Jokes

Today’s Sunday, and Mother’s day, so I decided to submit a light post: my favourite Canadian jokes.

In Canada, we have four seasons: almost winter, winter, still winter, construction.

You know you’re living in Canada when:
-your municipality buys a Zamboni before a bus.
-People leave cars worth thousands of dollars in the driveway and put their useless junk in the garage.

Mike Harris: basically a sober Ralph Klein

A Canadian analog to "as American as apple pie.": "as Canadian as possible under the circumstances."

Best sign reported today at the anti-Bush protests in Ottawa: "Please Leave"

Q: How many Canadians does it take to change a light bulb?
A: None. Canadians don't change light bulbs, we accept them as they are.

Now, here’s the cherry on the icing: this is the transcript on an ACTUAL radio conversation of a US Naval ship with Canadian authorities off the coast of Newfoundland in October, 1995. Radio conversation released by the Chief of Naval Operations 10 - 10 - 95.

Americans: Please divert your course 15 degrees to the North to avoid a collision.
Canadians: Recommend you divert YOUR course 15 degrees to the south to avoid a collision.
Americans: This is the Captain of a US Navy ship. I say again, divert YOUR course.
Canadians: No. I say again you divert YOUR course.
Americans: THIS IS THE AIRCRAFT CARRIER USS LINCOLN, THE SECOND LARGEST SHIP IN THE UNITED STATES` ATLANTIC FLEET. WE ARE ACCOMPANIED BY THREE DESTROYERS, THREE CRUISERS AND NUMEROUS SUPPORT VESSELS. I DEMAND THAT YOU CHANGE YOUR MEASURES WILL BE UNDERTAKEN TO ENSURE THE SAFETY OF THIS SHIP.
Canadians: This is a lighthouse. Your call.

I hope you had a few good laughs; I’ll talk about something more serious later!

Blair

So Blair’s leaving; finally! He certainly hung onto power for as long as was humanly possible. It’s pretty clear that most people had had enough, both in and out of his caucus. Sure, he was an effective and charismatic leader, but after ten years of power and a fiasco like Iraq, it was time to move on.

It’ll be interesting to see how Labour fares in the next election. I could be wrong, but if I were to base myself on the similar situation faced by the Martin Liberals a few years ago, I would conclude that the Conservatives will have a pretty easy ride to power. It’s funny how the current British political situation seems to be three years behind the Canadian one; if, in newspaper articles, we were to replace the name Labour with Liberals, Blair with Chrétien, Brown with Martin and David Cameron with Stephen Harper, the we’d be turning them into Canadian history books.

But you know, despite all his faults, I really like Tony Blair.

He just strikes me as a perfect leader: charismatic, innovative, efficient and pragmatic. His ability to balance policies and to make compromises is unequalled, and his communication skills would make JFK blush (well, maybe I’m pushing it, but you get the point).

I’m not going to say anything much about his long reign, as any attempt to cover it in a single blog post would be incomplete and misleading. Instead, I’ll just tell you one anecdote which I feel summarises the Blair government better than any expensive book or movie.

As you may know, the Labour Party published on YouTube a set of interviews with the Prime-Minister in which he talked about the highs and lows of his mandate and his experience as leader of the UK. At one point, the interviewer asked Blair to explain the widening gap between rich and poor, which he had promised to tackle in each election. I was expecting some Question Period gibberish or an accusation that the Tories would have fared worse, but instead, Blair gave a simple, concrete and believable answer.

He flatly told the interviewer that this figure was simply due to a minute percentage of the population getting infinitely rich, which is an undeniable reality of capitalism. That was all fine, but there are lots of other capitalist countries in which the gap is narrowing, so why not in Britain. But that was the heart of his argument. He explained, in his trademark casual style, that though the government could decide narrow the gap by taxing the very rich more heavily, like in the sixties, this would simply cause them to leave the country. Instead, he had decided to leave them alone and let them contribute to the economy by spending their riches, while focusing on narrowing the gap between the relatively poor and the relatively rich. Thus, he explained, if we compared the top thirty percent to the bottom thirty percent, which would erase the impact of the few extremely wealthy individuals, we would find that the gap had actually narrowed.

That’s what the Blair government was all about. Like the Clinton administration: well presented pragmatic ideas.

So you can say all you want about Tony Blair being unethical or addicted to power, it’s undeniable that he has been a gift for his country.

Le lobbying

Je viens d’apprendre par la presse que le Canada a décidé de hausser ses limites nationales de résidus de pesticides pour les rendre conformes à celles des Etats-Unis. Nos limites plus européennes gênaient apparemment le commerce entre les deux pays, et les Ministères du Commerce International et de la Santé ont cru bon de corriger la situation.

Seulement, si cela constitue un net avantage pour notre industrie agro-alimentaire, c’est bien au détriment de la santé des Canadiens qui se verront obligés de consommer des aliments encore plus toxiques. C’est précisément le genre de politique économique que l’on déteste voir, et qu’on peut reprocher à tous nos gouvernements.

J’ai toujours trouvé ce genre de comportement bizarre. Pourquoi des gouvernements habituellement si occupés à acheter la classe moyenne prendraient-ils la peine de favoriser l’industrie, au détriment de ces mêmes électeurs? Eh bien, voilà, je venais de me heurter pour la première fois à la triste réalité du lobbying.

Oui, le lobbying, ce travail mis en oeuvre par l'industrie qui consiste à faire chanter les gouvernements pour leur extorquer des profits supplementaires. C’est précisément à cause de lui que nous nous retrouvons si souvent avec de l'équipement inutile ou des mauvaises politiques fiscales.

Certes, le lobbying présente évidemment certains avantages, mais ceux-ci sont largement éclipsés par la monstruosité de certaines des politiques économiques qu’il engendre. A bien y penser, c’est quand même plutôt logique qu’un processus si anti-démocratique soit nocif pour le citoyen moyen. L’industrie investit rarement son argent pour le profit des autres!

Je ne crois pas qu’on devrait interdire le lobbying, mais comme la période des questions (voir message précédent), il faudrait l’encadrer d’une règlementation stricte et rigide pour qu’il devienne un outil au service de l’économie et de notre pays.

Restoring Dignity and Utility to Question Period

My dad and I both watched question period online today. There wasn’t much news; the Liberals spent most of their time attacking the government on the Afghan detainee issue, the NDP focused on Labour Minister Blackburn’s hidden travel expenses and the Bloc, as is usually the case, harped on about minor Quebec regions and sectors which were being shamelessly attacked by the evil anti-francophone Canadian government.

Papa had been looking forward to watching with me, and seemed curious to discover how question period had evolved since he had seen, as a young university student, P.E.T. call Joe Clark “the Honourable Blockhead”.

Well apparently, it hasn’t changed much, and though I haven’t been around long enough to watch it evolve, I must say that it would have been difficult for the quality of the debate to drop any lower.

Today, for instance, Jack Layton asked Minister Blackburn a simple question relating to his travel expenses, only to have Government House Leader Peter van Loan rise and start musing about the NDP leader’s frequent limousine use while serving on Toronto City Council. A few minutes later, Transport Minister Lawrence Cannon answered Gilles Duceppe’s question related to government funding for St-Hubert airport by informing the House that PM Harper had spoken on the phone with newly elected French President Nicolas Sarkozy. It went on like that for the rest of the hour.

Sometimes, I just can’t help thinking of the taxpayer dollars being wasted on running this useless comedy show. Couldn’t we scrap it and donate the saved funds to UNICEF.

NO, that would definitely be a premature plan, because Question Period CAN work, and SHOULD work. Indeed, the local equivalents in the British, Australian and New-Zealand parliaments are all very productive sessions which give the Prime-Minister an opportunity to answer questions from across the floor and give the government’s response. Why not in Canada?

The main problem is the absence of clear and enforceable rules and regulations. With the current system, there is nothing preventing agitated House members from deliberately breaking the rules or engaging in shameful conduct. This needs to change if we are to have the slightest chance of restoring dignity to the house.

We need to introduce a much stricter set of rules and regulations and give the Speaker the necessary powers to enforce them. Among those new rules, we should include provisions such as:

-A system of “two strikes and you’re out”, meaning that a member who violates parliamentary rules more than once in a single week would be ejected by the speaker from the current debate and suspended from the next. This would stop rogue ministers such as John Baird from violating 3 rules in one single answer.

-The possibility of aiming questions at particular ministers, giving them a binding obligation to answer. This would prevent ridiculous scenes such as the recent muzzling of Defence Minister O’Connor, who had questions aimed at him answered by ministers like Stockwell Day and Peter van Loan, neither of whom had any connection to the Ministy of Defence.

These are just ideas and by no means miracle solutions, but I am convinced that we will need to go down that tougher path if we are to succeed in restoring dignity and utility to Question Period. If all parliamentarians were like Ed Broadbent, it wouldn't be necessary, but, unfortunately, that's simply not the case.

Constitution

There’s been a lot of talk in the province of Quebec about the most recent national fad (by national, I am referring to the Quebecois Nation): autonomy. The ambiguous constitutional position brought forward by Mario Dumont’s ADQ, which Globe and Mail columnist Jeffrey Simpson calls the “have you cake and eat it solution”.

One of the pillars of the autonomy doctrine is the signing of a Quebec constitution, which would entrench the common values of Quebecers, and see the province recognized as the Autonomous State of Quebec.

Dumont’s party is obviously trying to navigate the line between soft federalism and tentative sovereignty, but autonomy clearly crosses it. Let me make things clear: a province which has the right to have its own constitution and to be called the Autonomous State of is not only unworthy of being part of our Federation, but legally unable.

A constitution, by definition, establishes the key governmental framework of a country, as well as embedding a set of rights and responsibilities which apply to all of its citizens. In Canada, those rights and responsibilities are enshrined in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Basically, the charter is ground zero of our legal system: Charter trumps all. ANY law, policy, or action–from banning same sex marriage to not letting a Sikh boy wear his Kirpan to school- is illegal if the courts determine that it goes against the Charter.

Now imagine having two ground zeros, and the possibility for Quebec citizens to switch between the two depending on the scenario. Our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and therefore our whole constitution would become a farce. Its raison d’être would have to be changed to “guaranteeing rights and freedoms to all Canadians and to Quebecois when it suits them”.

Here’s another scenario. The Quebec government is still unable to control spending while other have-not provinces are making inroads. Its equalization payments therefore skyrocket. The same week, Quebec decides to opt out from a federal agriculture plan, its right to do so being guaranteed by its autonomous position inside Canada. Get the picture?

I haven’t gone to Law school, but I’m rational enough to understand that a constitution is worthless unless it is applies to every single citizen. If Quebec signs its own, Canada’s won’t always apply and are current Constitution will be junk.

The solution is simple: tell the ADQ NOW (while sovereignty support is low), that there is no way a province will ever be allowed to posses its own Constitution. Calmly watch Dumont go mad and sovereignty support go up, and once that's all over, focus on something else.

Les détenus Afghans

Bon, maintenant que le niveau de tension a un peu baissé, je vais finalement traiter de la question des détenus Afghans.

Pour être franc, je ne suis ni surpris, ni troublé; c’est la guerre. Nous serions vraiment en train de pousser les limites de la naïveté en affirmant qu’une guerre aussi dangereuse que celle-ci puisse être menée sans scandales ou injustices. Oui, nous aimerions tous croire notre armée et notre Ministère de la Défense au-dessus de tout soupçon, mais ce n’a évidemment jamais été le cas.

Mais là n’est pas la question.

Le plus important était la réaction du gouvernement. Il avait le choix entre la confirmation ou la dénégation, entre la vérité qui fait mal ou le mensonge qui fait honte. Pas besoin de se casser la tête pour connaître sa décision. Au lieu d’admettre cette infraction, hélas, facilement pardonnable de la convention de Genève, de corriger le tir, puis d’enterrer l’affaire, il s’y est pris de manière totalement désorganisée, tentant à la fois de semer le doute sur la validité des allégations et de créer une illusion d’action.

Il doit maintenant récolter les fruits de sa maladresse : un harcèlement continue de la part de l’opposition, une mauvaise figure pour le Canada sur la scène internationale, et une chute dans les sondages. De plus, il sera encore parvenu à se mettre à dos les médias, car, ne l’oublions pas, c’est bien d’eux que provient toute l’affaire.

Et vlan! C’est ce que j’appelle la justice.

A New Hope

Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has just announced his intention to push for an interprovincial carbon emissions “cap-and-trade” system at an upcoming premiers meeting in Toronto. This system, which would initiate the creation of an interprovincial carbon market thus putting a price on emissions, is precisely the type of effective market based solutions to global warming that we should be supporting (see previous post: New Plan?).

It has already received a full approval from BC Premier Gordon Campbell, whose province is already working on a similar plan with neighbouring American states, as well as a tentative yes from Manitoba and Newfoundland and Labrador. Alberta is obviously opposed, but both Premiers McGuinty and Campbell have indicated that, though it was preferred, a consensus wasn’t required to put the system in place.

You can see how excited I am, because this is exactly what needs to be done to fight climate change: market based solutions. If the provinces decide to act, we might actually see some movement, regardless of the federal position.

You know what, if this system ends up being implemented, I might even forgive McGuinty for breaking his numerous campaign promises, including shutting down the coal plants.