The Financial Crisis

The financial crisis is too complicated for me to understand. Here's why:

In the last six months, Waterloo based Research in Motion has lost two-thirds of its market capitalisation.

At the same time, it has been selling its Black Berry product in record numbers and has just introduced a new line, the Black Berry Storm, which has become so successful that the firm is struggling to keep up with demand.

So, in short, RIM is making more money than ever before (and loads more money that its rivals) but it's stock price is dropping. How does this work?

The Eyes Of The Press

In less that one week since becoming Liberal leader, Michael Ignatieff has transformed the party's fortunes and given Stephen Harper real cause for concern.

...So says the press.

Maybe it's true, who knows. But maybe it isn't. There's no way of finding out.

The press chooses the truth and determines what we should and shouldn't know. They can decide whether a politician is confident or arrogant, intelligent or calculating, strong or vindictive. They create the images, and we have no way of verifying them.

The press obviously loves Michael Ignatieff. For all I know, he may be very lovable. He's certainly articulate and hold quite the resume. But that's all I can be certain of.

In the past five days, virtually every columnist in the country (even some at the National Post) has written a piece endorsing Michael Ignatieff. Not one says anything new. There's no insight or analysis, other than telling us that they think Michael Ignatieff would make a good Prime Minister.

Once again, maybe the journalists are right. I supported Ignatieff in the Liberal leadership race, and I don't see any reason to believe that he wouldn't be a great Prime Minister. But the power of the press is truly scary. They write the laws, and control everything we know.

The press killed Stéphane Dion. It wasn't the Conservative ads, nor his ambitious colleagues , nor money. Much in the same way, they may crown Ignatieff.

Senate

It looks like Steven Harper is going break his pledge push for an elected Senate by filling the 18 current vacancies with Conservative appointees. Aside from the apparent hypocrisy, there's nothing too drastic about Harper's decision. The Prime minister has always had the power to appoint Senators, and historically, he has always chosen individuals favorable to his party's cause.

But for those of you who would like to get rid of that arguably outdated system, here are two ideas that would allow us to modernize the Senate without having to reopen the Constitution to elect Senators:

-Ban party affiliation in the Senate, ban Senate whips and ban Senators from attending weekly party caucus meetings. This won't entirely get rid of party affiliation in the Senate since Senators will instinctively be drawn towards other members of their former party, but it would certainly help.

-Form a commission of Civil servants to recommend Senate appointments (in the same way that a commission appoints judges) and give the Prime minister the purely honorary role of signing the documents. The commission could be tasked with finding the most influential, knowledgeable and meritorious Canadians. This would bring us much closer to the initial vision that the Fathers of Confederation had of the Senate: a body of distinguished elder statesmen tasked with ensuring that elected officials make rational and carefully examined decisions.

J’ai droit à la santé… et pas seulement au travail

Toutes les provinces ont des lois qui garantissent la santé et la sécurité au travail. Elles empêchent l’exploitation des employés par les propriétaires d’entreprises et assurent que personne ne soit obligé de compromettre sa sécurité en venant travailler. Ce sont ces lois, par exemple, qui obligent les compagnies minières à faire baliser les chantiers pour prévenir les éboulements. Elles exigent aussi que les employés aient du matériel fonctionnel et un équipement de protection complet.

Ces lois sont toujours appliquées par les provinces et les compagnies qui les transgressent sont passibles de peines allant jusqu’à 50 000 $ au Québec et 500 000 en Ontario. Elles s’exposent aussi à des poursuites judiciaires qui sont parfois si importantes qu’elles finissent par les faire couler.

Si les employés ont droit à la santé et à la sécurité au travail, les simples citoyens, eux, ne sont pas protégés. Or il arrive souvent que des activités industrielles touchent autant la santé des ménages environnants que celle des travailleurs. Pensons à la ville de Thetford Mines où la concentration d’amiante dépasse les normes américaines dans cinquante pourcent des habitations, conséquence directe de l’exploitation de l’amiante dans des mines à ciel ouvert de la région. Les travailleurs des deux mines qui opèrent encore aujourd’hui sont protégés par un équipement spécialisé et des gigantesques filtres, mais les habitants de la ville sont condamnés à vivre dans des domiciles contaminés.

On observe une situation semblable en Alberta avec l’industrie du pétrole. L’explosion du prix du baril a rentabilisé l’exploitation auparavant impossible des sables bitumineux et de gisements de gaz sulfureux, deux activités aussi polluantes que dangereuses qui causent de graves problèmes de santé dans des régions rurales de la province. Depuis la construction de puits de gaz sulfureux dans les secteurs agricoles de Black Diamond et Turner Valley, on a observé une augmentation fulgurante du taux de sclérose en plaques qui atteint maintenant deux fois la moyenne nationale. Il y a aussi eu plusieurs décès, d’humains et de bovins, tous attribuables à des fuites de gaz sulfureux. Les fermiers ont bien quelques recours et ils peuvent poursuivre les pétrolières après la mort d’un proche, mais beaucoup d’entre eux préfèrent plier bagage.

Sur les berges de la rivière Athabasca, au pays des sables bitumineux, des communautés autochtones installées depuis des centaines d’années ont commencé à importer leur nourriture. L’eau de la rivière n’est plus potable et les poissons qui y vivent sont bourrés de métaux lourds. Certains villages sont dévastés par des épidémies de cancer. À Fort Chipewyan, 1200 âmes, le Globe and Mail rapporte que le nombre de cas identifiés de cancer du foie en 2005 équivaut à la moyenne annuelle dans une « grande métropole ». Tout ceci est la conséquence de l’exploitation des sables bitumineux. Les pétrolières prélèvent chaque année 450 millions de mètres cubes d’eau de la rivière Athabasca qu’elles utilisent pour séparer le pétrole brut du sable. Environ 10% de cette eau est renvoyée dans la rivière. Le reste se retrouve dans des lacs artificiels visibles depuis l’espace et si toxiques qu’il faut embaucher des tireurs d’élite pour éloigner les oiseaux. Évidemment, l’eau usée finit par se retrouver dans la nappe phréatique, mais les pétrolières disent que c’est un processus naturel…

Si cinquante employés d’une usine automobile mourraient d’un cancer à vingt-cinq ans, il y aurait scandale. Le gouvernement enquêterait, le syndicat lancerait des poursuites et la presse serait sans merci. Mais si ces cinquante jeunes sont des pêcheurs de Fort Chipewyan, un petit village inconnu, la presse oublie et la loi ferme les yeux. C’est précisément cette situation qu’il faut corriger.

Il existe déjà des lois qui interdisent les activités industrielles dangereuses pour la santé de la communauté. Le problème, c’est qu’elles sont rarement appliquées. Une usine doit pratiquement rejeter du gaz moutarde dans l’atmosphère pour que la justice s’y intéresse. Comme on le voit à Thetford Mines, même l’amiante n’est pas jugé assez toxique.

Il faut donc immédiatement mettre en place des commissions spéciales pour contrôler l’impact des activités industrielles sur la santé des simples citoyens. Elles doivent pouvoir répondre aux plaintes, mener des enquêtes scientifiques et ordonner des modifications dans la structure des sites industriels si nécessaire. Ces commissions ne devraient pas dépendre du gouvernement, car il est trop souvent en conflit d’intérêt. Ed Stelmach ne prescrira jamais de mesures sérieuses pour assurer la qualité de l’eau dans la rivière Athabasca car les revenus de son gouvernement dépendent des sables bitumineux. Dalton McGuinty ne fermera jamais la centrale de charbon de Nanticoke qu’il promet de remplacer depuis 2003 parce que les solutions de rechange sont trop coûteuses.

Évidemment, il faut être réaliste. Même si les gaz d’échappement d’automobiles causent des problèmes respiratoires, on ne peut pas les interdire. Il faut cibler surtout les grands pollueurs, les quelques sites industriels qui, à eux seuls, ont un impact néfaste mesurable sur la santé des communautés. Là aussi, il faut faire attention. On ne doit pas ordonner la fermeture de l’industrie du pétrole de l’Alberta parce qu’elle contamine la rivière Athabasca. Il faut avoir l’art du compromis : ordonner l’installation de filtres plus performants, faire ralentir la production, obliger l’utilisation de nouvelles technologies comme le Toe-to-Heel Air Injection (THAI) qui utilise une quantité négligeable d’eau et réduit les déchets de métaux lourds de 90%.

C’est facile de justifier la pollution si l’enjeu économique est assez important. Il suffit de recycler les mêmes arguments qui ont permis de défendre l’esclavage, le travail des enfants et l’exploitation des ouvriers. Or on a vu que les réformes du travail, loin de nuire aux industries, on plutôt permis de créer une classe moyenne de consommateurs motivés. Tout porte à croire que des réformes de la santé auront aussi un impact positif sur l’économie. Les travailleurs seront moins malade, plus heureux et donc, plus productifs.

100

The Canadian death toll in Afghanistan reached 100 today.

The Globe and Mail, Canada's self-proclaimed newspaper of record, predictably published an easy patriotic editorial which concluded by saying that "We should reflect on the fact that Canada is making a difference in the world".

Ironically, there's another article in the Globe and Mail. It basically says that we're going backwards. In other words, Canadian troops are having a negative -at best neutral- effect.

Hmm...

Prorogation

Il est presque certain que Stephen Harper demandera demain à la Gouverneure générale de proroger le Parlement. Cela signifierait que la Chambre des communes serait fermée jusqu'en janvier et que tous les votes de confiance seraient reportés.

Dans notre système parlementaire, la prorogation du Parlement est un pouvoir qui appartient au Gouverneur général. En temps normal, il doit agir sur recommandation du Premier ministre car celui-ci représente une majorité de députés de la Chambre des communes et donc, par extension, le people canadien. C’est une règle constitutionnelle établie par précédent depuis la Confédération.

Cependant, aujourd'hui, Stephen Harper n'a pas la confiance de la Chambre, et les experts constitutionnels s'acordent pour dire que la situation est donc différente. Michaelle Jean n’est pas tenue d’accepter l’avis de Harper comme celui de n’importe quel autre Premier ministre, puisqu’il ne représente plus la Chambre des communes.

La réalité est qu’il n'y a pas de précédents sur lesquels Michaelle Jean pourrait se baser pour prendre sa décision. Elle devra fixer sa propre interprétation des lois. Or ses deux options principales sont soit dangereuses pour le pays, soit dangereuses pour la crédibilité du poste qu'elle occupe.

En prorogeant le Parlement, elle maintient notre système politique dans un état de suspens et de quasi impuissance. Elle permet également la survie d’un gouvernement qui n’a plus la confiance de la Chambre des communes.

En refusant la demande du Premier ministre de proroger la session parlementaire, elle risque d’être accusé d’ingérence et de compromettre l’impartialité du poste de Gouverneur général.

Voici donc la troisième option qu’elle devrait choisir : proroger le Parlement mais enlever à Steven Harper la plupart de ses pouvoirs exécutifs qui lui permettraient, par exemple, de distribuer des fonds publics comme bonbons ou de nommer de députés de l’opposition au Sénat. Steven Harper deviendrait donc en quelque sorte un Premier ministre par interim, comme c’est le cas pendant une campagne électorale.

Coalition

The last few days have been simply surreal.

At any rate, according to the CBC, a tentative deal has now been struck between the Liberals and NDP to form a coalition government. The government would last exactly two and a half years, the Prime minister, deputy Prime minister and Finance minister would all be Liberals.

The Conservatives have launched an all-out media blitz to turn public opinion against the coalition, but they are effectively powerless to prevent it since the opposition have a majority of seats in the House. It's therefore up to the Liberals (since the NDP is strongly in favour of the coalition) to decide whether they really want to take power at the beginning of an economic storm or instead let the conditions destroy the Conservative party brand.

As a general rule, it's better to be in government than in opposition, so my guess is that they will stick to the current deal with the NDP. Their task will therefore be to keep the Canadian economy afloat for the next year and half, and hope that the conditions improve before the end of the coalition.

It's very significant that the coalition deal has a precise lifespan attached to it. The Liberals and NDP obviously understand that the next year will be very difficult and want to avoid going to the polls right in the middle of the economic crisis. Actually, if they are lucky, the conditions will start improving in two years and the coalition will be able to take credit for the improvement. Of course, the opposite may happen, but once again, it's always easier to be the governing party.

The last question is of course: who will become Prime minister? I believe that the job should go to Stéphane Dion until a new Liberal leader is picked in May. He was after all elected democratically at the Montreal leadership convention which gives him the right to lead the party until he choses to step down (he has chosen next May). At any rate, if he were prepared to take all of the necessary and unpopular measures needed to confront the economic storm, the public outcry would die down after his departure and his replacement would be able to start governing on a strong economic base. He could therefore be a very useful political asset to the coalition.

Auto Sector

There's been much talk recently about the disastrous state of the U.S. (and therefore Canadian) auto industry. Just this week, the GM CEO said that his company risked bankruptcy in the next 14 days unless the U.S. government agreed to a multi-billion dollar cash injection. Analysts also expect Ford to fail in the next month unless the government steps in.

The U.S. auto sector is a politician's nightmare. It's clearly unproductive and unsustainable, but it controls millions of jobs. In other words: it should fail, but it can't fail.

This cartoon by Gable of the Globe and Mail sums the situation up:

Franco-ontarien

Mon conseil scolaire s'est donné la mission d'encourager chez ses élèves un sentiment d'appartenance à la communauté franco-ontarienne. Il a donc créé un nouveau département (le département de Construction identitaire) pour organiser des activités qui font la promotion de l'identité franco-0ntarienne.

L'objectif ultime de cet exercice n'est évidemment pas de renforcer l'identité franco-ontarienne mais de pousser les jeunes à parler en français. L'idée est simple: si les jeunes sont fiers d'être franco-ontariens, ils choisiront de parler plus souvent en français.

Le seul problème, c'est qu'on ne peut pas être des fiers Franco-Ontariens sans le français. La langue est la pierre angulaire de l'identité franco-ontarienne, est sans français, il n'y a pas de Franco-Ontariens.

Il y a donc un problème de logique. On ne peut pas encourager l'usage du français en essayant de renforcer l'identité franco-ontarienne, puisque cette identité d'existera jamais sans le français.

Le conseil scolaire devrait donc modifier son approche et mettre l'accent sur la langue et non pas sur l'identité. La première étape pourrait être de revoir le curriculum d'enseignement du français pour s'assurer pour s'assurer qu'il soit aussi exigeant que le curriculum québecois.

Note: j'ai parlé uniquement de mon conseil scolaire mais la situation est valable partout en Ontario.

The .isms

I have to participate this Thursday in a discussion which will be partly about the theme of multiculturalism in Canada. I'd therefore like to use this opportunity to test an idea.

Consider this question: Does a country’s choice of an integration policy really have a serious long term social impact? Does adopting multiculturalism rather than pluriculturalism, republicanism or the American melting pot system mean anything truly significant in the long term?

I have a feeling that it means much less that we often assume. Why? Because only the first generation of immigrants are significantly affected by their new country’s integration policy. The second generation, with a few much publicized exceptions, is born in the new country and inevitably takes that country’s culture. It doesn't matter to them whether it is multicultural, pluricultural, unicultural or anything else. That new country is their homeland its culture is theirs.

Canadians are very good at finding anecdotes to support the claim that multiculturalism is divisive. There point to the isolated Sikhs of Brampton, the Canadian-born Islamic terrorists whose disinterest in (or hate of) Canada can be apparently attributed to the government funding of their cultural events.

This logic might make sense if other countries in the world with opposite integration policies didn’t have exactly the same issues.

Take the U.S.: They are supposed to adhere to the “melting-pot” vision, yet they have many home-grown terrorists (many of which are white skinned) and were also the first to rename the Christmas tree to Holiday Tree. This is not something you’d expect from the country of the melting pot.

France is even more serious. It is supposed to be a republican country of one nation, one people, yet there are about 8 million resentful ethnic North-Africans detached from mainstream society living in the suburbs of Paris and Marseilles. It’s hardly one nation, one people.

It seems to me that the impact of integration policies is greatly overblown. They don’t seem to alter the nature of societies in practice the way they do on paper. In my mind, they’re much more about making new immigrants feel welcome and accepted than about changing the construction of society. In that regards, I would say that multiculturalism is a success because it makes it easier for first generation immigrants to keep alive traditions that are so important to their sense of identity and belonging.

Article

Cette chronique d'André Pratte montre que l'ADN et the Front national de Le Pen ont beaucoup de choses en commun...

Je veux aussi mentionner, pour ceux qui ne sont pas au courant de la nouvelle, que Poutine et Medvedev ont trouvé le moyen de modifier la Constitution russe de façon à guarantir qu'ils seront au pouvoir pendant les 26 prochaines années. C'est ce qu'on appelle un coup d'état sans éclats. Ca rapelle un certain homme politique allemand en 1933-35...

L’occasion du choc

L’économiste Milton Friedman est reconnu pour avoir popularisé le principe de « l’occasion du choc ». Cette idée veut qu’une crise soit le meilleur moment pour un gouvernement de mettre en œuvre des changements majeurs dans l’infrastructure sociale et économique d’un pays. Pour Friedman, une crise est un catalyseur qui rend les solutions « politiquement impossibles » des économistes « politiquement inévitables. »

La crise boursière a sérieusement porté atteinte à la crédibilité de l’approche « laissez-faire » de Milton Friedman mais son travail sur « l’occasion du choc » reste très pertinent. La débacle des marchés financiers, pourvu qu’elle se répercute sur l’économie courante, présente en effet une occasion en or aux gouvernements occidentaux de rénover leur système financier pour le rendre non seulement plus transparent, mais aussi plus vert.

On sait depuis longtemps que le réchauffement climatique est une bombe à retardement qui risque de ravager l’économie mondiale dans les cinquante prochaines années. Il n’est pas trop tard pour agir, mais il faudra un effort considérable de la part de tous les pays industrialisés pour corriger la situation. Cet effort devra s’orienter sur deux axes complémentaires: encourager la recherche et décourager la pollution. Des mesures drastiques comme l’introduction d’une taxe sur le carbone et la mise en place d’un gigantesque fond de recherche pour l’industrie verte seront donc nécessaires.

Or on a vu dans la dernière élection fédérale ce qui l’en coûte de proposer des changements importants sans le couvert d’une crise financière. Stéphane Dion a parié que les Canadiens comprendraient le bien-fondé de son Tournant vert. Il a perdu. Mais la nouvelle dégradation de l’économie, combinée avec l’élection d’un président démocrate aux États-Unis, change la donne. Il est donc permis d’espérer que les politiciens occidentaux profiteront de la crise pour jeter les bases d’une économie durable.

No Portrait Gallery

You probably won't have heard about this since the media barely mentioned it, but the Conservative announced last Friday their intention to fully cancel the project to build a National Portrait Gallery. The project had already become something of a farce when the government tried integrate it with the EnCana corporate headquarters in Calgary. This is just the final nail on the coffin.

The Conservatives cited the economic uncertainty as their reason for canceling the programme. This argument might carry some credibility if the portrait gallery were that expensive to buil. But in reality, it costs less than 50 million dollars, petty cash for the Government of Canada (and less than the cost of an election)

The real cause is not economic uncertainty, it's ideology.

Obama

So Obama is the new President. Good.

Two comments on that topic:

-Obama's arrival is necessarily good news for the planet as it means change from George Bush. Will he be a transformational president? We'll have to wait and see. He's definitely smart, well educated, and aware that the world is larger than Texas, so there's reason to be optimistic.
His first task will be to downplay expectations because there are millions of people expecting a miracle just as the economic meltdown is about to hit full steam. He should be fine in the long term, because the crisis will eventually be resolved, but the next few months mightn't be pretty.

-Is it just me, or did Canadians invest more emotional energy into the American election than into our own. For the past few days, my school has been filled with talk about Obama the Great and all of the wonderful things he represents. Many students stayed up all night with their parents to watch the coverage of his election victory and the Haitian-born students are still over the moon with excitement that finally, America has a black President.

I can only base myself on what I saw at my school, but the Canadian election didn't generate nearly as much interest or emotion. Certainly, no one at school stayed up all night to watch it. It's fashionable to bash the U.S. and to gleefully discuss its downfall, but if there's one thing that this election confirmed, it's that the America is still the country that makes us dream.

Cabinet

It's always fun to watch the media get excited about the composition of a new Cabinet. Today, Stephen Harper made headlines by naming the first ever Inuit Cabinet Minister, Leona Aglukkaq, who will take over the health portfolio.

The truth is that this Cabinet isn't too different from the last one. There are some new faces, true, but no huge influx of new talent that could change the dynamic from the previous government.

At any rate, the Cabinet can be the best in the world and still nothing will change until the PMO starts giving Ministers more say in government policy. Ms. Aglukkaq, for instance, may be a very compelling symbol of the progress of Canadian democracy, but she will never be more than a symbol if the PMO treats her like her predecessor Tony Clement.

The Conservatives claim to be decentralizers, so they should start by moving the policy out of the PMO to the ministries where it belongs. But such a thing is not likely to happen because centralizing the policy also allows the PMO to centralize the message, which paid dividends in the last election.

Cartoon

Gable, Globe and Mail

Médias

J'ai perdu ma foi. Moi qui était pendant si longtemps un fervent lecteur du Globe and Mail et de Cyberpresse, grand admirateur de Jeffrery Simpson et d'André Pratte, je lâche le monde des médias.

Les journalistes ne m'intéressent plus. Après une campagne électorale où ils ont sacrifié leur rigueur intellectuelle pour se débarrasser d'un "nerd à lunettes" dont ils n'aimaient pas la tête, je ne conserve plus beaucoup de respect pour la plupart d'entre eux.

Evidemment, ils y a des exceptions. J'ai toujours été impressionné par les articles du Devoir par exemple. Seuls hics: le journal est souverainiste et l'essentiel du contenu est payant...

Il y a aussi quelques autres rares notables nichés un peu partout dans les médias du pays. Je pense à des gens comme André Pratte (que j'aime encore beaucoup), James Travers (quand il ne dit pas de bétises), et certains journalistes politiques de la CBC qui sont dirigés, il faut le dire, par une légende: Don Newman.

Un autre chroniqueur qui m'a toujours impréssionné, c'est Doug Saunders du Globe and Mail. Il est depuis quelques années correspondant du Globe en Europe, et il a écrit un article absolument fascinant cette semaine sur l'effet de la crise banquaire sur les petits pays d'Europe, et indirectement, sur le mouvement souverainiste écossais.

D'après Saunders, le problème de ces petits pays (Islande, Lichtenstein, Iles Canaries...) est que la valeur de leurs grandes banques internationales dépasse de loin la taille de leurs économies. Mais comme, depuis quelques mois, les gouvernements des plus grands pays occidentaux acceptent de fournir des prêts gigantesques à leurs banques et de garantir tous les comptes d'épargne, les plus petits pays sont dans un situation fort dangereuse.

Pour les souverainistes en Ecosse, la situation est aussi difficile car HBOS, la plus grande banque d'Ecosse vient d'être nationalisée par le gouvenement britannique. Comme il est clair que le gouvernement écossais n'aurait pas eu les moyens de nationaliser cette banque (et comme le chef du parti indépendantiste est un ancien employé de HBOS) sans l'appui du Royaume-Uni en entier, les souverainistes sont dans une situation compliquée...

Déficit 0... pour le moment

Pardonnez-moi de ne pas avoir actualisé mon blog depuis quelques jours! Je suis en train d'organiser un concert de levée de fonds pour des orphelins au Cambodge (www.khk-es.ca) et je n'ai pratiquement plus un moment de libre. De toute façon, depuis l'élection de Harper, je suis en deuil et j'essaye de ne pas trop penser à la politique.

Reste que les prochains mois risquent d'être intéressants. Vu l'état de l'économie mondiale, les revenus du gouvernement vont vraisemblablement baisser. Or, comme Stephen Harper a promis qu'il n'y aurait pas de déficit, il va avoir un sacré défi pour présenter des budgets équilibrés sans couper de façon trop drastique dans les services du gouvernement.

Car ne l'oublions pas, nous sommes encore en minorité, et Harper devra soumettre tous ses budgets à un vote de confiance. Les partis de l'opposition ne se gêneront pas de le faire tomber l'année prochaine s'il présente un budget assez nocif politiquement, il devra donc minutieusement planifier sa stratégie pour faire avaler au Canadiens la dure réalité que l'équation (moins de taxes)+(récession)=(revenus stables) est malheureusement fausse.

Si l'on s'en tient à cet article, il prépare déjà le terrain.

Hypocrisy At Its Best

You may have noticed that most of the country's leading newspapers have endorsed Stephen Harper's Conservatives. As far as I've seen, the only exception is the Toronto Star, which would have endorsed a mailbox for Prime Minister provided that it were painted in Liberal Red.

I'm not really irritated by right-wing papers like the National Post endorsing the Tories. They support the Conservative ideology so it's only natural for them to endorse the Conservative party.

What ticks me off is the choice made by supposedly non-partisan papers like the Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen, and the Globe and Mail.

The Globe editorial board has opposed every single one of Stephen Harper's key policies. The opposed the GST cut, they opposed the $1200 a year child care plan and they opposed the botched implementation of the accountability act. Yet they still endorsed Stephen Harper, praising his leadership abilities and claiming that he's grown into the job.

The Ottawa Citizen's endorsement is even more ludicrous. They endorsed Harper but preferred the Liberal platform. They wanted Stephen Harper to get elected but suggested that he should steal the Liberal Green Shift plan...

These newspapers have been taken for a ride by Conservative Party spin doctors. They oppose everything about the Conservative Party, but still endorse Harper because they have been told often enough that "Stephen Harper is a strong leader who gets things done".

Conversely, these newspapers have all supported most key planks of the Liberal platform (Green shift, 30-50 poverty plan, infrastructure plan), but still attack Stéphane Dion since he's, according to the latest Conservative TV ads, "Not a leader".

The hypocrisy is disgusting. These newspapers claim to be motivated entirely by ideas, but when they are given the choice between a cerebral nerd defending a coherent platform they support and an opportunistic politician defending a 40 page advertising document they oppose, they pick the politician for his "leadership" and "steady hand". They claim to be intellectually fair and transparent, but they're the first ones to fall for the spin.

Next time these papers publish an editorial bemoaning the lack of decorum in the House of Commons, the lack of vision from our leaders, the lack of transparency, the lack of bench strength, the lack of coherent economic, social and environmental policy we can point to their endorsement of Stephen Harper and say: "you asked for it, hypocrites".

Arts

On assiste pendant cette campagne électorale à une mobilisation sans précédent de la communauté artistique contre le Parti Conservateur. Des manisfestations ont été organisées à Montréal et Toronto et des groupes culturels ont appelé la population à voter contre Stephen Harper. Plusieurs personalités célèbres comme Margaret Atwood et Michel Tremblay ont joint leur voix au mouvement anti-conservateur. Le chanteur Michel Rivard a peut-être asséné le coup fatal en publiant sur Youtube une video hyper-populaire sur l’avenir des arts sous un gouvernement conservateur majoritaire.

Le zèle des artistes vient d’une décision controversée du gouvernement Harper de couper 40 millions de dollars au budget annuel du Ministère du Patrimoine. Cet argent servait auparavant à financer des programmes de musique, de lettres et de théatre, et à subventionner des tournées d’artistes canadiens à l’étranger.

Les Conservateurs soutiennent que les programmes en question sont inefficaces. C’est faux. Ils disent aussi que le climat d’incertitude économique rend nécessaire ces compressions. C’est bête.

Le secteur des arts est un moteur essentiel de l’économie. D’après le Conference Board du Canada, il est responsable de 600 000 emplois et à un poids économique d’environ 84.6 milliards de dollars (7% de notre P.I.B.). C’est un vehicule d’investissement sûr qui rapporte gros au gouvernement. En fait, des études ont montré que chaque dollar investi dans les arts en rapporte 11 en retombées directes et indirectes.

Les économistes disent que la meilleure réponse d’un gouvernement face à l’incertitude économique est d’investir dans ses citoyens. Plus d’argent pour l’éducation, l’infrastructure et les arts. De toute façon, même aux prises avec la guerre la plus meurtrière de l’histoire humaine, un certain Winston Churchill trouvait assez d’argent pour les arts. Sinon, disait-il à son ministre des finances, « Pourquoi se battre ? ».

More Plagiarism

For the second time in three days, the Liberals are accusing Stephen Harper of plagiarism. Today, they point to a 2003 speech where Stephen Harper's words are suspiciously inspired from... of all people... Mike Harris. The offense isn't as blatant as the previous one but still clear plagiarism.

The Conservatives are refusing to divulge the identity of the speechwriter which also suggests that it isn't the one responsible for the John Howard fiasco. It looks bad, once again, but it is unlikely to signficantly affect voter intentions. After all, it was 5 years ago!

Speaking of voter intentions, who won the English debate?

An Ipsos online poll held half way through the debate ranks Stephen Harper as the clear winner. However, it is an Ipsos online poll conducted half way through the debate...

I think Stephen Harper did fine, but I was more interested in the performance of Jack Layton vs. Stéphane Dion.

Layton spent the entire evening in attack mode. He pulled off the best one liners and staged many virulent attacks against the PM and Dion. Dion was the opposite. He made himself understood in English, tried to explain his plan, but nothing more.

Most people would easily crown Layton the winner of this batter, but I somehow don't think that his aggressive and eloquently over-the-top style went down well with left-wing voters hesitating between the Liberals and NDP. It would have been a hit in municipal politics or if he were vying for the right-wing vote, but I really think that he only ended up irritating his target electorate: urban, middle and lower class voters.

We'll get a better idea tomorrow in the polls.

John McCain

I've just finished watching part of the US. presidential debates. The topic was foreign policy and the quality of the exchanges was absolutely abysmal.

Both candidates gave us an earful of nonsense. Barack Omaba promised to leave Irak to shift the focus on Afghanistan. John McCain pledged to stay in both countries, to cut contacts with Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and Russia, and to form a "league of democracies" to better advance the interests of the western world (i.e. the USA).

It was all about how to be better policemen. Who can we talk to, who should we impose sanctions against, who do we invade? John McCain was busy spreading fear and he did an excellent job. His message was the same as George Bush's: if you're not scared, you're naive.

Obama did fine, but he certainly didn't shine. He spoke in very short sentences and got bogged down too easily by McCain's jabs. The eloquence of his speeches was missing from this debate.

I actually believe that Stéphane Dion should make John McCain his model for public speaking. Neither of the two men look credible when they try to make fiery political speeches like Barack Obama or Pierre Trudeau. But McCain has found a way to communicate his message very effectively by speaking slowly and in a very soft tone of voice. It makes him look sincere, wise and in command of the issues.

The same would be true of Dion. If only he spoke like McCain, he'd make less English mistakes and regain the advantages he used to own on sincerity and competence.

Petits commentaires

Quelques commentaires sur la présente campagne:

Stéphane Dion a dévoilé aujourd’hui son programme électoral, un gros document de 68 pages avec l’inventaire des promesses de son parti. Les calculs sont tous bons, mais pas nécessairement fiables car ils sont basés sur des chiffres anciens qui ont été revus à la baisse. Dion, s’il est élu, sera vraisemblablement obligé d’annuler certains programmes conservateurs ou de renier sur des promesses de son parti. Il en est sûrement conscient et à sans doûte déjà décidé précisément quelles promesses il compte tenir.

Jack Layton, pour sa part, a affirmé ce matin en entrevue qu’il serait prêt à former un gouvernement de coalition avec les Libéraux si cela permettait de se débarasser de Harper. En réalité, c’est très peu probable car les Libéraux sont les pires ennemis du NDP. Mais, comme formule pour freiner le vote stratégique, Layton aurait difficilement pu trouver mieux. Chapeau!

Polls

The headline in La Presse today read: "Conservatives Cruising Towards Majority"
The headline in The Globe and Mail read: "Conservatives Losing Ground In Key Ridings"

The reality is somewhat in between. The Conservatives are still comfortably leading with just under 40% of voter intentions. However, the Liberals picked up some steam in the past few days and gone up by a few percentage points. How do I know this? Because the Globe and Mail has a handy system called "The Poll of Polls" which finds overall trends by finding the average of all national polls. You can visit it at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/national/politics/

The small Liberal rise in popularity is most likely due to their decision to finally start showcasing their team. Bob Rae and Ken Dryden have been making regular appearances on the campaign trail with Dion in the past two days and Michael Ignatieff is scheduled to join them tomorrow at a rally in Toronto. There is concern among Liberals that the team may end up overshadowing the leader and send his personal plummeting ratings even lower, but I've always believed that those "leadership ratings" are overrated. After all, in contrast with our neighbours to the south, voters here choose their party, not their Prime Minister.

Cartoon

Since it's my birthday today, I'm going to write a "lazy post"! Here are two great cartoon from the Globe and Mail's Gable!

Début de campagne

Les premiers jours de cette campagne électorale ont été marqués par la transformation extrême des images de Dion et Harper, quelques dérapages dans la campagne conservatrice et le fameux fiasco entourant la participation d’Elizabeth May au débat des chefs.

Les médias ont grandement fait état des avaries dans la machine électorale du Parti Conservateur. C'est vrai qu'avec l’épisode du guano de macareux et le congédiement aujourd’hui d’un administrateur important du parti qui avait accusé le père d’un soldat mort en Afghanistan d’être un Libéral diguisé, il y a de quoi se faire des soucis.

Mais sur le fond, très peu de choses ont changé depuis le début de la campagne. Les Conservateurs jouissent encore d’une avance importante dans les sondages et les Libéraux n’ont pas été capables de regagner le terrain perdu. Dion se débrouille honorablement, mais il lui faudra un effort presque surhumain pour détrôner Harper.

Je prédis que l’économie deviendra vite l’enjeu principal de la campagne. Steven Harper devra paufiner son image de stabilité et de compétence tandis que Dion devra convaincre les électeurs des bénéfices économiques du Tournant Vert. En ce moment, c’est très nettement avantage Harper, mais les Libéraux sont encore de la partie.

Campaign 2008

Election campaigns are all about rhetoric and notoriously devoid of serious policy discussion. André Pratte from La Presse suggested that scheduling regular debates between the two main contenders would make more serious policy discussion possible, but this is unlikely to happen anytime soon.

In keeping with the style of the campaign, I'll be updating my blog much more regularly in the next few weeks, but not necessarily to do anything more than comment on the performance of the party leaders in the last 24 hours.

While day 1 of the campaign was largely won by the Conservatives, day 2 was Liberal victory. They set the agenda by announcing a policy that would ban assault weapons like the one used in the Dawson College shootings, and dominated the news until word broke out that Elizabeth May would be excluded from the Leaders' debate. The also unveiled a series of new ads which, while falling short of ground braking, are still well made and on message. The French ads are much better than their English counterparts and could go far. They are combative without being excessively negative, and also show the strength of the Liberal team.

It was an uneventful day for Stephen Harper. No major mistakes, but an unsuccessful attempt to control the day's agenda by calling a press conference at 6.00 am. The idea backfired because the journalists were so angry at being woken up that they covered the morning news with clips of Conservative ministers fumbling in their answers to straightforward questions!

Liberals Must Attack

The Conservatives have been running an advertising campaign since the beginning of the week in preparation for the election that it expected to be called on Sunday. New polls suggest that it is paying off. They don't yet seem to be in majority territory, but they have gained at least five points.

It will therefore be extremely important for the Liberals and the Bloc to go on the attack immediately and give Conservatives a taste of their own medicine. Machiavelli explained in the Prince that the high road doesn't work. His advice is still valid today. When George Bush and Karl Rove launched a devastating ad campaign against John Kerry, the democratic candidate chose to trust the intelligence of Americans and refused to respond with an attack campaign of his own. The result was Bush making up the ground he lost in the early stages of the election campaign, and winning the election with a clear majority.

Canadians aren't any smarter than Americans and a well-run ad campaign can be just as effective here. It would be better for all parties to take the high road, but since the Conservatives are committed to an ad blitz that would make Karl Rove proud, the opposition parties need to us the same tactics.

Elections et sondages

Stephen Harper et Stéphane Dion se sont rencontrés aujourd'hui au 24 Sussex, soi-disant pour déterminer s'il y aurait un terrain d'entente possible entre les deux partis dans la prochaine session parlementaire. Le tête-à-tête à duré en total un gros 15 minutes, et s'est achevé avec la conclusion évidente que Stephen Harper allait déchencher des élections.

N'empêche que c'est une sacrée comédie que nous a joué le premier ministre avec cette histoire de "rencontre au sommet". Il s'est d'abord servi du refus de Stéphane Dion de le rencontrer avant le 13 septembre pour alimenter sa thèse de parlement dysfonctionnel, or une fois que Dion a accepté, il l'a reçu pendant un quart d'heure avant de conclure que, ô surprise, il fallait aller aux urnes.

Autre nouvelle d'aujourd'hui: un nouveau sondage de Stategic Counsel place les Conservateurs huit points en avance des Libéraux avec 37 points par rapport à 29.

Si ce sondage était le premier depuis le début du mois, on pourrait y voir quelque chose d'intéressant. Mais c'est plutôt le cinquième de la semaine. Alors, comme les autres sondages plaçaient systématiquement les deux principaux partis à égalité, on peut aisément conclure que celui-ci n'est rien d'autre qu'un freak-poll.

Ce n'est la première fois pas non plus que Stategic Counsel publie un sondage avec des résultats plus que douteux. Comme vous pouvez le constater sur le site web Nodice.ca qui fait l'inventaire de tous les sondages depuis le dernier scrutin de janvier 2006, Strategic Counsel a tendence à considérablement surestimer les appuis conservateurs. En mars dernier, ils avaient réalisé une enquête donnant au parti de Steven Harper une avance de 11 points sur les Libéraux, quand une autre enquête publiée le même jour, celle-ci de Harris-Decima, voyait plutôt une égalité 32-32 entre les deux partis.

Le plus drôle dans tout ceci, c'est que ce dernier sondage de Stategic Counsel donne aux Libéraux une avance importante sur les Conservateurs au Québec (26-23). C'est tout un contraste avec le dernier sondage de Léger-Marketing qui donnait seulement 20% des appuis aux Libéraux mais qui plaçait en revanche les Conservateurs à égalité avec le Bloc...

Permanent Cap

The national campaign spending limit exists to stop political parties from buying their way into office. It is supposed to level the playing field for all parties during an election and to ensure, in the words of the Supreme Court, that “no one voice is overwhelmed by another.”

But this law is easily circumvented by well-off political parties who simply spend their excess money in the months leading up to the election campaign. The governing party benefits the most since the prime minister still has the right to choose when an election will take place.

We should therefore move to install a permanent cap on the spending of political parties. This limit would be set low enough to put all parties on an equivalent financial footing, but leave room for them to run day-to-day operations, to consult with Canadians, and to deliver their message. Let’s not forget that, regardless of the spending limit, elections always produce a winner. Some are fairer though, and some see less money go from the pocket of concerned Canadians into the coffers of ad agencies and polling companies.

Elections

J’affirmais dans mon dernier message que Steven Harper ne déclencherait pas d’élections avant l’ouverture de la prochaine session parlementaire. C'est encore mon avis. Mais ce qui n’était il y a 48 heures qu’une simple rumeur pourrait maintenant facilement se concrétiser. Si bien que la semaine prochaine, oui, la semaine prochaine, il est fort possible que le pays soit plongé dans une campagne électorale qui promet d’être dure et vicieuse.

On a aujourd’hui appris que le bureau du premier ministre a annulé le voyage en Chine de la gouverneure générale prévu pour la semaine du cinq septembre pour s’assurer de sa présence au cas où Stephen Harper voudrait provoquer des élections. Hier, le ministre de la justice Rob Nicholson a aussi annulé la lecture en Chambre d’un projet de loi controversé introduit par un député conservateur de l’Alberta qui devait donner aux foetus un statut juridique. Beaucoup de gens percevaient ce projet de loi comme un pas vers l’abolition du droit à l’avortement.

Il semblerait vraiment que le premier ministre veuille aller en élections. Des signes comme ceux-là mentent rarement. Mais je maintiens qu’elles viendront plus tard, sans doute vers la fin du mois de septembre. Ou alors, il faudrait que le premier ministre redoute quelque chose dont le public n’a pas encore été informé. On verra, mais pour le moment, les paris sont ouverts.

Why There Won't Be An Election

There’s been an increasing amount of speculation in the past few days that Stephen Harper could send the country into an election by asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament. Despite what the story-starved media may be claiming, this is a baseless rumour.

Stephen Harper has two obvious reasons for keeping Parliament alive:

-He passed a law two years ago which brought in fixed election dates. This meant that unless the government were to be defeated in a confidence vote, an election would be held on the fixed date: Monday, October 19 2009. Of course, the law didn’t strip Harper from his constitutional right to call an election, but the public backlash associated with him breaking his own promise would be such that it would only make sense to do so if he were certain of a major victory.

-He isn’t certain of a major victory. The latest Harris-Decima poll puts him in a statistical tie with the Liberals, whom he trails in both Ontario and Québec.

The lesson to learn from this story is that political columnists (and bloggers like myself) have little material to draw from in the month of August, one of the reasons for which it wouldn’t be such a pity if the Ottawa Chamberfest were lengthened by a week.

Food Inspection

After two weeks of chamber music, it’s time to get back to politics.

The Globe and Mail reports that a second life may have been claimed by the outbreak of Listeria monocytogenes which has caused havoc in the meat packing industry. Maple Leap Food Inc., the company that owns the Toronto plant from where the outbreak is thought to have originated, has already been forced to recall two million dollars worth of meat products that can be found in supermarkets and restaurants like MacDonald’s and Mr. Sub. More recalls are expected in the next few days.

The sheer scale of this bacterial outbreak raises the question of why on earth the problem wasn’t spotted earlier. Experts from the Canadian Food Inspection Agency have only recently been able to establish the presence of Listeria in Maple Leaf Food’s Sure Slice brand of roast beef: it’s too little, too late.

The problem is that health officials can only monitor 2% of the food that is shipped to consumers. Most of what ends up on our plate is trucked directly from the plant with no inspection whatsoever in between.

Leaked Cabinet documents reveal that the Conservatives were planning on reducing spending in the Canadian Food Inspection Agency by shifting the responsibility of monitoring food safety to the industry. The announcement of the policy was apparently delayed “owing to significant communication risks” (e.i. it would go down terribly in the polls), but Cabinet remains committed to releasing it at some point in the next year.

This Conservative plan would hand the responsibility of monitoring the safety of meat products to the industry that produces them. This equates to asking inmates to guard their own jail. The Liberals and NDP rightly derided the proposal and Stéphane Dion even likened it to the Harris Government measures that led to the Walkerton disaster.

But the opposition didn’t have to launch such a childish and demagogical attack on the government when at least half of policy makes perfect sense. Industry should play a bigger role in food safety control and the sooner that responsibility is bestowed on it, the better it is for the consumer. However, industry should not replace the government health officials but merely complement them. Hopefully, this will make it possible to change that dismal 2% figure that I mentioned earlier on.

Inmates should be given security duties and asked to keep watch over their fellow prisoners. But the jail guards should also keep their jobs!

Closing Gala Concert

I apologize for taking so long to publish the last instalment in my series of Chamberfest reviews. I’ve been away from Ottawa with my family since the morning after the last concert and I haven’t had any access to a computer since! This prolonged leave of absence mightn’t turn out to be such a bad thing though, as it gave me much needed time to think over what was undoubtedly the most perplexing concert that I saw. I still haven’t made my mind up, but my thoughts are now significantly clearer!

The music of the Closing Gala was perhaps the best of the festival. Certainly the most powerful that I heard in my two weeks of concert-going: it was a truly fantastic blend of excitement, provocation and novelty. Both of the two works performed stood out for their wonderful innovation and musical openness, with seemingly equal inspiration drawn from Bernstein’s West Side Story and Bach’s classical Cantatas. Bass soloist Robert Pomakov’s decision to wear a Hawaiian shirt in front of the choir dressed in traditional black garments literally embodied this theme.

It was wonderful for the Closing Gala to consist only of new Canadian music (composed in 2004 and 2006 by Larysa Kuzmenko and Christos Hatzis). I would hope that it was selected solely for its musical merit rather than as a political statement, but regardless of the motivations, it was certainly good enough to justify the choice.

What I found slightly troubling about the concert was not the quality of the music but its place in the Chamberfest Closing Gala. When the Gryphon Trio took over the artistic leadership of the festival, they made it clear that they would shift the focus away from the traditional repertoire written by dead-white-European-men towards more modern, Canadian music. In principle, their objective is praiseworthy and a positive step for the Festival. But I do feel that in their zeal to give more space to contemporary Canadian music, they have sacrificed part of the original mission of Chamberfest, which remains fundamentally to bring chamber music to the Ottawa area.

In the Closing Gala, the music was wonderful, but it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination chamber music. There were on stage two full sized choirs, a soloist and the Gryphon Trio. Such an ensemble can produce -and did produce- truly fantastic music, but not chamber music.

If such a concert had taken place earlier in the week, I wouldn’t have felt in the least uncomfortable. In the future though, I would consider it a matter of principle and artistic focus that the Closing Gala Concert of Chamberfest feature what the festival does best: chamber music and only chamber music.

Leipzig String Quartet

The first thing I noticed about the Leipzig String Quartet was the fantastic mood of the musicians. They were all smiling pleasantly, exchanging quick laughs between movements and making discreet gestures to the visibly delighted audience.

The second thing I noticed is that they were all melting away. Ottawa’s August humidity was clearly a problem for this group of Germans from Leipzig (much more so than for musicians of the Shanghai Quartet) who were constantly having to pull a white cloth out of their pockets to wipe away the perspiration dripping from their faces.

But the main thing was the music, and it was great. The execution was exciting and full of panache, the shaping was innovative without being distracting and the repertoire, yes the repertoire, was finally conservative: Beethoven, Mendelssohn and Shostakovich.

I was truly impressed by the wonderful ability of these Germans to sing. They didn’t just play notes, they played music by treating each note as a syllable and each bar as a key word of a song. Every last bit of music was sucked out of the page with the end result often sending shivers up my spine. It helped of course that they played Mendelssohn and Beethoven, two composers with a real knack for melody , but even the Shostakovich G minor piano Quintet performed jointly with Stéphane Lemelin had intricate phrasing and real lyricism.

My only criticism is the same one that I make after every concert, namely: I want more sound. I’m beginning to think that it must have something to do with church acoustics or my seating in the hall because I consistently feel that performers could easily double the volume without hurting anyone’s ears. The NAC Music Director Pinchas Zukerman likes to use the phrase “Play to the exit sign” to help young musicians perform with a full sound. And while Zukerman may be a soloist rather than a chamber musician, his advice still applies to the Chamberfest musicians: a sound that can fill the hall right up to the exit sign is more exciting not only for its added power and depth, but also for making possible the stark volume contrasts that are so fundamentally important to chamber music.

Hoebig-Moroz

A very pleasant concert yesterday at noon featuring the violin-piano duo of Gwen Hoebig and David Moroz. On the program were Beethoven's 10th Sonata, Brahms' 2^nd Sonata, and two contemporary works by Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.

Hoebig's sound is truly beautiful. She has a marvellous warm timber which fit perfectly with pianist Moroz playing on a Steinway Grand, and there was some absolutely wonderful shaping and expressive interplay between the two instruments.

The musicians had just recently arrived from Calgary, however, and there were visibly some rusty fingers at the beginning of the performance. The Brahms sonata wasn't therefore quite as perfect as might otherwise have been the case, though the piece is such a crowd-pleaser that most in the audience –including myself- were more than ready to forgive the occasional tentative passage.

Neither of the two works by Arvo Pärt were on the programme, which I found surprising given that they both looked extremely difficult. I've heard of musicians replacing a difficult piece with an easy one, but the reverse is less often encountered! Their success was hard to judge. Some people in the audience were visibly elated but others looked bored stiff. For my part, I was ambivalent. The execution was good, but they didn't sell me on the musical interest of the work.
In contemporary music where many passages are not easily accessible, the performer needs to work especially hard to keep the audience's attention. With a few more dramatic volume and tempo contrasts, I suspect that I would have found it easier to stay focused on the music.

The Beethoven 10th Sonata was a delight. It's a work that usually sounds good, but this duo really made it special by exaggerating the contrasts that are so essential to Beethoven. Hoebig's sound, although very lovely, is also quite small. I would have been happy with twice as much sound for the whole duration of the concert, but for lack of having both a big sound and being beautiful, it's better to be beautiful!

Musical Musing with Harry Halbreich

Musicologist Harry Halbreich’s reflexions on the day’s program this morning at Dominion-Chalmers were absorbing albeit unexciting. Halbreich is a true Chamber Music expert and had many interesting facts and anecdotes to share with his audience. He spoke at length about composers such as Stravinski, Janacek, and Valentin Silvestrov, and also delivered a pointed critique of the 1950s minimalist movement.

Though his command of English was quite exceptional, he had a tendency to speak in a monochord tone and sometimes lost part of his audience. He also made a few bizarre and slightly inappropriate comments, including one alluding to the fact that he was against the death penalty because he was a believer and followed the commandment “Thou shalt not kill”.

At any rate, the lecture was pleasant and informative, but perhaps not engaging enough to make me want to go on a daily basis.

Music Moves

The festival’s main contemporary music concert took place last Wednesday evening at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. On the program were well known groups such as the Gryphon Trio and the Penderecki String Quartet, as well as a much publicised collaborative performance between Canadian composer Omar Daniel and violinist Erika Raum.

It was clear from the outset that this concert would be about pushing the boundaries: not just contemporary music, but 21^st century contemporary music. It was also clear that the concert would be Canadian. In fact, of the 19 artists who performed on stage, all were Canadian (it might also be added that they all came from the GTA, but that’s another story). On that front, the artists and organisers deserve our most sincere congratulations. There is nothing more important than encouraging innovation in music, and if it can happen in Canada, all the better!

It is possible, however, that the artists went too far in their creative exploration. Every work that was performed last Wednesday had at least one wonderful element. It could be an interesting choreography, an innovative use of digital playback, or, in the case of the first work, plain old good music. Unfortunately, that single wonderful element was systematically masked by a plethora of entirely useless distractions. The most glaring was the decision to amplify the Gryphon Trio’s performance of “Memory, Distance and no time for Dances” when the hall was small and the music free of any digital sound effects… but there were others. In the much hyped performance of “The Flaying of Marsyas”, for instance, composer Omar Daniel hung by his ankles in a tubular metal cage to control, through a series of cables and wires, the volume and sound effects of the violin performance of Erika Raum. The music was great, once again, but the sight of a half-naked composer hanging upside down in the middle of the stage was not an example of profound symbolism, but a truly unwelcome distraction from an otherwise wonderful violin performance.

It’s better to innovate too much than too little. However, in the future, it would be preferable if the audience left the concert feeling that boundaries had been pushed, not for the sake of pushing, but to create a better work of art.

The Art of The Arabic Violin

In case you needed confirmation, Arabic violin is not like western violin. For a start, the A and E strings are tuned a tone lower. They thus become G and D and the instrument, instead of being tuned solely in fifths, has one fourth and two fifths. Any western violinist will tell you that this matters a great deal!

More importantly, Arabic violin is made to play Arabic music. It therefore functions in a totally different musical universe where the “scientific” rules of pitch, rhythm, and sound production are abandoned in favour of pure emotions.

The result is not without merit. It’s certainly very interesting, and for a short while at least, quite enjoyable. Much like in Jazz, there’s a strong emphasis put on improvisation and it’s quite amazing to watch how the musicians communicate and stay together while inventing new melodies on stage!

The lack of technical prowess, though, does take its toll on the listener’s ears after a while. One can understand that Arabic music wouldn’t require the same level of technique as western music, but the ability to play in tune and to produce a beautiful sound are always important. Yesterday, this was not always the case and it took away from the wonderful rhythms and harmonies that the musicians were creating.

In any case, the concert was a great experience that, while not necessarily wanting to repeat, I advise everyone to try.

Shanghai Quartet

After a performance like the one I heard last night, it’s tempting to write the word perfect in bold characters and go off to review something else. I’ll nevertheless give this a shot.

The Shanghai Quartet was not perfect: the first violinist had a flat note in the second movement of the Beethoven 6^th Quartet. Aside from that, it suffices to say that these guys are amongst the best in the business, and it showed.

There was something quite marvellous about their sound. Not just the intonation - so perfect it buzzed in the listener’s ear - but an amazing togetherness that most chamber groups never really achieve. Competent professional musicians play in time and in tune. But in a quartet, probably the most exposed musical formation, it’s nearly always possible to hear small pitch variations and slight rhythm discrepancies, usually between the base line and the melody. Not last night. These musicians played with a pitch so centered and a rhythm so cohesive that it really did sound at times like a single instrument.

The programme was wonderfully selected: a perfect blend of classical, romantic and modern music from Vienna, Hamburg and Shanghai! Of the three works performed, I probably preferred Beethoven’s 6^th Quartet, though the Brahms 2^nd Quartet was the best executed and From the Path of Beauty was by far the most interesting piece. I must say that it was great to hear a modern work that was both innovative and accessible to a non-expert audience (like me!). The fact that it was composed in the Quartet’s home town (which I recently visited with my violin choir!!) made it seem like a more personal choice.

Before I log off, I’d like to give special kudos to the second violinist Yi-Wen Jiang. He was not only perfectly integrated to the melodic line, but also responsible for giving the music such a pleasant movement and flow. Second violinists have the hardest job in the quartet and rarely get the credit they deserve. Bravo to Yi-Wen and bravo to the Shanghai Quartet.

Chamber Music Festival

You may have noticed that I haven't updated my blog in the last few days. Well, I'll more than make up for it in the next two weeks with post on average twice every three days. The catch is that we're taking a break from politics and going into music.

For the next 14 days, I'll be posting on this blog reviews of concerts at the Ottawa Chamber Music Festival. For those of you who live in Ottawa, I strongly encourage you to attend a few concerts yourself as the music is really wonderful. And for those of you who don't, well, I'm sure some of those Chamber groups will be coming to your city in the next year!

Brass Bounty, Saturday July 26^th

Tonight’s programme was all about having fun: easy, tuneful music performed by a hearty brass band with the simple goal of giving the audience a pleasurable evening.

Things kicked off appropriately with Spirit of Brass, a fun and thoroughly unmemorable piece written by Uruguayan composer Enrique Crespo. I say unmemorable not in a pejorative way, but rather as a compliment: much of the charm of tonight’s pieces came from the fact that they were light, easy to take in, and yes, each one more unmemorable than the others!
Next on the list was a 7 movement extravaganza inspired by the works of John Aubrey. Each movement depicted a short story written by the English author, and if outlandish isn’t a strong enough adjective to describe them, let’s just say that we went from a sick patient thrown from his doctor’s office into the Thames, to a rude son slapping his father’s best friend, to a young man joining the Turkish army, and back again to the doctor’s office. Composer Simon Willis clearly had a lot of fun with this piece and teased the audience by sprinkling his tuneful melodies with unexpected wrong notes. He also created voice and tempo contrasts so exaggerated that they passed the point of grotesque and became simply funny!
We ended the first half of the concert with Brass Memorial to Brahms, a modern Dutch piece inspired by the oboe solo of the Brahms violin concerto. I think I probably still prefer the original, but it was nevertheless very nice.

The second half of the concert took place in the Latin world. After a quick stop-over in Algeria for Saint-Saens’ Marche militaire française from the Suite algérienne, the ensemble arrived in the Americas where it settled for the rest of the evening. They performed an Argentian Tango (written by a Dane), a Brasilian modinha, a Mexican andaluza and… a Canadian Tango. This one was written by 26 year old Rob Teehan, a promising composer en herbe on the staff of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada. He was by pure chance present for the performance with part of the National Youth Orchesta and gave the audience a nice introduction to his work. It was actually, in my mind, one of the nicest pieces of the evening, certainly better than the Villa-Lobos!

We're Making Things Worse

A few interesting albeit predictable developments this week on the Afghanistan front:

We start off with a report by U.S. security officials claiming that more districts of Kandahar are controlled by the Taliban than by the Afghan government. This report is backed up by an even more pessimistic U.N. study that basically describes Kandahar as a hopeless and deteriorating battlefield.

Next, we get an admission from our new Chief of Defence Staff, Gen. Walter Natynczyk, that Afghan violence is indeed rising. And not only in Kandahar, says the general: "You have a worsening security situation, especially localized in three areas -- the Kabul area, in the Regional Command East, where the Americans are, and in the south where we are with the British forces and the Dutch,"
In my mind that “worsening” situation is actually better described as “rapidly deteriorating”: according to Natynczyk, year-to-year violence is up 34 per cent!

Finally, the Globe and Mail releases an internal Defense department memo revealing that Canada has decided to significantly downgrade its objectives for the Afghanistan mission. Specifically, the key original goals of significantly reducing the capabilities of Taliban insurgents and reducing narcotics cultivation and trafficking have been abandoned. Instead, the Harper government said in a June statement that the objective was to "maintain a more secure environment and establish law and order by building the capacity of the Afghan National Army and Police." Visibly, the Harper government isn’t interested in failure, so since violence and poppy cultivation have both rocketed since our military arrived, they are simply changing the mission description.

No one can deny based on all of this evidence that the NATO Afghanistan mission is failing miserably. Kandahar, where Canadian troops are stationed, is the worse area of the country.

So what do we do? If Gen. Natynczyk had his way, we’d simply send more troops. But it seems that the more troops we send, the faster the situation deteriorates. Actually there seems to be a proportional relationship between violence, narcotics trafficking and troop numbers. The sensible thing to do is therefore to pull out. Leave with the knowledge of having turned Afghanistan into a basket case and be thankful that it isn’t even worse. Let Afghanis fight a civil war if they wish, let the Taliban or the military establish a police state if they can. Keep sending in foreign aid for as long as the government accepts it, and hope that with time, things improve.

Où sont les chefs?

En ce beau mois de juillet, voici où sont nos chefs de parti:

Stéphane Dion: En Alberta sur le circuit des BBQ pour vendre son plan vert.

Jack Layton: En expédition de canot-camping avec son épouse Olivia Chow. Ils y vont pour filmer la régression d'un glacier qui alimente une partie de la rivière Alsek!

Pauline Marois: À Boston en stage d'immersion de langue anglaise.

Jean Charest: Au concert de Paul McCartney.

Stephen Harper: Silence absolu. Censuré par son nouveau directeur des communications.

Ambition Is Key

Since I was away for the past month, the blog had to go into hibernation. But now that I’m back, it’s woken up.

We’re July 17^th today, smack in the middle of the summer, so there obviously isn’t much political news. The 10 Premiers have spent the past few days meeting in Quebec City and seem to have reached a significant deal on labour mobility, but since the only thing I can find to say about this agreement is “How come it took you so long?” I’d prefer to comment on an event that occurred, yes, south of the border…

Al Gore made a speech today in which he challenged the United States “to commit to producing 100 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy and truly clean carbon-free sources within 10 years,". Yes, that’s right, 100% clean electricity in ten years.

Mr. Gore’s challenge was of course immediately endorsed by both presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain, but they also refused to include it in their election platform. Politically, a 20 % reduction of fossil fuel electricity production in 10 years is already a tough sell, so a 100 % reduction is simply suicide.

But that’s the kind of reduction that we’ll need to make if we seriously want to halt global warming. Let’s face it, a 20% reduction in western countries, offset by the development of China, India, Brazil and others, simply won’t cut it.

The bottom line is that there are 6.8 billion people in the world and that if they all reach the high standard of living that includes a car and air conditioned house, we will be polluting far too much for the earth to handle.

If we want to stop global warming while maintaining our standard of living, we will need to use new technologies that produce NEXT TO ZERO greenhouse gas emissions. Some of these technologies already exist, many more can be discovered, but this will only happen with pressure from the government.

Targets like the one Mr. Gore suggested demonstrate the unequivocal commitment of the government to tackling global warming. They send a clear message to the industry and encourage innovation more than any subsidy. We should adopt Mr. Gore’s target in Canada, and then go even further. Why not aim to make all cars bought in Canada 100% green by 2018? If the penalty for buying vehicles that run off gasoline were big enough (say $15 000), you’d find that all of a sudden, companies started innovating and hydrogen became affordable.

The idea is very simple. If the government makes pollution punitively expensive or even outlaws it, industry will be forced to adapt to keep its customers. But if the government sets weak targets, industry will stay put, technology will change very little and pollution levels will stay the same.

Fighting the Taliban

For those who are still buying in to this "fighting the Taliban" propaganda, here's the portrait of an average Taliban painted by the London Independent.

So best of luck to NATO. They're going to need it!

OGM

Je vous invite à lire un texte que j'ai écrit sur les OGM pour mon cours de biologie. Je n'en suis pas incroyablement content, mais je me suis bien amusé à l'écrire!

La manipulation génétique existe depuis bien longtemps. Dès les débuts de l’agriculture, l’homme a compris l’art de la sélection artificielle et a cherché à domestiquer les plantes et les animaux pour améliorer leur rendement ou leur goût. Bientôt, l’hybridation est aussi apparue, de sorte qu’en 6500 après Jésus Christ, on croisait déjà des chiens.

Avec l’apparition des premiers clones et organismes génétiquement modifiés dans la seconde moitié du vingtième siècle, beaucoup d’experts ont affirmé qu’il ne s’agissait là que d’une nouvelle étape dans l’histoire de la domestication. En effet, après presque 10 000 ans d’hybridation, il était grand temps qu’on apprenne à faire la même chose en laboratoire. Or le présent rapport, loin de prendre ce parti, cherchera plutôt à montrer que la génétique artificielle commerciale – clonage et recombinaison génétique – est une pratique exceptionnellement dangereuse qui doit absolument être éradiquée.

Mais commençons au début de l’histoire.

Les organismes génétiquement modifiés sont indéniablement avantageux. Aujourd’hui, à peine cinquante ans après la découverte de la spirale de l’ADN, on produit déjà des tomates à mûrissement ralenti, des pastèques carrées, et des légumes capables de pousser dans des climats désertiques. On gaspille moins, on combat la malnutrition, les fermiers s’enrichissent, et tout le monde est content!

En fait, c’est à peu près ça. Car les OGM, voyez-vous, sont fabriqués sur mesure pour nous plaire. Ils peuvent être grands, petits, ronds, carrés, faibles en gras, forts en protéines, esthétiquement parfaits, ou tout simplement résistants. Avec le génie génétique, tout est possible. Les seules limites sont celles que nous nous imposons.

Les environnementalistes trouvent certes beaucoup d’arguments pour dénoncer la production d’OGM. Ils sont vulnérables aux parasites, disent les uns. Ils bouleverseront l’équilibre des écosystèmes, disent les autres. Certains juristes et philosophes soulèvent aussi des problèmes d’éthique sur des questions comme le rapport de l’homme à la nature et la brevetabilité du vivant.

Mais tous ces arguments paraissent bien faibles dressés contre les centaines de millions de vies qu’on pourrait sauver grâce aux OGM. Oui, il y a des dangers ; oui il y a des contraintes. Mais si on peut sauver des vies, si on peut améliorer le niveau de santé de la population mondiale, ces risques sont acceptables.

Alors c’est terminé ? Oui aux OGM ? Presque. Mais il nous manque encore une dernière mise en garde qui nous vient d’un philosophe grec mort il y a maintenant bientôt 2500 ans.

«Je suis sage (…) par le fait même que ce que je ne sais pas, je ne pense pas non plus le savoir. » disait Socrate.

Nous, hommes du 21^ème siècle, nous savons mettre une fusée sur la lune, combattre des virus 10 000 fois plus minces qu’un cheveu, et depuis quelques années, nous savons modifier le code de la vie. Nous sommes capables de faire des choses que tous ceux avant nous croyaient impossibles. Mais pourtant, sommes-nous aussi sage que Socrate? Sommes-nous capable d’admettre comme lui qu’il y a encore beaucoup de choses que nous ne savons pas?

La nature, malgré toutes nos connaissances, est encore trop complexe pour oser y toucher. Oui, nous savons beaucoup, mais nous ignorons encore plus. Chaque nouvelle découverte est accompagnée d’une nouvelle question. Or pour pouvoir modifier la vie en toute sécurité, sans crainte de répercussions imprévues, il nous faudrait connaître toutes les réponses.

Si nous sommes sages, nous acceptons de tourner le dos à la manipulation génétique à des fins commerciales. Nous arrêtons de produire des pastèques carrées et nous abandonnons le rêve de faire pousser des oranges dans le Sahara. C’est dommage, mais contrairement à l’autre solution, ça ne sera jamais la fin du monde. Et comptez bien sur une chose : on s’en remettra.

New Poll

Harris-Decima has just released a new poll today. The verdict: Liberals and Conservatives tied at 32%.

But the agency also did a second series of polls to examine some trends hidden beneath the apparent tie. The verdict: advantage Liberals.

Basically, Harris-Decima tried to replicate the scenario of a polarised election, where, in the last days of the campaign, Bloc, NDP and Green supporters realise that only the Liberals or Conservatives can form a government and therefore give their vote to the party that they dislike the least. The numbers, which leaned in favour of the Conservatives last fall, are now strongly Liberal.

Simply put, a strong majority of Canadians would now prefer a Liberal government to a Conservative government. The also feel that Liberal values are closer to theirs than Conservative values, and that the Liberals have a stronger front bench. The only area in which the Conservatives come first is leadership, with Steven Harper still significantly ahead of Stéphane Dion.

With these numbers in mind, it’s quite surprising that the Liberals didn’t choose to topple the government today by voting against the controversial immigration legislation. It would have been a good election issue for them, and the Conservative organisation still hasn’t recovered from the series of scandals that have plagued their party since the beginning of this year. Apparently, the whole Liberal caucus advised Dion to drop the gloves, but he refused because he wants to spend the summer selling his environmental plan.

He may well feel, like Kim Campbell, than an election is not the place to discuss serious policy. But if he doesn’t succeed in getting his message across, it’s very much possible that he’ll come back to the House in October cursing himself, because the Conservatives will have spent all summer repairing their organisation and littering the country in negative ads. Dion had better hope for a long, warm and humid summer.

Questions

Lawrence Martin of the Globe and Mail, usually a staunch Liberal supporter, published an article in today's paper partly blaming the opposition for the chronic misconduct of Question Period. He wrote, very accurately, that the questions posed to the government are so blatantly rhetorical and demagogic that they make it easy for the government to refuse to answer. For example, when an opposition MP asks a minister whether he's "incompetent or deliberately misleading the house", that MP can't seriously expect the government to answer.

Lawrence Martin strikes a very good point here. But one could also argue that the structure and sole objective of Question Period makes it impossible for the opposition to ask serious questions. After all, when Question Period only exists to put a member of each party on the 10 o'clock news, one shouldn't be surprised to see that the questions have little relevance.

Personally, I think the whole concept of Question Period needs reviewing. It's currently a waste of both time and money, and a source of serious embarrassment to our country. Those who defend it say that it strengthens our democratic process and forces the government to stay in tune with day to day issues. But there are better solutions. My suggestion is to adopt the British model where Question Period starts with a debate between the leader of the opposition and the Prime Minister, and the rest of the questions deal exclusively with local issues. I really think that it would make all the difference. We'd have real debates every day on Parliament Hill, but the government would still need to pay attention to small local issues like water towers leaking in Milton or passport offices being closed in Vancouver. And unlike Senate reforms, we wouldn't need a constitutional amendment.

Why?

The Conservatives held a press conference today announcing that two experts had ruled the incriminating "Cadman tape" to be "doctored". The two men, both paid by the Conservative party, filed an affidavit in the Ontario Superior Court asserting that the recording in which Stephen Harper admitted to financial offers having been made to Chuck Cadman had been edited by its author.

At first glance, this expert ruling would seem to clear the Prime Minister and vindicate the Tories in this whole "Cadman affair", but in reality, it's not worth much at all. The only thing the experts are saying is that there have been edits to the recording. But this does not mean that the PM's words have been artificially fabricated or moved around on the tape to misrepresent the event as it actually occurred. In fact, the Conservatives have refused to say if any edits were made to the relevant part of the tape in which the Prime Minister talked of "financial considerations". This suggests that there were none.

The affidavits filed by the Conservative "experts" are part of a court injunction to stop the Liberals from using the tape as evidence in their defense against the Prime Minister's defamation suit. This is a common procedure, and we can assume that the Liberals will also have a group of hired "experts" who could very possibly end up claiming the exact opposite of the Conservative "experts".

But all of this raises a simple question: why? Why did the Conservatives choose to bring back the "Cadman affair" long after it had died away by holding a press conference to call in question the value of the tape recording? They could easily have made that argument in court without anyone noticing, but instead, they invite all the media to watch James Moore speak of the "expert" findings, thus catapulting the affair right back into the spotlight.

Daniel Lessard, of Radio-Canada, gave the following answer: "I feel like being cynical by saying that it's a desperate attempt by a desperate party in a desperate Parliament where everyone should go on a holiday because they don't have anything intelligent to say!"

That may be a little too harsh, but on the whole I agree! It's the beginning of summer, people are sick of politics and MPs are ready to take a break. This press conference is irrelevant, and probably just a symptom of the general level of frustration and acrimony on Parliament Hill. I don't think that the Conservative thought about what they were doing, and at the moment, I don't know how much they really care!