Outliers

Those of you who have read Malcolm Gladwell's latest bestseller, Outliers, will remember the passage at the beginning of the books where he shows that a disproportionate number of all-star junior hockey players are born in the first months of the year. Gladwell attributes this to the fact that slightly older players have a slight size advantage as children and are therefore more likely to get into competitive leagues with better coaches and more hours of practice.

This seems like a truly astonishing statistic, but it's also slightly misleading. While it's true that an overwhelming proportion of top junior hockey players are born in the first months of the year, this is not the case at the top of the NHL. This year, for instance, the top three scorers in the NHL were born respectively in July, August and September. Wayne Gretzky was born on January 21st but Mario Lemieux was born on October 5fth. Really, among the top, top players, among the best of the best, there doesn't seem to be any clustering of brithdates.

Gladwell's book is about Outliers, so it's a little bit misleading for him to study junior hockey players -who aren't really outliers- rather than NHL stars.

Don't be fooled

Some of you may have read that the Conservative negative ads have worked. This seems to be the general media consensus, and it is all based on a poll which can be consulted here: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/harpers-a-tims-man-but-ignatieff-inspires/article1161277/

However, there's a serious snag. While the poll does show that Harper is perceived as more patriotic than Ignatieff, there are no earlier polls to compare current results with. In other words, there's no before and after; just the after.

Eh bien voilà. Après plusieurs semaines de spéculation, le Ministère des finances a avoué que le déficit fédéral atteindrait les 50 milliards de dollars cette année. C'est 20 milliards de plus qu'avait annoncé Jim Flaherty dans son dernier budget.

20 millards! Voilà une bien grosse somme d'argent. Mais que signifie-t-elle dans le contexte économique actuel? Y a-t-il vraiment matière à s'inquiéter?

Oui et non.

Pour le gouvernement canadien, 20 milliards de dollars, ce n'est pas une si grosse somme. Rappelons-nous que les gouvernements libéraux faisaient souvent des erreurs de dix à 20 milliards de dollars dans leurs prévisions budgétaires. Évidemment, dans leur cas, il s'agissait de surplus et non pas de déficits...

20 milliards de dollars, c'est non seulement une somme d'argent assez modeste pour un gouvernement, mais c'est aussi une somme que le Canada peut se permettre de dépenser (voire même de gaspiller). La dette canadienne, calculée en fonction du PIB national, est la plus petite du G8. Grâce à 15 ans de prospérité et gestion compétente du trésor public, le gouvernement du Canada a les moyens de dépenser de l'argent.

Ce dont on devrait s'inquiéter, ce n'est pas d'avoir une dette de cinquante milliards à rembourser mais d'avoir encore aux commandes le gouvernement qui nous a mis dans cette situation. Soyons précis, le gouvernement conservateur n'est pas responsable de la crise économique et il avait raison de mettre les finances du pays dans le rouge pour relancer l'économie. Mais en baissant la TPS de deux points, le gouvernement s'est privé d'environ 10 milliards de dollars de revenus annuels, ce qui, en deux ans, donne notre nombre magique: 20 milliards.

Things

I'm tired, it's late, and I can't find any ideas, so I'll simply as I usually do: post a cartoon from the Globe and Mail.


The one story I did find worth following in the past few days was the suicide of former Korean President Roh Moo-hyun who killed himself because of allegations of corruption. President Roh's name was being dragged through the mud until his death but he is now being mourned by thousands in a tremendous outpour of public sympathy. Of course, this sympathy won't make Roh feel much better at this stage, but it might have helped him avoid suicide if it had manifested itself earlier.

Now, think of Brian Mulroney, who was apparently driven to tears by aggressive reporters this week. If he were to die tomorrow of heart failure -or to commit suicide-, we would forget all about the Oliphant inquiry and remember only for successes as Prime Minister.

Maybe we should try doings things in the opposite order from now on: respect former holders of public office while they are alive and drag their names through the mud after their death.

Guantanamo

Barack Obama's pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison by January 2010 is looking more unlikely by the day. The US Senate and House of Representatives have both overwhelmingly voted to prevent the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees to the US.

This latest episode just shows how hard it is for Americans to exorcise the demons of Bush's years in power. It's not just the logistical quagmire that comes with having to find a home for 200 or so presumed terrorists. Just as bad is the paranoia. Six months after Bush's farewell, after Obama's election, Americans are still scared.

US Senators and Congressmen can't honestly believe that it would be impossible to find a safe home for 200 or so prisoners in the United-States. They're smart individuals, and objectively, they would all agree that transferring 200 men from Cuba to a high security US detention centre would be a feasible undertaking for the most powerful nation in the world. But they're still scared. They still have that impulse of the Bush years that hears the word "terrorist" and immediately associates it with "panic.

Dear Obama: Good luck!

The Free Ride

The Ignatieff negative ads have been out for about a week now. Has anyone noticed how little response there has been from the media? The ads seem to have gone largely unnoticed.

When the Conservatives ran their fist ads against Stéphane Dion, it was a much bigger media event. In a matter of days, the ads cought on and journalists started inserting into their stories the idea that Stéphane Dion was weak (an idea they hadn't previously thought of).

The contrast is worth noting. Maybe the one true statement that the Conservatives have come up with about Michael Ignatieff is that the media have "given him a free ride". Or maybe the media simply chose make Dion crash.

I’ve been trying all week to write an ending to my previous piece. I’ve decided that I’d be better starting again from scratch. I’ll post my new version some time next week.

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In the past two days, three politicians have been facing questioning about alleged illegal activities. Brian Mulroney is being questioned by the Oliphant enquiry about his dealings with the Karlheinz Shreiber. Ottawa Mayor Larry O’Brien is in Court answering to bribery charges. Liberal MP Ruby Dhalla is being grilled by the partisan House of Commons ethics committee about the alleged abuse of foreign caregivers whom she hired to look after her mother.

What bothers me about this situation is not the fact that three important politicians are facing allegations of criminal conduct. Quite to the contrary, I’m disturbed that we see anything wrong with politicians facing allegations.

In my books, allegations are allegations. A defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty. An individual who is facing criminal charges can keep his reputation intact until the charges have been proven.

We have already made Brian Mulroney into “Lying Brian” even though he has never been sentenced in court. Ruby Dhalla’s political career is over because two nannies publicly accused her of abusing them. This is wrong.

We have no right to stigmatise individuals whose only crime is to be accused. The fact of the matter is that court system is the only body able to establish guilt. Until guilt has been proven, we have a duty to treat the accused like any other citizen. After all, we never know when we might find ourselves facing serious charges. All it takes is one public lie and a reputation that took a lifetime to build can be irreversibly destroyed.

Continuation

There are currently one million French Canadians living outside Quebec. Most are scattered along the Quebec border in Ontario and New-Brunswick. A few more are in Winnipeg. The francophones of English Canada face a difficult situation by living in an English society. English is inevitably the language of their daily life, so they can only be francophones at home. As such they cannot be true francophones; not as long as they greet strangers with ‘Hello’ rather than ‘Bonjour’.

This is what it means to live in a minority. However hard one struggles to maintain a language, how ever desperately one tries to hold on to a culture, it is impossible outside the confines of the cultural centre and the family home. Life in a minority is life with people who are culturally deaf. Assimilation is very hard to avoid.

What to make of it depends on one’s point of view. Our immigration system relies on assimilation. Otherwise, Canada would see the emergence of cultural ghettos and the social problems that come with them. Many new Canadians also dream of assimilation. Their goal is for their children to children grow up as full members of Canadian society, even if means they abandon the culture of their ancestors.

To French Canadians, assimilation is above all a source of fear. The fear of disappearing has long been a source of great angst. It’s easy to o see why: seven million or so French speakers are surrounded by over three hundred million Anglophones. The numbers are unreal.

Assimilation captivates the lives of French Canadians. Even in Quebec, an objectively Francophone province, not a month goes by without some minor controversy being caused by a Montreal newspaper about the abuse of French in the province. In the rest of Canada, fears of assimilation are supported by statistics.

(To be continued.)