The Real Scandal

Last November, a nuclear reactor in Chalk River, ON, producing two-thirds of the word’s medical isotopes was forced to shut down by the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The Commission, which regulates the industry, discovered that the reactor had been operating for 17 months without a battery-operated starter on the pumps, which left it vulnerable to overheating during a disaster such as an earthquake.

The closure has been felt across the globe, denying hundreds of thousands of patients the access to key medical tests that could determine whether they live or die. Acting to resolve the crisis, parliament invoked an emergency sitting last week and decided to give Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd., the Crown Corporation that operated the reactor, an eighteen month window to install the starter pumps.

The decision was certainly debatable. The government was stuck between a rock and a hard place and had to balance the safety of the Chalk River residents with the medical urgency of restoring the mast production of isotopes. An expert in probability theory would probably feel they took the right decision, but I still wouldn’t want to be living anywhere near Chalk River.

The real scandal though, has little to do with parliamentarians and much to do with the foolish appointees whom they throw into Crown corporations as a gift for many years of service. The Safety Commission told AECL 17 months ago that their reactor needed renovations. Yet the Crown corporation, headed by a past conservative riding association president, did nothing to avoid an inevitable closure that would threaten millions across the planet.

AECL is a nuclear technology Crown Corporation. It has a duty to operate wisely and safely as any accident could have consequences felt across the continent. This is not the place for a puppet, and the current head had luckily submitted his resignation yesterday.

By placing nuclear novices at the head of one of AECL, the government is making a fool of itself. and putting the safety of Canadians at risk.

Ashamed Canadian

This Globe and Mail cartoon sums up the situation in Bali. Half a century after Lester Pearson's Nobel Peace Prize, Canada is no longer the country it once was on the international stage.

Foreign interests helped unseat Clark? Bah...

This story never ends.

Now, we're back in 1983, at the time of the Joe Clarck putch. Why? Because according to Karlheinz Schreiber, part of the money used by Brian Mulroney to transport anti-Clark delegates from Quebec to the PC convention in Winnipeg came from himself; the late Franz Josef Strauss, the chairman of Airbus Industrie; and probably from Mr. Strauss's political party, the Christian Social Union.

Well... big deal...

Regardless of Mr. Scheiber's allegations, that fact is that politics then weren't as transparent as they are now. There was no donor's list and few accountability measures; Money -cash- was always floating around.

This is no longer the case. Lobbyist are now watched very tightly and cash can't move around like it use to. We should applaud this new reality.

Even if it turns out that Karlheinz Schreiber was saying nonsense all through the questionings, he will nevertheless have highlighted the stark contrast between the obscure Ottawa of yesterday which he worked in and the much clearer Ottawa of today.

An Opposition Government

I try not to show too much bias in my comments, but I'm so incensed by what I've just seen on the Conservative Party website that I feel entitled to give them all the criticism in the world.

Please follow this link, and tell me what you see: http://www.conservative.ca/

Here's what I see:

One small smiling Stephen Harper in the banner and FIVE huge photo-engineered Stéphane Dions.

A headline reading : DION'S YEAR OF HERO-ICS, a sidebar of multimedia negative ads, and two "reality check" articles at the bottom of the page outlining all the bad things Stéphane Dion has done for Canada as Leader of the Opposition.

Finally, a link to the Not A Leader.ca website created by the Conservative Party to warn Canadians about the dangerous Frenchman Dion. The website is complete with Kyoto's Dog Blog, which is so indescribably vicious and unethical that I won't even comment on it.

I'm sorry, but this is no way to lead a country. The website of the governing party should be about the future. It should show Canadians its accomplishments and explain how it will build on them to bring a better future. Yet in this entire website, all we see is the opposition; all we see is Stéphane Dion.

But actually, forget about leading a country. The bottom line is that this is no way to be acting in society.

Let me ask Stephen Harper this question: "Would you be confortable showing Kyoto's DOg Blog to you children?"

I think that says it all.

Shameful NDP Hypocrisy

NDP MP Irene Mathyssen displayed earlier today some of the most disgusting and unscrupulous behaviour that I have ever seen in the House:
Rising on a point of order after Question Period, she informed her colleagues and thousands of Canadians watching her on TV that she had seen pictures of "scantly clad women" appear on the laptop of Conservative MP James Moore. She carried on to state in her carefully rehearsed indignant tone of voice that: “I feel very strongly that this is not only disrespectful of women, but it's disrespectful of this House. It reflects an attitude of objectifying women, and we know that when women and other human beings are objectified and dehumanized, they become the objects of violence and abuse.”

James Moore, visibly stunned, immediately denied these allegations, but his reputation and dignity had already been stained.

A few hours later, once it became clear that the allegations were false and it was revealed that the pictures where actually of Mr. Moore's girlfriend and dog, the NDP had to issue a news release stating that Ms. Mathyssen accepted the explanation and would make a formal statement in the Commons at the earliest opportunity. But regardless of the content of her apology, Mr. Moore's dignity is left severely stained.

If Irene Mathyssen had really seen pictures of "scantly clad women" on James Moore's laptop, she could simply have walked over to his bench (which is only a few feet away from hers) and asked him to remove the images from her line of sight. If that wasn't possible, she could have voiced her concerns to him later in private, or even to the government Whip who would no doubt have been very troubled by the allegation.
But instead, she chose to make her unproven allegation immediately public in the House, knowing full well that it would be seen by thousands of Canadians and hurt the reputation of a hard-working MP.

Coming from a prominent member of the NDP -a party that poses as a defender of morality- I'm totally and utterly disgusted.

Partisanship At Its Best

After sifting through the minutes and recorded proceedings of the Ethics Committee’s questioning of Karlheinz Shreiber today, I can only wonder how our elected officials get away with such stunning partisanship and incompetence. A week after they forced Speaker Peter Miliken to use an archaic Speaker’s Warrant to bring the German-Canadian businessman to testify in Ottawa, they have turned their committee into a televised circus and learnt virtually nothing.

The NDP spent the whole committee trying to tie Schreiber to the Liberals. The Liberals used the same tactics to connect Mulroney to Harper. The Conservatives just tried to distance Harper from this whole affair. And the Bloc, once Jean Charest’s name was mentioned, just, well, kinda lost track.

This didn’t need to be the case. They really could have gotten some answers if they had bothered to ask real questions. But I guess that’s just not how it’s done on Parliament Hill.

Merci Pinchas

Pinchas Zukerman est sans aucun doute l’un des plus grands interprètes de son époque. Violoniste et altiste virtuose, il a atteint les plus hauts sommets de la musique classique et apposé son nom à la courte liste des musiciens éternels. Dix ans après avoir surpris le monde de la musique en acceptant le poste de directeur artistique du Centre National des Arts (CNA), la vie culturelle de la Capitale Nationale a connu une telle transformation qu’il serait grand temps de dire : Merci Pinchas.

Le Centre National des Arts dont le Maestro Zukerman a herité la direction en 1998 était une institution musicale modeste. L’orchestre en residence, l’OCNA, avait un niveau respectable, mais Ottawa n’étant pas une destination favorite des grandes vedettes musicales, la salle de concert Southam se trouvait trop souvent vide.

Dix ans après, grâce au leadership du Maestro, la situation était entièrement renversée. Le CNA jouit aujourd’hui d’une réputation internationale et accueille chaque année un nombre croissant de grands artistes. L’orchestre aussi s’est nettement amélioré sous la baguette de Zukerman et a attiré plusieurs jeunes recrues talentueuses.

Mais l’héritage du Maestro ne s’observe cependant pas en salle de concert; du moins, pas encore. Car sa véritable marque sur l’histoire de notre ville, Zukerman l’a laissée dans le domaine de l’éducation. A son arrivé en 1998, le CNA n’était qu’une salle de spectacle : on y recevait chaque semaine des artistes qui se donnaient en concert pour le public de la ville. Aujourd’hui, cependant, grâce aux nombreux programmes de formation qu’il a introduits, le Centre a aussi assumé un rôle éducatif. En l’espace de quelques années, c’est même devenu l’un des principaux pôles de formation musicale du continent, accueillant des jeunes talents internationaux désireux de travailler avec le légendaire Maestro.

Pinchas Zukerman a mis Ottawa sur la carte du monde musical. Pour cela, il mérite nos plus sincères remerciements.