Time to ride into the sunset

It’s past time to put “E” Division out of its misery. Oh, I know. Studies, recommendations and implementation plans for rehabilitating the RCMP are underway but it’s unlikely the overarching need for leadership, streamlining and a clear cut mission will arrive soon enough to prevent more catastrophes. Like the taser death of Robert Dziekanski at Vancouver airport, the botched communications that allowed a man in violation of a court order to visit his three children in Merritt, B.C., then to be charged in their slayings, tops a history of missteps and out of touch police work. So “E” Division has to go. With some 6000 officers in 126 detachments throughout British Columbia, the contract for Canada’s largest RCMP division is up for renewal in 2012. And as retired Judge Wallace Craig has argued in Vancouver’s North Shore News for the last few years, it is now or never to decide B.C.’s policing arrangements for the subsequent twenty years... (more)

April 26, 2008

The gain drain

The conventional wisdom that immigration is an economic boon to Canada isn’t holding up under scrutiny

Immigration has a long history of successful settlement in Canada while globalization has increased acceptance of a coffee-coloured world and provided endless supplies of skilled and other labour to western democracies; so what’s not to love about mass immigration? While Canada’s opposition parties quibbled over modest measures expediting the arrival of skilled immigrant workers, one answer to that question appeared in a report from the British House of Lords. Stunningly, it concludes that record levels of immigration bring no economic benefits.... (more)

April 12, 2008

We can't just trust the experts

The always fatal but slow to incubate bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE or mad cow disease) is more prevalent in older animals, so when the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) allowed re-entry of Canadian cattle and beef over the age of 30 months to its market, the ultra-protectionist U.S. cattlemen's association, R-Calf, took it to court. Allowing re-entry of older Canadian cattle and beef has created an "unjustified and unnecessary increased risk of infection of U.S. cattle with BSE," R-Calf argued even as the USDA offered scientific evidence to the contrary. Particularly helpful to the USDA is how such evidence made cheap Canadian cattle and beef available for its large meat packing industry. What hasn't helped is the recent discovery on an Alberta farm of a 12th case of BSE, but at least Canada is fessing up. This development isn't welcome, a Canadian Cattlemen's Association spokesperson said, but "... it does prove the system is working and the producers are on board with the program"... (more)

March 29, 2008

Canada, U.S. find a trade solution

You have to hand it to the Americans. The U.S. softwood lumber market, not to mention the global economy is tanking, because of their self-inflicted subprime mortgage crisis. Nevertheless, they have the audacity to haul Canadians into arbitration for failing to anticipate it. The U.S. housing collapse means less softwood lumber is required for building houses. Not content, however, with seeing the Canadian softwood industry on its knees, the U.S. government invoked the provisions of the 2006 Soft Wood Lumber Agreement last summer and accused Canada of failing to abide by agreed export quotas based on "anticipated consumer demand." Now, the London Court of International Arbitration has slapped both countries on the wrist for having struck a substandard agreement and returned them to their sandboxes to brood over their pyrrhic victories. Are there lessons here? You bet. Especially for those concerned about the North American Free Trade Agreement... (more)

March 15, 2008

Why need an RCMP we can count on

Reading Dale of the Mounted In the Arctic by Joe Holliday, it's easy to see why a prairie boy growing up in the 1950s would want to become a Mountie. Dale is courteous and self-effacing, yet resourceful and surefooted when tackling crime, then there's that dashing red serge. Dale's adventures stretched across Canada, including, in Holliday's term, Canada's "Arctic Empire." Boy's own to be sure, but the Dale of the Mounted series is also symbolic of the esteem in which the Royal Canadian Mounted Police was held in post-war Canada. At the zenith of its achievements and under the leadership of legendary figures like Sam Steele, the Mounties had grown from being a force for establishing orderly authority in Canada's northwest to an internationally recognized organization... (more)

March 1, 2008

Identity politics and subprime loans

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declined early calls to seek the Republican nomination for president of the United States despite having the competence and character for the job. The integrity of a preacher's daughter that cautioned against exploitation of her race or gender for political purposes was likely one factor in her decision. In the Democratic nomination race, the triumph of identity politics is being wildly celebrated, as if black or female presidential nominees are something new. Yet in 1872 the Equal Rights Party nominated a woman named Victoria Woodhull for president and a black running mate, Frederick Douglass. Of course those were genuinely transformative times in which people saw themselves not as victims but as powerful actors in a political landscape where much needed to be done... (more)

February 16, 2008

Remember the Neanderthals

No one knows exactly why Neanderthals became extinct 30,000 years ago, but a new theory recently reported in the Boston Globe suggests that once able-bodied women, the “reproductive core” of their small population, began hunting with the men, it was game over. Already in survival mode, their combined forces were no match for the perils of climate change, ferocious beasts and interloper Homo sapiens, according to the theory. Worse, while a few Neanderthal men might be expendable, reproductive women were not. In this light, last week's decision from a Manitoba High Court confirming the right of two high school girls to try out for the boys' hockey team, while advancing women's rights, may also be retrogressive... (more)

February 2, 2008

Finish the work of Reform

The burdens of leadership fell heavily on the shoulders of Abraham Lincoln but lifestyle considerations were assuredly the least of them. Leaving Springfield, Illinois to become president of the United States, he informed his law partner and future biographer, William Herndon, that "If I live I'm coming back some time, and then we'll go right on practising law as if nothing had ever happened". Contrast this with Brian Mulroney, whose Gucci excesses, dancing "with the lady that brung ya" and "jobs for the boys" helped launch a reform movement in western Canada and, arguably, are again raising eyebrows in Alberta where a poll recently found the Conservatives down 23 points. At some unconscious level, at least a few Albertans must be wondering why the prime minister isn't finishing the job the Reform party started those many years ago... (more)

January 19, 2008

We have yet to feel the full Alberta effect

A friend of mine was surprised to learn this summer that her modest, northeast Edmonton home was worth a small fortune. Today, a glut of properties on the market suggests lower prices even as landlords charge exorbitant rents to meet oversized mortgage payments... (more)

January 7, 2008