From Cork to Toronto

"Woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites; because you tithe mint, and anise, and cummin, and have left the weightier things of the law ; judgment, and mercy, and faith. These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone. Blind guides, who strain out a gnat, and swallow a camel." (Matthew 23:23-24) Even though I was educated by primary and secondary schools controlled through the Catholic Church back in Ireland, I am a believer in unified education, at least when publicly funded. I believe that state funding used to fund the same curriculum in a school with a religion's name on the door should be used to promote diversity in education provision. This would mean taking the money which currently funds duplicated bureaucracy in the Catholic School Board system and putting it towards under-resourced areas such as trade apprenticeships, guidance counselling, after-school programmes and special needs teaching as well as ensuring that buildings are properly ...

H/t Paul Wells - apparently the press are being confined to a drip feed in a room across the road from the caucus shindig and interlopers to the hotel lobby are being tossed by the RCMP detachment . While tour bus groups freely wandered the lobby of Charlottetown's Delta Hotel, plainclothes Mounties rebuffed reporters who had convened for the Conservative party's three-day summer strategy session. “There's a time and a place for the media,” a Mountie told a small knot of print reporters, making it clear the issue was not a matter of security but of communications strategy. The unnamed officer said he was acting on orders from the Prime Minister's Office. The reporters were nowhere near the actual caucus meetings, which took place behind a set of closed doors and somewhere down a long hallway in one of the hotel ballrooms. But that was too close for the Conservatives, who set up a media room in a federal building across the street and promised to bring MPs for interview...

A week after the unveiling of the Air India 182 memorial in Etobicoke, tonight's National featured a piece by Terry Milewski (text summary here ) on the involvement of NDP, Liberal and Tory politicians with Sikh parades in BC and Ontario. Some participants and floats in the parade glorified members of various banned organisations which seek the secession of "Khalistan" from the Punjab area of India and Pakistan such as Babbar Khalsa , and International Sikh Youth Federation. In the case of the Surrey parade, both of the acquitted in the Air India Trial present - and the Premier of British Columbia. The Liberal, Tory and NDP MPs challenged on their presence issued supportive statements but later flip flopped - as did the Premier. Some of the "martyrs" were linked to the mass murder of those aboard Air India 182 near Akahista (which had a huge impact in Cork then and still reverberates today ) and the killing of Indira Gandhi - an incident celebrated in a...

Apparently a tax break has been introduced by the Tories and outside of one company in Immigration Minister Diane Finlay's riding nobody can find an eligible recipient. But irrespective of the sneaking in of a tax break for a single Tory MP - WHAT THE HELL IS THE GOVERNMENT OF CANADA DOING GIVING TAX REDUCTIONS FOR PRODUCTION OF TOBACCO?! Worse still - it appears this tax break is in part to assist the MP in avoiding the fallout from the Caledonia debacle - so now federal as well as provincial taxpayers are shelling out for that particular fiasco.

It's Wajid Khan for pity's sake, not Kahn. Blogs on all sides can't manage it . Bloggers are bad, so-called national newspapers worse. If there was any spelling error to be made in his name I expected it to be "Wajit". Other Khans in history: Genghis Khan Kubla(i) Khan Khan Noonian Singh ( Hollywood is "history" now? Shurely shome mishtake - ed. ) Imran Khan the Aga Khan Chaka Khan ( bottom of barrel approaching - ed. ) As for Kahns, well, there's Oliver Kahn Dominique Strauss-Kahn er... that's it. Now all you bloggers out there, Tory gloaters and Liberal spiters alike, get it right before I set Ricardo Montalbán on your ass. He may be old but I bet he's got some moves. And you Tories - what a prize you have. A guy who used to spend his mornings gorming with on FAN590 with Landry and Stellick. God help us all if the guy from Korry's on Danforth who advertises on the FAN runs for office, even if it's against fungus face .

The Globe and Mail seems to think so , quoting former Liberal leadership contender Dr. Carolyn Bennett. The article by Gloria Galloway notes that in addition to providing Dr. John Hamm, former Premier of Nova Scotia, with a nice little retirement earner, the new board appointed by Tony Clement includes: a professor of Jewish studies who has written of his opposition to abortion unless life of the mother is being threatened, a social anthropologist who is director of research for the Catholic Archdiocese of Toronto, a Montreal oncologist who has spoken against euthanasia at an anti-abortion conference, and a Halifax bioethicist who opposes using fresh embryos for stem-cell research -- an opposition commonly voiced by those who believe life begins at conception. Stem-cell researchers, for instance, are nowhere to be found on this board despite its role in approving more than 20 Assisted Human Reproduction Act regulations controlling testing unborn children for genetic diseases, IVF emb...

The Harper government has announced that 4,450 hectares of land expropriated to create Mirabel Airport will be sold with priority given to existing renters of the land, most of whom owned it prior to the forced sale in 1969. The mayor of Mirabel is unhappy as he was looking to expand the industrial sites at the airport but that is something he can take up with the new owners. The Kanesetake Mohawks have filed a land claim on the land - I'm going to pass over that one because I don't understand how indigenous land claims work in Canada, and the bigger problem is that it seems to me nobody else does either. Mirabel itself still exists as a cargo airport and occasionally a film set . Apparently Montreal Airport Authority covets it for flights between Dorval-Trudeau and Mirabel (a distance of 32km as a noisy old cargo plane flies) which seems environmentally dubious to put it mildly - is this the hand of Bombardier who still maintain a factory at Mirabel? The next question i...

Whatever did Stockwell Day mean ? And if he meant what I thought he meant when I read the quote, could this be a 10 day wonder like Peter McKay's "bitch" or a career killer like Mel Lastman's cannibals or George Allen's "macaca" ? Some people don't think it's a big deal - unless Stock wants to join Rona Ambrose in Harper's doghouse he better hope more people agree. Some Tory supporters think otherwise .

The rationale for this (CBC, seen at James Bow ) escapes me. Space robotics is a field when Canada can truly claim to be a world leader, where the Canadarm and Canadarm2 are integral parts of current space missions, but the Harper government has just refused to permit the Canadian Space Agency's participation in a European Mars Rover project even though no additional funds were required, just permission to reallocate existing funds. The Europeans appeared to regard it as a formality and are now scrambling to find a replacement. Is it because Marc Garneau ran for the Liberals ? Were the funds being reallocated originally destined for Quebec and thus Minister Bernier couldn't abide it? Who is going to get answers to these questions? Via Hassenpfeffer , New Scientist's David Shiga writes : For a country with a relatively small population, Canada has made some very respectable contributions to spaceflight, producing several astronauts and a robotic arm for the space shu...

During the Liberal leadership campaign, the argument against Ignatieff was that he shot from the hip and was too liable to gaffes. Harper, Time Canada's Man of the Year , was the opposite, too in control of his agenda and those of his subordinates. Well, it turns out Harper's "Qana was a warcrime" may turn out to be "so-called greenhouse gases". As usual, Youtube provides ...

What I found interesting about Michael Chong's resignation was not that he did so - it was clear he had been marginalised in this matter in a way Stephane Dion would never have been in a matter so clearly in his jurisdiction - but why he did it just before the vote, had his press conference and then didn't even record a nay vote as Garth Turner and the fifteen others did but absented himself as several other Tories did. If Michael Chong had a principled objection to this vote his resignation should have come immediately after Harper's announcement of the government's motion on nationhood for Quebec - what made him pause a while? Perhaps he was urged to wait and see what happened on the Liberal benches and if they were in disarray some alternative strategy was planned. Michael Chong may have shown principle in refusing to go along with Cabinet collective responsibility but he has shown more proof that we currently have a one man with one vote Cabinet and also that he ...

The job is: stop faffing around in Kandahar and get over to Beijing smartly to propose and sign a bilateral agreement with the Chinese, the effect of which would void double jeopardy for citizens deported after completing their sentences. The Star brings up something I had wondered about on the Globe and Mail's "conversations"- what if China decided to execute Min Chen as a punishment for crimes committed abroad. I learned from the Star article that the Supreme Court already forbids this explicitly, but has not spoken on lesser punishments. Should Chen be unable to be deported then having completed his sentence it would be difficult to avoid releasing him. We should not wait until Chen is released in 2019 to make him another Karla Homolka , with whatever opportunist successor to Michael Bryant there is as AG in Ontario wailing on about the consequences of a plea bargain . We should have an assurance that Chen will leave federal prison in transportation that puts him...

The true colours are beginning to show on the Tory back bench, as Tory MP Maurice Vellacott attacks the Supreme Court and Chief Justice MacLachlin. But he's not speaking for the government, so that's all right then... The Star reports : "Beverley McLachlin herself actually said that when they step into this role all of a sudden there's some mystical kind of power comes over them by which everything that they ever decree then is not to be questioned," he told CBC-TV, referring to the chief justice of the Supreme Court. "They take on these almost god-like powers. And (McLachlin) said that herself. I didn't say that." A charge against abortion and same sex marriage is probably not far behind I guess.

Well, as Emma pointed out , my last post mentioning the lumber issue went out just before the proposed deal hit wide circulation. Oops. Symbolically, it's very bad that even the 20-odd percent negotiated away (about $1,000,000,000 - just to be clear) stays in the US, half of which will subvent their lumber industry and pay for their now successful Congressional lobbying. All of the money should have returned to Canada, and the rest of the negotiations should have started from this point. This is Harper's billion dollar boondoggle as the gun registry and HRDC were for the Liberals. However, it's interesting how the Liberal governments in QC, BC and ON, initially against it, came around to accepting the deal (Alberta is said to have done so "reluctantly"). One wonders whether Harper mentioned that failure to bring in the chunk of the $4bn the government would accrue via taxation would have implications for provincial transfers... but that would be bullying and ...

Yes, with all the crap hitting the fan right now we should worry that the Government of Canada home page has some blue in it . Maybe the Liberal Party should give up red and white to take partisanship away from the national colours? No? Didn't think so. You see, you start wondering if the Liberals have had enough of a time-out and then they remind you why they were kicked out. This is why Harper will get away with his schemes - Layton can be bought and the Liberals are fighting the wrong battles. Meanwhile the Bloc supported Harper's stance on the flag... Forgive me for coming over all Don Cherry (what'd I tell you eh?), but I predicted Rick Mercer would give Harper a kick after cancelling his ads. Here he is on the flag issue . (Hat tip Saskboy ) Here's my second Cherry moment : according to CTV, Stockwell Day is considering 10 year passports . I'm surprised that with all of the dread of Stock being made Foreign Minister that he has kept his head down and ...

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 ...