We pause for a day this week to mark the birth of our nation on July first, 1867! The break comes as "A Mari Usque Ad Mare", governments at all levels shovel out the cash to boost the so-called economic stimulus programs.
Why some wags even wonder out loud how doling-out tens of thousands of dollars for free concerts at Ottawa jazz and blues festivals can possibly be helpful to the economy...Pshaw! The Minister of Transportation and Infrastructure, responsible for the stimulus programs, John Baird, is the Capital Region's rep in Cabinet.
And...truth be told, apparently sometimes (Just some times mind you), "politics are a factor when supporting businesses." The revelation, refreshing as it is, has a New Brunswick Cabinet Minister in hot-water, and wishing he'd said something else. The candid comment is attributed to, Victor Boudreau, Minister for Business New Brunswick; who, no doubt pressured by journalists, conceded a few days ago that politics sometimes plays a role in deciding which financially troubled business to help-out.
Down east, New Brunswick's provincial government has made several dubious loans and loan guarantees to help stave-off Armageddon in some northern communities. In the wake of spectacular failures, the government of Premier Shawn Graham is being criticized, in particular for a $40-million loan to Fraser Papers, a company now in bankruptcy. (See - "Farewell To The Industrial Revolution", June 22/09)
In the government's defence, Minister Boudreau, says the process of providing loans and loan guarantees to companies is not taken lightly. He claims that forensic accountants pore over business plans to ensure that the investment is viable and has a good chance of success...But: extenuating circumstances are also considered and might result in... "political considerations overriding financial advice". The Minister says more than 85% of New Brunswick's government investments are repaid successfully.
On the eve of our national celebrations, the Minister's candor is refreshing and should be cause for others to pause, ponder and follow. Doubtless Sir John A. Macdonald would have wanted it that way.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Friday, June 26, 2009
FEARING THE "GREAT WHITE" MELTDOWN
When the American Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was in Niagara Falls about ten days ago she raised with her Canadian counterpart, Lawrence Cannon, the spectre of "Arctic Sovereignty". (see: "Another Banana Republic" June 14/09) Canada controls the Northwest Passage, but the Americans call it an international waterway.
In a wide ranging interview with the Canadian Press recently, our new Chief of Maritime Staff has echoed the call of recent Prime-Ministers, including Stephen Harper, that the Canadian Navy is the best hope to patrol the Arctic waters..."It's about sovereignty; it's about jurisdiction," Vice-Admiral Dean McFadden told C.P.
But, according to the President of the University of the Arctic, Lars Kullerud, the talk of, and the additional military activity in the Arctic Ocean, is just bull..."It's hype to talk of a 'cold' war", he says. The University of the Arctic is an international cooperative network of universities, colleges and research institutes involving eight different countries, including Canada.
Still, a cornerstone of our Government's "Northern Strategy" is to build 6 Arctic patrol ships (to be delivered in 2014). The Russians are increasingly aggressive in flying patrol bombers ever closer to Canada, and last year sent a nuclear submarine across the Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. Norway recently bought 48 Lockheed-Martin F-35 jet planes for "exploration". And...apropos Secretary of State Clinton: A secret U.S. Navy project is building "quieter" nuclear submarines.
Since the dawn of man, the area around the Arctic Ocean has been too remote, too cold and too dark to be of any interest. A warming trend and thaw of the ice linked with climate change have stirred-up oil and gas exploration and mining; as well as created new potential shipping routes and fishing grounds.
All perfectly valid and legitimate reasons it seems for the six countries that surround the Arctic Ocean to seek their share. Still though, as Mrs. Clinton echoed in her Niagara Falls comments, the Arctic nations are promising to avoid a new "Cold War" and cooperate rather on the challenges brought-on by the melting icecap. University President Kullerrud told Reuters: "The Arctic area would be of interest in 50 or 100 years - not now."
I am somehow not quite reassured by his optimism...still though. I hope he's right.
In a wide ranging interview with the Canadian Press recently, our new Chief of Maritime Staff has echoed the call of recent Prime-Ministers, including Stephen Harper, that the Canadian Navy is the best hope to patrol the Arctic waters..."It's about sovereignty; it's about jurisdiction," Vice-Admiral Dean McFadden told C.P.
But, according to the President of the University of the Arctic, Lars Kullerud, the talk of, and the additional military activity in the Arctic Ocean, is just bull..."It's hype to talk of a 'cold' war", he says. The University of the Arctic is an international cooperative network of universities, colleges and research institutes involving eight different countries, including Canada.
Still, a cornerstone of our Government's "Northern Strategy" is to build 6 Arctic patrol ships (to be delivered in 2014). The Russians are increasingly aggressive in flying patrol bombers ever closer to Canada, and last year sent a nuclear submarine across the Arctic to the Pacific Ocean. Norway recently bought 48 Lockheed-Martin F-35 jet planes for "exploration". And...apropos Secretary of State Clinton: A secret U.S. Navy project is building "quieter" nuclear submarines.
Since the dawn of man, the area around the Arctic Ocean has been too remote, too cold and too dark to be of any interest. A warming trend and thaw of the ice linked with climate change have stirred-up oil and gas exploration and mining; as well as created new potential shipping routes and fishing grounds.
All perfectly valid and legitimate reasons it seems for the six countries that surround the Arctic Ocean to seek their share. Still though, as Mrs. Clinton echoed in her Niagara Falls comments, the Arctic nations are promising to avoid a new "Cold War" and cooperate rather on the challenges brought-on by the melting icecap. University President Kullerrud told Reuters: "The Arctic area would be of interest in 50 or 100 years - not now."
I am somehow not quite reassured by his optimism...still though. I hope he's right.
Monday, June 22, 2009
FAREWELL TO THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION
These days one does not have to look very far afield for evidence of the devastating effects of the end of North America's shinning 20th Century industrial age.
It is not just about the headline making spectacular failures of the giant industries that surround the Great Lakes: The vast steel mill complexes; the auto-parts and automobile assembly sector, and the too many manufacturers of products too numerous and varied to enumerate.
The demise of the industrial age hasn't been good to the town of my birth, Edmundston, New Brunswick; like so many single industry communities far removed from the major trading outlets of the vast urban areas of North America...And: The emergence of the "age of information" surrounding the dawn of this 21st Century really doesn't seem to offer any viable foreseeable solutions.
Growing-up in Edmundston at the mid-point of the last century our bilingual community revelled in the optimism of the post World War II economic boom. It was from the vast timber resources of western New Brunswick that the plywood constructed fabled "Warbirds" credited with saving England at the "Battle of Britain" had been assembled. The "Fraser Companies": Its giant mills straddling both sides of the International Border between New Brunswick and the State of Maine dominated the skyline; and the pollution from its coal fired furnaces (also trucked across the International Border); dominated the air we all ingested.
Fraser's endless timber resources, its pulp products for the newspaper industry, and most importantly the thousands of tons of quality "catalogue paper", produced for "Sears & Roebuck" and "Spiegel's" of Chicago meant that the Canadian National Railway's "transcontinental line" through Edmundston (the city's second largest industry) was kept operational and busy twenty-four hours a day. Just across the border in the wilderness of the State of Maine, "Loring Air Force Base", developed as a part of President Dwight Eisenhower's "military industrial complex" - fueled by the Cold War with the USSR - brought thousands of military servicemen into the area. Strategically, "Loring AFB" was the closest over the North-Pole point for atomic bomb carrying aeroplanes to reach the USSR from American soil - Thus the U.S. Air Force made sure it was the largest, best equipped "Strategic Air Command" facility in the world.
Loring Air Force Base is long gone. So is the Canadian National Railway. CN's three story brick train station and yard control centre is now a cheap looking out-of- place office building. It has also been a long time since the "pulse of daily life" in northwestern New Brunswick has been governed by the steam whistles of the Fraser mills on either sides of the international frontier between Canada and the USA...or for that matter by the "bells" of the massive Roman-Catholic "Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception" on top of the hill half a block away from the house where I was born.
Late last week, Fraser Papers filed for "bankruptcy protection" with both Canadian and American regulators. Just like so many larger manufacturers, Chrysler and General-Motors included; the financiers, managers and about 3,700 employees hope that a leaner productive and profitable "Fraser's" will emerge from restructuring. The likelihood though is for just more shattered dreams for the folks of my little hometown. The memories it seems may be all that are left for the pages of history.
It is not just about the headline making spectacular failures of the giant industries that surround the Great Lakes: The vast steel mill complexes; the auto-parts and automobile assembly sector, and the too many manufacturers of products too numerous and varied to enumerate.
The demise of the industrial age hasn't been good to the town of my birth, Edmundston, New Brunswick; like so many single industry communities far removed from the major trading outlets of the vast urban areas of North America...And: The emergence of the "age of information" surrounding the dawn of this 21st Century really doesn't seem to offer any viable foreseeable solutions.
Growing-up in Edmundston at the mid-point of the last century our bilingual community revelled in the optimism of the post World War II economic boom. It was from the vast timber resources of western New Brunswick that the plywood constructed fabled "Warbirds" credited with saving England at the "Battle of Britain" had been assembled. The "Fraser Companies": Its giant mills straddling both sides of the International Border between New Brunswick and the State of Maine dominated the skyline; and the pollution from its coal fired furnaces (also trucked across the International Border); dominated the air we all ingested.
Fraser's endless timber resources, its pulp products for the newspaper industry, and most importantly the thousands of tons of quality "catalogue paper", produced for "Sears & Roebuck" and "Spiegel's" of Chicago meant that the Canadian National Railway's "transcontinental line" through Edmundston (the city's second largest industry) was kept operational and busy twenty-four hours a day. Just across the border in the wilderness of the State of Maine, "Loring Air Force Base", developed as a part of President Dwight Eisenhower's "military industrial complex" - fueled by the Cold War with the USSR - brought thousands of military servicemen into the area. Strategically, "Loring AFB" was the closest over the North-Pole point for atomic bomb carrying aeroplanes to reach the USSR from American soil - Thus the U.S. Air Force made sure it was the largest, best equipped "Strategic Air Command" facility in the world.
Loring Air Force Base is long gone. So is the Canadian National Railway. CN's three story brick train station and yard control centre is now a cheap looking out-of- place office building. It has also been a long time since the "pulse of daily life" in northwestern New Brunswick has been governed by the steam whistles of the Fraser mills on either sides of the international frontier between Canada and the USA...or for that matter by the "bells" of the massive Roman-Catholic "Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception" on top of the hill half a block away from the house where I was born.
Late last week, Fraser Papers filed for "bankruptcy protection" with both Canadian and American regulators. Just like so many larger manufacturers, Chrysler and General-Motors included; the financiers, managers and about 3,700 employees hope that a leaner productive and profitable "Fraser's" will emerge from restructuring. The likelihood though is for just more shattered dreams for the folks of my little hometown. The memories it seems may be all that are left for the pages of history.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
EROSION OF CONFIDENCE
There was never going to be an election this summer. I said so a week ago...days before the last 48 hours of media-spun nail biting drama erupted on Parliament Hill. (See: "Iso-Dopes" June 10)
I am passionate about politics. It, and a passion for journalism, I owe to my mother. A typical stay at home 1950's housewife, she had never even entered a grocery store by herself when my father died suddenly in 1954, leaving her with two sons, no job or job prospects, a mortgage and car payments.
She dusted herself-off; became one of the country's first female Canada Customs Border Officers; and on those long shifts at the International border between Northern New Brunswick and Northern Maine developed a passion for the political issues she read (And subsequently discussed with me) from the office's French and English language newspapers. Enough digression.
In the bi-partisan agreement to form a 6 member panel on changes to the Employment Insurance Program reached with the Prime Minister; the Liberal Leader, Michael Ignatieff, has concluded that he has obtained the significant concession he sought to call-off the threat of a summer election. But, at what cost? Surely the drummed-up threat of a mid-summer election was hollow at its very best. No one, let alone an intelligent and articulate politician like Mr. Ignatieff wanted to trigger, and be blamed for, what with certainty would have been the most unpopular election in modern Canadian history. So what gives?
Although rare, it happens from time to time, somewhat like cream rising over the milk of platitudes; that an intellectual, a thinker, a visionary rises to shake-up the humdrum of a country's political existence. Even fewer such candidates actually make the transition to reaching a role of historic leadership. I don't know whether Mr.Ignatieff has that potential. Certainly, barring the Conservative Party "attack ads", he seems to show a level of statesmanship; the background and the aptitudes that could qualify him. The greatest danger to his success is in playing badly at the "game" of politics. On that score, I suspect that he's been getting bad advice.
I share the opinion of a timely editorial published in the "Montreal Gazette" that this week's election "dare" shows poor political acumen and that, unlike in the Tory "attack ads", this time the damage is of the Liberal Leader's own making: "Many Canadians have never liked Stephen Harper, others have been disappointed by him. So Canadians are eager to like Michael Ignatieff, but with his grandstanding about forcing a summer election, the Liberal Leader has put himself in a bad light and he seems to keep wanting to make it worse."
With this current crisis of confidence ended (yet again) - Words of wisdom that each politician should contemplate over the summer hiatus. More particularly the Leader of the Liberals, as he and his entourage contemplate their actions and re-actions heading into the fall of 2009. Canada's future and what is at stake for each of us are just too important to be reduced to a game of political checkmate as if on a Chess Board of toy soldiers and little matter.
I am passionate about politics. It, and a passion for journalism, I owe to my mother. A typical stay at home 1950's housewife, she had never even entered a grocery store by herself when my father died suddenly in 1954, leaving her with two sons, no job or job prospects, a mortgage and car payments.
She dusted herself-off; became one of the country's first female Canada Customs Border Officers; and on those long shifts at the International border between Northern New Brunswick and Northern Maine developed a passion for the political issues she read (And subsequently discussed with me) from the office's French and English language newspapers. Enough digression.
In the bi-partisan agreement to form a 6 member panel on changes to the Employment Insurance Program reached with the Prime Minister; the Liberal Leader, Michael Ignatieff, has concluded that he has obtained the significant concession he sought to call-off the threat of a summer election. But, at what cost? Surely the drummed-up threat of a mid-summer election was hollow at its very best. No one, let alone an intelligent and articulate politician like Mr. Ignatieff wanted to trigger, and be blamed for, what with certainty would have been the most unpopular election in modern Canadian history. So what gives?
Although rare, it happens from time to time, somewhat like cream rising over the milk of platitudes; that an intellectual, a thinker, a visionary rises to shake-up the humdrum of a country's political existence. Even fewer such candidates actually make the transition to reaching a role of historic leadership. I don't know whether Mr.Ignatieff has that potential. Certainly, barring the Conservative Party "attack ads", he seems to show a level of statesmanship; the background and the aptitudes that could qualify him. The greatest danger to his success is in playing badly at the "game" of politics. On that score, I suspect that he's been getting bad advice.
I share the opinion of a timely editorial published in the "Montreal Gazette" that this week's election "dare" shows poor political acumen and that, unlike in the Tory "attack ads", this time the damage is of the Liberal Leader's own making: "Many Canadians have never liked Stephen Harper, others have been disappointed by him. So Canadians are eager to like Michael Ignatieff, but with his grandstanding about forcing a summer election, the Liberal Leader has put himself in a bad light and he seems to keep wanting to make it worse."
With this current crisis of confidence ended (yet again) - Words of wisdom that each politician should contemplate over the summer hiatus. More particularly the Leader of the Liberals, as he and his entourage contemplate their actions and re-actions heading into the fall of 2009. Canada's future and what is at stake for each of us are just too important to be reduced to a game of political checkmate as if on a Chess Board of toy soldiers and little matter.
Sunday, June 14, 2009
ANOTHER "BANANA" REPUBLIC?
Bet you thought American colonialism vanished at the Iraqi border? It's a rhetorical question...but, here's a new twist - It seems the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative, the wide ranging security perimeter the United-States unilaterally imposed on June first, really only applies to Canada and to Mexico.
As only about 20% of Americans have valid passports and few plan to get them; They'll stay home. But - America's own internal complementary domestic security initiative known as "Real ID" which was meant to apply "in country" as the adjunct to W.H.T.I. is being repealed and replaced on the say-so of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. It is quite simple really: The 50 States have refused to pay for it. It seems the State Governors showed the backbone Canada did not, stood-up to Washington, and are forcing the Obama Administration to retreat on this keystone recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. It helps of course that Napolitano, when she was Arizona's Governor, said the legislation was "not worth the cost" and had signed a state law opting Arizona out of the plan. I sure wish we Canadians and the Mexicans had the same options. Eighteen of the 19 September 11, 2001 hijackers, (It bears repeating: None of whom came from Canada) carried fraudulent "State" identification documents which readily eased their movements within the USA.
The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative is one more example of the "big dog" from down south wagging its Canadian "tail". We are just as powerless over its implementation as over the measures of February's U.S. Economic Recovery Legislation which dictate that the steel and manufactured goods bought with Federal Funds must be made in the United-States. President Obama, his Homeland Secretary, and just this weekend, his Secretary-Of-State, Hillary Clinton, talk a good game - talk is cheap - And Stephen Harper's counter-offensives about "protectionist behaviour" on the ultra-right "Fox News Network" aren't going to matter dick-all.
Yikes! If one rather believes Hillary Clinton, I fear yet more initiatives down this slippery slope. Subjects she touched-on during her three-hour "feel good" romp with Lawrence Cannon across Niagara's "Rainbow Bridge" on Saturday included: Arctic Sovereignty, the Boundary Waters Treaty, and the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Until Canada starts showing the same backbone against measures which verge on threats of renewed American imperialism, as somehow the State Governors seem to do, we may be destined to being the 51st State...or worse just another subservient Banana Republic of the 19th Century. Ouch!
As only about 20% of Americans have valid passports and few plan to get them; They'll stay home. But - America's own internal complementary domestic security initiative known as "Real ID" which was meant to apply "in country" as the adjunct to W.H.T.I. is being repealed and replaced on the say-so of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano. It is quite simple really: The 50 States have refused to pay for it. It seems the State Governors showed the backbone Canada did not, stood-up to Washington, and are forcing the Obama Administration to retreat on this keystone recommendation of the 9/11 Commission. It helps of course that Napolitano, when she was Arizona's Governor, said the legislation was "not worth the cost" and had signed a state law opting Arizona out of the plan. I sure wish we Canadians and the Mexicans had the same options. Eighteen of the 19 September 11, 2001 hijackers, (It bears repeating: None of whom came from Canada) carried fraudulent "State" identification documents which readily eased their movements within the USA.
The Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative is one more example of the "big dog" from down south wagging its Canadian "tail". We are just as powerless over its implementation as over the measures of February's U.S. Economic Recovery Legislation which dictate that the steel and manufactured goods bought with Federal Funds must be made in the United-States. President Obama, his Homeland Secretary, and just this weekend, his Secretary-Of-State, Hillary Clinton, talk a good game - talk is cheap - And Stephen Harper's counter-offensives about "protectionist behaviour" on the ultra-right "Fox News Network" aren't going to matter dick-all.
Yikes! If one rather believes Hillary Clinton, I fear yet more initiatives down this slippery slope. Subjects she touched-on during her three-hour "feel good" romp with Lawrence Cannon across Niagara's "Rainbow Bridge" on Saturday included: Arctic Sovereignty, the Boundary Waters Treaty, and the 1972 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement. Until Canada starts showing the same backbone against measures which verge on threats of renewed American imperialism, as somehow the State Governors seem to do, we may be destined to being the 51st State...or worse just another subservient Banana Republic of the 19th Century. Ouch!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)