From Cork to Toronto

No, not the film (although I've never seen it which is weird given it's probably CanCon or something). 19 Quebec priests (including one who has spoken out in the past) have written to La Presse criticising the Catholic church's stance on same sex marriage. Personally I try and stay out of what the Church thinks, because in the main I don't think it matters unless and until they try and impose that view via the law. Sadly that is all too often the case. It will be interesting to see how the hierarchy reacts. La Presse's main article ( Google translation here ) The original letter in French ( Google translation )

Seen at Opinio Juris .

Two captains in my thoughts - Mats Sundin of Sweden and the Toronto Maple Leafs and (it seems) Robbie Keane of the Republic of Ireland. First - Mats. Not my kind of captain really, but in my short hockey-following spell he's all we've had. Pretty different from the "blood, guts and guile" employed by Manchester United - Robson, Bruce, Cantona, Keane (we have yet to see Neville G exhibit guile). My wife regales me with tales of Doug Gilmour - who sounds like Robson in putting his body on the line but never making it to the ultimate prize. In any case, Mats and Krusty the Klown have been tearing it up in Torino and returning with gold medals. He's 35 now - a bit late to acquire a taste for championhood but even if the Stanley Cup is beyond us in 2006 I wish he would show some rage once in a while... unSwedish I suppose. God knows he has a lot to rage against if he took a notion to, since there are more passengers in the team than on the TTC and even Domi lo...

There were three standout moments in the somewhat tepid closing ceremony to the Torino Olympic Games (compared to say, Sydney) - the costumes on the former Olympians carrying out the Olympic flag - only in Italy, the guys being blown into the air by the giant fan - looked even crazier than skeleton racing and finally the acceptance of the Olympic flag by Mayor of Vancouver Sam Sullivan . Sullivan became quadruplegic at 19 after a skiing accident. He had a socket built into his wheelchair so he could wave the (huge) Olympic flag as is traditional - apparently he practiced in deserted parking lots at night. (I still think a Canadarm would have been cool though). Boy did he ever wave it and the crowd went nuts. The Politic has some media reaction . The Governor-General ( hot, as always ) seemed to be enjoying herself immensely - was sceptical at first but she certainly beats her predecessor for public appeal (and looks and dress sense). I wonder if VANOC will be worried about Bryant ...

Transit Toronto picked up the Star's piece on Howard Moscoe, the TTC Chairman's plan to force condo developers near subway stations to purchase metropasses for their residents. Now, some condo developers do offer one year of metropasses as a sales incentive. However, the ongoing budget crunch has seen some pretty dubious tactics from city council where the existing development levies are being supplemented by extra squeeze - money for a park here or a public square refurbishment there - which of course the local councillor can take credit for. The TT article asserts that condos don't pay development levies as it stands - but they do, and are supposed to pay for city infrastructure including transit . One would think the saving grace of this is that the money raised will help out the TTC because it's going direct to them - instead it will just allow the city to cut its direct subvention to the TTC while adding more riders to the hard-pressed system and cause resentment...

There's a lot of ongoing handwringing in Toronto about public spaces (usually in NOW but sometimes in Eye and the Star). I agree with some of it - the current newspaper boxes are a disgrace to the city and a hindrance to the partially/non-sighted citizenry. PATH is indeed confusing and I have yet to find some of the passageways the PATH map claims exist despite looking many times. I sympathise with guerrila gardeners and it emphasises how poorly the city looks after the bits of green they are supposed to tend. The campaign to remove road-facing fencing does add to the open culture I found when arriving in Toronto as opposed to the almost mandatory front walls in Irish housing estates. However, the same people that oppose corporate advertising (which has, it's fair, completely colonised places like Yonge and Dundas) also oppose bylaws to restrict every scobe with an inkjet and a pot of glue to plaster posters for every lame band or service in the city all over the neare...

The price of a democratic society is often unpalatably high - in terms of what society pay must to preserve it and in terms of what some societies will demand of their citizens to exercise it. Two instances of this have come to mind over the past few days. The first was a story in the NY Times (registration required) in respect of mounting fees which States levy on former criminals in order to regain their franchise, lost at the time of their conviction. Those few of the poor that bother to vote are now denied it both by their punishment which in turn becomes a "life sentence" as they are too poor to discharge the fees levied. These States are not just the usual suspects like Georgia but so-called blue states like Connecticut. The fees seem to be small, $30 here, $15 there but added together come to thousands of dollars. I consider it dangerous to withdraw the franchise for prisoners - any group without a franchise or unable to exercise it is a group which will encounter...

Long ago, starting from Famine times, the Irish people went to the States, the UK, Australia and Canada in their droves. In latter years some got turned away and went illegal, some got Morrison visas (which even then were seen to favour Ireland disproportionately over poorer nations). We continued to produce children for export (no contraception) and threw them on the mercy of the rich. Fast forward past, oh, when Fitzer stopped running the country further into the ground to the 1987 government, Mac the Knife and the proposal of the IFSC. All of a sudden the need to emigrate to find work started, slowly at first, to evaporate. Shortly after that people started to turn up at the doorstep looking to live here, and not just Jeremy Irons and his pink castle in West Cork either. Some of these people were even "coloured". The same colour as the people on the collection boxes adorned the tills in country shops and Trocaire boxes at Easter. Now, some countries would have taken...

Don't believe me? Ask the press: Four medals; one big loss No, Canada! The day started off well for Canada at the Torino Games - Chandra Crawford wins the cross-country sprint, the least favoured of the three Canadian entrants. Hiccups later on the morning - "Jasey Jay" Anderson disappoints again (should get himself a good Irish name, J.J.) and the womens curling team is beaten the semi-final but retains a shot at bronze. Then the mens curlers win their semi, guaranteeing silver. Cindy Klassen gets 2006 medal no. 4 (first time for a Canadian) in speed skating (gold), Kristina Groves following her for silver and the womens short track relay take silver too. Canada has surpassed their Salt Lake City 2002 medal total and the games aren't over yet. Pretty good for a day's work? Not when disaster was around the corner. CBC and NBC tv executives are probably jumping off bridges - the US and Canadian hockey teams were eliminated in the quarters, by Finland and Rus...

Eamon Dunphy's podcast this morning (Newstalk 106 Tuesday 21st) had Irish Times journo (and "songwriter") John Waters on in the guise of a newspaper reviewer. During his chummy banter with Dummers (at 39m50sec according to iTunes) he came out swinging against the Irish Examiner poll which claimed 51% of surveyed Irish people supported "some form of gay marriage". ( United Islander has also written on this today ) According to Wikipedia Waters has previously expressed views against extending the term marriage to gay partnerships, but professed to support civil partnerships. His initial annoyance seemed to be with the Examiner article lumping in all sorts of gay partnerships as forms of "gay marriage" . From a journalist it's amusing that he would take offence at a sub-ed lax headlining, surely he's been at the Old Lady long enough to have had it happen to himself. The amusing thing was that he decided to tell us what was natural ("heter...

saved from the NIMBYs that is. The Divisional Court handed down its reserved decision (PDF format - hat tip Spacing Wire for the link) in the rehearing of the attempt by Save Our St Clair to derail the Streetcar Right of Way project. SOS' antics have cost the city millions and created disruption for the locals by interrupting the construction. The Ontario Muncipal Board's thumbs up to the Transportation section of the 2002 Official Plan a month ago seems to have demolished the last doubts. Biking Toronto has more analysis but hopefully this will be the last bump in the road - for streetcars to work they must be able to move efficiently - indeed the clustering caused by traffic congestion and consequent lost travel time is one of the reason people criticise streetcars!

Transit Toronto notes various discussions about transit this weekend, including a Star article on TTC riders attitude to pregnant and elderly fellow commuters and the Globe on cutting the TTC's 33 Forest Hill route to help plug the TTC's deficit . In other news, Gord Perks is back in Eye and on the attack after his election defeat, although unlike other candidates he never actually abandoned his soapbox during the campaign, unlike Global TV's Peter Kent for example. Matt Blackett runs Spacing magazine and the associated Spacingwire, and he comments on the Star's article in a "nothing to see here, move along" kind of way. To be honest when I read spacing wire I agree wholeheartedly on some stuff and want to puke reading others, like his kneejerk response to the launch of Porter Airlines and this latest (short) reaction to the Star article. There's a lot of things that women and men tell each other "you wouldn't understand" (with men it...

This post used to say "Try ul rather than li - might be a bullet point?" which is a lesson to me not to post on comments and post to my blog simultaneously. And it's not like they look similar either... oh well! Bit of a symptom of the weekend really - back to back losses for the Canadian men's hockey team against Switzerland (Tobler0wned?) and Finland, the dawning realisation that unlike a large chunk of "Dallas" I'm not going to suddenly be in a shower and realise that Steve Staunton as Irish soccer manager is all a dream and lastly the crushing defeat at Anfield - not the scale of the result but the significance of it for United's season, for the disaster that is United's playing staff and for Alan Smith's future . I missed it on telly and I'm glad I did because h earing about it was depressing enough . Nice to see that the workshy scouse plague left us with the moral high ground with their "serenade" of Smith though - a...

Last month I wrote two pieces on the power supply in Ontario, here and here . Since then, the proposed Toronto portlands power station is becoming a bigger fiasco by the day. David Miller is still pushing back at the Portlands Energy Centre 550MW power station, given the thumbs up by the province this week . He has to, since his fellow NDPer Peter Tabuns is making it a cornerstone of his MPP campaign. If Miller wasn't in danger of being kicked out before, failure to help out Tabuns would lead to more Churley style hissy-fitting . Indeed, at the recent public meeting, some speakers opposed any plant at all which is unsurprising given Hizzoner's recent damascene conversion to having one. This is what happens when you promise to turn an existing industrial zone into parks and fluffy bunnies and ignore the City's actual needs - especially when you haven't gotten a badly needed park sorted out already . There are several unanswered questions about Miller's reason...

Jeremy Hinzman is one of a number of American military personnel who have come to Canada since the so-called "war on terror" began. At present he is appealing an Immigration Tribunal decision that he does not merit refugee status since he would not receive cruel or unusual punishment for his desertion. Judgement has been reserved by the Federal Court judge hearing the case. He voluntarily enlisted in the 82nd Airborne Division in 2001 (he is now 26 so he was fully adult at the time) and served one tour in Afghanistan in a non-combat role but his request for "conscientious objector" status being refused (since he wanted to pick and choose which conflicts he would fight in rather than be non-combat in all circumstances) he was reassigned to his previous combat role as an armoured mechanic. He had attended meetings of the Society of Friends but this made his application for selective objection rather than a more understandable objection based on religious pacifism ...

Much angst has been expended in the Canadian media that Dale Begg-Smith, 21 year old Canadian born gold medalist at the Winter Olympics, declared for Australia in his late teens as their regime facilitated his dot-com business. He also claimed funding favouritism by the sports authorities towards French-Canadians. The Toronto Star reports: "The French-Canadian guys get so much funding," Begg-Smith told the Vancouver Province last year. "You're better and they're getting the funding and I'm like, 'Why?' In business, I deal with all that crap. In sports, you shouldn't have to deal with that." His internet ventures have made him a millionaire and driver of a $300,000 Lamborghini but was after his win he was evasive as to the nature of his business . Now we know what that business actually is . He's a spammer . His companies are accused of facilitating spyware . Here he is discussing his software on a computing bulletin board. There have b...

Leaving the sordid Bertuzzi-Moore-Danson triangle behind for something far more positive. During the Winter Olympic women's cross country team pursuit, Canadian Sara Renner's ski pole snapped. Nearby Norwegian official Bjornar Hakensmoen gave Renner one of his poles . The Canadians stormed back for a second place finish 0.6 seconds behind, while the Norwegians finished fourth. Despite the Norwegian claiming that he had only done what all the officials had agreed to do beforehand, and the Norwegian Ambassador to Canada (having received goodies at the embassy from various thankful Canadians) passing it off as only the natural reaction, the fact is that many would have not acted quite as quickly. Indeed some Norwegians muttered about how much help a Swede would have been to a similarly afflicted Norwegian . All the same, in an all too cynical world, I raise my imaginary hat to Mr Bjornar Hakensmoen. Well done, sir.

I am offering Don Cherry's advice to Wayne Gretzky to another canuck under the cosh. Tim Danson, publicity hound extraordinaire, has filed a lawsuit on behalf on Steve Moore and Moore's parents following Todd Bertuzzi's suckerpunching of him. The statement of claim against Bertuzzi, the Vancouver Canucks and their holding company, seeks $15m in lost earnings, aggravated damages of $1m, punitive damages of $2m and $1.5m for his parents' claim of "negligent infliction of nervous shock and emotional distress". Now, don't get me wrong, what Bertuzzi did was wrong and some restitution is due, unlike Gretzky who has done nothing wrong except be subjected a thinly veiled charge for "failing to control his wife". In the case of the suit itself, only a lawyer who in my opinion shamelessly exploited the French and Mahaffey families while attempting to radically alter the nature of state punishment in Canada, would lodge this suit the day before Bertuz...

The UK Iraqi occupation forces have been accused of abuse of Iraqis since the war - this one is not going to be explained away like some of the previous ones (source via United Irelander/blogs.ie). Video here (from the Screws) - shows kicking and headbutting of Iraqis brought into the compound after stone throwing incidents.

The Ontario NDP have revoked Buzz Hargrove's party membership (hat tip Far and Wide again) which he has held for 41 years, an action which terminates his Federal membership. Funny that a week ago the rumour was about that Buzz's membership was in doubt but he claims to have not seen it coming. NDP executive member and fellow CAW official Mike Shields noted that David Miller's NDP membership is questionable given his endorsement of Liberal candidate John Godfrey if Hargrove's actions deserved expulsion. Paul Martin mentioned Miller (and had the handgun ban photo-op) during the campaign which the NDP tried to explain away . Needless to say, NOW, helped by former employee and now Hizzoner's media flack Don Wanagas, got Miller's excuses in a row during the campaign .

At Sicilian Notes , Richard Waghorne has written a long piece on what he sees as the downgrading of Irish military capability , favouring significant increases in funding to enable participation in Petersberg tasks . While this debate is worth having it needs to be broken down a bit to fit in blog posts and maybe that will evolve as it unfolds. I should point out at the start that I have never served in the Defence Forces. The first principle which I feel Irish people cherish about the role of our military abroad is that we choose to keep our heads down to avoid the need for mutual defence pacts and automatic participation in conflicts. We get to decide where our boots go on the ground, when and why. This is linked is our attachment to primarily UN missions - the multilateral option which has less (but non-zero) chance of being driven by economic dictats than the need for oil. We spent 30 years in Lebanon and there's not much oil there. Richard does rightly point out that debat...

pretty sad I know... but I did want to have my little place in the blogosphere :) Gender : Male Age : (1-18; 19-30; 31-45; 46-60; 60+) 31-45 Nationality : Irish Country of residence : Canada Sexual Orientation : Heterosexual (married) Do you have a disability? No. How would you describe your political philosophy? Fiscal conservative, social liberal Level of education (primary; post-primary; third-level; graduate; professional) Bachelor's degree. If you were to vote on party lines which party would you choose (Ireland)? FF or PD If you were to vote on party lines which party would you choose (UK)? Tory or LibDem If you were to vote on party lines which party would you choose (USA)? "Reagan Democrat" Where do you stand on the EU? I support a Common Market/Europe of nation-states model rather than a Federation. Did you support the invasion of Afghanistan? Yes. Did you support the invasion of Iraq? Yes. I had no confidence in the UN (esp. France) doing anything about...

Saw the Irish Winter Olympic team carry in the flag in Torino for the Olympic Opening Ceremony. If you looked at the RTE Sport main page you'd never know it, just a headline about suspended skiers. Naturally they were dwarfed by the Canadian contingent, who looked like they were going into space. Cue even more complaints about their "budget" Hudson's Bay outfits .

Sir Freddie Laker , former boss of Laker Airlines/Skytrain , has died at the age of 83 . His death is notable as he was one of the first pioneers of airline deregulation and no-frills flying, and suffered an early form of the British Airways dirty tricks campaign they later subjected Virgin Atlantic to. Prior to his involvement, transatlantic flight was the preserve of the rich but Laker offered flights at one third of the flag-carriers fares. The oil crash of the late 1970s killed off Skytrain but sowed the seed for the later Southwest and Ryanair wars against US and European legacy carriers and their high fares.

The rapid rate of the TTC increases are being felt primarily at the cash fare end. While TTC types struggle to keep metropasses below $100, the cash fare is now $2.75 - and the poorest in society may have difficult affording $21 a time for 10 tokens and almost certainly have problems raising $99.75 once a month. More affluent riders can afford the Metropass discount plan and save that way. The way cash fares are being hiked you'd swear they were cigarettes or liquor... At the same time it seems that fake tickets and tokens are costing TTC a packet . Time to switch to smart cards - soon! Although Ducharme seems sceptical, comparing it to credit card fraud - well where does that leave TTC's own metropass? Royson James, who has been more and more sceptical of Hizzoner, much to the rage of the mayor's cronies in the Toronto media and blogosphere, points out that TTC commissioners who raged against necessary fare hikes under Lastman are quietly acquiescing under Miller .

Apparently Jose Theodore of the Canadiens has tested positive for propecia, a masking agent , and the story is it's because of hair loss products. (If he is taking drugs it doesn't seem to be helping him much). Apparently it's doctor prescribed so that's okay then. Funny that his doctor doesn't have a copy of the banned list when my brother used to carry a card with the IRFU banned list when he played junior rugby in Dublin. US skeletoner Zach Lund also seems to have hair problems. This seems to be quickly replacing cold medicine as one of those "whoops, you mean it has drugs in it" scenarios we see every Olympics. Come on Jose - embrace the Messier look. Didn't hurt him did it? Because it's not as if you'd ever take drugs, obviously.

I've just finished (very belatedly, it was a Christmas present) RTE's excellent four part series " Haughey " following the life and career of " the Boss ". I was a bit worried it wouldn't work in our DVD player/NTSC TV but it was fine and the picture/sound was excellent. Naturally given the subject a fourteen part series wouldn't be enough but there was quite enough to be getting on with. The programme is very well made but what distinguishes it is the cast of characters that appear on it. P.J. Mara is predictably memorable but valuable detail is provided by his private secretary in the 80s. Padraig Flynn's sheer drive first to protect Haughey and then to oust him is almost shocking. Haughey's children Conor, Eimear and Sean all appear, and perhaps this is why the Celtic Helicopters affair didn't appear that I recall, and that his mistress Terry Keane was not only a gossip columnist but the wife of the Chief Justice. Dermot Desmond s...

It must burn the opposition parties that this NHL betting probe has popped up just as they hoped to get their teeth into Emerson and Fortier, and now O'Connor. Apparently some of the Alta. MPs are burned about Diane Ablonczy not getting the nod rather than the traitor and the senator. Instead Harper anoints the "gorgeous, pouting" Rona Ambrose (does very little for me actually, too much pouting, too little gorgeous, but I guess when you consider the alternatives...). Also some nonsense from the Star letters page about the West having too many ministers, when by population Alta/BC/Man/Sask are only slightly over-represented - hat tip Far and Wide. So what does that add up to? If Ablonczy failed to make cabinet, it wasn't because Fortier or Emerson were in the way, but Harper, Prentice, Solberg and the aforementioned Ambrose. Personally speaking she looks like a pretty good mind veiled by a vocal tone that puts teeth on edge. Between this and the defector and th...

Obviously these are the headlines of Stephen Harper's first Cabinet. As has been pointed out elsewhere, Emerson was headhunted and parachuted by Martin in 2004 along with Dosanjh and Shirley Chan, over the fury of the local Liberal associations. This was plainly done with a promise of a ministry. He obviously had no desire to sit on the backbenches when he could be back coining it in in the private sector. This appointment gives Harper a local stickhandler for Vancouver 2010 which would hang around his neck like a gigantic millstone if the CPC were deemed to have contributed in any way to stuffing it up. One of course hopes nothing of the sort, but the recent $110m over-run (and we're still four years out!) gives no cause for optimism. We have yet to hear precisely who approached whom but either way I doubt it needed much persuading. Fortier is a different proposition but again is an attempt at getting a bridgehead in Montreal. Good luck with that say I, can't believe ...

For all of those who left us that night 48 years ago . One cold and bitter Thursday in Munich, Germany, Eight great football stalwarts conceded victory, Eight men who will never play again who met destruction there, The flowers of English football, the flowers of Manchester

No, not the whole FISA brouhaha. Some time ago Mata Harney said : "If unemployment were to rise in Ireland because of the slowdown globally, then we just wouldn’t issue the work permits" Brendan Howlin fired back with a trenchant defence of economic migrants , regardless of petty capitalist considerations: "Now we see the immigration issue as something that can be turned off when there are economic pressures in the economy. The Tanaiste actually boasts that she can turn off this tap to remove the pressure." Now less than three years later, his Party's leader (sic), petty capitalist Pat Rabbitte is turning his hand to plumbing . RTE's report: "a new work permit system to control the numbers of people coming to work in Ireland from outside the State may be necessary. Speaking on RTÉ Radio's Morning Ireland, he said such a scheme should be examined in the wake of the Irish Ferries dispute, although he did not say whether or not it should be implemente...

A lot of the anti-TCCA bloggers and those who comment on them remind us (approvingly) of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley's closure of that city's airport, Meigs Field . (Meigs can still be seen on Google Maps - hat tip to Information Echo ). It's worth reminding ourselves of some of the history around that closure. Daley moved in the middle of the night with bulldozers to make the main runway unusable with no notice to the Federal Aviation Administration, the small fine this offence attracted causing the FAA to increase it ten-fold for future offences . Sixteen aircraft had to be given permission to depart from the taxiway, hardly normal or safe practice! An investigation appears to be be still pending (no sign of resolution on faa.gov) regarding Daley's use of funds from O'Hare International to demolish Meigs. The reconstruction of Northerly Island is being funded by granting a concert stage to Clear Channel - the kind of corporate media giant that would surely chil...

You are Paul Krugman! You're a brilliant economist with a knack for both making sense of the current economic situation and exposing the Bush administration's lies about it. You somehow came out as the best anti-war writer on the Op-Ed staff. Other economists hate your guts for selling out to the liberals. To hell with 'em. Which New York Times Op-Ed Columnist Are You?

Well, from way up in his ivory tower (one sec, I believe he's in UCD so that would make it a concrete tower...) it seems we can rely on Richard Waghorne's Sicilian Notes to bring us the latest and greatest original thinking . He reveals to us that the Prophet Muhammed may have been... wait for it... a paedophile. This refers to the Prophet's marriage to Aisha and her age at time of its consummation. He references (but does not link to) Charles Moore's column in the Torygraph on this subject in December 2004 . Indeed, Moore answered his own question To me, it seems anachronistic to describe Mohammed as a child-molester. Pity RW, a worshipper of many things neo-con, couldn't have just taken one of Maggie T's favourite journo's word for it (he even reproduces it!) and not bothered. But he did bother, so... Moore's concern seemed to me to be whether others could make this claim without prosecution. That he used this example at all brought a rebuttal from I...

Flu Bleh Two years of flu shots, two years of flu Bleh... UPDATE: At one stage I thought I was going to puke and didn't. But the inclination passed when having reached the bathroom I passed out of hearing range of Eamon Dunphy interviewing Martin McGuinness on a Newstalk106 podcast. Funny that.

Hat tip to Gavin's Blog for pointing me to Jon Stewart's comparison between Oprah's Paxman -esque grilling of James Frey and the toadying of US "real news" interviewers of their political interviewees. Sorry to use a tired old phrase but " it's funny coz it's true ".

The New York Times (rego required) reports on a conflict over the film "End of the Spear" which relates the story of missionaries killed by aboriginal Ecuadorians in 1956. The families of these missionaries forgave their killers and converted them to Christianity. Baptist associate pastor Rev. Jason Janz called on the film-makers to apologise for casting Chad Allen , an openly gay actor, in a lead role as one of the missionaries and also plays the part of that missionary's adult son. He said casting someone who "promoted drunkenness" would be equally heinous. This has drawn out some even more unpalatable commentary - the president of the Central Baptist Seminary in Minneapolis, Kevin Bauder, said "Granted, we must not overreact. And it would probably be an overreaction to firebomb these men's houses. But what they have done is no mistake. It is a calculated strategy." Probably an over-reaction?? Mr Bauder also described an article quoted the mi...

So there's a gun club at Union Station - surprising that didn't come up in the wake of the Union Station shooting but obviously it was a well kept secret - while the membership (formerly for railway staff) is now open to the public you must be referred by an existing member to join. I'm surprised no-one else has picked up on it since CBC mentioned it on the news last night. It will be interesting to see if city council eliminate it from the new Union Station with the pressure on them to curb guns in the city. I can understand how competition shooters feel but perhaps a range could be set up in a more secure location, such as the C.O. Bick police college.

The Globe and Mail reports the loss of a Canadian Forces Sea King helicopter from HMCS Athabaskan off the east coast of Denmark. The crew are safe and CF plan to salvage the helicopter. It must be hard enough to convince yourself to fly a 40-year old helicopter off a destroyer let alone one that's got a soaking in salt water. The Liberals first killed the EH-101 replacement order at a cost of $50m then ordered the S-92 to create a new fleet type within the CF. No arrivals until 2007 so we keep on flogging these old choppers. Let's see what Harper can do about the replacement of the C-130s, the tendering of which was swiftly becoming another Liberal fiasco.

Great analysis, shocking spelling - even for an American. This is just one step in a grand conspiracy by those sneaky canucks to take over the word. I for one welcome our touque wearing overlords

The Globe and Mail is running a story about the likelihood of a same sex marriage vote in this session, and a separate piece listing the declared MPs for and against and those who say "they'll listen to their constituents" or "they were unavailable for interview" . My MP is Jack Layton, and while I have my issues with him, SSM is not one of them. Check the list and find out if your MP is planning to listen to you - take him or her up on the offer regardless of your position for or against! God knows they don't listen much usually.

REGCO, the regional airline championed by Robert Deluce, is one large step closer to reality with the announcement of 10 firm orders for Bombardier Q400 70 seat turboprop aircraft . The airline's plan is still to operate from Toronto City Centre , where at present only private flights operate with the exception of a single Air Canada route to Ottawa operated by 37 seat Bombardier Q100s, which are approximately 150 kilometres per hour slower than the Q400. This order, valued at $500m but which with the usual discounting will net to substantially less, is good news for local workers who build the Q400 and who pleaded with City Council not to reverse the decision to build the bridge, a decision which David Miller would cost $2 but has so far cost the Feds $35m. Whether REGCO will be a success is anyone's guess. There is scope for traffic to Ottawa for bureaucrats and business types but beyond that it's hard to say. However I do admire that he is bothering to try, given the...