The Shotgun Blog
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Saturday, October 27, 2007
"Bureaucrats afraid to take action for fear of breaking new rules, think-tank says..."
Right. Because our federal bureaucrats were such bold risk takers under the old rules.
"The rules-laden Federal Accountability Act is backfiring and creating a bureaucracy of risk-averse "Dilberts" who keep their heads down, don't trust anyone and put process ahead of getting things done, warns a report by Ottawa think-tank Public Policy Forum.
The newly-released report, which draws on interviews with 50 leaders in the public and private sectors, including former prime ministers Joe Clark and Paul Martin, concludes that the Conservatives' signature legislation went so overboard with rules, regulations and parliamentary watchdogs looking over bureaucrats' shoulders that it is killing morale and stifling innovation, creativity and effective leadership."
As "innovation" is bureaucratic code word for new regulations and controls, the Accountability Act may be another Harper masterstroke. One of the ways in which Reagan slowed the growth of government was by allowing for massive budget deficits. As a result there was simply no money left over for new government programs. In attempting to make the federal Public Service more accountable - and so in theory more effective in "helping" Canadians - he has also increased its paralysis and thereby limited its effectiveness in controlling Canadians lives. Or maybe I'm just thinking wishful here.
Continue reading at The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Posted by PUBLIUS on October 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack
Goodbye Alberta -- hello Saskatchewan?
The timing is perfect: just as Alberta is about to bring in a Tommy Douglas-style tax hike on the oil patch (and -- worse -- rip up signed contracts with the oil sands), Saskatchewan is about to elect the free market Sask Party.
Here's a column I wrote with Lyle Dunkley about it in today's National Post. Here's an excerpt:
Alberta's oilsands can't be moved. But what about oil sands and oil shale in Saskatchewan? The same geological formation that lies under Fort McMurray stretches across the border, into Saskatchewan's Clearwater River Valley. It was explored to some degree in the 1970s, but not developed for economic and political reasons. But new technology has made once-uneconomic oil sands profitable -- and oil at US$90 a barrel helps, too. Combine that with a new, property-rights-respecting Saskatchewan Party and hundreds of experienced oilmen returning home from Alberta, and you've got an interesting possibility. A company called Oilsands Quest is back out there already, drilling exploratory wells.
Don't get me wrong; Saskatchewan has 60 years of catching up to do. But it looks like 2007 alone will close that economic gap by about a decade.
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 27, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (75) | TrackBack
Friday, October 26, 2007
Open the pod bay doors, HAL
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that. "
"I know you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen."
(crossposted at halls of macadamia)
Posted by Neo Conservative on October 26, 2007 in Canadian Politics | Permalink | Comments (27) | TrackBack
Thursday, October 25, 2007
The Lazarus Tory
Politics really is a sport to some. It's about personalities. It's about all the right moves and all the bad fumbles. So and so trounces so and so. Positioning. Messaging. Lest anyone be so deluded as to think the purpose of politics is, ultimately, to govern. The hum-drum stuff like picking up the garbage and making sure grandma gets a new pace maker, the boring stuff where no one gets trounced or positioned. This is the politics that pundits live for - the manoeuvring for advantage that leads to power, or its loss. There is no purpose to the manoeuvring, it's movement for the sake of movement, sometimes focusing long enough and far enough ahead to get power and keep it. What do you do with power? Heavens, let's leave that question to the eggheads. The great architect Louis Sullivan, mentor to Frank Lloyd Wright, is suppose to have said that the form of a building should follow its function. Applying that maxim to politics the origins of the unholy mess that is Canadian politics becomes apparent. We're fighting about nothing so nothing ever gets done. Andrew Coyne observed recently that we had some of the stupidest political discourse in the free world. He's right. That's because we're arguing about nothing.
Continue reading at The Gods of the Copybook Headings.
Posted by PUBLIUS on October 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (32) | TrackBack
Will Stephane Dion be renaming his dog?
"Scrap Y2Kyoto", says science journal "Nature"
A report in an influential science magazine says it is time to forego the Kyoto protocol because the United Nations treaty has failed to bring about any significant action on climate change.
Not only has the decade-old treaty not delivered cuts in global emissions of greenhouse gases that continue to soar, but it is the wrong tool for the job, say Gwyn Prins of the London School of Economics and Steve Rayner at Oxford.
(crossposted at halls of macadamia)
Posted by Neo Conservative on October 25, 2007 in Science | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack
NEP II
Alberta's premier, Ed Stelmach, still hasn't been elected. The provincial PCs chose him -- though, like Stephane Dion, he was the party's "none of the above" choice -- but the province has not yet been given the chance to legitimize his authority, even though he's been premier for nearly a year.
His energy tax hikes, announced today, don't have democratic legitimacy. They were not mentioned by the PC party in the last provincial election. And Stelmach certainly didn't campaign on higher taxes within the PC party's internal leadership vote.
It will be interesting to see what the stock market does tomorrow morning. On the one hand, oil is above $90/bbl -- and Stelmach's taxes won't kick in until 2009. On the other hand, a tax hike is a tax hike, and Big Oil -- with the exception of the oil sands -- is extremely mobile. (Little operators are less mobile; Exxon can operate in Algeria or Nigeria with ease; not so for a five-man oilfield services company based in Red Deer.)
It's tax hikes all across the board -- in a province that already spends far more than any other, and already has a ten-digit surplus.
But the most odious aspect of the new "rules" are those applying to the oil sands companies that have written, agreed-upon tax rates already negotiated with the government:
The government will not grandfather existing oil sands projects. The government is in discussions with Syncrude and Suncor, whose Crown agreements expire in 2016, to participate in the new oil sands royalty regime. The transition details will be worked out over the next 90 days. In the event the agreement cannot be reached, the government will take other measures to ensure a level playing field for all industry stakeholders.
In other words, the govermment will unilaterally tear up signed agreements. So much for rule of law and sanctity of contracts.
Leftist and anti-oil pundits -- and Alberta has a surprising number of them -- scoffed when energy analysts compared Stelmach to Hugo Chavez and other looters. The only question will be: do Syncrude, Suncor and others quietly submit to Stelmach, Kazakhstan-style, in the hope of limiting their losses, or do they go to court?
My prediction:
1. You'll see a reduction in future Alberta investments by companies that can move to more favourable jurisdictions (including, amazingly, Saskatchewan);
2. An immediate ripple effect throughout other Alberta industries, ranging from real estate to auto dealers;
3. And, in the end, a lower tax haul by the Alberta government, because of reduced economic activity.
I just don't know the boardroom politics of Suncor and Syncrude well enough to know if they'll fight this expropriation in court.
The possible wild card -- a new political movement to oppose the PCs from the right -- doesn't seem likely in the short time before Stelmach's imminent election call.
It's the second NEP. Who could have guessed it would be implemented by an unelected Alberta farmer, rather than a Montreal Liberal lawyer?
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (104) | TrackBack
The Left on the Right
Fast Forward, Calgary's weekly free arts and entertainment newspaper, has a friendly valediction to the Western Standard.
A small but funny part of the story is about Matthew Good, the Vancouver can-con rocker who has a half-music, half-9/11 truther blog where he has poked at us, including just this month.
Good refused to talk with Fast Forward for their story, even "banning" them from reprinting his public comments about us. That's just weird -- they're on his blog, after all. Weirder still is that Good wouldn't want to talk to an urban, leftish, music magazine about his political views, but a right wing magazine's entire staff didn't feel uncomfortable doing so. It's a sad statement on intellectual discourse and the left. Oh well.
If you want a chuckle, read this exchange I had with Good last February.
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (18) | TrackBack
Hollywood's surge strategy failing
Hollywood's recent surge of anti-war movies is failing at the box office. That's particularly heartening, given the star-power -- and advertising budgets -- that has been deployed in this P.R. war.
I went to the premiere of In the Valley of Elah, and heard writer/director Paul Haggis deliver a rant about how noble he was for producing the film, calling the war in Iraq "corrupt". I didn't know what he meant by that -- he didn't take questions. Was the bi-partisan U.S. congressional vote to go to war "corrupt"? What would that even mean? Was Saddam's regime legitimate? The new, democratically elected Iraqi government, with a fairly liberal constitution, also democratically approved -- is that corrupt? The fact that Americans (and other allies) are there to help prop up that nascent government, and stamp out terrorists, including many foreign-born terrorists of fortune -- is that corrupt?
I watched the movie and learned the answer: according to Haggis, the U.S. soldiers themselves are corrupt. The film is styled as a whodunnit -- who killed a U.S. soldier back home from Iraq? The answer: another U.S. soldier, best friends with the victim. The movie's lowest moment is the confession of the murderer, who says if he didn't kill his friend, his friend would probably just kill him a few days later -- that's what U.S. soldiers do. Another U.S. soldier in the film kills his dog, then drowns his wife. Soldiers regularly kill innocents in Iraq, driving over kids -- it's part of their standing orders, says the movie.
The Left often says it supports the troops, just not the war. Anti-war types know that condemning troops is beyond the pale, and they'd turn most people off, so they try to be pro-soldiers, just anti-soldiering. It's logically inconsistent, but no-one ever calls them on it. Haggis doesn't waste time being subtle: there are no politicians or generals in his movie. The bad guys are U.S. troops themselves. It's an anti-troops movie.
I'm thrilled that the film has only grossed $6.5 million in the past month, a flop by any standard. Rendition's opening weekend didn't clear $5 million. The Tom Cruise/Meryl Streep/Robert Redford movie, Lions for Lambs, isn't out yet, but it looks weak. As BoxOfficeMojo's Brandon Gray says in the story linked above: "Is it simply [the actors] sitting in rooms giving speeches? That's what it looks like."
Of course Lions for Lambs got the same exultant applause at its London premiere that Elah got in Toronto. The only place more anti-war than Hollywood itself would be the pseudo-intellectuals who comprise Hollywood's foreign hangers-on and wannabes in Toronto or London. That's why these films are debuted there -- those are the only focus groups who would accept such painfully ham-fisted political screeds as anything close to "entertainment".
These films are not the results of true business decisions by Hollywood. They're personal indulgences -- hopefully ones that will cost the studios dearly.
I don't know showbiz, but it seems to me that the first studio to decide to make an unabashedly pro-American movie about the war on terror -- where the enemy isn't the CIA, or a rogue U.S. Senator -- would set a box-office record. Surely there are at least one or two A-list stars who would swallow their dime-deep leftist convictions and do a pro-American, anti-terrorist movie.
Of course there would be squawking and politically correct attempts to stop it. But if a distributor had some courage, who knows? The last time someone produced a conservative, politically incorrect movie that freaked out the liberal intelligentsia, it became one of the highest-grossing films of all time.
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBack
Hiller says Stay the Course
When Canada's top soldier says the Afghans need more time, then we should all shut up and listen. Though if the NDP and Bloc had their way, we would be packing out bags and leaving Afghanistan tomorrow.
From the CBC: Afghans years away from taking over own security
"You just don't build that overnight and the international community will have to be involved for some time to see this through to the final level where you've got a government that works effectively"
Posted by Leah Dowe on October 25, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Wrongfully Convicted Man Sued for Back Child Support
As one of the commenters on this story suggested, Dwayne Dail ought to be nicknamed "Lucky."
In summary: a man is wrongfully convicted of raping a child. After twenty years in prison, he is finally exonerated and released. For those twenty long years, he's given a paltry $360,000 in compensation. He moves to Florida. His now-adult son moves to live with him.
What happens next? The mother of his now-adult son (who now lives with him, I might add) sues him for back child support for all of the years he was unjustly jailed.
Not only that, but she asks the court to order Mr. Dail to pay for her to sue him.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 24, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (28) | TrackBack
Global warming caused the arson!
Sen. Harry Reid, the top U.S. Democrat, blames the fires in California on global warming. Last night's CBC's The National said that "a lot of experts" believe it's climate change, though they didn't mention a single such expert. We can take it on faith, as the CBC did.
The California Department of Forestry and the Orange Country Fire Authority say at least one of the fires was arson. But what do those deniers/pawns of Big Oil know?
Still, this inconvenient truth doesn't derail the religious theory that Mother Earth is wreaking vengeance on George Bush's America. The arsonist was probably just trying to raise awareness about global warming.
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBack
Garth Turner, 12 months later
A year ago, I wrote about Garth Turner for what I said would be the last time:
I think the best approach to Turner is the one proposed by Dr. Richard Ferber. As anyone who watched the movie Meet the Fockers knows, Ferberizing a baby means putting it to bed and not giving it any attention when it whines. Ferber's theory -- espoused by the tough CIA grandfather played by Robert DeNiro in the movie -- is that responding to a crying baby encourages it to cry more.
I realize that I'm now breaking the Ferber rule, but I just can't resist linking to what Steve Janke noticed -- that Turner is at it again, freestyling in the media, contradicting his Liberal leaders just as he contradicted his Tory leaders. When Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff were trying to downplay their bellicose talk of an election, Turner stepped in to stoke the fires:
"I still believe that we are going to have an election in the next few weeks."
I wonder how long Turner will last before he's thrown out of the Liberal caucus, too? It's harder to enforce discipline in an opposition party than in a government, and Dion surely doesn't want to lose any more MPs from his count. But I'm willing to bet that Turner will be turfed before the next election, either by fellow Liberal MPs frustrated by his indiscretions with caucus confidentiality, or by Dion, eager for a test case to show a new toughness. I'm betting Turner will enter the next election as an independent, and that he'll come in third in his riding. Anyone have other predictions?
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack
Australia's election
A few weeks ago it looked certain that John Howard, Australia's four-term prime minister, was going to lose to Kevin Rudd in the upcoming vote down under. Howard's party is called Liberal, which is literally accurate -- he has been a strong booster of western liberal values when it comes to Australian citizenship and Australia's alliance with the U.S. It was Howard who, after 9/11, famously said it was no time to be an 80% ally.
Today, the polls are tightening, though Rudd remains in first. But even if Rudd wins, don't expect to see any appreciable shift on the big issues of the day -- the war on terror, the inculcation of western values into new Australians. Here's Rupert Murdoch's bullish comments on Rudd. Here's a despondent leftist lamenting Rudd's pro-U.S. policies and his support for the war on terror. And here's Rudd on the Israel-Hezbollah war last year.
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (17) | TrackBack
Iran; Two Articles
Very good pieces at NRO today by Michael Ledeen and Senator Santorum:
Michael Ledeen of AEI: Iranian gov't buys more time
Fmr. US Senator Rick Santorum: Regime change in Iran, peacefully
Posted by Winston on October 24, 2007 in International Affairs | Permalink | Comments (5) | TrackBack
Jihadis at school
I ran away all the way from a hell-hole that was Iran occupied by the Arabo-Islamic mullahs to come and sit among people in a free country hearing these illiterate Jihadists repeating the Mullahs' viewpoints over and over again praising the likes of Saddam, peddling their hatred of the Jews and infidels. I am disappointed to see that these people are every where....
Read more about what happened at school yesterday
Posted by Winston on October 24, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack
The Truth About the Jena 6
For some time, I've being trying to explain to people the absurdity of the uproar about the "Jena 6" - six criminals who assaulted an entirely innocent man and then, somehow, managed to make themselves into victims. But this article, from the Assistant Editor of the Jena Times lays out the case far better than I ever could.
Here is the most striking portion:
The event on Dec. 4, 2006 was consistently labeled a "schoolyard fight." But witnesses described something much more horrific. Several black students, including those now known as the Jena 6, barricaded an exit to the school's gym as they lay in wait for Justin Barker to exit. (It remains unclear why Mr. Barker was specifically targeted.)
When Barker tried to leave through another exit, court testimony indicates, he was hit from behind by Mychal Bell. Multiple witnesses confirmed that Barker was immediately knocked unconscious and lay on the floor defenseless as several other black students joined together to kick and stomp him, with most of the blows striking his head.
Let's review: this group of thugs ambushed an innocent individual and savagely beat him unconcious. Yet they're the ones who are getting songs written about them and who are being held up as heroes of civil rights? What brave martyrs they make! Though, they're more likely to make Bull Connor than Martin Luther King proud.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 24, 2007 in Crime | Permalink | Comments (157) | TrackBack
Tuesday, October 23, 2007
SJS: Miami
Now, of course, we don't know much about the knife attack in Toronto today. But, if you don't think that the media and authorities have a tendency to either suppress information or be willfully blind when it comes to outbreaks of Sudden Jihad Syndrome, I invite you to read this story.
In brief, a twenty-two year-old Moslem who had been placed on a terrorist watch list drove to a military base, got out, and attacked the guards with knives and crude homemade explosives. Naturally, the authorities and media insist that it was not an act of terrorism.
Update: Never mind, I should add, the hillarious implication that somehow terrorism and suicidal tendencies are conflicting impluses.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 23, 2007 in Military | Permalink | Comments (11) | TrackBack
CTV.ca takes cheap shot at Jim Flaherty
How low can a (so-called) respectable news organization go?
Posted by Neil Flagg on October 23, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBack
Random Jihad in Toronto?
The shocking story began at around 11:30am, when someone approached a 40-year-old man near Adelaide and Yonge Sts. "A male confronted him, came up behind him, grabbed him by the neck and stabbed him three times," relates Det. Sgt. Neil Corrigan.
Updated 1: Farid Maronisi was arrested for his alleged actions in downtown stabbings in city of Toronto.
And I think we might have a random act of Jihad here in Toronto if this is going to be true.
Posted by Winston on October 23, 2007 in Crime, Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (14) | TrackBack
How long will this be ignored?
In yesterday's Sun, I wrote about the fact that not a single reporter mentioned that the Calgary school bus driver in the deadly crash last week was wearing a head-covering -- whether it was a hijab, a baboushka or a scarf.
There is a journalistic black hole here: we now know the name of the deceased child, but not the name of the bus driver.
Is that not curious?
Today there is news that the same bus was driving erratically the day before. This received minimal coverage.
I just don't get it. The story of the week in Calgary has been exhaustively reported, except for the identity, nature, history and other relevant details of the bus driver. If it were a 25-year-old white male driver wearing a hoodie, this would be big news -- common sense would prevail, since there would be no ethnic sensibilities to worry about. I think that political correctness is trumping common sense, and numbing journalistic curiosity.
Whether the bus driver's scarf/hijab/baboushka was the cause of the accident is for a court to decide. But surely journalists' jobs are to ask questions and try to get answers, not censor politically correct facts.
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 23, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (60) | TrackBack
Monday, October 22, 2007
The Price of Reasonable Accommodation?
Down the page Ezra is taking heat from some for discussing the media’s disgusting (but hardly surprising) failure to ask necessary questions about the driver in the recent Calgary bus crash.
To wit: that the bus driver’s vision may have been obscured by a Hijab or other head scarf which, given the mysterious causes of the accident, might well be particularly relevant.
Unsurprisingly, Bigcitylib is accusing Ezra of racism and making wild allegations.
Well, let’s judge for ourselves. Here is a pair of screen-grabs of footage of the scene:
Naturally, the mavens of political correctness will seek to push this issue to the sidelines and to ignore it altogether because it raises questions which make them uncomfortable.
Does any reasonable person really think that wearing a face-obscuring garment and driving a bus full of children are compatible? This is a question which we uniquely must deal with, insofar as I somehow doubt that the Saudis and others have to worry too much about Hijab or Niqab-wearing women driving buses or, well, pretty much anything at all. I’m curious to see how anyone can defend someone driving a school bus (or any vehicle for that matter) is compatible with wearing something – anything – which obscures their vision in such a manner.
I've updated this to add a close-up to the picture. Are you telling me that a loose-fitting garment right near the eyes like that couldn't pose a serious visual obstruction in an emergency?
Go take a hooded sweatshirt or jacket and put it up over your head. Would you recommend driving in such a get-up? Let's be very clear here - this has zero, from my perspective, to do with religion or anything else. It would be an equally serious concern if the driver was wearing a hoodie or whatever. But, of course, I can't imagine people being willing to tolerate a bus driver going around wearing a hoodie.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 22, 2007 in Current Affairs | Permalink | Comments (73) | TrackBack
Elizabeth May: Psychologist
Among her many talents Elizabeth May, the leader of the federal Green Party, is also an amateur mental health expert.
"Elizabeth May is trying to love Prime Minister Stephen Harper.
Ms. May, the leader of Canada's Green party, is also studying to become an Anglican priest; so the injunction to "love thy neighbour" is one she takes to heart. Still, it's hard for her to warm up to a man who has spent his political life fighting against the social and environmental ideas she has fought just as passionately to promote.
"I work hard at loving Stephen Harper," says Ms. May, as she mixes bread dough in a large crockery bowl in the kitchen of her New Edinburgh home. "I don't dislike him as a person. I feel sorry for him as a person. He's obviously a person who has a hard time being happy. That's the basis on which I attempt to love him."
This analysis, one assumes, comes from hours of carefully watching the Prime Minister on national television and perhaps a few close encounters in the House of Commons lobby, if that. Few doubt that our Prime Minister is an introverted man. He dislikes pressing the flesh and by many accounts is almost incapable of small talk. Does this mean he is unhappy? Surely one of the things a would-be Anglican minister should learn is humility. Only the Almighty - should you believe in him - knows the depths of a man's soul. Christ maybe love, but surely you can demonstrate the Christian virtue of modesty as well and stop telling us how much you love Stephen Harper. Parading one's righteous is more of a United Church thing anyway. Reticence is a fine British trait, one which the C of E has in part helped to nurture. Mr. Harper displays it abundantly - if that's the word. He doesn't pretend to be comfortable in public or play the part of the social gadfly. He is what he is. A solid, highly intelligent and highly capable politician. For that - despite his drift to the political center - so many on the Right in Canada do love him. Unlike Miss May we try to keep it to ourselves.
Cross posted at The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Posted by PUBLIUS on October 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack
On Canada vs. Iran, Louise Arbour sides with...IRAN??!?!!?
Former Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, and current United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, is disappointed with her home country. From Reuters, October 22, 2007, "Canada's commitment slipping, U.N. rights boss says.":
OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canada's commitment to human rights is slipping and the country must work hard to regain the position it once held as an international honest broker, a top United Nations official said on Monday. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Louise Arbour, who is Canadian, said she was particularly unhappy that Canada had voted against a nonbinding U.N. declaration of rights for indigenous peoples last month. Her comments were aimed at the Conservative government, which took power in February 2006 and has shown less interest in multilateral diplomacy than its Liberal predecessor. Arbour said Canada had historically been perceived as an unbiased nation whose judgment was widely sought and which did not serve narrow interests. "I am very worried that this very romantic view that we have of ourselves is not being sufficiently nourished and preserved to allow us to continue to occupy a place much larger than the one that our single voice among 192 member states of the United Nations would otherwise allow for," she said. "I hope that we ... will collectively work very hard to reclaim that privileged space," she told an Ottawa conference on human rights.
Oh...THIS Louise Arbour?
Let's see...condemnation of Canada, silence on Iran. This Iran:
Let me spend a few moments highlighting some of the most recent atrocities. In a recent period of less than 30 days, some 31 executions were carried out and 8 women were awaiting execution by stoning. And in Gohardasht prison alone, some 612 individuals were in death row. Now you might think that litany of horrors couldn’t be surpassed but you would be wrong. Iran remains the only country in the world that continues to execute children and International human rights organizations have indicated a short time ago that 71 minors were incarcerated under the sentence of death.
Could this woman sink any lower?
Posted by Neil Flagg on October 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (40) | TrackBack
Car-buying thought experiment
So U.S. auto dealers are banned by their companies from selling cars to Canadian citizens, in attempt to stop Canadians from buying the same cars south of the border for as little as half the price.
Thought experiment: what would the ACLU set do if U.S. auto dealers refused to sell to customers who were Mexican citizens?
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (16) | TrackBack
Crazy for quotas
The B.C. NDP just can't get any traction. Saddled with a weak leader, Carole James, the party runs a distant second in poll after poll after poll behind Gordon Campbell's B.C. Liberal Party. And a recent leak from party HQ is bound to further marginalize the New Democrats.
Apparently, party brass is intending to set aside a high percentage of nominations--in ridings not currrently held by the NDP--for women and "persons of colour, gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered people, youth, aboriginal peoples and persons with disabilities."
Talk about a crazy quilt of special-interest groups. I'm predicting this quota-driven, "equality of outcome" scheme will backfire on the New Democrats.
Here's my recent Face to Face column on the subject in the Tri-City News, and here's that of my debating partner, Mary Woo Sims.
Posted by Terry O'Neill on October 22, 2007 in Canadian Provincial Politics | Permalink | Comments (6) | TrackBack
The veil and the school bus crash
The driver of the Calgary school bus that crashed and killed a kid was wearing some sort of veil. I don't know if it was a Muslim hijab, an Eastern European baboushka, or just a hoodie. I don't know because not a single one of the news reporters on the scene bothered to ask.
To me, it's obvious why: because the subject matter clearly touches on the debate about "reasonable accommodation" and how far we're willing to let Muslim culture trump Canadian culture, when the two clash. I submit to you that they clash when it comes to wearing something that blocks a school bus driver's peripheral vision. I would say the same thing about any other religious appurtenance that interfered with driving.
Here's my Sun column on the subject.
I've had a few responses so far, split between those who are appalled that I would even ask such questions, and those who are appalled that the rest of the media hasn't asked them.
It seems obvious to me that unimpaired vision is a "bona fide occupation requirement" -- legal jargon for an important job criterion that trumps political correctness. It's the same reason we "discriminate" against blind people by not letting them drive, either.
For those who say we should eliminate clear vision as a criterion for school bus driving, and allow hijabs, I'd ask:
1. Are there any limits at all? Such as the full niqab -- the one-woman-prison, often with the mesh in front of the eyes? and
2. Do you mind if we try out such one-way multicultural experiments on your kids, and no-one else's?
Posted by Ezra Levant on October 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (66) | TrackBack
Good Riddance
From the CBC:
Muslim cleric facing deportation Monday after failed appeal
Controversial Montreal-based imam faces deportation Monday after efforts to get the Federal Court to intervene and stop border officials from removing him from Canada failed.
A lawyer for Muslim cleric Said Jaziri — who fervently supports the creation of faith-based sharia law for Canadian Muslims and has publicly denounced homosexuality as a sin — said the court rejected his application to stay in the country following a teleconference late Sunday afternoon. Jaziri's last resort was an appeal to Citizenship and Immigration Minister Diane Finley, who could have used her discretionary authority under federal law to let him stay on humanitarian grounds.
Posted by Leah Dowe on October 22, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (25) | TrackBack
Sunday, October 21, 2007
McCain Steals the Show in GOP Debate
Line of the campaign, so far.
Posted by Adam T. Yoshida on October 21, 2007 in International Politics | Permalink | Comments (12) | TrackBack
George Brown Day
Liberal MP Mario Silva has proposed a private member's bill making October 18th Pierre Trudeau Day. Rather than providing a rant on why it's a horrible idea to honour one of Canadian history's leading statists, let me provide a counter proposal, a day, November 29th, to honour George Brown. Along with John A Macdonald and Georges Etienne Carter he formed the triumvirate that made Confederation a reality. A defender of free trade and free markets he opposed Macdonald's high tariffs and railway subsidies, policies lauded by Central Canadian myth makers but which in reality retarded the growth of Western and Eastern Canada. Brown, unlike Trudeau, was a self-made man, immigrating to Toronto in his twenties he founded what became the Globe and Mail and amassed a great fortune. In his thirties he founded what became the Liberal Party of Canada. During his lifetime both institutions stood for freedom and individual rights. Brown was also a staunch defender of the separation of church and state, yet was himself quite devout. Mario Silva describes Trudeau as having had “vigour, innovation and daring” and symbolizing Canada at its best. I think not.
Cross Posted at The Gods of the Copybook Headings
Posted by PUBLIUS on October 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (26) | TrackBack