Canada

[hildegoat]

Rumors are swirling this week about the left merging parties, like the right did several years ago.

Liberal-NDP: Would the merger of the two parties be a good idea?

Two Liberal Party advisers have sworn affidavits saying the federal party's president spoke to them about high-level discussions with NDP officials about the creation of a new party.

But Alfred Apps is denying he was involved in any serious merger talks.

Warren Kinsella, who was an adviser to former prime minister Jean Chrétien, said in the affidavit that Apps told him in May about "high-level" discussions with NDP officials about the "creation of a new party."

He said Apps told him the NDP would have to comply with three conditions: renouncing socialism and embracing a mixed-market economy; accepting Michael Ignatieff as leader; and having senior party "saints" such as former federal NDP leader Ed Broadbent and past Saskatchewan NDP leader Roy Romanow promote the merger.

There have been fierce denials by leaders of both parties of the CBC News report that the Liberals and NDP have been holding secret talks about possibly merging to form a new entity to take on the Conservatives.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/pointofview/2...good-idea.html

[hildegoat]

I'm not sure how Liz gets such a high approval rating. But I guess if all you do for the country is visit every couple of years, you can't really do anything wrong.

Canadians don't want Queen, even if she's done great job

Queen Elizabeth II may feel a little alienated when she arrives in Canada later this month, on the heel of news that the majority of Canadians believe the country should sever its ties to the monarchy once her reign ends.

Two in three Canadians agree the Royal Family should not have any formal role in Canadian society, according to the results of an Ipsos Reid poll conducted for Canada.com and released Wednesday.

But according to one expert on the monarchy, the sentiment is simply a product of Canadians being "woefully misinformed" about our institutions.

"Canada has always been a monarchy," said Matthew Rowe, a spokesman for the Monarchist League of Canada. "It's part of who we are as a nation. We didn't spring from the Earth fully formed. We're part of an institution."

Canada's association to European crowns dates back through centuries. Now, as a sovereign nation, Canada is a constitutional monarchy, meaning the powers of the monarchy in Canada are limited by the Constitution.

According to the poll and not surprisingly, the strongest voices favouring abolishment of the monarchy in Canada come from Quebec, where eight in 10 people believe ties to the monarchy should be cut when the Queen's reign ends, but 53 per cent think she has done a good job in her role as monarch.

On a national level, the Queen's approval rating is at 73 per cent.

"Find me a politician who has that approval rating," Rowe quipped.

As for what would replace the Queen, a majority of Canadians surveyed in the poll said they would prefer a republic system where the Governor General would become the elected head of state.

"Right now, our Governor General can't act as the constitutional referee," said Tom Freda, director of Citizens for a Canadian Republic, pointing to the fact the Michaelle Jean approved both of Prime Minister Stephen Harper's requests to prorogue Parliament. "It's not appropriate to have the prime minister appoint our head of state — and she does act as our head of state . . . Some dinosaurs in Ottawa and the Monarchist League are inhibiting the democratic evolution of the country."

But ridding Canada of the monarchy and reconstructing the government would be enormously difficult, Rowe argued.

"This would be something on a scale unheard of. It would be completely rethinking the basis of our legal system, the basis of our government structures. It would be a fundamental shift," he said. "And I don't think there's an appetite in Canada for that kind of shift in constitutional discussion."

http://www.canada.com/news/Canadians...692/story.html

[Sydneyfan]

Yep, and her kids and their partners keep the trashy magazines supplied with scandal and potential weddings. So it's a win/win for everyone.

[hildegoat]

Liz appeared to have a ton of fun in Canada this past week. The Duke at least enjoyed one moment (see if you can pick it out):

Spoiler:

[Sydneyfan]

The Duke is such a pompous, sexist old bore. My favourite Phil moment was a year or so back when he and Liz were introduced to a young guy who had been partially blinded in an IRA attack. Liz asked him how much he could see. "Not a lot, judging by that tie" said Phillip.

[Quincy]

The real question is who did he insult?

[hildegoat]

Originally Posted by Sydneyfan

The Duke is such a pompous, sexist old bore. My favourite Phil moment was a year or so back when he and Liz were introduced to a young guy who had been partially blinded in an IRA attack. Liz asked him how much he could see. "Not a lot, judging by that tie" said Phillip.

I love Phil

[Sydneyfan]

There are several sites devoted to collecting Phil's gaffes. Here's a few I found:

In China in 1986, he famously told a group of British students: "If you stay here much longer, you'll all be slitty-eyed".

# Still throwing spears? (Question put to an Australian Aborigine during a visit in March 2002)

# "Everybody was saying we must have more leisure. Now they are complaining they are unemployed." (during the 1981 recession)

# "If a cricketer, for instance, suddenly decided to go into a school and batter a lot of people to death with a cricket bat, which he could do very easily, I mean, are you going to ban cricket bats?" (in 1996, amid calls to ban firearms after the Dunblane shooting)

# "It looks as if it was put in by an Indian." (in 1999, referring to an old-fashioned fuse box in a factory near Edinburgh)

# "Deaf? If you are near there, no wonder you are deaf." (in 1999, to young deaf people in Cardiff, referring to a school's steel band)

# "You are a woman, aren't you?" (in 1984, in Kenya, to a native woman who had presented him with a small gift)

# "Oh no, I might catch some ghastly disease." (in 1992 in Australia, when asked to stroke a Koala bear)

# "Aren't most of you descended from pirates?" (in 1994, to an islander in the Cayman Islands)

# "You managed not to get eaten, then?" (in 1998, to a student who had been trekking in Papua New Guinea)

[hildegoat]

I guess when you don't need to worry about being elected, you can act like a crazy grandparent whenever you want.

[Sydneyfan]

Originally Posted by hildegoat

I guess when you don't need to worry about being elected, you can act like a crazy grandparent whenever you want.

Yep, I can't believe he doesn't realise he's being crass. I'm sure he just enjoys being able to say whatever he likes without any real consequences. Who wouldn't?

[hildegoat]

Maybe Liz will marry me when Phil kicks the bucket. She'll probably live forever.

[Sydneyfan]

Originally Posted by hildegoat

Maybe Liz will marry me when Phil kicks the bucket. She'll probably live forever.

I sometimes imagine that Charles must sit around in his mansion trying to figure out ways to scare Liz to death without making it look too obvious.

[hildegoat]

Netflix video-on-demand expands to Canada

Canadian video-on-demand services will face a challenge from a California-based company later this year.

Netflix Inc. said it's expanding into Canada with an internet subscription service that will deliver movies and TV episodes to televisions and computers for a monthly fee.

Similar internet online programming services are being rolled out by several Canadian companies, particularly Quebecor's Videotron and Rogers Communications.

Netflix says Canada will be the inaugural international market for its internet subscription service.

The company didn't announce how much it will charge for the service.

http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2...nd-rogers.html

Edit: It's just the streaming service.

Netflix said it will only offer its online streaming service in Canada, but will not be bringing its popular mail order movie subscription service to Canada. In the U.S., Netflix customers can pay a monthly subscription fee, create a list of movies they wish to rent and Netflix sends out DVDs through the mail. Users can keep the movies as long as they like, and new movies are sent once they old ones are returned.

http://business.financialpost.com/20...ada-this-fall/

[hildegoat]

Summer politics in Canada are out of control:

Census dispute throws StatsCan into turmoil

OTTAWA — The agency silently embroiled at the centre of the census debate has long been viewed as the best of its kind in the world, but observers worry government intervention could damage the impeccable methodology and autonomy for which Statistics Canada is renowned.

The agency has been thrown into turmoil by the Conservatives’ decision to scrap the long-form census and replace it with a voluntary survey — a move chief statistician Munir Sheikh found so untenable that he ended a 30-year government career by resigning in protest on Wednesday.

“StatsCan is thought of as one of the best,” says Kevin Milligan, an associate professor of economics at the University of British Columbia, who has worked extensively with the agency’s data. “The institutional culture is one of independence. That is at the heart of why they’ve been so distressed by this turn of events, because they really felt that independence was threatened.”

Over the last month, opposition has mounted to the Conservative government’s plan to turn Canada’s mandatory long-form census into a voluntary survey — a move critics say will produce a skewed or useless national demographic record. The government says it made the change because the long form was an invasion of privacy and it was coercive to force Canadians to complete it.

On Friday, the parliamentary industry committee will meet to discuss hearings on the census issue that will likely take place next week.

“StatsCan has a world-class reputation for its methods, for the reliability of its arithmetic and the credibility of the institution and it would be a huge tragedy if that Canadian model of excellence is sacrificed on the altar of Conservative [politics],” Liberal House leader Ralph Goodale said at a Thursday news conference.

In the early 1990s, a team of statisticians from 10 OECD countries ranked international statistical agencies for The Economist’s “good statistics guide.” Statistics Canada took the top spot, with the magazine lauding the reliability of its figures, its methodology and autonomy, noting that “British and American number-crunchers lack the formal independence” enjoyed by their Canadian counterparts.

The agency participates in international statistical conferences and publishes its own top-level peer-reviewed journal, Survey Methodology, says Don McLeish, president of the Statistical Society of Canada and a professor at the University of Waterloo.

Statistics Canada has been unable to speak about the potential impacts of the changes to the census, and as a senior bureaucrat, Mr. Sheikh was not permitted by law to reveal what advice he gave the minister.

His blunt resignation statement made clear that he did not support the government’s decision and that will help shore up the agency’s reputation, Mr. McLeish says, but the planned changes to the census are still anathema to statisticians who believe in the “sanctity of the data.”

“If I’m a statistician and I develop a methodology for analyzing some data, and someone comes along and for what I believe to be political reasons or any other vested interest says that I should change my methodology, then that strikes at the heart of our discipline,” Mr. McLeish says, emphasizing he speaks for himself and not the society. “If forced to do it, that would be very demoralizing.”

In a statement released Wednesday, after Mr. Sheikh’s resignation, Industry Minister Tony Clement, who oversees the agency, said: “The government made this decision because we do not believe Canadians should be forced, under threat of fines, jail, or both, to disclose extensive private and personal information.”

The mood among agency employees was sombre on Thursday, with many saying they were shocked by Mr. Sheikh’s resignation but thought he made the right decision to step down on principle.

“Obviously, it’s a bit disheartening. It was a surprise for everyone here,” Roberto Casagrande said of the news, which came hours after the cancellation of a town-hall meeting intended to address staff concerns about the census. “It’s unfortunate the way things have transpired. Anytime government gets too involved in specific departments and some of these critical programs, and we can’t resolve them without getting to this point, it is a bit disheartening for staff here.”

“It’s very sad that a man of that quality quit his job,” Alain Despatie said. “It’s not understandable that we have a government that won’t listen to its highest civil servant in a very specific field.”

When the previous chief statistician, Ivan Fellegi, retired in 2008, assistant chief statistician Michael Wolfson — now retired himself — gave a speech that touched on the delicate balancing act of maintaining the agency’s independence.

Mr. Wolfson recalled an instance a decade earlier when he was to present a paper on policy options for Canada’s tax-transfer system at an international meeting and a deputy minister intervened with Mr. Fellegi to stop him.

After determining the paper met “reasonable standards for impartiality and objectivity,” Mr. Fellegi gave the deputy minister his answer: No.

Earlier this week, a Tory senator attacked the veracity of new statistics showing crime is on the decline.

“The data is indeed agnostic, but there are many messages carried by the data to various constituencies. They can be social messages or economic messages and most of those messages probably have a political stripe to them, but you cannot blame that on the data,” Mr. McLeish said.

Ernie Boyko, director of census operations from 1991 to 1996 and a Statistics Canada employee until 2004, says it was “absolutely shocking” to hear Clement say in an interview that some people at the agency “like to think” it’s an independent body, but in fact it reports to him.

“Every relationship we had with a government, this has always been kind of established right at the beginning in a meeting between the chief statistician and the minister, and the minister generally agreed we need to have objective information and the agency should not be seen as being under political influence,” he says of his time at the agency.

Some national statistical agencies operate autonomously, similar to the Bank of Canada, while others function more as an arm of the government, Mr. Milligan says, but the situation in this country is “ambiguous,” depending on how the Statistics Act is interpreted and who are the politicians and bureaucrats involved.

One good that could come out of the census controversy and Mr. Sheikh’s resignation would be to clarify that relationship and cement the agency’s ability to do its work “independent from the political pressures of the day,” he says.

“It’s distressing to me that the minister is playing politics with the hard-earned reputation of StatsCan,” Mr. Milligan says.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Cen...138/story.html

[hildegoat]

The headline is misleading because raising taxes wasn't an option in the poll, but it's interesting nonetheless:

Canadians want better health care without more taxes: poll

OTTAWA — Canadians aren’t keen to pay more out of their own pockets to help the country cope with rising health-care costs, nor are they calling for governments to pump more money into the system. Instead, a majority of Canadians think efficiencies should be found in the existing system, with not a penny more thrown in the pot.

Those are the findings of a new Ipsos Reid poll released Wednesday that asked Canadians how governments should keep up with the growing tab for health care without raising taxes.

The majority of Canadians, 61%, said focusing on finding more efficient ways to deliver health care is their preferred option, while 28% said a bigger piece of the tax-dollar pie should be devoted to health care, which could mean cuts in other government services.

Only 11% said the best way for governments to address rising health-care costs is to provide more opportunities for Canadians to pay out of their own pockets for services, effectively expanding a network of private facilities to offer those services.

John Wright, senior vice-president of the polling firm, said the call for more efficiency shows how Canadians view their health system.

“I think there is a belief among Canadians that there is a waste,” he said.

The results also demonstrate Canadians’ aversion to the idea of pulling out their credit card for a health service, but Mr. Wright suggests we should get used to that notion, because the current funding system is simply not sustainable.

“Canadians don’t want to have to pay more for their health care, they believe there must be efficiencies in the system,” he said. “But we’re also at a stage where Canadians want more health care, they want better wait times, newer equipment. They want more of everything and that’s just not sustainable.”

Health-care spending is increasingly eating up the budgets of provincial and territorial governments and, as the population ages, even more pressure will be imposed on the system. Costs are expected to continue their ongoing rise, and it’s about time Canadians have a real debate about how to cover them, Mr. Wright said.

“There’s no way that governments can sustain the size and commitment to health care, especially with a greying and aging population,” he said, “And as a result we’re going to have to have some very tough decisions made and I don’t think we’ve got the ground prepared yet for that debate.”

The survey released Wednesday showed some interesting demographic and regional differences that could be a preview of the divisiveness a national debate on how to fund health care could provoke.

Quebecers, for example, were the most likely to say they’d favour a system with more opportunities for patients to pay out-of-pocket for a service they use, whereas British Columbians were the least likely to say that’s a preferable direction for the system to take.

Albertans were the most likely to say more public tax dollars should be put into the existing health system and residents of Saskatchewan and Manitoba were the least likely to say that’s the best way forward. Respondents in that region were the biggest supporters of finding efficiencies in the system to cope with the rising costs.

There was a significant difference between men and women on the question of paying more out-of-pocket for health care. Fourteen% of men said this was the best option, compared to 8% of women.

The poll of 1,015 people, conducted for canada.com between Aug. 10-16, had a margin of error of plus or minus 3.1%, 19 times out of 20.

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/Can...110/story.html

[hildegoat]

A blog posting about how difficult it would be for Canada to get rid of the monarchy:

Spoiler:

Going Queen-less easier said than done

“The majority of us in this country are not merely British only by naturalization, but British by pride,” the Canadian Jewish Chronicle wrote on May 19, 1944. “Though we are Canadians first, the love and hope of the most of us is with the British connection, the British Commonwealth of Nations — the widest system of organized human freedom that has ever existed.”

These words might seem strange today. Though Canada and Britain share a common language, the former colonial ties have long since faded away, having been replaced with a mutually respectful but business-like and unsentimental relationship.

This changed relationship has, from time to time, raised the question of whether or not Canada should cut its ties with the British monarchy. To this day, whoever happens to be the British monarch automatically assumes the title of Queen (or King) of Canada by law. A June 2010 Harris-Decima poll of 1,000 Canadians found the population evenly divided on the question of whether or not Canada should maintain its links to the monarchy.

By comparison, an October 1977 Gallup poll of 1,034 Canadians found supporters of the monarchy outnumbering critics by a two-to-one margin — 59 percent to 28 percent.

Questions about the monarchy’s future in Canada were raised again this week when Australian prime minister Julia Gillard, in her final days on the campaign trail before Australians go to the polls this Saturday, announced her hope that Queen Elizabeth II would be the final British monarch to act as Australia’s official head of state.

This is a familiar debate for Australians. In November 1999, voters there turned down a proposed constitutional change that would have turned Australia into a republic. The vote split — 55% “no” versus 45% “yes” — was close enough, however, to ensure that the question would arise again.

What would have to happen for such a vote to be held in Canada?

First of all, there would have to be an instigating factor. Britain and Australia have had a tempestuous relationship for years whereas Anglo-Canadian relations can be characterized more as a polite acquaintanceship.

The downloading of the Queen’s responsibilities to the Governor-General — though unpopular with hardcore Canadian monarchists — has also prevented anything from happening that might come across as outside interference in our internal affairs.

That lack of an instigating factor makes it difficult to argue for change.

Let’s say, however, that Parliament did introduce legislation to officially abolish the monarchy in Canada.

That would be a major change to our entire system of government — we’re not talking about a three-page private members’ bill here.

The monarchy is so embedded into the Constitution — “the Queen” gets 40 or so mentions in the British North America Act alone, which is just one of several constitutional documents — that it would be less complicated to write a new constitution from scratch than to edit what’s there now.

The reason why it would be less complicated: The Queen and the Governor-General have far more powers than most people realize.

The Queen can, if she were sufficiently deranged or prankish, order a Canadian invasion of Luxembourg (she is commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces under Sec. 15 of the British North America Act) and then move the nation’s capital to Reindeer Island in the middle of Lake Winnipeg (under Sec. 16, which reads, “Until the Queen otherwise directs the Seat of Government of Canada shall be Ottawa.”) (Italics are mine.)

The Governor-General also has wide-ranging powers. Governor-General Michaelle Jean, if she were inclined to go out with a bang later this year, could exercise her right to fill Senate vacancies with random people chosen out of the phone book (Sec. 24), dissolve the House of Commons and call an election (Sec. 50), veto a few bills (Sec. 55) and appoint a few judges (Sec. 96).

Reopen the constitution, and you have a tricky problem on your hands. Try to install a figurehead president who will defer to the will of the prime minister — as Australia tried to do in 1999 — and the public will revolt at this attempt to make the head of state into the PM’s puppet. (This, and not a deep and abiding love for the House of Windsor, was likely what led to the Australian republican movement’s 1999 defeat.)

Try to install an elected figurehead president, however, and you have to tread very carefully to ensure that you don’t end up with a two-headed government led by warring camps at Rideau Hall and 24 Sussex Drive, or at least ensure that the constitution places very strict limits on how and when the president can use his/her powers.

The provinces — which must unanimously approve any constitutional changes affecting the monarchy — would also have to be brought into the loop. With all ten provincial governments having a veto, it would be virtually impossible for a federal government to get a new constitution in place without having to make massive — and, at times, contradictory — concessions to the provinces.

Just ask former prime minister Brian Mulroney — who famously rolled the dice on the Meech Lake Accord 20 years ago and lost big time — how easy it would be to secure a deal.

Then it would have to go to the public in a referendum. Sort of. There is no legal requirement that the government hold referendums on constitutional changes, but the 1992 vote on the Charlottetown Accord — another calamitous Mulroney-led attempt at constitution writing that met the same fate as Meech — effectively set the precedent that voters would have the final say on any future major constitutional changes.

That might be easy to pull off if a 50-percent-plus-one vote is needed for victory, or difficult if the feds and the provinces agree that there will be no change unless the “yes” side wins a majority in all 10 provinces.

As much as having a person living here in Canada as our head of state makes sense, given all the complications it might just be easier to wait for Britain to dump the monarchy and become a republic first.

http://theviewfromseven.wordpress.co...aid-than-done/