Category Archives: Politics

Oct 03 2013
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Politics, Security

Big Brother wants a blood test

The truth has gone to ground

The truth has gone to ground

The only aspect of Canadian Justice Minister Peter MacKay’s flirtation with the notion of sampling and storing the DNA of suspects to serious crimes is its undue caution. Why stop there, with the merely apprehended? Why not cast that genetic dragnet across the entire country, capturing the guilty and innocent, alike?

Somehow, you suspect, that’s an itch he’s just dying to scratch.

“I know there’s always privacy considerations,” he tells the Globe and Mail this week, though he says they are in the background. “It has to balanced in the bigger picture. But I think that, you know, the timing of the taking of DNA is something that could very well emerge in the future as another issue of importance.”

It’s a crying shame, he seems to be saying, that “right now we’re limited to taking it (DNA) on conviction. It could be expanded to take on arrest, like a fingerprint. . .I maintain that, you know, a genetic fingerprint is no different and could be used in my view as an investigative tool.”

Oh really, Mr. Minister?

Here’s what my fingerprints, on file with the RCMP, can tell the cops: My name and address. With this information, they can find me without too much trouble in the time it takes me to plunder my bank account en route to the car dealership.

On the other hand, according to a source in the Guardian not long ago, here’s what my DNA can tell them: The colour of my hair and eyes, my gender, whether or not I am an insomniac, how long I’m likely to live, whether or not I have a propensity towards obesity, the degree to which I am at risk of developing certain types of cancer, Huntington’s Chorea and Parkinson’s disease.

If I am an unwilling guest at one of Canada’s finer penal institutions, then I should properly expect to lose any right to privacy I might have imagined for myself. But if I have not been convicted of any crime – only arrested on suspicion of having committed an offence – what gives the state the prerogative to profile me in such exquisite detail and keep a record of this information until the sun goes nova?

As William Trudell of the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence told the Globe, “It’s really sort of cataloguing the innocent. Until someone is found guilty, the presumption of innocence really has to mean something.”

In fact, Mr. MacKay is coming somewhat late to Big Brother’s most recent soiree. This summer, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the right of law enforcement officials in 28 states to collect DNA from suspects who have not yet been charged of serious crimes. An item in thinkprogress.org states that “the 5-4 ruling overrules a state court determination that Maryland’s DNA collection law permits unconstitutionally invasive searches. . .Justice Antonin Scalia warns in a dissent joined by three of the court’s more liberal justices that the court’s reasoning would apply equally to someone accused of any crime or violation at all: ‘Make no mistake about it. As an entirely predictable consequence of today’s decision, your DNA can be taken and entered into a national DNA database if you are ever arrested, rightly or wrongly, and for whatever reason.’”

The implications have alarmed more than one American jurist. In a commentary, published by the Chicago Tribune last month, former Las Vegas district court judge Jackie Glass observed, “The Fourth Amendment protects us from unreasonable searches and seizures and requires warrants to be issued based on probable cause. This Maryland v. King decision will allow for warrantless searches to occur based on failed logic. Justice Kennedy and his majority owed American citizens a better justification. Using DNA for standard identification is unnecessary and makes no sense.”

Still, on one level, it makes perfect sense.

In the absence of true leadership, in the presence of failed social policy, politicians are always on the prowl for the enemy within. Now, with a handy DNA test, indiscriminately administered, they can prove that the enemy is us – guilty by association with the code written into our genes.

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Oct 01 2013
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Economy, Government, Politics

From less government to no government

Fences make good neighbours and poor legislators

Fences make good neighbours and poor legislators

The Commander-in-Chief was in no mood to dance when he declared, on Monday, “One faction of one party, in one house of Congress, in one branch of government doesn’t get to shut down the entire government just to refight the results of an election.”

Indeed, he roared, “You don’t get to extract a ransom for doing your job.”

The observation was, at once, brilliantly conceived and utterly incorrect.

At the stroke of midnight, despite Barack Obama’s imprecations, the U.S. government did shut down (everything but essential services, such as the army, energy grid and air traffic control) because a mewling bunch of far-right-wing crybabies in the Republican Party can’t take no for an answer.

Even so, the journey to ignominy is not yet over.

On October 17, Congress faces another battle, the consequences of which could be far worse than this present contretemps over the government’s spending authority: whether or not to raise the nation’s debt ceiling. Not doing so would inevitably lead to the United States defaulting, for the first time in its history, on its financial obligations.

Canadians might be amused to imagine that this begins and ends with health care reform, also known as “Obamacare”. Simply put, Republican tea party Representatives despise it and will do everything in their power to “defund” it.

They don’t have a chance, as the most important bits of the new law have already passed in Congress and been endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court. But that’s not stopping this bunch – the most bloody-minded cohort of rank politicians in modern times. As Michael Gerson, an opinion writer for The Washington Post, observes, “Few believe any longer that Republicans will be able to defund Obamacare in this session of Congress; it is the fight that counts. This is a word that crops up frequently in tea-party discourse. Not winning. Not strategy. Not consequences. The fight.”

In fact, this is where the rubber truly hits the road, and where Canadians will want to stifle their giggles. The conflict is only titularly about Obamacare. At its roots is a fundamentally radical conception of government, itself – one that’s counterpoised to mainstream Democratic and Republican political values; one that actually finds little purchase on most main streets of America.

Teaparty.org articulates its “15 non-negotiable core beliefs” thusly:

“Illegal aliens are here illegally; pro-domestic employment is indispensable; a strong military is essential; special interests must be eliminated; gun ownership is sacred; government must be downsized; the national budget must be balanced; deficit spending must end; bailout and stimulus plans are illegal; reducing personal income taxes is a must; reducing business income taxes is mandatory; political offices must be available to average citizens; intrusive government must be stopped; english as our core language is required; and traditional family values are encouraged.”

There’s nothing especially alarming to a “liberal” mind about most of this creed. But, it is in the practice of it – the widely varied interpretation of it – when trouble brews.

As often as not, tea partiers view capitalism not as an economic system, but as an ethical imperative and to justify their position they love quoting Ayn Rand, who wrote, in 1962, “The world crisis of today is a moral crisis – and nothing less than a moral revolution can resolve it: a moral revolution to sanction and complete the political achievement of the American revolution. We must fight for capitalism, not as a practical issue, not as an economic issue, but, with the most righteous pride, as a moral issue. That is what capitalism deserves, and nothing less will save it.”

In this conception of the cosmos, government – which, by its function, takes and distributes wealth to provide for the common interest – is a dangerously corruptible institution and must be stripped of most of its power to do harm (i.e. spending).

Such hardline thinking precludes any possibility of negotiating with mainstream or traditional politicians. It also suggests that a dysfunctional Congress will only hinder the administration of foreign diplomacy and economic policy.

Ultimately, when the U.S. pays a ransom to the tea party, at least some of the cost will be born by its trading partners, including Canada.

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Oct 01 2013
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Demographics, Economy, Politics

Sticking out our economic chin

Oh yeah, baby, we are stuck where the sun don't shine

Oh yeah, baby, we are stuck where the sun don’t shine

Of course, precisely 11 months before the next provincial election in New Brunswick, the urgent conversation would have to shift, the channel change, the page turn. After all,  there’s only so much bad news one person can digest before he succumbs to the hallucinogen of wishful thinking.

Now, the question for all to ponder is whether we are, at base, a glass-half-empty or a glass-half-full kind of folk. And in so doing, the campaign slogans of yore will no longer suffice. We will no longer respond to heady promises of prosperity any more than we will believe desperate warnings of imminent penury.

Right down the middle, between all possible extremes of human circumstance, is where we are and where we want to stay. The political party that understands the true power of self-delusion will win the day, as it brands its march to the ballot box with a few, well-chosen words: “Hey, here in New Brunswick, it could be worse.”

The province’s annual deficit is now projected to reach $499.9 million by the end of fiscal 2013, the result of lower-than-expected revenue. “That’s due mainly to weaker than anticipated results from NB Power,” Finance Minister Blaine Higgs told reporters last week. “We’ve had this information on the first quarter for a few weeks but we were intending to be able to line it up to the year-end results from last year.”

As for the three-month period ending this month, he’s no more sanguine: “We’ve seen some signs of growth in sectors like in the forestry sector, but I’m not expecting a huge uplift in revenue for the second quarter.”

Cheer up, though: .

“If we had not made that decision (to cut government spending) early on, looking at the continued economic performance and the issues of revenue, we as a province would be in very dire straits,” Premier David Alward reassured the press corps.

Unsaid, but implicit, was the proposition that a province of 756,000 souls, with an annual lien of half-a-billion bucks and a structural long-term debt approaching $12 billion, is not, technically speaking, in dire straights. Clearly, Mr. Alward’s definition of the word ‘dire’ departs somewhat from the Fraser Insititute’s, which concluded in April, “It’s hard to deny that New Brunswick’s finances are in a dire state.”

Indeed, wrote the Vancouver-based think tank, “The province has splashed red ink every year since 2008/09. . .With the provincial government persistently spending beyond its means, New Brunswick’s net debt (financial liabilities minus assets) is set to dramatically increase from a recent low of $6.7 billion in 2006/07 (25.4 per cent of GDP) to $11.6 billion in 2013/14 (34.2 per cent).”

On the other hand, that’s just the Fraser Institute: Always raining on everyone’s parade. Should we more properly worry that we continue to lose the tax base we need to get our finances shipshape and Bristol fashion?

This week, Statistics Canada reported that New Brunswick shed 947 people during the 12-month period ending July 1, 2013. Michael Haan, a population expert at the University of New Brunswick, told the Telegraph-Journal, “I would estimate we will see year-over-year declines for the next five years or so. We are at a point in history where we have a large group at the age of migration. The baby boomers’ children are between 15 and 30 now. The prime year for moving is around 28.”

Again, however, it could be worse. The year before, New Brunswick lost more than 2,000 people to better jobs and rosier opportunities in Ontario and Alberta. Besides, at least we’re not Greece or even Spain where, as Bloomberg Businessweek reported in June, “The nation’s population fell last year for the first time since records began in 1971, and the main reason was an 18 per cent increase in the number of foreign nationals leaving the country. Romanians, Moroccans, and Ecuadorians led the way out.”

Rest assured, gentle reader, all is not woe in New Brunswick.

In fact, given our stubbornly sunny disposition, it’s remarkable we’re not all on skid row.

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Sep 30 2013
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Government, Politics, Security

Canada the war-friender?

Death in Dhaka...600 and counting

Death by unregulated guns…500-million triggers and counting

 

To the bemusement of many career diplomats and most human rights groups, standing apart – alone and aloof – has become the Canadian government’s preferred modus operandi to the United Nations.

In fact, one of the few truly substantial differences between the Tories in power and their Grit predecessors has been their unconcealed animus towards most things UN-related. The organization, they seem to believe, is broken, inefficient, hypocritical, duplicitous and needlessly bureaucratic. Worse, this cradle for the international community allows far too much license to rogue nations, and not enough to democratic, peaceful ones.

They have a point. But the federal Conservative regime would not be the first government in the world to question the value of its country’s membership. The organization is as flawed, or virtuous, as are its fellow states. Canada’s role and opportunity has always been to engage by setting a moral example – something which, until recently, it has been demonstrably willing to do.

The Harper government’s decision to delay signing the UN Arms Trade Treaty, which seeks to regulate international shipments of conventional weapons worth as much as $70 billion a year, is lamentably ironic. While it laudably pledges $3-billion pledge to improve the welfare of mothers and children around the world, the unfettered arms trade decimates the very people the Department of Foreign Affairs would otherwise help.

Even the United States, with its lock-and-load gun culture, has signed on to the Treaty, making it the 91st country to do so. “We are talking about the kind of export controls that for decades have not diminished one iota our ability in the United States as Americans to exercise our rights under the constitution,” U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said of his nation’s decision last week. “This treaty will not diminish anyone’s freedom. . . .Make no mistake, we would never think about supporting a treaty that is inconsistent with the rights of Americans, the rights of American citizens to be able to exercise their guaranteed rights under our constitution.”

Ottawa’s position suggests it is not as certain about the safeguards protecting this country’s gun owners. According to the Globe and Mail last week, “Rick Roth, a spokesman for (Foreign Affairs Minister John) Baird, said Ottawa is still studying whether joining the accord would have consequences for Canadians. “It is important that such a treaty not affect lawful and responsible firearms owners nor discourage the transfer of firearms for recreational uses such as sport shooting and hunting.”

That’s fair as far as it goes. But while the federal government waits, the arms trade continues its vile business in some of the world’s poorest nations.

In his book, Public Corruption; The Dark Side of Social Evolution, Robert Neild of Cambridge University observes, “It has been estimated that there are now about 500 million small arms and light weapons in circulation in the world, one for every twelve people. Gone long ago is the time when we Europeans could subdue other continents because we had firearms and the local peoples had not. In 1999 it was reported that an AK-47 assault rifle could be bought in Uganda for the price of a chicken.”

Amnesty International states on its website, “War crimes, unlawful killings, torture and other serious human rights abuses have been committed around the world using a wide range of weapons, munitions and military and security equipment. These are often provided to perpetrators in almost unlimited supply, encouraging and prolonging unlawful violence. Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, injured, raped and forced to flee from their homes as a result.”

Appallingly, says the organization, “Worldwide, hundreds of thousands of children under 18. . .are recruited into government armed forces, paramilitaries, civil militia and a variety of other armed groups.  Often they are abducted at school, on the streets or at home. Others enlist ‘voluntarily’, usually because they see few alternatives.”

Like it or not, the UN is the proper deliberative body through which to combat such turpitude.

Notwithstanding its distaste for the organization, Ottawa should set an example and ratify the Treaty.

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Sep 24 2013
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Humour, Politics

A grim fable for the fiscally frightened

IMG-20120922-00003

“No fairy tales, please” – New Brunswick policy specialist Donald Savoie, a long-time advocate for debt reform in government, on public attitudes towards political promises during the run-up to next year’s election, Saint John Telegraph-Journal, Sept. 21, 2013.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, in the land between the rising and setting sun, there lived a troll under a covered bridge, next to Perdition Highway, known locally as The Road to Nowhere.

Unlike most trolls, who are fierce and lean, this one was lazy and fat. He spent a good deal of his time, days and nights, fantasizing about his next meal, which was, in fact, never very far away. So bottomless was his appetite that the villagers in the area called him Poor Black Hole.

“Look how hungry he is,” they would say. “He must have a tape worm.”

But no matter how much or how frequently they fed him, Poor Black Hole was never full. Indeed, he grew so big his bulk threatened to break the deck of the bridge above him; still, he couldn’t get enough to eat.

“I need more,” he would cry. “Can’t you see that I am wasting away.”

Clearly, Poor Black Hole had body image issues. But the villagers were too polite to mount any sort of intervention. So, they continued to empty their pantries and drain their cupboards in the hope – vain though it was – that he would finally shut up.

Eventually, the people’s plight came to the attention of the king, who worried that his subjects would soon run out of the staples they needed to survive.

“We must do something about Poor Black Hole,” he told his chancellor of the exchequer. “He’s sucking the life out of my tithe-payers. At the rate he’s going, there won’t be anything left for roads or schools or hospitals.”

The chancellor, a pragmatic sort of fellow, agreed. “It is a serious problem, o sire,” he said. “The circumstances are drastic and they require drastic measures. I suggest that the royal court stop giving the people their special dispensations whenever they demand. They only hand them over to the troll, anyway. Then, we should increase the levies on every adult man and woman in the kingdom and use the money to raise an army with which to vanquish the filthy beast.”

The king pondered awhile and then turned to his faithful servant and said, “I’ll get back to you,” whereupon he promptly fell into a deep slumber.

Days passed, then months, then years. And as the king slept, the people grew poorer and the troll grew fatter. Eventually, the bridge over Poor Black Hole’s head cracked and tumbled to the ground. He didn’t mind, just as long as his meals came fast and furious, which, of course, they did.

Meanwhile, other bridges cracked and tumbled to the ground. Schools closed. Emergency rooms shut down. Roads became impassable. Perdition Highway, long the most heavily travelled thoroughfare in the realm, failed under the weight of its traffic.

When the king finally awoke, he was dismayed and a tad rueful.

“I guess I should have gotten back to you earlier,” he told his chancellor, to which the weary factotum replied in a voice that was barely audible: “You think?”

What, the king demanded to know, could they do now? The treasury had been emptied, the courtiers disbanded. Worse, perhaps, the villagers were revolting on rumours that their royal favours were about to be cut off.

Their land was a shambles and they were in constant danger from foreign carpetbaggers and moneylenders. But they were entitled to their entitlements. Weren’t they? Apart from anything else, these were how they fed the troll.

“Maybe,” the king ventured, “we should just tell everybody to move. . .you know. . .lock the gates, haul up the drawbridge, shutter the windows before things get really bad.”

The chancellor furrowed his brow and, pulling a parchment from his satchel, declared, “Sire, it may already be too late. I have a report that indicates that the villagers are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to protect their state perks. . .apparently, they’ve started to feed Poor Black Hole something new.”

The king raised an eyebrow. “What’s that?” he asked.

Sighed the Chancellor: “Their young.”

And they all lived. . .well. . .must I spell it out?

The End.

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Sep 19 2013
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Demographics, Economy, Politics

Facing up to the pension challenge

In the unlikely event that New Brunswickers, en masse, get busy and jump start another baby boom to someday repopulate the ranks of the provincial civil service, we might just avoid the fiscal crisis that now looms over public pensions.

The sad truth is, though, the $1 billion in unfunded liability will not vanish so appealingly. No fancies of the imagination, no wishful thinking, no sleights of the accountant’s hand will make it go away. Someone’s going to have to pay for it. The debate that roils now is solely about who.

Will it be, to some extent, those who paid faithfully into the fund for decades –  presuming that they would receive, upon their retirement, a predictable amount on which to survive their sunset years? Or will it be, to a much larger extent, those who are still working – many in the public sector; many more in the private sector where taxes must, by necessity, cover the pension shortfall.

Such is New Brunswick’s “Sophie’s Choice”.

The David Alward government has never been clearer about its stand on any matter of public policy than it has on this one. It wants to move to a shared-risk approach, modeled after some European systems, in which pensioners assume some of the hazards of their variably performing investments directly. Gone, then, would be the traditional and fixed guarantees, including yearly CPI indexing.

In a letter to the New Brunswick Pension Coalition (obtained earlier this week by the Telegraph-Journal), provincial Finance Minister Blaine Higgs said the status quo is unacceptable. So are the quick fixes contemplated to postpone the inevitable. “It would be impossible for the province to consider ‘Band-Aid‘ solutions,” he wrote. “Nor could we accept changes to the proposed model which would be unfair to our current and future employees or to New Brunswick taxpayers.”

It is around this issue of fairness than members of the Coalition also rally. Is it fair, they ask, for the provincial government to unilaterally claw back pension guarantees? Is it fair to force a retiree, with few economic options available to him, to accept a level of risk shrouding his income he was never led to expect until now? When, in essence, is breaking a deal ever fair?

Who’s right? In a way, everyone is. Still, and lamentably, for the current cohort of pensioners, there is no moral equivalency between these opposed positions. The ground on which the government stands is higher if only because most people in the province do not enjoy the arrangements at issue. Absent any reform, they would, however, have to pay for them.

DSC_0180

The disputants may blame each other until all the clauses in the Public Service Superannuation Act sunset. But the real enemy is demographics. And the cold, if somewhat comforting, fact is New Brunswick is not alone.

Just about everywhere in Canada, public pensions are in trouble. They were crafted at a time in the nation’s history when the future looked much more munificent than it does today. The pay-it-forward model – in which the existing generation of public workers essentially contributes to the retirement well being of future ones as it relies on the beneficence of past ones – is, for all practical purposes, broken.

Today, the population is increasingly geriatric and that – according to public policy experts William Robson and Alexandre Laurin, writing in the Globe and Mail this week – means “there are fewer active employees to support the pensions of retired beneficiaries. People are living longer, which means pensions need to be paid out for longer periods.”

In fact, as they discuss pension reforms underway in Alberta, they single out New Brunswick’s proposed changes as “ambitious” and “far-reaching,” suggesting that the “new shared-risk model. . .protects future generations by permitting reductions of base benefits already accrued, in extreme situations.”

For most New Brunswickers, the choice, though unhappy, is clear. In the interests of fairness, and for the sake of what’s left of the system, pension reform is necessary.

In fact, wishful thinking to the contrary, it’s unavoidable.

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Sep 18 2013
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Business, Politics, Society

Another day, another plan to fix New Brunswick

DSC_0074

Somewhere, beneath the florid appeals to New Brunswick’s angels – to its fairness, justness, competence, impartiality, integrity, and respect – lies a plan to exorcise the province of its equally durable demons, its languishing labour force and perishing skills.

Thus begins the David Alward government’s glittering, new Labour Force and Skills Development Strategy, inscribed as if on tablets come down from the mount: “New Brunswick has a proud history of innovation and national and international leadership. We have flourishing multinational companies and thriving small- and medium-size enterprises.”

And yet, o brothers and sisters, woe still walks among us: “New Brunswick is, however, facing challenges that cannot be solved quickly. . .a median population age that is older than all other provinces, a shrinking youth age group, a decreasing birth rate, and an adult literacy rate that limits employment options for some.”

What shall we do? For starters, we shall engage in the making and reading of charts, specifically the “GNB Strategy Map”, in which a “stronger economy” and an “enhanced quality of life” are possible even though we must, henceforth, live “within our means”.

This implies that “all working-age New Brunswickers and newcomers” will have “an opportunity to participate in the labour market” provided “that they have the right skills to match provincial labour market needs.”

How shall this be accomplished? It has something to do with stimulating “the creation of quality jobs” for citizens, fostering “private sector business growth” and “driving economic development efforts” to, in the final analysis, “provide value for tax dollars. . .achieve a sustainable budget” and “prioritize, optimize and improve processes” in government.

All of which suggests, if little else, that this government is no slouch in the report-writing department. And, to be fair, the document does contain no fewer than 44 “action” items, some of which actually make sense.

Still, one can’t help suspect that, a mere 12 months before the next election, many of these measures have lost much of their utility. They would have been more effective three years ago when the problems that beset the province’s labour force were just as clear, if not as acute, as they are today.

“In coordination with other partners,” the government intends to “develop labour market information products to assist with selecting relevant post-secondary education and employment opportunities in New Brunswick.” What’s more, it will encourage “employment counsellors” to “visit students beginning in middle school and again in high school to provide awareness of occupational forecasts and related skills requirements.”

The strategy is also big on collaboration to wit: “Government will develop a coordinated approach with departments and other partners to ensure that all parties entrusted with growing the economy, work together and are aware of each others strategies and programs, i.e., New Brunswick Business Council, Conseil économique du Nouveau-Brunswick.”

It will also “work with employers to increase their knowledge of the benefits and opportunities surrounding posting of jobs on the Job Bank and assist them in developing job and position descriptions.”

In fact, the key to the plan’s success, it seems, is its “many-voices” approach, for “to meet (the) challenges facing the province, strong, collaborative partnerships are required not only within government, but with communities, industry, businesses, educators, and labour to ensure that New Brunswick has the human resource capital to meet the needs of the labour market.”

Again, though, we’ve known this for years. What’s different now, apart from the fact that things are getting worse?

The frayed achilles tendon of this report – indeed, of virtually every version of a prosperity agenda since before Bernard Lord was premier – is the specific who, what, where, when and how much.

It’s one thing to declare that “Government will work towards ensuring that all high school students have a transition exit plan prior to graduation” or that it will likewise “work with the early childhood education sector to strengthen the sector’s capability to administer high-quality programming by its members for the benefit of young children.”

It’s quite another to spell out the actual mechanics. That’s what a proper, useful  strategy does.

One must assume that this government has a real plan.

Sadly, this particular document, as loftily well-intentioned as it may be, just isn’t it.

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Sep 18 2013
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Politics, Science

Cracking the algebra of federal R&D funding

Erecting fences between scientific inquiry and sound public policy

Erecting fences between scientific inquiry and sound public policy

Here’s a math problem for our evidence-distrusting times: In the equation ‘x+y=z’, ‘x’ represents federal government support for commercially promising science and ‘y’ stands for calls among university boffins for a broader definition of useful research. What, then, is the value of ‘z’?

Ottawa is firm about its dedication to the hard arts. In a statement the Globe and Mail carried recently, Greg Rockford, the federal minister of state for science and technology, declared, “Our government is committed to science, technology, innovation and taking ideas to the marketplace. Canada is ranked number one among G7 countries for its higher education expenditures on research and development.”

Well, yes and no.

According to Howard Solomon, editor of ITWorldCanada.com and Computing Canada, “Overall R&D spending [in Canada] is low and declining as the manufacturing sector shrinks, including in the communications equipment manufacturing sector. . .a new study by leading academics…(says). . .Communications equipment makers scored well for getting patents and articles in scientific publications. . .However, the group also showed a decline in R&D expenditures and economic output in the last few years, whether that was in R&D growth between 2001 and 2012, or export growth.”

He was writing last month, but the chances are things haven’t improved much since then. A Conference Board of Canada report a couple of years ago, concluded that when it comes to public R&D spending, this country merits “a ‘B’ and ranks eighth out of 16 countries. . .Increases in Canada’s higher-education R&D spending since the mid-1990s provided a temporary advantage, but international peers have closed the gap since the mid-2000s.”

The Board then makes this fateful recommendation: “Future public R&D spending should be aligned with innovation and commercialization needs and attentive to the possible ‘crowding out’ of private R&D by public R&D.”

To commercialize or not to commercialize. That is the question. And it’s clear that policy makers and legislators in Ottawa embrace an entirely different vision than that of working scientists who are growing increasingly frustrated with what they view as Ottawa’s entirely false dichotomy between pure and applied research.

Fundamentally, the research community is correct: This really is a chew-gum-and-walk-at-the-same-time conundrum. Hard science doesn’t always immediately yield commercial applications that build productivity and competitiveness for regional and national economies. But without it, you get nothing. No RIMs, no Nortels, no so-called clusters of excellence and innovation corridors.

That Ottawa talks incessantly about commercial applications and seems to eschew any mention of the lonely wetware, entombed in laboratories and classrooms, that’s vitally responsible for them is more a matter of semantics than ideology. Politicians (their party affiliations are irrelevant) are all about results and success stories and ribbon cuttings.

Scientists, it’s safe to say, are all about reason, the long game to enlightenment. And it’s reason to which they invariably appeal, as they have this week during their Stand Up for Science demonstrations in cities across the country. According to a Globe report, the nation’s research community intends to shift its attention to “drafting policies that reflect best practices on research integrity and funding priorities and will urge the country’s political leaders to adopt them.”

In essence, they hope to capitalize on developments over the past eight years in the United States, where science-friendly policies in the Obama administration have sparked something of a renaissance of respect, if not always funding, for the harder disciplines of inquiry. 

“Canadian scientists are where American scientists were maybe a decade ago,” Michael Halpern of the Washington, D.C.-headquartered Union of Concerned Scientists told the Globe on Monday. “They’re trying to figure out how to protect themselves from a government that’s increasingly focused on message control over a more open discussion of the facts.”

In fact, they’ve been trying to figure out that problem for some time now, with little to recommend their eventual success short of a change in government. That’s why the value of ‘z‘ is likely, for the moment, to remain a big, fact zero.

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Sep 16 2013
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Culture, Government, Politics

Quebec leaders sing a looney tune

State-enforced "neutrality" is for the birds

State-enforced “neutrality” is for the birds

Ranking high on the lengthening list of Quebec Premier Pauline Marois’s dubious political talents is her unerring ability to draw precisely the wrong conclusions from history – especially other people’s history.

Earlier this year, while on a trip to Scotland, the Partis Quebecois leader gamely offered her help to the independence-minded Alex Salmond, that country’s First Minister. She would, she said, send him a few morsels of information from her province’s 1995 referendum on sovereignty. His reaction, in turn, was to go out of his way to avoid being seen with her in public.

Then, last week, she told Le Devoir that ethnic diversity lies at the heart of social unrest in England, where, apparently, “they’re knocking each other over the head and throwing bombs because of multiculturalism and nobody knowing any more who they are in that society.”

Now, we discover through the Globe and Mail that she believes “France is a model of integration.” Further, she suggests that it is “the most beautiful example . . . (it) has a very impressive number of people (from North Africa) and has found a space to live well with immigrants from other regions.”

Wrong, wrong and wrong, again.

The roots of Scotland’s independence movement are so vastly dissimilar from Quebec’s, the comparison does not bear making. And even if they weren’t, what possible use would the PQ’s trove of documents from its failed attempt to sever Quebec from the rest of Canada be to the leaders of the Scottish National Party?

As for England, sectarian and ethnic violence — which, it’s worth noting, is no more rampant than it is in south-central Los Angeles — has less to do with “multiculturalism” than it does with the nation’s proximity to radicalized networks of European terror cells. This is a fact with which it and its continental neighbours have been dealing for decades.

And what of France, that “model of integration?”

An item from a BBC report this summer should settle the question:

“Crowds of youths have thrown stones at French police and set fire to cars in a second night of disturbances in the Paris suburb of Trappes. The trouble was sparked by the arrest of a man whose wife was told by police on Thursday to remove an Islamic face-covering veil, banned in public. He has been accused of trying to strangle the officer. Up to 300 people attacked a police station in Trappes on Friday night where the man was being held.”

Not for nothing, but methinks Ms. Marios’s staff might want to review the briefing notes they prepare for her before she finds occasion to pontificate in public. For them, and the rest of Quebec, this is getting embarrassing. And it seems to be going around.

In a recent column, my former colleague, the Globe’s Jeffry Simpson worried that Quebec’s leadership appears a tad unhinged, as Ms. Marois and company begin to “secularize” their civil service à la France. “These are the kind of policies that make Quebec look intolerant and slightly crazy in pursuit of some notional idea of the Quebec identity,” he wrote. “After all, the number of non-francophone employees of the province is tiny. From a practical point of view, this (charter of values) and the laws that might flow from it represent a fake solution to a non-problem.”

For Ontario, at least, this phony fix is turning into an opportunity.

“We don’t care what’s on your head,” an advertisement for Lakeridge Health of Oshawa reads. “We care what’s in it . . .Our focus is on safety and quality, and we’re looking for people like you to join our team of health professionals.”

If Ms. Marois cares nothing for most of what’s guaranteed by Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, she should nonetheless scrutinize Section 6, Subsection 2, which reads: “Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right (a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and (b) to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province.”

It’s mighty tough to draw the wrong conclusion from that.

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Sep 12 2013
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Culture, Politics

Fighting discrimination with more discrimination

The Partis Quebecois's Great Pumpkin: A solution looking for a problem

The Partis Quebecois’s Great Pumpkin: A solution looking for a problem

Finally, we Canadians face an issue about which all federal parties in Ottawa will concur. Even better, their consensus is morally, ethically and, quite likely, legally unassailable. The question is: What took them so long?

With its new “Charter of Values” – about which it has been hinting for weeks – the Quebec government seeks to expunge “overt and conspicuous” religious icons – such as hijabs, kippas and turbans – from its public service. No more veils. No more headdresses. No more ostentatious crucifixes dangling around teachers’ necks.

Big Brother’s foot soldier Bernard Drainville, the minister who is apparently  responsible for conformity in La belle province, explains the new policy bluntly in news reports, to wit: “If the state is neutral, those working for the state should be equally neutral in their image.”

His boss, Premier Pauline Marois couldn’t agree more. In fact, she told Le Devoir last week, “In England, they get into fights and throw bombs at one another because of multiculturalism and people get lost in that type of a society.”

What a profoundly stupid thing to say, but no dumber, perhaps, than Mr. Drainville’s assertion that ensuing “neutrality” among civic workers is a simple matter of imposing a secular dress code, as if the Province were underwriting some outlandish episode of What Not to Wear.

Contrary to the Partis Quebecois’s insustence, absolutely nothing good can come of this unnecessary, provocative nonsense. And Jason Kenney, Canada’s Minister of Employment, Social Development and Multiculturalism, is right to question the constitutionality of the move.

“(We are) very concerned by any proposal that would limit the ability of any Canadians to participate in our society and that would affect the practice of their faith,” he told reporters this week. “We will ask the Department of Justice if these proposals become law to closely review them and if it’s determined that a prospective law violates the constitutional protections for freedom of religion to which all Canadians are entitled, we will defend those rights vigorously.”

Added NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair, “We’re categorical in rejecting this approach. Human rights don’t have a best-before date, they’re not temporary and they’re not a popularity contest. To be told that a woman working in a day care centre, because she’s wearing a head scarf, will lose her job is to us intolerable in our society.”

Yet, despite the utter correctness of their points, it’s a shame that these two have come late to the contretemps.

In August, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau was first and alone among federal politicians to denounce Quebec’s divisive scheme. “We sadly see that even today, as we speak, for example, of this idea of a Charter of Quebec Values, there are still those who believe that we have to choose between our religion and our Quebec identity, that there are people who are forced by the Quebec State to make irresponsible and inconceivable choices,” he told a group of his fellow Grits in Prince Edward Island.

The only official statements coming from the Conservative and NDP camps at that time were watery testimonials to civil rights and commitments to carefully review Quebec’s plans if and when they went public. Still, better late than never.

The values charter is not only a palpable jab at religious freedom; it infantilizes an entire society. It tells Quebecers that those who work for the public service can’t be trusted with the symbols and trappings of their faith and ethnicity while they are on the job; that the only way to prevent discrimination is, bizarrely, to embrace it.

Just as bad, it tells the world that the government of a sizable chunk of Canada is diametrically opposed to the principles of equity and diversity that have, for decades, burnished the country’s international reputation for fairness and inclusiveness.

The Partis Quebecois has taken a non-issue and turned it into a firestorm for no sensible reason other than cynically appealing to certain elements of its exclusionary base. This, alone, transports it beyond the realm of provincial partisanship and lands it squarely in the arena of federal politics.

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