the mistake caught many economists by surprise, given the agency’s well-earned, international billing for accuracy and verisimilitude.

“I struggle to think of a comparable foul-up anywhere in the world,” wrote Derek Holt, vice-president of Scotiabank Economics, in a memo to the investment community. “The revisions are broad sweeping and affected every major measure in a highly significant manner. Theories regarding how one single factor could be responsible for the revisions went straight out the window as StatsCan pointed to a systems error that affected everything.”

In an interview with the Globe and Mail, he added, “I think they (StatsCan) are still among the elite statistical agencies in the world. There’s no doubting that this was an uncharacteristic but rather large mistake. . .on this particular one that unfortunately blemishes what is otherwise a pretty solid reputation.”

Jim Stanford, an economist with Unifor, the largest private-sector union in Canada, goes further.

“I can’t say whether the funding cutbacks and the siege atmosphere that is evident at Statistics Canada contributed to this particular mistake, but they certainly have contributed to Statistics Canada tarnished reputation,” he told the Globe. “You’ve had a government now for eight years that’s often hostile to what I would call fact-based policy discussion and I do believe that has diminished Statistics Canada’s standing.”

He has a point.

In 2010, when the federal government announced it was scrapping the mandatory long-form census in favour of a “voluntary” household survey, editorials across Canada screeched their opprobrium. The nation’s two top statisticians, Munir Sheikh and Phil Cross, actually resigned their posts at StatsCan in diaphanously concealed protest.

In a news release, Mr. Sheikh wrote that while he could not “reveal and comment on (the) advice” he gave the government “because this information is protected under the law,” he wanted to “take this opportunity to comment on a technical statistical issue which has become the subject of media discussion. This relates to the question of whether a voluntary survey can become a substitute for a mandatory census. . .It can not.”

Indeed, last summer Robert Gerst, a partner in charge of operational excellence and research and statistical methods at Calgary-based Converge Consulting Group Inc., had choice words for the federal government’s evident preference for voodoo science over rigorous research.

“Take the first data releases from the national household survey of Statistics Canada,” he wrote in a commentary for the Waterloo Region Record. “The quality of the results has come under criticism because the voluntary survey replaced the compulsory long-form census questionnaire. In effect, this replaced a random sample with a non-random sample. Non-random samples have their place, but making conclusions about the population isn’t one of them.

Naturally, then, “no conclusions about the Canadian population can be drawn from the national household survey.”

The monthly Labour Force Survey is not the same type of beast. Given the rigorous process on which it depends, it should be virtually immune to errors.

That it is not is a troubling sign that, thanks to limited resources and battered morale, mistakes might well become a statistically meaningful trend at Canada’s numbers-crunching agency.

Aug 18 2014
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Politics, Society

The prodigal pothead returns

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Stoners say the darnedest things. Take Marc Emery, for example. He’s Canada’s “Prince of Pot”, just released from a four-and-a-half-year long American hoosegow, courtesy of the state of Mississippi.

“Everywhere I go there have been well-wishers, even people who I don’t think agree with marijuana legalization think that maybe it’s a bit rough to have someone go away for five years over seeds,” the activist, who was sent up the river for running a mail-order marijuana seed company, told a reporter for the Toronto Sun last week.

Still, that was mild in comparison to other things he has said. Just ask Margaret Wente, the Globe and Mail’s delightfully irascible current affairs columnist. In one of her commentaries last week, she wrote, “Despite the public adulation, Mr. Emery is among the most obnoxious jerks in Canadian public life,” she wrote. “And I say this as someone who thinks it’s past time to relax the laws on weed.

“He’s a relentless self-promoter who’s compared himself to Gandhi and Martin Luther King. He insists that the persecution of people who smoke pot is the moral equivalent of the persecution of the Jews.

“In his most despicable, he called Irwin Cotler, the former federal justice minister, a ‘Nazi-Jew’ for allowing the United States to extradite him. Mr. Cotler is a Liberal who campaigns passionately against anti-Semitism.”

Well, gee, Peggy, why not try saying what’s on your mind for a change?

Methinks, however, her larger point is that because Mr. Emery is so objectionable  (at least to her), his support for legalizing pot undermines the principle, itself. This is a neat trick of tortured logic that some of us in the screed-making game make from time to time (me included).

Much has changed since Mr. Emery went to prison. Colorado and Washington has legalized marijuana for recreational use. President Barack Obama has openly joked about his yputhful adventures with weed, apparently to no ill effect on his standing in public opinion pools, which, in any case, couldn’t get much worse. And federal Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau is calling to make the stuff legit.

And why not? Actual experts on this subject generally reject the proposition that the billions of dollars governments in Canada and the United States have spent fighting the so-called drug war over the past 30-or-more years have been worthy investments.

According to the International Centre for Science in Drug Policy last year, its “researchers reviewed two decades of global drug surveillance data, finding that the supply of major illegal drugs has increased, as measured through a decline in the price, while there has been a corresponding general increase in the purity of illegal drugs.”

This moved the Centre’s Scientific Chair Dr. Evan Wood (a co-author of the study) to state: “These findings add to the growing body of evidence that the war on drugs has failed. We should look to implement policies that place community health and safety at the forefront of our efforts, and consider drug use a public health issue rather than a criminal justice issue. With the recognition that efforts to reduce drug supply are unlikely to be successful, there is a clear need to scale up addiction treatment and other strategies that can effectively reduce drug-related harm.”

In fact, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, former President of Brazil and Chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy, agreed when he stated: “In response to a study like this, policymakers often say ‘drugs are harmful so they must be kept illegal’. What they fail to consider is, as this and other research suggests, that drugs are more harmful – to society, individuals, and the taxpayer – precisely because they are illegal. Some European countries have taken steps to decriminalize various drugs, and these types of policies should be explored in Latin and North America as well.”

Already, a sizable chunk of Canadians support decriminalizing pot, if not actually legalizing it.

All of which is to say that Mr. Emery can yak on about anything that fancies him. That’s what a man on a mission (a.k.a. media hound) does, stoned or not. It won’t affect  the ultimate outcome.

On this issue, if with few others, the momentum of the age is with common sense.

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Aug 15 2014
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Politics

Liberal jobs plan is much ado about nothing

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An economic development agency by any other name would smell just as. . .what? Musty? Stale? Rank? Surely, the appropriate adjective is not “sweet”.

Our history with such creatures of bureaucratic imagining in New Brunswick is not stellar. At worst, these government units have functioned as rubber stamps for multi-million-dollar adventures in politically motivated corporate welfare. (Can you spell A-t-c-o-n)?

More often, too often, they’ve served as repositories of senior civil servants, grandfathering out of their jobs en route to comparatively fat pensions, picking up, during their final periods of service to the taxpayers who pay their salaries, handy tips for reinventing themselves as private-sector consultants. For them, perhaps, “entrepreneurship” never smelled sweeter.

So when Liberal Leader Brian Gallant insists that what the province needs now is more of the same, but, of course, completely different, one is inclined hold one’s nose before stooping to sniff that particular flower.

Still, he’s adamant. According to a report this week in the Telegraph-Journal, “Gallant said (his) proposed Opportunities NB differs from the current Invest NB because it would report to government through its board of private sector members rather than through the civil service. He added that the new Crown corporation will target ‘high-growth sectors’.”

In the interests of explication, he said, “right now, Invest NB has six vaguely defined sectors that they are trying to prioritize. We think we have to pick a few and become really good at it.”

Quick question: When are “six sectors” not “a few”?

Dunno, but the T-J reports that this political hopeful thinks that information and communication technology will be one of his priorities. Guess what? That’s also one of Premier David Alward’s cherished sectors, and has been since his election in 2010.

So, then, one is forced to ask, again, how does the proposed Opportunities NB differ substantially from the existing Invest NB, apart from the name?

Is it in the composition of the board, itself? Will its private-sector members enjoy carte blanche to pursue investment opportunities to their logical conclusion, without interference from government bureaucrats – as has, from time to time, the Greater Halifax Partnership?

Or will it more likely become another sounding board for official government policy (meaning courtly inaction) full of sound and fury, signifying nothing?

Stranger still, are Grit plans to take over job creation in the province. The second shoe that drops in Mr. Gallant’s grand scheme to reinvent New Brunswick’s labour market finds purchase in this excerpt from the T-J piece: “Under the proposed economic model, the Liberals would. . .decentralize the role of job creation to other departments. The Liberals would also create a board, headed by Liberal Leader Brian Gallant, to co-ordinate economic development initiatives across government.”

What’s more, the presumptive premier would then lord over the new jobs board like a latter-day Solomon issuing edicts to a body that “would be made up of all ministers and deputy ministers of the principal economic departments and chairpersons and CEOs of all economic Crown Corporations.”

Indeed, “the board would set government policy on jobs, establish targets for job creation, and hold government agencies and personnel accountable for meeting job creation objectives.”

So much for “decentralizing the role of job creation to other departments.” So much for an independent, private-sector board at the new Opportunities NB.

It all seems so gravely familiar, musty, stale and rank.

Mr. Gallant began his campaign to become the next premier of New Brunswick bravely and boldly, if a little naively, by emphasizing, in his platform, the primacy of education and sensibly administered health care. He rightly admonished the current Progressive Conservative government for failing on both accounts.

Now, he retreats behind the window-dressing of policies that will not, in fact, enhance economic capacity in this province, but only add public sector costs to the growing deficit and debt without any clear promise of return on investment.

He has, in effect, forgotten his Shakespeare.

In New Brunswick, the central conundrum is, as it was for the fictional Prince of Denmark, to be or not to be; that is the question.

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Aug 14 2014
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Politics

Politicos in no mood to give straight answers

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How sadly predictable are the prescriptions New Brunswick’s political leaders now issue  to treat the provinces’s various and chronic maladies.

Asked repeatedly to speak plainly, boldly and fearlessly about innovative, even radical, remedies for the runaway illnesses of budget-sapping deficits and debt, they pour bromides instead.

Consider their responses to two questions the organization that owns this newspaper posed recently: Would your party consider hospital closures; and does there need to be a change in the size of the public service?

Anyone with even a mote of appreciation for the challenges of health care in a province whose population is simultaneously shrinking and aging recognizes that New Brunswick hosts too many primary care facilities doing too many of the wrong things in  too many of the wrong places.

Of course, we should shutter some hospitals. We should also reconstitute and strengthen geriatric care in community health centres and consolidate emergency medical services wherever such moves do not compromise the quality of, and access to, the services, themselves.

Saskatchewan, a province with population comparable in size to New Brunswick and under similar fiscal circumstances to ours, managed to revamp its health care system in the 1990s.

So, then, gentlemen on the hustings, what say you?

“We’re not in the business of closing hospitals,” declares People’s Alliance Leader Kris Austin. And just what business are they in? “What we are in the business of is finding ways to create a better system whereby people can have access.”

Brilliant.

But no more so, perhaps, than Green Party Leader David Coon’s response: “In the abstract, there is no reason to rule anything out, but in the concrete does it (closing hospitals) make sense? I have no idea.”

Meanwhile Liberal Leader Brian Gallant is in a decidedly conditional mood: “If we can grow our economy, if we can create jobs, if we listen to people on the front lines about how we can be more efficient, more productive, if we ensure that we are more proactive about our health care system. . .we will be able to keep and maintain the infrastructure that we have.”

Sure, and if my grandmother wore a mustache, she’d be my grandfather. Sorry, Mr. Gallant, but wishing for a fundamental change in the fabric of reality does not a health care policy make.

Still, yours is a better answer than this from our current fearless leader, Premier David Alward: “We are focused to be able to build a foundation for an economy based on natural resource development, based on innovation, based on investing in our people so they have the right skills and that will allow us to be able to continue and invest smarter in health care, in hospitals, as we go forward.”

So, is that ‘yes’ or ‘no’? Would your party consider hospital closures?

Never mind. Let’s move on. What about the size of the public service? Whaddya think, men? Too big? Too small? Or just perfect?

You first, Mr. Coon: “Let’s just be practical. .and say, ‘OK, do we need these people to do this work to deliver a good public service and are they in the right places?’”

Yeah, but didn’t we just ask you that?

You next, Mr. Cardy: “It’s not a question of adding or subtracting people. . . It’s a question of what do we need to deliver the public services people want.”

Actually, the question that’s currently on the table is whether we can afford to pay for a civil service that numbers 50,000 in a province whose total population tops out at 750,000 on a good day. That’s among the highest per capita concentration of public workers in Canada.

Yes, Mr. Gallant; I see you have your hand up: “We are going to do a program review and that means we are going to look at every program, every department and every ministry to fully understand where every dollar is going.”

Fair enough, then. You’ll get back to us.

Finally, you Mr. Alward: “We’ve been clear from square one going back to our previous platform in 2010 – we believe that we need to continue to lean the size of the public service. We’ve done that in a very responsible way through attrition.”

Forget it, Mr. Premier. You had me at “lean the size of. . .”

Alas, it seems, a politician’s determination to turn a noun into a verb to express the virtue in maintaining the status quo is about as innovative and radical as it gets in this pretty little tableau of a province.

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Aug 13 2014
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Humour, Society

The incredible shrinking man mourns our dietary obsessions

Big and bigger cavemen rejoice

Big and bigger cavemen rejoice

If I were a caveman, living 30,000 years ago, I would, in all likelihood, resemble Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1970s and not Woody Allen in the 1970s. That’s because my caveman antecedent (and Arnold) ate meat, eggs, nuts, fruit and that’s about it; whereas Woody and I ate bagels.

I can’t speak for one of my favorite (if diminutive) filmmakers, but Elizabeth Kolbert can. She’s a staffer at the New Yorker magazine. She’s also a former Fulbright scholar and, recently, the author of “The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History”.

So, I assume she knows what she’s talking about when she pronounces, as she does in a recent issue of her esteemed organ, “According to a study of human remains from China and Japan, the height of the average person declined by more than three inches during the millennia in which rice cultivation intensified. According to another study, of bones from Mesoamerica, women’s heights dropped by three inches and men’s by two inches as farming spread.”

Indeed, she writes, “A recent survey of more than twenty studies on this subject, published in the journal Economics and Human Biology, found that the adoption of agriculture ‘was observed to decrease stature in populations from across the entire globe,’ including in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and South America.”

And that’s not all: “Early farmers were not just shorter than hunter-gatherers; they were also more sickly. They had worse teeth – one analysis from the Near East suggests that the incidence of cavities jumped sixfold as people started relying on grain – and they suffered from increased rates of anemia and infectious disease. Many now familiar infections – measles, for instance – require high population densities to persist; thus, it wasn’t until people established towns and cities that such ‘crowd epidemic diseases’ could flourish. And, by living in close proximity to their equally crowded farm animals, early agriculturalists helped to bring into being a whole set of diseases that jumped from livestock to people.”

In fact, according to Ms. Kolbert and her expert authorities, it took thousands of years for humankind to recover its physical stature following the so-called Agricultural Revolution of the Neolithic Age.

To be clear, it took me only 27 months to get to a fighting, palaeolithic, trim weight of 150 pounds (waist size of 30 inches), from a relatively corpulent 180 pounds (waist size of. . .well, let’s just say, capable of eclipsing my view of my shoe tips). I did it by obsessively exercising daily and adjusting my diet and portion sizes.

As a result, my blood pressure is delightfully low (when, not too long ago, it was alarmingly high), my cholesterol is standing where it did when I was a callow youth of 17. I have more energy and enthusiasm for everything (which is fortunate, given that my beautiful daughters and their husbands have, in the past five years, given me four grandchildren).

I still stand only five-foot-nine and a bit on a good day (nothing I can do about that – thanks Agricultural Revolution!). But, generally, I feel pretty good for a man who’s about to matriculate into his 54th year.

But here’s the thing: The so-called paleo-diet fad has conquered the affluent corner of the western world, and to almost fascistic effect.

As Ms. Kolbert writes: “In promoting red meat and rejecting grains, the paleo diet challenges just about every precept that nutritionists have been pushing for the past fifty years. In effect, it turns the familiar food pyramid on its point. This is an increasingly common inversion, if not in academic circles or at the U.S. Department of Agriculture then on the talk-show circuit. In his wildly popular manifesto-cum-recipe book, ‘Grain Brain,’ David Perlmutter, a Naples, Florida, neurologist, maintains that sandwiches are not just hard on the digestive system; they wreak havoc on the mind. ‘Modern grains are silently destroying your brain,’ he writes. ‘Basically, I am calling what is arguably our most beloved dietary staple a terrorist group.’”

Is he joking? Does Woody Allen know about this?

Chill out, doc. The chances are that your inner caveman will appreciate the odd P-P-J on Wonder Bread, if only to prove that the species is just a tad more digestively adaptable than a young Arnold would allow.

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Aug 12 2014
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Government, Politics

Redford to the masses: Let ‘em eat cake!

When the rock is a hard place, it's usually government thinking it's a friggin' balloon

When the rock is a hard place, it’s usually government thinking it’s a friggin’ balloon

There is something decidedly Bev Oda about Alison Redford. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but the two of them share a certain je ne sais quoi, a certain let ‘em eat cake mentality, a certain – how shall I put this? – aura of power.

Actually, that’s not my phrase. It belongs to Merwan Saher, Alberta’s Auditor-General. Speaking to reporters last week about his report on Ms. Redford’s financial dalliances whilst serving as premier of that province (she’s since left both the job and her position as Progressive Conservative MLA), Mr. Saher said, “This is the sense we had  – that this working around rules, this tendency even to ignore rules, is to fulfill requests coming from the premier’s office in ways that avoided leaving the premier with personal responsibility for those decisions.”

Of course, compared with Ms. Redford, Bev Oda, former federal minister for International Cooperation, is a lightweight in the entitlement department. Before Prime Minister Stephen Harper “retired” her in 2012, she was justly famous for charging a $16 glass of orange juice in a London hotel back to Canadian taxpayers.

Ms. Redford, on the other hand, once spent $825 on a single hotel room (according to the Globe and Mail), had her staff block-book seats on airplanes for people who didn’t exist just so she could get a little more legroom, and spent nearly half-a-million bucks on a trip to Switzerland.

Specifically, Mr. Saher’s report bluntly states: “Premier Redford and her office used public resources inappropriately. They consistently failed to demonstrate in the documents we examined that their travel expenses were necessary and a reasonable and appropriate use of public resources – in other words, economical and in support of a government business objective.”

What’s more, says the report, “Premier Redford used public assets (aircraft) for personal and partisan purposes. And Premier Redford was involved in a plan to convert public space in a public building into personal living space.”

Finally, comes this stinging rebuke: “No public servant, not even a premier, should be excused from vigilant oversight of their compliance with policies and processes designed both to protect the public interest and themselves from bad judgement.

And what does the former Princess of the Oil Patch have to say for herself? 

“I had hoped to have more time to do more of what I promised Albertans,” she wrote recently in the Edmonton Journal. “There were many issues we could tackle quickly – a new social policy framework, equality rights, better funding for mental health, disaster responses in the north and south, funding for teachers, Assured Income for the Severely Handicapped, a single regulator and sustainable energy development, a more rational royalty framework, and opening new trade offices. I am proud of the Safe Communities Agenda for Alberta, and the Social Policy Framework that helped to prevent vulnerable youth from following the path of addiction, crime and homelessness. I truly believe we made a difference.”

At the same time, she conceded, “There were also many issues that we needed to deal with that were always going to take longer to fix, for two reasons. First, they were complicated, and second, many had been neglected for too long and there was entrenched resistance to new approaches. That is a reality and a dilemma in public life. It is necessary to be bold and confident, but there is always reluctance to look ahead and to face challenges as well as opportunities. It is easier to look back, to what we know and understand. Moving forward is more difficult, particularly in a province as blessed as Alberta.”

I’ll say it’s blessed. Ask any Maritimer who can’t afford bus fare, let alone plane tickets and hotel rooms. That’s what you get when you have more money than God. In fact, if you’re Alison Redford, you don’t actually need His blessing at all.

Just a little of what Mr. Saher calls “bad judgement” and an “aura of power.”

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Aug 11 2014
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Democracy, Sports

Is artificial turf unfair to women?

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Several, world-class women footballers claim that their sport’s governing body has all but relegated them to second-class status by forcing them to play on artificial turf in next year’s FIFA Women’s World Cup in Canada. But has it?

The question, which is important for many reasons of fairness, also contains a local, practical dimension. Moncton, one of six Canadian host cities for the women’s event, covered its stadium’s grass soccer field with the phony stuff on orders from FIFA. It cost the municipality $500,000, or a third of the total price.

“New irrigation was installed and then what you’re seeing is this spring they were able to finish that subsurface and then install what they call in the industry, the carpet or the artificial turf,” Stéphane Delisle, venue general manager of the event, said in May. “The surface is one example of FIFA’s mandate to ensure that we’re offering literally a level and equitable playing field for all of the participants.”

Some elite players beg to differ. Now, they are threatening legal action against FIFA for gender discrimination.

“We just saw the World Cup in Brazil,” Carrie Serwetnyk, an ex-player for Canada and the brains behind the non-profit Equal Pay, told the CBC last week.

“We just know there’s absolutely no way the men would play on fake grass. It would be a scandal. So to think it’s OK for the Women’s World Cup to be played on artificial turf, what kind of a message does that send?”

Added the women’s lawyer, Hampton Dellinger: “We know there’s no doubt that the men would not be asked to play on a second-class surface for their world class tournament. They weren’t this year in Brazil, it’s already been established that the men’s World Cup tournaments in 2018 and 2022 will be on grass. There’s no reason the women should be treated as second-class.”

Moreover, he said, “There’s certainly a very credible range of evidence that artificial turf poses a greater and unique danger versus grass pitches, particularly at the highest level. Obviously the only place you can have turf burns – and these are serious, they can really be incapacitating to a player – is on an artificial pitch.”

The problem is that there is also a “very credible range of evidence” that suggests just the opposite: That artificial turf is, at least statistically, no more injury-inducing than natural grass.

According to an article entitled, “A Meta-Analysis of Soccer Injuries on Artificial Turf and Natural Grass”, in the Journal of Sports Medicine last year, researchers “examined eight studies that compared soccer injury rates occurring on artificial turf and natural grass. In total, these studies report nearly 1.5 million hours of training and match play and almost 10,000 injuries. The adjusted injury rate ratios for all injures was significantly less than 1.0 indicating lower incidence rates for playing and training on artificial turf. For specific categories and specific injuries, several injury rate ratios values were less than 1.0. In no case did we find an injury rate ratios value significantly greater than 1.0.”

Indeed, last year, Justin Shaginaw, Athletic Trainer for US Soccer Federation, reported on his sports blog that just as many studies support artificial turf as do natural grass and “since the research doesn’t give us a definitive answer regarding injury rates and artificial turf. . .we know that the greater the traction, the higher the rate of injury. Wearing cleats made specifically for artificial turf, or better yet turf shoes, may help to decrease traction and therefore reduce lower extremity injuries.

“We can apply this same thought process to grass regarding increased traction and increased injury rates. Unfortunately, there may be a decrease in performance as shoes with less traction may cause players to slip.”   

None of which is likely to convince the potential litigants against FIFA. To them, the issue is one of fairness.

Elite athletes – both men and women – have long expressed their preference for natural grass. Is it fair that FIFA accedes to the males and not the females it represents?

On the other hand, is this treatment of women tantamount to gender discrimination when even the experts can’t decide which is the superior playing surface?

In the end, it will likely be communities like Moncton, where the games occur, that provide the answers.

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Aug 08 2014
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Municipal Affairs, Politics

Where’s Rob Ford when you need him?

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Time was when a good, old-fashioned political scandal in this country involved equal measures of illicit drugs and public inebriation.

Now, according to the Globe and Mail this week, the mayor of Brampton, Ontario, Susan Fennell, has been accused of improperly charging $172,608 to the municipal credit card, which she used to pay for “hotel upgrades, flight passes and even IQ quizzes. . .on her cell phone.”

One wonders how that last one worked out for her. The auditors, in any case, aren’t waiting around to find out; they are less interested in the details of her preoccupations than in the scope of her alleged public pinching.

Says the Globe piece: “An expense scandal has been simmering since last fall, but it wasn’t until a four-month audit was completed this week by Deloitte Canada that the extent of the mayor’s breaches of the city’s spending policy were revealed, highlighting and high level of dysfunction in Canada’s ninth-largest city.”

Specifically, Deloitte found that the burgermeister of this burb of 600,000 souls had violated the codebook 266 times and possibly more, since Ms. Fennell couldn’t provide details about 72 other spending excursions.

Naturally, her fellow councillors are livid. “We certainly didn’t sit around this table and approve first-class travel and luxury hotel rooms,” said Elaine Moore, who is no fan of the mayor on a good day. “I think what we have is an attitude of compete disregard for taxpayers’ dollars.”

What irks and astonishes others who are not privy to the traditional perks of municipal office is the lack of procedures in place to enforce spending policy. Says the Globe: “In February, 2011, councillors voted 7-2 to. . .allow members to approve their own claims. . .It’s a move that;s baffled observers.”

Indeed, exclaimed Susan Crawford of the city’s Board of Trade, “There’s no corporation in our country that doesn’t have an oversight function in terms of expenses – recording them, reviewing them and approving them,”

Still, is Ms. Fennell worried? Commenting on her colleagues‘ demand for a criminal investigation into her activities, she smirked, “Do you want to stick to the (Ontario Provincial Police or do you want to double-check the proper protocol with Peel, OPP, RCMP, CSIS, the army?”

Elsewhere in Public Service Land, where the roads are paved with gold and no one need ever check his bank account, scandal-plagued former Alberta Premier Alison Redford penned her goodbyes to the citizens of the Wild Rose province.

“I am stepping down immediately as MLA for Calgary-Elbow to start the next chapter of my life, teaching and resuming work in international development and public policy,” she wrote in the Edmonton Journal this week. “I recognize that mistakes were made along the way. In hindsight, there were many things I would have done differently. That said, I accept responsibility for all the decisions I have made.”

Oh really? According to the CBC, which obtained an advance copy of Alberta Auditor-General Merwan Saher’s report on the former premier’s spending habits, “false passengers” appeared on several government flights. Ms. Redford’s staff would routinely ‘cancel’ the manifest at the last minute, thus “making it possible for (her) to fly alone with her entourage.”

The CBC report continued: “(The A-G) also concluded Redford derived a “personal benefit” by taking her daughter on dozens of government flights. Saher raises the question of whether Redford’s desire to take her daughter on out-of-province trips may have influenced the decision to use government aircraft rather than commercial carriers.”

Again, just as in Brampton, the peasants are revolting. Jim Lightbody, a University of Alberta political scientist can scarcely believe his eyes. “It reveals a scarcely disguised contempt for taxpayers’ money,” he told the CBC.

Indeed, it does. But that also seems to be the way the circus is heading these days. 

Earlier this summer, Joe Fontana – the former mayor of London, Ontario, having been convicted of fraud and breach of trust (charges that stemmed from his time serving as  federal Liberal cabinet minister) – was sentenced to four months of house detention and several more of probation.

Former Conservative senator Mike Duffy faces 31 charges of fraud, breach of trust and bribery. Who knows what’s happening in the Pamela Wallin case, as the RCMP continues its investigation into her expenses?

It all makes one yearn for a little illicit-drug and public-inebriation action.

Dear Rob Ford: Won’t you come out and play?

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Aug 08 2014
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Personal History

Ode to a summertime moment

Beyond the headland, off to meet the horizon

Beyond the headland, off to meet the horizon

The view from the base of the old Ash that hangs precariously over the equally ancient woodshed at the edge of the family property on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore hasn’t changed in 75 years. Not, at least, in any way that you’d notice.

A ten-acre field of high grass stretches down to a spruce and fir tree line. A jumble of broken trunks and scrub give way to a tidal pond which nearly encircles a drumlin of scrappy forest that overlooks the mighty Chedabucto Bay.

You could walk a straight path from the shed to the shore, and do that all day, back and forth, and never meet another soul. This is, after all, a part of the world for the leaving of things, not for the returning.

According to a Statistics Canada survey, Guysborough is the least populous and prosperous county in Nova Scotia. The number of residents three years ago was just over 8,000, or roughly two for every square kilometer, earning $20,000 less in any given year than the average Haligonian.

In fact, the population has been shrinking (along with wages) since 1871, from a high of 16,555 to a low three years ago of 8,143, which was, itself, a 10 per cent drop since 2006.

What’s happened to Guysborough is now happening all across the Maritimes. This eastern district was merely among the first to send the flower of its youth to points west. Of course, the restless, generational search for work is bred in virtually all rural bones down here.

“Wave after wave of Maritimers have left their beloved homeland, rolling westward again and again to seek jobs up and down the Atlantic seaboard, in the American midwest and far west, in Quebec, Ontario, the Prairies, British Columbia, and the northern territories,” my father, the writer Harry Bruce, penned in his lengthy love letter to the region, “Down Home”, in 1988. “Leaving Home has long outlasted the  golden age of sail as part of their heritage.”

Indeed, it has. But sometimes on a soft, mid-summer afternoon, when the view of the bay from the base of the old Ash is clear and bright, you get a rousing sense of alternatives. History need not always repeat itself in exactly the same nauseating way.

You cock your ear to the merry squeals of your three-year-old grandson robustly engaging a soccer ball and his substantially older (and vastly more patient) cousins on the field beside the main house.

Meanwhile, your sister and her husband are attempting to dislodge a toy airplane made of balsa wood from the lower canopy of a maple tree into which it has careened.

Evident experts on such matters, they take turns hurling various items, purloined from the woodshed, at the flyer, until a garden rake becomes firmly wedged in the elbow  of a large branch. Now airplane and rake appear determined to remain where they are until at least the first nor’easter blows through.

You could solve their problem in an instant. There’s a ladder in the shed next to the winter wood. But you wonder. . .

“Leave this to me,” you shout, as you leap from your perch and start bounding towards the maple.

You gaze straight up and with one determined leap wrap your arms and legs around the trunk and commence to shimmy in a manner that’s both workable and undistinguished.

Stepping nimbly among the branches, you manage to guide a homemade contraption from the sibling ground crew to their quarries and, eventually, shake loose both rake and flyer.

Safely back on the ground, you cheerfully accept the applause of your family and marvel at the sheer effort it has taken to coordinate this reunion – harder than climbing a tree at age 53 – in this most out-of-the-way spot in the backwoods of Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore, where the population has, nevertheless, if only for a summertime moment, spiked by eight.

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