A closer look at the veterans' medals

In picturesPublished Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 11:23PM EST (Paul Darrow for the Globe and Mail) Hide caption

Veteran Tom White salutes outside of the Royal Canadian Legion in New Waterford, NS, 9 November 2010. Mr White served in the Royal Canadian Signals and Military Engineers in both the regular and reserve army from 1952 to 1991. He served in Europe, Middle East, Congo and high Arctic. He was on loan to the German army , Royal Engineers 24 FD Squadron and the U.S. Air National Guard. He is a national founding member of C.A.V.U.N.P and PASS, Nova Scotia. Director and a member of the Veterans Ombudsman Advisory Committee, he was NCO I/C of the honour guard for the 1983 visit to Nova Scotia by their Royal Highnesses the Prince and Princess of Wales. Thomas is married to the former Jeanette MacNevin of Scotchtown, have three sons an eight grand children.

(Paul Darrow for the Globe and Mail) Hide caption

Veteran Tom White medals (L-R) Special Service Medal-2 Bars, Canadian Peace Service Medal, United Nations Emergency Force 1, United Nations Truce Supervision - Palestine, United Nations- Congo, Queen's Silver Jubilee, Canada 125th Birthday, Queen's Golden Jubilee, Canadian Decoration- 2 Bars, and (bottom) Minister of Veterans Affairs Commendation , taken 9 November 2010.

(Jennifer Roberts for The Globe and Mail) Hide caption

Veteran Tom Hoppe is seen outside of his home in Kingston, Ontario on November 6, 2010.

(Jennifer Roberts for the Globe and Mail) Hide caption

Tom Hoppe's medals are seen left to right in his home on November 6, 2010: Meritorious Service Cross, given for leadership and bravery under fire during 1993 Bosnian tour; Medal of Bravery, for rescuing three kids trapped under sniper fire during the 1993 Bosnian tour; Special Service Medal, for NATO tour in Europe 1985-1990; Peace Keeping Medal, given to all soliders who serviced on a peace keeping tour; United Nations Protection Force Medal, 1993 Bosnia; Canadian Forces Decoration, for 12 years of good service

(Chris Bolin for The Globe and Mail) Hide caption

WWII Vet Andrew Bogle who is now 86 years old and lives in Calgary, AB. Born in Scotland he arrived in Canada with his parents in 1927. He enlisted with the Navy in Winnipeg in February 1943 and served 32 months on the H.M.C.S.Nene, a British Frigate with Canadian Crew. He was photographed in Calgary on Friday, November 05, 2010.

(Chris Bolin for the Globe and Mail) Hide caption

World War II and more recent medals belonging to WWII vet Andrew Bogle who is now 86 years old and lives in Calgary, AB. Left to right : 1.3945 Star 2.) The France-Germany Star 3.) The Canadian Volunteer Service Medal 4.) The 1939-45 War Medal 5) The Police Exemplary Service Medal 6) The Alberta Centennial Medal

$(document).ready(function() { globe.article.gallery('1793913','6','normal'); });0 comments Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 9:31AM EST

A look at how other countries remember their veterans and the fallen

Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 7:12AM EST

Images from Remembrance Day ceremonies across Canada and beyond

Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 6:31AM EST

To mark Remembrance Day, Globe readers have shared family photos from various wars

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 11:23PM EST

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 11:06PM EST

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 9:32PM EST

Incarceration and gangland slayings have been common for Montreal's most noted mafia family over the past several years

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 2:34PM EST

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 11:50AM EST

2 St. Thomas Street, November 9

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 11:45AM EST

A select guide to the best shows on Thursday

Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 11:26AM EST

French auto maker faces lawsuit over use of girls’ name for new car

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Looking for the cracks in medicare? Try the Ontario-Quebec border

Published Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 11:49PM ESTLast updated Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 7:47AM EST77 comments

At only 26 years old, the Canada Health Act is ailing.

The act guarantees universal health care, setting out key principles of access and affordability – one of which suffers from a serious case of neglect.

Under the portability requirement, every Canadian is entitled to full medical coverage, no matter where he or she lives, and provincial health insurance plans are supposed to be good anywhere in the country.

But that tenet is showing cracks at the Quebec-Ontario boundary. Quebec patients are turned away or pay out-of-pocket for medical services outside their home province, essentially denied portability.

Fair or not, that’s the stinging reality of a creaking medical system – one that Ken Jamieson felt the effects of first hand. In need of a colonoscopy on the advice of his doctor late last year, he was told he would have to wait a year in his hometown of Gatineau, Que., or pay for it at a private clinic. But across the river, a mere 15-minute drive away in Ottawa, it could be performed in about a week.

Mr. Jamieson was turned away, because he was told the anesthesiologist in Ontario wasn’t accepting Quebec patients.

The rates Quebec pays to physicians to deliver medical services are, on average, the lowest in Canada, which means that patients like Mr. Jamieson are refused non-urgent care when they travel to another province, are treated like foreigners, or are among the lucky few who have doctors provide medical services at a discounted rate.

“It’s not what I could call fair,” says Mr. Jamieson, a retired high-school teacher.

The Canadian Medical Association has called on Health Canada to enforce the portability provision of the act. The Harper government, however, doesn’t appear eager to wade into what it deems a provincial matter – especially in Quebec. “Requiring patients to pay up front, and having them seek reimbursement from the covering province or territory, still satisfies the portability criterion of the act, as long as access to a medically necessary insured service is not denied due to the patient’s inability to pay,” said Tim Vail, spokesman for Federal Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq.

Quebec doesn’t believe it’s doing anything wrong, saying it has no obligation under the law to pay the additional fees demanded by physicians in other jurisdictions. A spokeswoman for the Health Minister said the government doesn’t intend to change its mind.

In the midst of all this political mayhem, the lowly patient suffers.

“When we consider that many people spend thousands and thousands and thousands of dollars a year in taxes to go to a system to fund it, it is frustrating for them when they can’t get care. I think it’s more a reflection of a system that’s no longer functioning well,” said Merrilee Fullerton, president of the Academy of Medicine Ottawa.

For life and limb, patients are never denied access to the country’s emergency rooms (there are interprovincial agreements to cover any in-hospital and emergency care). When it comes to non-urgent medical services, that’s where the system’s failings surface. All provinces, except Quebec, signed the Reciprocal Medical Billing Agreement about two decades ago, where a doctor seeing a patient from another province can bill the appropriate provincial medicare plan and be reimbursed as if the patient were from the same province.

But in allowing Quebec to simply opt out, what teeth does the Canada Health Act have? The section on portability states that Quebec must pay the rates of other provinces, or strike a deal with them to pay doctors differently. There is no such deal. The Quebec rate for an in-hospital orthopedic consult, for example, is $61, whereas the Ontario Health Insurance Plan pays about $76 and the British Columbia plan about $99.

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Out-of-date property assessments costly

Published Tuesday, Dec. 07, 2010 10:55PM ESTLast updated Tuesday, Dec. 07, 2010 10:57PM EST0 comments

In fast-growing municipalities, a lag in assessing the values of properties can put a dent in city finances. For taxpayers, homeowners paying less than their fair share in property taxes can mean others pay more than they should to compensate.

These were the takeaways from Monday’s revelation that the Ontario agency tasked with evaluating the worth of properties for tax purposes has been using out-of-date assessments, leading one homeowner in eight to pay too much or too little in taxes.

The findings were contained in a report by the auditor-general that also revealed that officials at the Municipal Property Assessment Corp. had used expense accounts to pay for meals, Wii game consoles and iPods.

Outdated property value assessments are a problem Milton, Ont., mayor Gord Krantz has been dealing with for years. The town west of Toronto, which pegs its population at 80,000, has experienced break-neck growth, and the MPAC rolls weren’t keeping pace, he said, depriving city hall of revenue.

“I’m not just talking about chicken feed – it was into the tens of thousands of dollars,” Mayor Krantz said.

The town has kept the pressure on MPAC and it has improved, he said, adding that he believed the problem was simply that the agency didn’t have enough assessors to keep the property values current.

Pat Vanini, executive director of the Association of Municipalities of Ontario, said that, if faulty assessments by MPAC allow some homeowners to pay less tax than their properties are worth, the municipality can alter the tax rate to maintain the desired amount of revenue, which ultimately shifts the burden to others.

“At the end of the day, if someone doesn’t pay, someone else does,” she said.

Part of MPAC’s trouble is trying to do evaluations in areas where not all properties are alike, such as in rural areas, said Terry Rees, executive director of the Federation of Ontario Cottagers’ Associations.

“That’s a challenge when you’ve got far-flung properties in the province,” he said.

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B.C.’s big boom in little houses

Published Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 8:57PM EDTLast updated Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 9:00PM EDT2 comments

Allan Bernardo’s new house in south Vancouver cost him a little more than he had originally thought. Somewhere over $200,000.

But the laneway house that he had built behind his parents’ home was still a bargain compared to any condo he could have bought in the city: The cheapest, older condos listed these days start at $204,000. The laneway option was also half the price of the smallest house available in Vancouver and well below the $681,000 average.

Instead he got a new place built to high-level green standards, with top-quality, durable materials. And he doesn’t have to leave the city.

“I could have done what my friends have done and moved to Surrey or Langley or Coquitlam. But I wanted to stay here,” said Mr. Bernardo, 35, who works in the warehouse at London Drugs. “And this way, I don’t have to worry about strata fees or maintenance.”

Mr. Bernardo and his parents made a choice that is proving to be increasingly popular in the Lower Mainland, as high-altitude house prices and shifting lifestyles have combined with a push for urban densification from city planners. Cheering them on are the lower-carbon-footprint advocates.

At the head of that parade is Vancouver, which introduced a new policy a year ago that allows small houses to be built behind any single-family house in the city that has a lot wider than 33 feet as well as access to a lane or road.

So far, nearly 200 applications have come in – a number that has made Vancouver a North American leader in enthusiasm for this new form of housing.

Many other Lower Mainland municipalities are also on board, albeit with a few more restrictions and cautions than Vancouver.

For 10 years, Surrey has allowed coach houses in certain zones – its new-urbanist development of East Clayton, as well as south Newton, Douglas, Grandview – and the city has nearly 700 of them, which represents almost half the sites where they’re permitted. “It’s something that allows a young couple to meet bank requirements for a mortgage,” said Surrey’s head of planning, Jean Lamontagne.

The City of North Vancouver and Maple Ridge also permit laneway houses.

And others are joining in. Richmond is asking its residents in public consultations whether to allow what it calls coach houses or granny flats anywhere in the municipality. (In Richmond, coach houses are apartments above garages. Granny flats are one-storey standalone houses at the back of the lot.)

That’s all part of Richmond’s move to allow all kinds of new housing forms to flourish in what had once been a monoculture of large single-family homes, as people look for options for their aging parents or for adult children priced out of the housing market.

“This is a new choice and we’re asking people if they would like it,” says Terry Crowe, Richmond’s manager of policy planning.

Coquitlam and West Vancouver, along with Victoria over on Vancouver Island, are also contemplating allowing laneway houses.

Where did the mania for these small, infill houses come from? Besides their appeal for the mortgage-overloaded and the extended families, there are political and environmental reasons.

“This was a low-risk, low-political-cost way of densifying without incurring the wrath of these wealthy homeowner groups,” said Lance Berelowitz, an urban planner and author of Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination.

Mr. Berelowitz points out that, as much as advocates champion laneway houses as solutions to affordable housing, they’re not. Even if Vancouver builds 100 a year for 10 years, that will work out to an amount of housing that is no more than a few condo towers.

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Child development not linked to length of parental leave, government argues

In a fight to deny double paid parental leaves to an Ottawa couple who have twins, the federal government is citing a study that challenges a motherhood assumption: Longer maternity leaves, the research concludes, do not improve early child development.

The government is appealing a ruling that granted both Christian Martin and Paula Critchley full parental leave benefits to care for their baby girls, arguing that the decision contravened federal employment insurance rules.

But what worries the parents’ lawyer and the opposition Liberals is one study in a package of evidence introduced by government lawyers. While some of the reports support expanded time off, the paper found that doubling maternity leave to one year did not lead to gains in child development.

Never mind the mommy wars over staying at home versus rejoining the work force, the question of whether longer parental leaves have tangible advantages for children is the subject of great debate among sociologists and economists.

“The research that has been done is inconsistent at best, and it’s largely because it’s very complex and challenging to assess,” said Donna Lero, a professor of family relations and applied nutrition at the University of Guelph who has studied parental leave.

To Mr. Martin, however, there was no debate on the benefits of him and his wife both taking time off to look after Athena and Lucie, who were born five weeks premature in April, 2009. While Ms. Critchley received maternity benefits for a year, Mr. Martin took eight months leave but hasn't yet received EI payments because of the lengthy appeal process.

“We had a lot of work to do with respect to taking care of them. They needed a lot of support,” said the 34-year-old researcher, adding that the girls are now 21 months old, healthy and “very vocal.”

Studies that support extended leaves have found that mothers who work during a child’s first year generally stop breastfeeding sooner, and that their children tend to have behavioural problems and slightly lower scores in cognitive development and academic achievement. Others conclude that longer leaves improve mother-child attachment, reduce maternal stress and lower infant mortality rates.

On the opposite side of the debate, researchers have found that longer maternity leaves do not improve children’s development, and can hinder women’s advancement at work and erode gender equality.

Part of the reason for the lack of consensus is that teasing out the effects of parental time off on children’s well-being involves evaluating a host of interconnected variables, including infant health, the quality of child care, parenting styles, work force opportunities, income, gender equality and families’ support systems.

Measurable benefits aside, however, governments extend parental leaves for other reasons, including boosting fertility rates, pleasing voters and keeping women in the work force.

Since Jean Chrétien’s Liberal government doubled parental leave in late 2000, parents have embraced the opportunity to stay home longer. The length of time most mothers took off jumped to between nine and 12 months in 2001 from five to six months the previous year, according to Statistics Canada. And 10 per cent of fathers claimed or planned to claim parental benefits in the first year of the new policy, triple the previous level. Under current rules, mothers receive 15 weeks of pregnancy leave and both parents can share a maximum of 35 weeks of parental benefits of up to $468 per week.

However, for Kevin Milligan, a University of British Columbia economics professor, the main assumption underlying extended parental leaves – that staying home longer is better for children – cried out for further scrutiny.

Prof. Milligan and Michael Baker, a University of Toronto economics and public policy professor, did the study that found longer parental leaves did not have a positive impact on child development. They used data from youngsters born before and after maternity leave was expanded, including markers such as temperament, achievement of milestones, and motor and social development.

“The question to ask is what kind of bang are we getting for our buck there,” he said. “If the only thing you’re looking at was the impact on child development, then it would be a hard case to make.”

However, they also found that back when women could take only six months of maternity leave, babies largely were left with relatives, nannies or neighbours – not daycares – when their mothers returned to work.

Still, the government’s reference to their paper, which was published last year in The Journal of Human Resources, has raised concerns among some observers that the Conservatives are less than committed to year-long maternity leaves.

“The fact that they’re citing this study in this court case does mean that they better clarify with Canadians in a hurry is there a secret agenda to cut this key social program that parents across the country count on,” said Carolyn Bennett, a Toronto Liberal MP.

The government’s lawyers, Dale Noseworthy and Renée Darisse, referred interview requests to Anna Maddison, a Human Resources and Skills Development spokeswoman, who wrote

in an e-mail: “It is not appropriate for us to comment due to ongoing legal proceedings.”

But in asking that the research be entered into evidence for the appeal, scheduled for next week in Toronto, Ms. Noseworthy and Ms. Darisse wrote in a letter earlier this month: “Please note, however, that we take no position on the validity of the study.”

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Dear G20: Don’t forget your development agenda

Kofi Annan5 comments

With the G20 summit beginning in South Korea on Thursday, two issues stand out for those of us who take an interest in international development.

First, the concepts of fairness, balance and the common good have experienced a welcome renaissance as world leaders have had to remind each other of these universal principles to avoid a potentially devastating escalation of their disagreements on currency values and trade imbalances.

Second, while it remains to be seen to what extent it will help to bring countries’ contending economic strategies into line, this rediscovery of basic values comes just as the G20 is starting to include international development issues in its deliberations. Naturally, it is my profound hope that the principles of fairness, balance and the common good will also inform these discussions – and not only those on issues such as undervalued currencies, lopsided trade statistics or skewed consumption patterns, however important they may be.

Unfortunately, the signs are decidedly mixed. The global repercussions of the financial and economic crises have clearly nourished an understanding of the true extent and consequences of our interdependence. At least for a moment, there seems to have been a consensus that a world that restricts the benefits of globalization to a few at the expense of many is neither fair nor stable; that one cannot address trade imbalances without addressing the development imbalances that underlie them; and that it is in everyone’s interest to see the developing world graduate out of instability and economic dependence as soon as possible.

But all these realizations have not yet led to the fundamentally different policies that are so urgently needed. In many G20 countries, the crises, and particularly their effects on the world’s poor, appear already all but forgotten and business and politics have resumed with little regard to the damage caused, the trust destroyed, and the lessons learned. Several G20 members have even used the economic upheavals as an excuse to tighten protectionist policies in direct contrast to their repeated pledges to keep markets open. As so often, developing countries have been among the primary victims.

This is deeply unfortunate, since the G20 states, both individually and collectively, are the natural drivers of development. They are, by definition, the countries with the capacity, resources, influence and, thus, the moral obligation and responsibility to help those less fortunate. Many of them have only recently graduated into major economies, and their developmental experiences are still fresh. These countries understand that the key to development is not charity but equitable, job creating and, ideally, green economic growth fuelled by investment in the productive sectors, agriculture, infrastructure, renewable energy, trade, knowledge and technical skills.

They also appreciate that the most important sources of development finance must be domestic revenues and private-sector investment and that aid’s main value other than in meeting urgent humanitarian needs is to increase capacities, reduce dependence on external support, and lubricate and leverage investment in the sources of growth and good governance.

It is thus encouraging that the development agenda proposed by South Korea speaks as much to these realities as to a new sense of partnership and genuine mutual accountability. The document, as far as it is known, covers all the right points, including the unblocking of existing initiatives and the need to complement the efforts of other actors such as the G8, the G77 and, of course, the United Nations. If the leaders assembled in Seoul decide to take it on with the same universal values in mind that they now invoke in the areas of trade and exchange rates, we will have gained much.

Having said all this, the implementation of the valuable ideas entailed in the Korean proposal should not be made dependent on the G20’s taking them on as a group. While a renewed commitment to development by the world’s most powerful group would certainly be a major step in the right direction and send an important political signal to developing countries, it is, of course, not enough on its own to overcome the immense challenges that these countries face. Nor does it necessarily invalidate some of the concerns raised regarding the G20’s legitimacy and capacity.

What really counts is that each member of the group internalizes the concepts of fairness, balance and the common good and adapts its behaviour accordingly. If the G20 setup can help them do so by playing to its unquestionable strengths of composition, reach and sheer economic prowess, this will be all the better and should not only be welcomed, but encouraged.

Kofi Annan, secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006, is chair of the Africa Progress Panel.

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Air Canada directs staff to step up screening on Yemeni passengers: lobby group

Published Saturday, Nov. 06, 2010 12:32AM EDTLast updated Saturday, Nov. 06, 2010 12:36AM EDT63 comments

Air Canada is directing staff to subject passengers with any connection to Yemen to additional security screening, the head of an Islamic group says – a move he equates with racial profiling.

In an internal memo, the national carrier wrote that anyone who is born in the Arab nation, has citizenship there or is travelling to the country, should be pulled aside, taken to a separate area and subjected to extra security checks on top of regular search procedures, said Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Mr. Gardee, who has seen the memo, said the document had been issued to staff at Vancouver International Airport, but implied that the new checks apply to passengers at other major airports as well.

The missive follows the discovery of two bombs, which had apparently originated from Yemen, and were discovered aboard cargo jets bound for the United States. The reported targets were Jewish centres in Chicago. An al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Yemen has since claimed responsibility.

Earlier this week, Canada and some other nations banned direct cargo flights from the country, in order to head off potential security concerns.

It was not immediately clear whether the latest memo was taken at the initiative of Air Canada alone, or if it followed some direction from the government. Officials at the airline and at Transport Canada could not be reached for comment late Friday evening.

Mr. Gardee said that he understands the concerns about airline security, especially in the wake of last week’s bomb scare, but cautioned that the new policy contains elements of racial profiling.

“What if you were born in Yemen, you left when you were six months old, you’ve never been back, you don’t care about Yemen, but what this memo says is you would still be taken for additional screening,” he said. “There is no qualitative or quantitative evidence that [racial profiling] works as public policy.”

What’s more, he said, staff are being directed not to hold flights while these additional checks are performed, and instead to book the Yemeni passenger on the next plane.

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Dad's classic Oyster Stew a meaningful memory

I've been getting lots of feedback on the Food section's latest series, Soup Stories, and I've been asking readers to write in with their own stories and recipes about favourite soups.

This one comes in tribute to a departed father, Tom Kocourek,  who had a great recipe for Oyster Stew (like a soup, really) that became a Christmas classic for his family. Originally, the reader sent an e-mail with a scanned copy of the recipe in her Dad's writing, penned in December of 1990. He died in 1991. It made me think of the recipes that I have, written in the hand of the late creator, that mean so much to me, including Alma Zimmerman's Chocolate Brownie Pudding.

Here is Tom's Oyster Stew:

Ingredients:

1/4 cup (50 mL) flour

1 teaspoon (5 mL) salt

1/4 teaspoon (1 mL) pepper

4 teaspoons (20 mL) Worcestershire sauce

2, 8 ounce (250 mL) cans oysters, liquid drained and set aside

1 quart (1 litre) half and half cream

1 quart (1 litre) milik

3 tablespoons (50 mL) butter

Method: Blend flour, salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce, liquid from oysters and one half cup (125 mL) water to a smooth paste, like a roux. Add to cream in saucepan. Cok over low heat until thickened. Add oysters and continue cooking until edges of oysters curl. Add milk and butter. Heat, and serve with ordinary crackers, or if you're Norwegian pretend it's lutefisk and serve with flatbrod.

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N.S. soldier faces new court martial in shooting of friend Afghanistan

Published Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 6:32PM EDTLast updated Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 7:35PM EDT0 comments

A Nova Scotia reservist who successfully appealed his conviction in the shooting death of a fellow soldier in Afghanistan in 2007 will face a new court martial.

The Defence Department said Friday that Matthew Wilcox, who was a corporal, will face the same charges of manslaughter, criminal negligence causing death and negligent performance of military duty.

No date or place has been set for the new trial. He will be tried by a military judge and a panel of five members of the Canadian Forces.

Mr. Wilcox, who is from Glace Bay, N.S., won an appeal of his earlier conviction at the Court Martial Appeal Court after his lawyers complained that the makeup of the military jury was unfair at his trial in Sydney, N.S.

Mr. Wilcox was found guilty of criminal negligence causing the death of Cpl. Kevin Megeney, 25, of Stellarton, N.S., and negligent performance of a military duty on July 30, 2009.

Mr. Wilcox was found not guilty of the most serious charge of manslaughter.

Military judge Cmdr. Peter Lamont sentenced him to four years in prison and kicked him out of the military.

Mr. Wilcox has been living with his parents in Glace Bay under court-imposed conditions since December when he was released from prison pending appeal.

In the appeal, Mr. Wilcox's legal team argued the military panel hearing the case should have consisted of five members, instead of only four. One member on the panel was excused due to a conflict with a work commitment but he wasn't replaced with an alternate.

Cmdr. Lamont decided the trial could proceed and that's where the Appeal Court ruled the defendant's right to a fair trial may have been breached.

Mr. Wilcox was charged two years ago in the shooting death of Cpl. Megeney on March 6, 2007.

During his court martial the prosecution put forward the theory that Mr. Wilcox and Cpl. Megeney were playing a game of “quick draw” in their tent at the Kandahar Airfield base when Mr. Wilcox's loaded pistol accidentally fired, hitting Cpl. Megeney in the chest.

The defence claimed it was a case of self-defence.

Mr. Wilcox testified he shot “instinctively” against an unknown threat that was pointing a gun at his back inside the tent he shared with Cpl. Megeney.

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Air Canada directs staff to step up screening on Yemeni passengers: lobby group

Published Saturday, Nov. 06, 2010 12:32AM EDTLast updated Saturday, Nov. 06, 2010 12:36AM EDT63 comments

Air Canada is directing staff to subject passengers with any connection to Yemen to additional security screening, the head of an Islamic group says – a move he equates with racial profiling.

In an internal memo, the national carrier wrote that anyone who is born in the Arab nation, has citizenship there or is travelling to the country, should be pulled aside, taken to a separate area and subjected to extra security checks on top of regular search procedures, said Ihsaan Gardee, executive director of the Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Mr. Gardee, who has seen the memo, said the document had been issued to staff at Vancouver International Airport, but implied that the new checks apply to passengers at other major airports as well.

The missive follows the discovery of two bombs, which had apparently originated from Yemen, and were discovered aboard cargo jets bound for the United States. The reported targets were Jewish centres in Chicago. An al-Qaeda-affiliated group in Yemen has since claimed responsibility.

Earlier this week, Canada and some other nations banned direct cargo flights from the country, in order to head off potential security concerns.

It was not immediately clear whether the latest memo was taken at the initiative of Air Canada alone, or if it followed some direction from the government. Officials at the airline and at Transport Canada could not be reached for comment late Friday evening.

Mr. Gardee said that he understands the concerns about airline security, especially in the wake of last week’s bomb scare, but cautioned that the new policy contains elements of racial profiling.

“What if you were born in Yemen, you left when you were six months old, you’ve never been back, you don’t care about Yemen, but what this memo says is you would still be taken for additional screening,” he said. “There is no qualitative or quantitative evidence that [racial profiling] works as public policy.”

What’s more, he said, staff are being directed not to hold flights while these additional checks are performed, and instead to book the Yemeni passenger on the next plane.

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Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms coming to Edmonton

Anybody familiar with Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma will know Polyface and  Joel Salatin. He's a, hmmm, well, how to describe Joel? He's a food activist, and devoted to organic, small-scale farming that respects animals and the environment. There. He's here to be a keynote speaker for the Canadian College and University Food Service Association conference at the end of June. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4

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My Artisanal Bread Making Class at NAIT Continues

Our homework, until we meet again on Tuesday, is to feed our levain, or bread starter. This means taking 40 grams of starter and combining it daily (twice a day if you're a keener) with 100 grams of water and 100 grams of flour every day for a week.

For this I need a scale, as weighing ingredients is at the heart of baking, as much a science as an art. So far I've been using an old Weight Watchers scale, and it's tippy at best. Thinking about upgrades. Still, it seems to be working as daily, the yeasty smell increases. "Wild yeast" from the air is settling into my flour and water mixture, making is all goopy and sweet.

I really enjoyed my class this week, when we made a "ladder" bread, studded with cheese and hot peppers. But, as usual, I am the least talented in the bunch (this is my fifth NAIT course since I became food writer three years ago and I am now used to my bottom-rung position - these are extreme foodies, don't forget). Still, I amuse myself, always the key. Check out my ladder bread dough, more Edvard Munch than Peter Reinhart.

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Dangerous Dan's dangerous ads calculated to cause offence

Published Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2010 9:25PM ESTLast updated Thursday, Nov. 11, 2010 6:57AM EST37 comments

If controversy can be good for business, the owner of one Toronto diner may be laughing all the way to the bank.

Or at least giggling uncontrollably.

Dangerous Dan’s, a gritty Leslieville joint popular among big eaters and night crawlers, has launched an ad campaign calculated to cause offence, positioning itself as a purveyor of aggressively gluttonous fare that is perfect for addled recreational drug users.

The campaign includes three radio spots featuring a group of stoned people semi-incoherently ordering takeout food and chatting about the musical Grease and tattooed genitals.

Three other radio ads boast that some of the restaurant’s more outrageously proportioned menu items have the potential to cause serious illness. One of those, for the so-called Coronary Burger Special, begins with a clinical description of a heart attack (“First, a blockage occurs in the arteries ... oxygen depletes...”) before concluding with a narrator jauntily proclaiming: “Beef, bacon, cheddar, a fried egg – mmm, mmm, deadly.”

The radio ads are airing only once each on the Ryerson University station CKLN, concluding Thursday. They are also posted on YouTube.

The campaign also includes six posters with pictures of the diner’s massive sandwiches and provocative lines like, “While We Still Have Health Care,” and “Meat is Murder. Tasty, tasty murder.”

The campaign originated with a pair of employees at a local audio production house eager to do work that reached beyond the conservative sensitivities of most advertising clients, in hopes of submitting it to industry awards competitions.

They figured they had a willing partner in James McKinnon, the owner of Dangerous Dan’s, who is known for instructing customers to place their orders with him because, “the waitress is dead.”

“He likes being non-PC, he understands to be provocative is worth its weight in gold,” said Drew Frohmann, a writer with Tattoo Sound + Music who said he was one of five people who recorded the stoner commercials while genuinely “baked.”

“If you’re trying to do something that’s fun and interesting, that’s a wonderful place to start.”

The gross-out campaign comes in the wake of the fast-food chain KFC bringing to Canada its Double Down, a gut-busting bonanza of two fried chicken breasts, bacon, cheese, and sauce that contains 540 calories, 30 grams of fat, and 1,740 mg of sodium. KFC claimed 300,000 of the items were sold in its first 10 days on the menu.

Mr. McKinnon suggested economic pressures may be playing a part. “In a recession, you always hear that people order more comfort food, they order more desserts and stuff like that. They really are in this recession,” he said. “So I think it’s sort of a backlash against the whole healthy eating thing.”

Promoting that stance also helps his restaurant stand out. “Nothing makes Dan happier than to [upset] a vegetarian,” said Mr. Frohmann. “He’d love to have PETA picketing outside his place.”

So far, no one is taking the bait. “The ads speak for themselves in their outrageousness,” wrote Susan Sperling, a spokeswoman with Toronto Public Health, in an e-mail. “Clearly we have concerns about rising rates of obesity in our population and so we obviously have issues with the kind of food portrayed in these ads. However, we do not want to spend a lot of time engaging in discussion on something this outrageous and contributing to the publicity the restaurant is seeking.”

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Electoral injustice: Cities are getting the shaft

Jeffrey Simpson5 comments

Voters of Greater Toronto, Calgary and British Columbia’s Lower Mainland: Beware! You’re about to get shafted again by your federal Parliament.

These areas, and other urban and suburban ones across Canada, are already being shafted by the electoral map that heavily favours rural and northern areas. Ridings there already have many fewer voters – tens of thousands, in some cases – than those in urban and suburban areas. And, of course, the Atlantic provinces and Quebec already have too many seats relative to the rest of Canada, courtesy of deals made at Confederation or later.

The latest shaft apparently comes from a very quiet agreement by the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats to shelve a bill that would have given Ontario 18 new seats, B.C. seven and Alberta five – seats to which they’re entitled under the last census.

Apportioning seats among provinces is supposed to be a technical, straightforward matter that starts with the decimal census. Based on the population of each province and territory, seats are allocated after taking into account the special deals for Atlantic Canada and Quebec. Then it’s up to non-partisan redistribution commissions (made up of political scientists, retired judges and the like) to draw the constituency boundaries within each province. There’s an appeal to the process that sometimes can wind up in a parliamentary committee.

Generally speaking, the system is established to prevent politicians from fiddling with the law and the principle of one person/one vote that underpins the law.

Politicians, however, have been known to fiddle, and they’re fiddling again. They should be stopped as fast as possible, because Parliament belongs to the people, not the political parties or the self-seeking provinces.

Before the last election, seized of the census count and the apportionment of seats among provinces that flowed from the census, the Harper government tried to pull a fast and dirty on Ontario.

With then-House leader Peter Van Loan actually from Ontario, the government concocted a convoluted explanation why Ontario shouldn’t get 18 more seats but something less. B.C. and Alberta, Conservative strongholds, could get their fair share, but not Ontario. Premier Dalton McGuinty (and others) rightly blew a gasket, and the Conservative deviousness died on the order paper.

Why did the Harperites even try to be devious, mocking the one-person/one-vote principle? Because Quebec objected, pure and simple. The province, knowing its relative strength would decline under redistribution for the unassailably logical reason that its population was not growing, concocted a plea of its own. Quebec is a “nation,” said the National Assembly, and therefore doesn’t deserve to lose seats. In typical Quebec fashion, the National Assembly unanimously passed a resolution endorsing this fiction.

This self-definition, whatever its cosmological, epistemological, atavistic, cultural or descriptive power, had nothing to do with seats in Parliament. It was just a power play, and the Harperites folded because they themselves had declared the Quebecois to be a “nation,” courtesy of a snap decision by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and were trying to tickle Quebec’s fancy by any available means.

That destined-to-fail flirtation was rebuffed in the last election, so the Harperites actually began to stand on principle. Ontario would get its new seats, after all, as would B.C. and Alberta. So said the Harper government, repeatedly. Case closed.

Now fear of irritating Quebec, plus renewed special pleading from the already overrepresented Atlantic provinces, has caused all major parties to push the pause button on the legislation, thereby shafting the urban areas in these provinces that, by law and right, should have more seats. The Bloc Québécois, being only interested in Quebec, obviously wants no change in the electoral map.

It’s also possible that rural and northern MPs in the provinces due more seats might silently be cheering on the special pleaders, since their areas within provinces will lose relative clout. No doubt, they’d argue that their ridings are already too big geographically.

Bottom line: Fast-growing and urban/suburban parts of Canada are about to be done yet another electoral injustice by a Parliament whose electoral composition already mocks contemporary Canada.

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Hot Ticket: Hard Core Logo Live

Published Friday, Jan. 28, 2011 9:17PM ESTLast updated Friday, Jan. 28, 2011 9:18PM EST0 comments

It’s a classic Canadian rock ‘n’ roll tale – a Vancouver punk band lines up an ill-fated, against-all-odds reunion tour, trying to make the impossible happen.

First it was a book by Michael Turner, then a hit movie by Bruce McDonald; now Hard Core Logo: LIVE is one of the mostly hotly anticipated shows at this year’s PuSh Festival.

The brainchild of Michael Scholar, Jr., the stage adaptation tells the story of the fast-talking, hard-living front man Joe Dick, who struggles to regain the band’s former glory, along with his band mates who come along for the ride.

While it honours Mr. Turner’s poetry, and the film’s narrative, the play also veers off in new directions – and was given an edgier score by Vancouver punk legend Joe (Shithead) Keithley.

Mr. Scholar, who admits to an obsession with classic punk, plays Joe Dick – a role that allows him to live out his own thwarted rock ‘n’ roll aspirations, even if it leaves him a little worse for the wear.

“It’s like putting myself through a blender every night. I come out beat up and exhausted. My doctor says I need to go on permanent rest immediately,” says Mr. Scholar with a laugh. “But I said, ‘I’ll do that after the show closes.’ ”

Hard Core Logo: LIVE runs through Feb. 6 at the Rickshaw. The PuSh Festival continues through Feb. 6. Other must-see shows this weekend include Veda Hille’s Happy Birthday Teenage City, Berlin’s Bonanza, Company Drift’s sound machine and many more (pushfestival.ca).

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Vigil honouring Canada’s First World War dead planned for Ypres

Published Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 7:15PM EDTLast updated Friday, Oct. 29, 2010 7:19PM EDT0 comments

The historic city of Ypres will be the site of a seven-day vigil beginning Nov. 4 to remember the 68,000 Canadians killed in the First World War.

The names of the war dead will be projected in sequence, one by one, in the centre of the city opposite the Cloth Hall, the location of the In Flanders Fields war museum. Each name will appear for 25 seconds between sunset and sunrise.

“We'll be projecting through an open window of the museum and across a street onto the side of an old building above the Belgian war memorial,” said Ottawa-based lighting designer Martin Conboy, co-creator of the project along with Canadian actor R.H. Thomson.

“You won't even see where the beam of light is coming from, and so the images of these names will just emerge from the stone as if they were inside the stone. ... It's quite magical and extremely evocative.”

The vigil, with funding from Veterans Affairs Canada, will be streamed live to the website www.1914-1918.ca, ending early on Nov. 11. It will also occur simultaneously at over 150 schools across Canada and at the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa.

The names of the dead include those killed in the Canadian Expeditionary Force, the Royal Newfoundland Regiment, the Canadian merchant navy and the Canadian Army Medical Corps.

In 2008 Mr. Thomson and Mr. Conboy developed a similar vigil with names projected at the National War Memorial in Ottawa and in cities in Canada and the U.K.

Canadians fought in the area surrounding Ypres during the First World War. Thousands of Canadian graves are located in the region.

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Ottawa halts change that would leave low-income seniors in lurch

Published Friday, Nov. 26, 2010 12:45PM ESTLast updated Friday, Nov. 26, 2010 1:28PM EST150 comments

The Harper government has suspended a new policy change affecting low-income seniors after The Globe and Mail reported it could lead seniors to unknowingly surrender their federal income support.

Human Resources Minister Diane Finley made the announcement Friday in the House of Commons. She said she has instructed federal officials at Service Canada to contact all Canadians who might be affected.

Some seniors were poised to lose a key part of their monthly income because of a new policy approved by the federal government without public notice, according to internal guidelines.

The rules would have changed the way lump-sum withdrawals from Registered Retirement Income Funds affect Guaranteed Income Supplement payments.

However, in Ottawa Friday Ms. Finley said seniors who were caught up in the problem this year will be contacted directly and allowed to use the old rules.

“I was very concerned by what was reported this morning,” said Ms. Finley, when asked about the issue by Liberal MP Gerry Byrne in the House of Commons. “That is why I have instructed departmental officials to immediately put a hold on this policy while we review it completely. I have also instructed officials to contact those individuals affected directly so that their applications can be reviewed and evaluated for eligibility under the old policy.”

Mr. Byrne, who first raised the issue in the House earlier this week, responded with skepticism to the minister’s suggestion that she first learned of the issue in Friday’s Globe and Mail.

“Mr. Speaker, review is not reversal. No notice, no consultation, no information and no compassion,” he said. “The minister now says it is brand new information. Allow me to table letters the minister signed to senior citizens across Canada informing them of this policy just recently. Now she says that she will review it.”

Opposition MPs said the minister should go further and scrap the policy permanently.

The new policy meant that if seniors withdrew more than the minimum allowed from their RRIF – which is what a Registered Retirement Savings Plan becomes in retirement – it could affect the threshold for receiving GIS payments, which are meant to ease the financial burden of low-income seniors. In the past, seniors could have their GIS eligibility calculated based on projected income, which did not take into account large RRIF withdrawals.

The issue is surfacing as new data show the number of Canadian seniors living in poverty jumped nearly 25 per cent between 2007 and 2008, to 250,000 from 204,000, according to Campaign 2000.

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Michael Ignatieff courted Julian Fantino but was rebuffed

Morning BuzzPosted on Friday, November 26, 2010 8:26AM EST430 comments

Stephen Harper’s star candidate, Julian Fantino, was asked by Michael Ignatieff to run for the Liberals in Vaughan – but turned him down, according to the Conservatives.

Now, on the eve of Monday’s vote, the former Toronto police chief and OPP commissioner is being subjected to what the Conservatives consider character assassination by the Liberals.

And so the Tories are fighting back. They are charging hypocrisy and are breaking their silence on a secret they’ve kept since the beginning of the by-election campaign.

“We were aware from the beginning of the campaign that Mr. Ignatieff asked him to run for the Liberals,” Conservative Party spokesman Fred DeLorey said. “We had no intention of making it public – but to see the Liberals actually attack his character and integrity, a man who has committed his career to public service and fighting crime, is just too much.

“The Liberals need to be called out for their hypocrisy.”

The Grits confirmed they had spoken to Mr. Fantino but said discussions did not go very far. “Early on, before Maurizio [Bevilacqua, the former Liberal MP in the riding] formally resigned, we spoke to him,” a senior Ignatieff official told The Globe on Thursday night. “But nothing ever gelled on either side. We didn't like him, and he didn't like us. So we both moved on.

The official added: “We got the right candidate for Vaughan – Tony [Tony Genco]. And Fantino got Harper. Happy ending all around.”

And so the by-election campaign just got nastier, with only days before Monday’s vote in the suburban Toronto-area riding. The race between the Liberals and Tories is tight and the stakes are high.

Mr. Harper has given a lot of support to his hand-picked candidate; there is strong speculation Mr. Fantino will go straight to cabinet if he wins. For Mr. Ignatieff, a loss in Vaughan would be troubling as it has been a Liberal seat for 22 years.

For the past week, the Tories and Liberals have been exchanging barbs in the House of Commons, and elsewhere, about Mr. Fantino and his Liberal competitor, Mr. Genco.

The Grits charge that the Prime Minister’s Office is keeping Mr. Fantino out of the public eye, given the former police officer has turned down invitations to debate Mr. Genco. Liberals are circulating a YouTube video and still photos noting Mr. Fantino’s absence from a recent all-candidates debate. But the Tories noted he had to attend a mass for his wife’s family so wasn’t available.

The Conservatives, in turn, have accused Mr. Genco of not releasing past expenses. Public Safety Minister Vic Toews seems to delight in mispronouncing his surname – repeatedly using a hard “G” so that he sounds like some sort of lizard.

And Thursday two Liberals stood up in the Commons to attack Mr. Fantino over his handling of the native protests in Caledonia when he was the OPP commissioner. They noted that Human Resources Minister Diane Finley, whose represents the troubled corner of Ontario, had signed a petition calling for an inquiry into Mr. Fantino’s actions.

“The member was a minister when she signed a petition demanding the Prime Minister’s hand-picked candidate in Vaughan, Julian Fantino, be investigated. She wanted his pay docked,” Toronto MP Maria Minna charged. “She wanted him suspended and she wanted him fired. Does she still hold the same view now?”

And another Toronto Liberal, Rob Oliphant, made a statement concerning Mr. Fantino and Ms. Finley’s actions. “If the Minister did not have the confidence of the Prime Minister’s hand-picked candidate then, how can she or the Prime Minister expect the voters of Vaughan to have confidence in him now?”

Such is the state of play in federal politics ahead of Monday’s by-election.

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