Let's not bid against each other for medical services

Councillor Hutchison has the best interests of Kingstonians at heart as he works to get Kingston to offer financial incentives in order to attract the family doctors we need. (“Motioning to attract more doctors”, Kingston Whig-Standard, Oct. 18, 2007) However, I think we should keep in mind that this may be the first step down a slippery slope. By bidding against our neighbouring communities for the services of family doctors we are, in the long term, pushing up costs for all Ontario communities. Art might be sold at auctions, but I’d be uneasy doing the same with basic medical services.

What about less wealthy communities that can’t afford to compete?

If many communities are offering financial incentives to attract new family doctors then perhaps, instead of trying to bid against each other, we should realize that an increase in their pay and other support is needed, and work together to implement this is in a well regulated way for all communities, wealthy or not.

I call on Liberal MPPs to not work on Family Day

Bravo to Ontario premier Dalton McGuinty for declaring today that the new statutory holiday, Family Day, will be celebrated beginning in 2008. It is indeed important for busy working people to have more time to spend with their families. I also wish that future improvements in our standard of living be taken in the form of more free time rather than in higher wages (used to purchase more "stuff"). I believe that's a more sustainable way to become richer and I believe that Family Day, or whatever it might have been called, is a step in the right direction.
To be faithful to the spirit of Family Day, I therefore call on all Liberal party MPPs to not work on that holiday. That means not just staying away from Queen's Park, but not engaging in any public activity back home either. Instead of just adjusting MPP's salaries, I think that we should be compensating our politicians by forcing them to take time off work. I think a lot of fine people cannot enter public service because of the demands it puts on their personal lives and the lives of their family members. For this reason I think that an enforced day of rest is a step in the right direction towards eventually encouraging a larger pool of people to consider seeking public office.

Politics is better with the presence of academics

The following article makes me mad. The author either hasn't got a clue what he is talking about or is being dishonest.


Why academics like Stephane Dion are unsuited to the world of politics

John Martin

Special to The Province

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

With all the finger pointing regarding the recent meltdown of Stephane Dion, little attention appears to be directed toward his biggest liability -- Dion is an academic.

Good for him, and good for us, as I'll try to explain in my comments.

It is common for political leaders to be well educated, especially in law. But a lengthy career in academia, supplemented by precious little else, is among the poorest ways to prepare one's self for life in politics -- never mind aspiring to be prime minister.

Academics raise kids, try to balance that with their careers, try to make ends meet on a limited budget, own homes, do a lot of things around the house themselves because they can't afford to hire somebody else. Job experience isn't everything. Moreover, the academic world is often very political. That fact that the author doesn't know that shows that he doesn't know what academic life is like.

I reject the notion that there are good or bad ways to prepare for a life in politics, especially in a democracy. We may need a good number of lawyers in the legislature, but if parliament is to be representative of the people, I would hope that our legislature include a few people from all walks of life.

The problem is that most academics are unable to bring a great deal of life experience to a second career in politics. From the ages of six to 30, they've often done little more than attend school; studying, reading, debating and writing. As they near completion of graduate school they get assistant teaching opportunities, which soon roll over into part-time, and eventually, full-time instructor positions. All of a sudden they're nearing 40 and still eating in the student cafeteria.

They've held views and then had to change them when faced with contrary evidence. They've had to face deadlines, solve problems, and innovate. They've communicated with colleagues around the world and have been exposed to different places and different cultures. They've had to manage research budgets and personnel.

This one-dimensional frame of reference tends to provide a smug, limited world view that finds little company off campus.

Academics are always under pressure to look at the world in a fresh way in the hopes of gaining new and useful insights. Having a "smug, limited world view" wouldn't be a way of doing successful research, getting it published, or funded.

Fidel Castro may still be an inspiration at political-science faculty department meetings, but few others are toasting the dictator's health.

Mr. Martin doesn't like Fidel Castro, apparently. Perhaps he wouldn't care for the views of "smug" academics like Friedrich von Hayek or Milton Friedman either. I'm sure that any of Mr. Martin's political beliefs possessing solid foundations would have had those foundations established only because of the work of academics.

The entire culture and practice of academia is at odds with the rough and tumble arena of politics.

Much nastier things are commonly said at faculty meetings than have ever been said in parliament or in a media scrum, and I can assure you that Fidel isn't the one taking the hits. That's rough and tumble.

University professors have the option of taking 45 minutes or longer to explain and analyze a relatively basic point. They can qualify and clarify their statements to the point of exhaustion.

One part of the work of a member of parliament that is not sufficiently appreciated is committee work. Parliament isn't just or even mainly about scoring points during Question Period. Committee work is where our legislators pay attention to the details and take the time to listen to experts, debate details, and carefully craft effective legislation. It is where legislators with a workman-like attitude really contribute to the welfare of our country as opposed to those who have an aptitude for being a showman or a strongman. Academics are well suited to this kind of work.

Academics are accustomed to captive, attentive audiences who rarely challenge them out of respect, deference and intimidation. Even when they clearly misstate the facts, professors are unlikely to be confronted. If they disapprove of where a discussion is heading they have the option of cutting it off in mid-sentence.

It looks like Mr. Martin has only ever encountered academics as a student, perhaps an undergraduate student. The truth is that the academic world, while usually polite, is intellectually brutal. Academics are constantly challenging each other on small details and are eager to cut each other down - especially those who have competing ideas and who compete for jobs or research funding. Small misstatements of the facts would be like blood in the water to academic sharks. They would smell the scent of a victim who hasn't prepared properly and is ready to be slaughtered.

No such luxuries or control mechanisms exist in politics. Interviews, media scrums and question periods are no-holds-barred cage matches compared to the safe and structured settings academics conduct themselves in.

If the academic world looks safe and structured, it is not to coddle academics but to prevent bullies from obscuring the truth with their sound and fury. The world of politics could use a little more of this structure, so let's bring on a few more academics and let there be more light and less heat in our capitals.

Like so many university professors, Dion comes across as condescending and pretentious, seemingly frustrated that these little people asking him questions are obviously much too pedestrian to grasp the complexity of what he's saying.

As is the scholarly tradition, he is quick to dismiss ideas originating from outside the ivory tower as naïve, simplistic and reactionary.

So much of academic research is empirical that I find this stereotype of "scholarly tradition" laughable. The ivory tower is another false stereotype. If anything, academics look at the world more closely than people normally have time to do.

When Stephane Dion tells you he thinks your idea is wrong, he will also give you a reason why he thinks so and not some political rhetoric. He would also invite you to change his mind by giving him a better reason why you are right.

Aloofness and elitism are common traits among academics.

...but they are still eating in the student cafeteria at age 40, apparently.

Nonetheless, these fail to resonate with blue-collar workers, small-business owners and others trying to make a go of it in the real world.

Most academics aren't well-paid and so they understand very well the problems of trying to make ends meet in everyday life.

It's often noted that A-students end up working for B-students in corporations owned by C-students, who dropped out of college.

This is the first time I've heard something that is supposed to be often noted.

Watching an awkward, floundering Dion, it's not difficult to see why.

That's how his enemies would like to paint him. If you've ever had a substantive discussion with him, you'd know that picture is completely false.

Contact criminologist John Martin at the University College of the Fraser Valley

Separated at birth? A bit of silliness...

Pervez Musharraf, president of Pakistan











Danny Williams, premier of Newfoundland and Labrador

How many carrots?

One of the tricks you learn, as an academic, for deciding whether to trust the author of a paper you're reading is to check the details. Authors who pay attention to the small details are often more reliable when it comes to believing their conclusions about the main issues.
So it is quite sad to point out a line from Tom Axworthy's op-ed (of advice for Stephane Dion) in the Toronto Star today where he writes about,
"...the monumental cost of importing farm produce from thousands of miles away, rather than supporting local farmers (carrots grown in Millgrove, Ont. and shipped to Toronto create 15 grams of CO2 from transport exhaust; if imported from California, 840 grams, for example.)"
This statement about carrots is clearly missing a context because there is no indication about what mass of carrots is being transported. What was he thinking when he casually quoted a figure of 15 grams of CO2?
This line appears to be taken from this article from the Toronto Star a couple of years ago where it is attributed to Stephen Bentley, a grad student at UBC. It refers to an amount of carrots actually used by the Star to prepare a Christmas meal.
If Mr. Axworthy took even more care with regards to the issue of greenhouse gas emissions, he may have decided to avoid any link with that article because near the end it touts the advantages of eating locally grown food from Ontario greenhouses. The energy required to heat greenhouses far outweighs the transportation costs of food from California!

Can we trust Deloitte & Touche?

Look at this page which shows 2006 federal election expenses by category and party. You'll that it shows zero for non-radio/tv advertising by the Conservative Party. This was recently amended by the Conservatives after they were questioned on it by Elections Canada (see Ottawa Citizen article here). This zero stands out like a sore thumb. There are only nine categories of expenses and every significant party has non-zero expenses in each category.

Deloitte & Touche were the auditors who approved the Conservative return back in May 2006. Months later they withdrew that opinion. How could they miss something so obvious? The next time I read an annual report of one of their clients, can I trust it?

To Deloitte & Touche:
This is not a trivial matter because there are serious questions currently about whether the Conservative Party illegally circumvented election spending limits in 2006.
I call on you to explain yourselves. Your brand is at stake.

Ontario MMP referendum: response to Prof. Dan Usher's article in the Kingston Whig-Standard

Letter to the Editor:

In Professor Dan Usher’s article on the October 10^th referendum question (A flawed proposal for reform, Kingston Whig-Standard, Monday Sept. 24, 2007), he stated that the current first-past-the-post electoral system favours large parties and, conversely, that the proposed reform (MMP) is biased against large parties and in favour of small parties. I think there is another bias to worry about.

It seems to me that one problem with the current system is that it favours politicians or parties who have a geographically concentrated base of support and who are advocating for a particular region. A good example of this (looking federally for a moment) is the Bloc Quebecois who have a large number of seats in Ottawa compared to their share of the national popular vote, and who are especially concerned about Quebec. Conversely, the current system is biased against those who are especially concerned with issues that affect people all across the province, or country, but whose supporters are not concentrated in any particular region. An example of this is the Green party who might win up to 10% of the vote in the Ontario or next federal election but not win any seats because their supporters are well spread out.

Is it fair that an electoral system should favour a “Quebec First” party over an “Environment First” party?

Some important political issues may concern just a few ridings and others are of concern to voters across the province. For that reason it doesn’t seem unfair or unrepresentative to me that we supplement our provincial legislature with new members having a province-wide constituency. It might even better represent, in Prof. Usher’s words, “the interests of the people of Ontario in the policy of its government”.

Ontario Liberals propose new February statutory holiday

Letter to the Editor

I think it’s a good idea for Ontario to join other provinces and add a new statutory holiday in February (Critics pan Liberal’s proposal for winter holiday, Sept. 5, 2007, The Whig-Standard). As a society I believe we should be trying to be wealthier by having more time rather than having more money. Decades ago futurists were predicting that we would have more and more leisure time. Nothing of the sort happened. We certainly got wealthier, but it seems like we worked more to earn more money so we could buy more “stuff”. Since the Liberal government wants to call the holiday, “family day”, it seems appropriate to consider the example of average Canadian household size which decreased from 3.9 in 1961 to 2.6 in 2001 and continues to decrease. One of the reasons for this decline is that we have been working to buy more living space. But in this day and age when we are worried about environmental sustainability, perhaps we should put a higher value on having ‘time’ and a lower value on consuming ‘things’.

The Canadian Federation of Independent Businesses claimed that, “a paid day off means a $2-billion ‘blow’ to the province’s economy”. My answer to that is that if the CFIB really believes that one more holiday would be a $2-billion ‘blow’, then why don’t they advocate one less holiday which by their logic might be a $2-billion ‘bonus’ to the Ontario economy. Shall we get rid of Christmas? The point is that an extra day of life for every working Ontarian, to spend as they please or offer to others, should be worth something too – perhaps, ultimately, comparable to the money missing from their pockets. Are businesses going to be seriously harmed by having to pay wages and losing ½% of a year’s work in return? In the long run I think not. Inflation has been running at around 2% per year recently. So holding the line on salaries for 3 months would be a crass way of getting back that ½% if a business were really intent on doing so.

What I learned about having a BBQ with compostable food service materials

This past weekend I tried to have compostable food service materials used at two somewhat large summer BBQs (about 100 people in attendance at each). There were potato starch utensils, sugarcane fibre plates and bowls, and corn "plastic" cups. I also tried to collect the used materials to eventually use to enrich in my home garden plot.

I feel like I made some rookie mistakes. Lots of garbage got dumped into my compostable material container. That makes me want to write down what I learned:

• Have lots of good signs, really big, clear signs, that stand up right beside the things you are talking about. After the fact, my wife had this good idea of taping a little fork or cup to the signs explaining how they are biodegradable.
• Educate the organizers. They, and their volunteers, can help reduce the chance that waste gets casually dumped into whatever container is at hand.
  
• Educate the caterers, or, more to point, educate people you know will be generating waste. I found a lot of plastic food packaging from the caterers that had been dumped into the "compostable waste" container.
• Use a specially coloured, and well labeled container to collect the compostable materials. I only had a cardboard box with a bag in it. The purpose of my box was not clear enough because it looked like a garbage container (even though I had signs beside it). There is a good chance that my home town of Kingston will soon start regular collections of compostable waste. Then there will be an conventional colour of container that people will associate with compostable waste.
  
• Put the regular garbage, compostable materials, and recyclable materials receptacles all together because when people want to throw away their stuff, they usually have a mix of all three to throw away.
• Don't offer a mix of compostable and disposable materials when serving the food. I failed to insist that no plastic disposable materials be used. For example, at one of the BBQs some plastic knives were added to the compostable forks and at the other they decided to have plastic cups. The consequence was that people were confused and I spent a good amount of time picking plastic out of the compostable materials before I could put them into my compost bin.
  

Canadian Brands

I'm looking at Business Week/Interbrands "100 Top Brands". For example #1 is Coca Cola from the U.S., #5 is Nokia from Finland, #21 is Samsung from South Korea, #24 is Nescafe from Switzerland, #38 is IKEA from Sweden, #42 is Philips from the Netherlands, #46 is Gucci from Italy, #50 is Accenture from Bermuda. I look down the list, down the list...

There are no brands from Canada in this list.

Why is that? My wife bought me this book called, "Why Mexicans don't drink Molson". I'm looking forward to reading it to see if there's a good answer there or not.

Larger landfills

I think I would prefer larger landfills instead of many small landfills. It seems you get economies of scale that make it cheaper to flare or generate electrical power from methane emissions, or to monitor and deal with leachate.

Effect of Carbon Tax on the Poor

A simple reason why a carbon tax should not be dismissed because of concerns about whether the poor will be shielded from the costs of the tax is the following: Any carbon tax is, at most, comparable to the increase and fluctuations that have already occurred in the price of energy from fossil fuels in the last few years. Whether or not there is a carbon tax, we already have the need to protect the poor from escalating energy costs. Let's go ahead and set up such a shield (such as a per head income where any leftover amount could be retained if a person figured out how not to spend the whole amount on fossil fuel energy), and not let it be a show-stopper for an important tool to reduce fossil fuel consumption.

Dion and Layton are critics of the government, loyal to the crown

Letter to the Editor, The Kingston Whig-Standard

I must protest one section of Mr. Bryan Paterson’s article, “I’m proud to be a Canadian” (The Kingston Whig-Standard, July 12, 2007) in which he tells of hearing of the deaths of six Canadian soldiers, and explains how the sacrifices being made by our troops in Afghanistan make him proud to be a Canadian. He goes out of his way to take a shot at the leaders of Canada’s opposition parties, who he claims called for a, “… retreat from Canada’s mission in Afghanistan in the aftermath of the deaths of these soldiers.”

But in fact, Stéphane Dion and Jack Layton have simply been keeping to their respective long-held, principled positions. In particular, on July 4, Mr. Layton held his news conference to reiterate his stand just before the news of the deaths hit the wires (Chantal Hébert, Toronto Star, July 6, 2007).

I’m proud to be a citizen of a country that has members of parliament whose job it is to criticize the government while remaining loyal to the crown. Mr. Paterson mentioned only the, “values of freedom and equality we believe in”. Let us also keep valuing our hard-earned democratic traditions.

Canada's Economic Advantages

On July 5, 2007, Microsoft announced the opening of the Microsoft Canada Development Centre in Vancouver, B.C. (there's a Vancouver in Washington State!) in the fall of 2007. According to S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of the Developer Division at Microsoft, “Our goal as a company is to attract the next generation of leading software developers from all parts of the world, and this center will be a beacon for some of that talent.” Phil Sorgen, president of Microsoft Canada, said, “We have long advocated that Canada would be a wonderful place to locate Microsoft development. We have burgeoning high-tech and software industries and a globally envied quality of life, and our cities represent exactly the kind of environment that leading information workers want to live in. This center will help Microsoft remain globally competitive while providing strong economic benefits to British Columbia and Canada.” This press release also noted that, "The Vancouver area is a global gateway with a diverse population, is close to Microsoft’s corporate offices in Redmond and allows the company to recruit and retain highly skilled people affected by immigration issues in the U.S."

I think this is but one example of the kinds of advantages that Canada should be promoting in order to strengthen its economy.

1. Be a place that talented, creative people want to live in, especially our fellow Canadians who might otherwise seek greener pastures abroad.
2. Be welcoming to immigrants from all over the world and make Canada a place where people of different cultural backgrounds live and work well together.
3. Be connected to the rest of the world.
4. Take advantage of dumb moves by other countries: in this case US immigration authorities blindly limiting the number of visas for foreign workers.

Sharing the duty of securing Kandahar

Letter to the Editor, Kingston Whig-Standard

Michael Den Tandt (Growing opposition to Afghan war gives Harper a weapon, The Kingston Whig-Standard, July 6, 2007) criticizes Stéphane Dion’s calling for Canada to rotate out of our combat role in Kandahar in February 2009, and to arrange now for other NATO forces to move into that role. It is clear that Canadian soldiers are working an especially dangerous part of Afghanistan and it is standard practice to rotate units in and out of such a front-line area. But Mr. Den Tandt seems to think that such a rotation would be a, “moral victory for [the insurgents], a public relations bonanza, and ample reason for them to continue with the tactics that are serving them so well.” On the contrary, preparing an orderly rotation of duties between NATO allies and sharing the burden of securing Kandahar could help protect our troops by showing the Taliban insurgents that targeting Canadian soldiers won’t work. They would instead be dealing with the formidable staying power of the entire NATO alliance.

Quiz

What do Mr. Dressup, C. D. Howe, Elizabeth May and Stanley Knowles have in common?

O Canada moment

The CBC recently chose its “Seven Wonders of Canada” after inviting Canadians to submit entries and to cast a vote for their choice. I think my choice would have been Canada’s diversity. We can be proud of the role that the Liberal Party of Canada has played in bringing that about.

Three things about this Wonder stand out to me. The first is that, in Canada, English and French, and Catholic and Protestant more or less managed to live together and build a nation. The second thing is that the resulting institutions that we inherited from Canada’s founders have been built upon to make Canada a multicultural society that includes immigrants from around the world.

The third part of this Wonder is that, 140 years after Confederation, the descendents of one of Canada’s founding people’s, aboriginals, are still, as a group, seriously disadvantaged. The Liberal Party must push the Government of Canada to make the sacrifices to correct this.

Finally I’d like to relate a personal anecdote about Canada’s geographic diversity. I was working in Paris in 1998 and had decided to attend a seminar about European Monetary Union and what might happen to government bonds issued by the different European countries. The subject of this seminar turned out to be the history of bonds issued by a jurisdiction with an economic diversity similar to Europe – the Canadian provinces. For me, that was an “O Canada” moment!

The Quebec "Carbon" Tax

Letter to the Editor, Montreal Gazette,

The government of Quebec’s decision (Quebec to bring in Canada’s first carbon tax on fuel, Kevin Dougherty, Montreal Gazette, June 7, 2007) to tax carbon at the producer level (e.g. 0.8 cents/l for gasoline) starting October 1, and to ask the energy companies to absorb the tax, is a misguided policy that will actually hurt Canada’s effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Minister of Natural Resources and Wildlife, Claude Bechard, said that the tax is based on the ‘polluter pays’ principle, so evidently they are hoping to discourage pollution with this tax. But consumers, not producers, are the ones who make the choice to pollute. I believe it shows a lack of understanding of economics to not realize that if consumers do not see this tax then their choice to consume more or less gas will not be affected. It scares me to think what kind of damage could be done by a government that ignores this concept.

I think it’s agreed that, in order to solve the global warming problem, one way or another there must be a price put on carbon. A carbon tax is one way to do that but a stumbling block is that there is substantial political opposition to imposing a carbon tax. The new “carbon” tax, if not passed on to consumers, is really a tax on energy producers’ profit margins, not carbon. Giving people the wrong idea about what a carbon tax is will foster political opposition to future efforts to truly put a price on carbon.

What about the fact that the expected $200 million a year in revenue from this tax was to finance greenhouse gas emissions reductions projects? That’s an irrelevant question because the government is about to cut income taxes. So if those green projects are worthwhile, there is money to fund them.

Cutting Water Usage in Kingston

Letter to the Editor, Kingston Whig-Standard

The article, “City considers cutting water usage, June 5, 2007”, reports that the City of Kingston is considering how to reduce water consumption by 15%. I would support a higher price of water as a means of encouraging less usage. Indeed, as the article states, residential customers pay a higher rate (65 cents versus 52 cents per 1000 litres) if their monthly consumption exceeds 25,000 litres. However what the article did not say is that (according to the Utilities Kingston website) commercial customers pay a lower rate if their consumption exceeds 50,000 litres (39 cents versus 52 cents per 1000 litres). Surely the wrong message is being sent here.

It’s easy to check online that people who live in dry places like Arizona or Alberta pay, on average, about twice what we do for drinking water. If we and all of our neighbours around the Great Lakes could charge ourselves that much for drinking water, I think it would lend a lot of credibility to our claim that Great Lakes water is too valuable to be siphoned off to the rest of the continent.

Nathalie Zanon

Une femme sage, honnête, qui écoute les plus petits, qui a un esprit profond et une vision claire.

Une amie.

Voici Nathalie Zanon:
Son Site Web

Bidding for doctors is bad: Letter to the Editor

Napanee has followed many other Ontario communities in offering a signing bonus to a new doctor (Napanee lures doctor to community, Whig-Standard, May 15, 2007). I think we should consider what may happen if local communities continue to spend money to recruit or provide financial incentives to new physicians. First, it would not be surprising if more affluent communities had sufficient numbers of physicians while less affuent communities did not. That would threaten the universality guaranteed in the 1984 Canada Health Act. Secondly, bidding against our neighbours in an auction for physician’s services could be an expensive way to get medical care. If we’re ready to spend money on incentives, we might save ourselves some money by getting together, as an entire province, and asking if physicians are being compensated enough in the first place. I don’t know what the best answer is to our physician shortage, but pitting one town against its neighbour doesn’t seem to take us in the right direction.

Letter to the Editor concerning SNO and competitiveness

It was refreshing today to see the Whig-Standard feature Professor Art McDonald and the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory (SNO) on its front page. I think it’s worth noting that this group succeeded, and succeeded here in Canada, by putting together some diverse elements: government support for research, foreign collaboration, repatriation of talented Canadians (McDonald was a physics professor at Princeton before returning to Canada to head SNO), risk taking, as well as taking advantage of world-class Canadian resources: a supply of heavy water, a deep underground mine and the technology to work there, and most of all, an existing group of top nuclear physics technicians and scientists.

Perhaps this is an example of what Canada needs to do more often in order to compete, in the global economy, with the concentration of creativity, technical expertise, and infrastructure one finds in places like the San Francisco/Stanford University/Silicon Valley area.

Letter to the Editor of the Toronto Sun

Re: Peter Worthington's column, "Weather Watch", April 25, 2007

Freeman Dyson has indeed said that climate models can't be trusted to predict the effects of global warming. While Mr. Dyson is not a climate researcher, I'll concede that there's uncertainty in the models. But that uncertainty can work both ways. Consider the news today that Artic sea ice has been measured to be melting three times faster than average prediction of 18 computer models used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Instead of doubting global warming we should be cautious and conservative by putting the burden of proof on those who say that it's okay to continue "business as usual".

Letter to the Editor concerning Stephane Dion

Re: “Dion’s the leader, but who’s in charge?”, by Jane Taber, The Globe and Mail, Monday April 23, 2007

I’d like to offer a view of Stéphane Dion’s management skills from a different vantage point. I once had the privilege of being welcomed into a policy session with Mr. Dion and his advisors. The meeting reminded me very much of a senior professor in charge of his research group, or a business executive running a boardroom meeting. Setting the agenda, assigning tasks, reminding people of past experiences, pushing people to make improvements and maintain high standards, reconciling disagreements, and fixing deadlines: these are what I saw Mr. Dion do. I believe that Stéphane Dion is in charge when it comes to the most important thing for Canadians: what a Dion government would do for Canada.

Letter to the Editor concerning CFLs

Bravo to the Liberal government of Ontario for deciding to ban the sale of most incandescent lightbulbs in favour of compact fluorescent lightbulbs (CFLs) and other efficient light sources. I would like to allay concerns about the small amount of mercury (about the size of the tip of a ball point pen or 1% of the amount found in the old mercury thermometers) inside CFLs. First of all, the City of Kingston accepts and safely recycles CFLs at our Household Hazardous Waste facility. Second, over half of Ontario’s marginal electricity production is from burning coal and burning coal also releases mercury. It turns out that the mercury released from burning coal to provide the extra energy needed by an incandescent bulb is comparable to the mercury inside the CFL anyways. If you accidentally break a CFL, sweep it up and open your windows for a while to let any fumes escape. Let’s use CFLs to reduce our electricity consumption and get closer to being able to shut down Ontario’s coal burning power plants.

Letter to the Editor of the Chronicle Herald

From my home in Ontario I've been learning about Central Nova in the last few days. If nothing else, Elizabeth May and Stéphane Dion have certainly been able to turn the national spotlight on this riding's voters and their concerns. While the voters of Central Nova will be the only ones who have a say on election day, I do feel the need to speak out today in favour of May and Dion's courageous decision to focus on advancing the environmental cause in Canada and on defeating a Conservative MP, rather than on the goal of running candidates in all ridings. With our first-past-the-post electoral system, coalitions have to be built before the election as well as after. It'll be a great fight and I'm sure Canadians across the country will now be paying close attention to Central Nova.

Racial ways of thinking by Canadian public figures

I was struck recently by the similarities between utterances of Andre Boisclair, leader of the separatist Parti Quebecois, and Carol Off, a host of the noted CBC radio news show As It Happens.

During the recent Quebec election, Boisclair talked about the competition from Asia and the Asian students he saw while he himself studied at Harvard. The translated quote from the National Post, March 15, 2007, was,

"The reality is these countries are not just working to create jobs in sweatshops,” he said Wednesday to students in Trois Rivières. "When I was in Boston, where I spent a year, I was surprised to see that on campus about one-third of the students doing their bachelor's degrees had slanting eyes.

"These are not people going to work in sweatshops. They are people who will later become engineers and managers who create richness. There is a ferocious competition happening in the world today. What I would like to do it equip you and equip Quebec to face [the challenge]."

The sad thing is not the "slanting eyes" language, which apparently is not a big deal in French, but the fact that probably a majority of those undergraduates he was talking about were Americans (and Canadians!). He simply assumed that they were not.

CBC broadcaster and veteran journalist Carol Off on As It Happens, April 10, while talking to a student in Georgia organizing a first black/white integrated high school prom, said, "There's more than just black students and white students. There's other nationalities at this school are there not?". (taken from CBC online audio archives)

Canadian Confederation Bicentennial Project

To be proposed on April 1, 2007

Whereas Haiti is the western hemisphere’s poorest country, with problems that would require an immense effort to overcome,

Whereas Canada has human ties to Haiti through immigration including Canada’s current Governor General Michaelle Jean,

Whereas the desirability of Canada’s Confederation is in constant need of re-affirmation, and that this desirability could be proven by welcoming new jurisdictions wishing to join Confederation, not just the prevention of jurisdictions leaving Confederation,

Whereas Canada’s Francophone minority feels that it is in danger of being diluted within the North American Anglophone majority, and whereas their numbers would be doubled if combined with that of Haiti, whose official language is French,

Whereas Canada, as a rich nation, has a responsibility and the capability to help out poorer nations, and might do a better job if it had a concrete long-term goal in mind,

Whereas it is regrettable that Canadians feel the need to leave their country and travel to Florida, Cuba, or Mexico to enjoy some sunshine and warm weather in the winter,

Be it resolved that, should the people of Haiti and the people of Canada express their joint desire through the passage of a clearly worded referendum by a substantial majority, Canada should re-allocate and concentrate its international aid on Haiti during the next sixty years in order to bring standards of living and governance in Haiti sufficiently close to Canadian standards, that Haiti might join Confederation as a new province of Canada by 2067, the 200^th anniversary of Confederation.

(with thanks to Jim, Bob, and Peter for useful comments)

What I learned from Self-Checkout

A local grocery store recently introduced self-checkout, presumably to reduce lineups. I, being generally interested in trying out new technology, gave it a try and learned a lesson -- the people who work at checkout are very good at what they do. I was slow, slow in scanning, slow in bagging, and had an especially hard time with fresh produce. Perhaps stores should charge a fee to use the human checkout line. I would be tempted to pay.

How not to offset the Green House Gas emissions from your campaign travel

In mid-January of 2006, during the federal election campaign, Canadian Green party leader Jim Harris released the following:

The Green Party will completely offset the greenhouse gas pollution produced by the leader's tour by planting enough trees to absorb all of these emissions, said Green Party of Canada leader Jim Harris today.

Tree Canada Foundation certified the Green Party of Canada's leader's campaign carbon-neutral today in Ottawa. Harris submitted the total number of travel miles he and his media team will have covered in this election to be offset by an investment in carbon reserves that trap greenhouse gas emissions responsible for climate change.

The Tree Canada Foundation had the following news release:

The Tree Canada Foundation certified the Green Party of Canada's leader's campaign carbon-neutral today in Ottawa. Harris submitted the total number of travel miles he and his media team will have covered in this election - Tree Canada calculated that in 20 years, the 131 trees planted in the Spring of 2006 will absorb the 16 tonnes of carbon dioxide Harris produced in the travel for his campaign.

In addition, Tree Canada certified the 14 Saskatchewan Green Party candidates as well, overseeing the planting of 314 trees to offset their campaign travel as well.

Oops, that 20 years got lost in the Green Party press release. The problem with the Green party's rather sloppy offset is that the offset will only have occured if, after 20 years, the trees survive insects, fire, cutting, and then mature into a permanent forest. Who is there to guarantee that? If the land had been left to itself, would it not have sprouted trees on its own? Does this forestry project satisfy additionality? Unfortunately the Tree Canada website does not answer these questions and does not record any details of the trees it 'planted'. I've sent an email to them (March 21, 2007) asking for information. One clue is that Tree Canada sells offsets through cleanairpass.com. That organization buys credits on the Chicago Climate Change (CCX) I believe and perhaps bought afforestation or reforestation credits on the CCX from some counterparty. I believe it is a fair statement that tree-planting is a controversial Green House Gas offset, and requires at minimum a careful accounting, best made public so that it can be verified.

Replying to a Climate Change denier

Here is an opinion piece from The Whig-Standard, Kingston, Ontario's local newspaper, followed by my reply to the paper. I can't believe the editorial board allowed the piece to be published!

Some inconvenient questions about global climate change

Opinion by George Luck
Monday, March 05, 2007 -

Environmental Stories - OPINION

The “cause du jour” for this year seems to be the dreaded “man-made global warming.” You cannot turn on a TV or read a news paper without being bombarded with the most dire forecasts of doom and gloom. Isn’t it funny that we rarely hear from those who call for caution in this headlong rush to Kyoto? Isn’t it odd that we are urged to accept that any scientist who disagrees with the concept of imminent man-made global catastrophe is in the pocket of big oil? Yet nobody seems to be asking where the global alarmists are getting their funding and what it might mean to their findings.

Before we all jump on the Kyoto bandwagon, there are some serious questions that need to be asked about “man-made global warming.” Unfortunately, any brave academic who dares to question prevailing thought on the subject is quickly shouted down. In fact, there are several instances of outright dismissal for this heinous crime. But the questions remain.

Here are some real inconvenient truths that the global warming alarmists do not want to address:

• It is an undisputed fact that water vapour is the main culprit in any supposed global warming. In fact, it is calculated that up to 95 per cent of the warming effect is due to water vapour, with the dreaded CO2 responsible for as little as .5 per cent. And yet carbon dioxide is held out as the “great Satan.”

• Since the 1940s, the number of hurricane landfalls on the coastline of the United States has actually decreased, from 23 in that decade to 14 in the period 1990 -2000. The strength of these hurricanes has actually decreased, not increased. The supporters of the “global warming is causing more and stronger storms” school of thought
often refer to the hurricane that devastated the Gulf Coast as a Category 5 storm. In fact, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this storm as a strong Category 3 hurricane.

• Supporters of the global warming theory often refer to the loss of ice and snow from Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa as more proof of global warming. In fact, the snow and ice have been receding since the late 1800s. It is now postulated that this may be due to the deforestation of the lands around the mountain, which prevents the formerly moist winds from creating snow at the top.

• There are about 167,000 glaciers on our planet, and only 79 of them have actually been studied with any real
accuracy. Now math is not my forte, but that means that “experts” are claiming that the glaciers are melting based on a sampling of .0473 per cent of the total. That is not scientific research. That is not even a good guess. To say that the glaciers are melting based on a .0473-per-cent sampling is, if not misleading, then downright untruthful.

• If this were CO2-driven warming, it should have started in 1940 and risen strongly from there. In fact, warming started in 1850 and rose sharply until 1940, then decreased for 35 years. The total warming since measurements have been attempted is thought to be about 0.6 degrees Centigrade. At least half of the estimated temperature increment occurred before 1950, prior to significant change in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels.

• Greenland got its name from the verdant pastures that attracted the Norse settlers under Eric the Red in 986. They carried on their normal way of life (based on cattle, grain, hay and herring) for 300 years until the time of the Little Ice Age, when they were driven off by the encroaching ice and the Inuit took over. The ice and the Inuit are still there.

And, of course, the entire man- made global warming issue is based on computer-generated models that in themselves are based on so many assumptions that their accuracy must be questioned.

Perhaps most shocking of all is the summary issued recently by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Even this body, which is largely responsible for the hysteria over the global warming issue, has backed away from many of its previously outrageous claims about rising sea levels, global temperature increases and destruction of sea ice, to name a few. And, worst of all, the actual

report on global warming, which has not been released yet, is being edited to agree with this clearly political document. But then, should we expect anything less from the United Nations “experts” who have a vested interest in ensuring that their funding remains intact?

Probably the most important point to be made here is that for every report, speech or movie shrilly screaming about the impending doom to be caused by “man-made global warming,” there is an equal number of scientists, reports, speeches and movies that claim that the “man-made global warming” issue is a dangerous charade. (An interesting question is, why does the press not give equal time to these sources?) So before we spend billions of dollars and probably beggar the economies of the West (but not China and India, which did not sign the Kyoto Protocol) we should demand a fair and equal hearing of all the facts.

Of course, this column probably ends my chances of winning the Nobel Peace Prize, but if that is what it takes to make people think for themselves, then so be it.

George Luck is a member of the Whig-Standard’s Community Editorial Board. He lives in Lansdowne.

Here is my reply which, unfortunately, did not get published:

The “Cause du Jour” is a Well Considered Cause

A response to the column on the environment by Mr. George Luck entitled, “Some inconvenient questions about global climate change”, The Kingston Whig-Standard, Monday, March 5, 2007.

I am, by nature, a cautious person. So I sympathize with George Luck when he wishes to be cautious about accepting the danger posed by climate change. But in this case Mr. Luck is wrong – not only wrong in his facts and arguments, but erring on the wrong side of caution.

Let us consider his points one by one.

• Why are we being ‘bombarded’ by reports in the media about climate change? I think the fact is that opposition to the reality of climate change has fallen apart in the last few years. From Evangelical Christians to the Conservative Party of Canada, more and more groups have joined the voices of those that accept that something needs to be done to tackle this real and serious problem.
• Is water vapour is responsible for most of the global warming? Water vapour does help trap heat but when there is a lot of water vapour it is easily removed from the atmosphere. It rains. Human activities aren’t increasing the global concentrations of water vapour in the atmosphere. But when extra carbon dioxide enters the atmosphere, it takes a century or so to remove it. In the meantime, the carbon dioxide heats up the earth.
• Has the number of hurricanes decreased since the 1940s? The number of named tropical storms in the North Atlantic was relatively constant from 1850 to 1990 with about 10 per year. In the last ten years the average has been 14. Mr. Luck claimed that Hurricane Katrina was not a category 5 storm, but instead a category 3 storm. In fact, Katrina was a Category 5 storm but fortunately decreased to category 3 before it made landfall the next day.
• Haven’t only a few glaciers been studied “with any real accuracy”? Let us be very generous and accept Mr. Luck’s figure that only 79 of 167,000 glaciers have been studied with any real accuracy. Are glaciers in retreat or not? Think of it this way. Suppose I am blindfolded and presented with a big, big bowl of Smarties. I’m told that either 90% are red Smarties and 10% are green Smarties, or there an equal mix of red and green Smarties. I pick 79 Smarties out of this big, big bowl, then take off my blindfold and look at the Smarties I picked out. I think the reader would agree that I could probably tell whether 90% of the Smarties were red or not. It doesn’t matter at all that I picked them out of a big, big bowl. What really matters is that 79 is a good sized sample of Smarties. We can tell from 79 glaciers whether glaciers are retreating or not. In fact more than that have been studied.
• Did warming start in 1850 and decrease for 35 years after 1940? One must look at a bigger picture. Global temperatures have indeed been rising since global industrialization in the nineteenth century and this rise sticks out clearly in a graph of global temperatures, say, over the last 1000 years, no accident in retrospect. Pointing to the decrease in temperature from 1940 to 1975 is rather like pointing to the great depression and wondering whether the world economy has really been growing over the last couple of centuries.
• Didn’t Greenland used to be green? Greenland was never lush and the Norse settlements only occurred in a few protected fjords. Scientists have been unable to generalize what happened there to the global climate. Consider the strange fact that there are palm trees in Lugano, Switzerland. Palm trees thrive there because Lugano is situated on the north shore of an alpine lake with steep hills to keep in the warmth. Don’t expect to deduce much about the climate in Switzerland from the climate in Lugano.
• Couldn’t the computer models be inaccurate? Global warming and carbon dioxide concentrations have been measured. You may use computer models to project into the future, but you don’t use them to measure the temperature and carbon dioxide concentration today.
• Isn’t the final IPCC report being edited before release? The latest IPCC report, like its predecessors, will be a conservative document that only makes claims for which a broad scientific consensus has been reached. If anything its statements are written to underestimate the strength of conclusions on climate change.
• Are there an equal number of scientists claiming that, “man-made global warming” is a dangerous charade? In plain fact, no. UC San Diego history of science professor Naomi Oreskes looked at hundreds of peer-reviewed papers published between 1993 and 2003. They all supported the reality of man-made global warming and none denied it. If we don’t trust that study, then I would propose to Mr. Luck that he find some scientists at Queen’s who are willing to sign their name to a statement that, “the ‘man-made global warming’ issue is a dangerous charade”. For every name that I see, I’ll go and get ten Queen’s scientists to say that it’s not a dangerous charade.

My final point is that Mr. Luck is not being cautious. Carbon Dioxide levels in the atmosphere are rising far above what they have ever been during the time that human beings have been on this planet. If you want to be cautious, Mr. Luck, put the burden of proof on those who say, “Don’t worry”.

Markers, "This American Life", "Three Pillars"

I think it's worth writing something down when I've made a connection for myself between different things that I've come across that allow me to view an idea from different angles.

Today I start with a segment on the National Public Radio documentary "This American Life", hosted by Ira Glass. This show's genius is in its ability to look deeply at average people and typical happenings and make them very interesting. Over several months of the 2004 US presidential campaign, Ira interviewed James, an articulate Republican doctor from Cincinnati, who was going to vote for George Bush but, according to the show's website, "pretty much hates every thing he's [president Bush] done since taking office". Ira was a Kerry supporter. He gently argued with James. Time and again, Ira would convince James that they agreed on a lot of things. James conceded that he agreed Bush was wrong on a lot of things such as the Iraq war, tax cuts for high income earners, and high deficit spending. Ira seemed to be persuading James to change his vote. James would consider changing his vote, and then move back. After many months of this and a final few days of thinking he might vote for Kerry or not vote at all, James finally returned to his original choice to vote for Bush. Why?

This leads me to policy markers. Policy markers, according to Jim Coutts in a Policy Options paper (Coutts is a long-time Liberal from Alberta, Canada who advised prime ministers Pearson and Trudeau), are long term political tenets that guide the party, and therefore characteristics that voters count on when faced with an uncertain future, unfamiliar politicians, or unclear facts about the present. The NDP in Canada and the Democrats in the US are identified with favouring organized labour. The Bloc Quebecois will act in the interests of Quebec nationalism. The Federal Liberal Party is for French-English partnership, multiculturalism, open immigration, and progressive social programs balanced against fiscal restraint. My explanation is that James felt drawn to vote for Bush because of the "security", "fiscal responsibility", and "trust" markers that hadn't yet faded for the Republican party and perhaps some negative markers associated with the Democratic party. What's amazing about the example of James is the staying power of these markers.

What Coutts argues is that for the long term health of political parties, and by extension democracy itself, parties need to be maintain their markers and from time to time seek to cultivate new ones. Conversely, political strategies such as relying on the charisma of a leader, relying on the electorate to vote against something, to vote simply for a change, or being a political weathervane do not cultivate and maintain policy markers and will not serve to give the party strength in the long term. Coutts gives the example of the Liberal party's apparently permanent loss of its traditional support in Quebec as the symptom of a weakening of the English-French partnership marker. Another marker whose credibility is in danger of being lost is the Liberal party's social program marker, threatened especially by delays in acting on healthcare and environmental issues. Coutts' 2004 article was in fact a plea to the new Paul Martin government. I guess it fell on deaf ears because Martin's team increased centralized control of the government by the Prime Ministers Office and more than ever, the Prime Minister was made to be the face of the Liberal party. During the 2006 election, which they lost, one of their campaign themes was that the Conservatives had to be stopped -- an example of tactical election campaigning that cannot lend strength to the party in the long run.

From time to time new markers are created when a major new policy issue arises in society. I think there is a great example in the third pillar of new Liberal party leader Stephane Dion's policy platform. It's environmental sustainability. Of course all of the leadership candidates had platforms that supported a stronger environmental policy. The difference with Mr. Dion was that he, in the language of this post, was promising to make environmental sustainability a new marker for the Liberal Party of Canada. In that sense he could be qualitatively distinguished from the other candidates, as much as the now coveted green signs, shirts, and scarves distinguished his supporters at the leadership convention.

Is selecting delegates complicated? unfair?

Many have complained, with reason, that the selection process for riding association delegates to the 2006 Liberal party national convention seemed complicated and perhaps unfair. The 14 elected delegates had to be chosen to conform to the vote percentages that the leadership candidates receive in the riding (after a non-trivial rounding off process), as well as conform to constraints by age and sex.

But perhaps it's just "Canadian"? Consider this quote about Sir John A. MacDonald's task in putting together the very first cabinet for Canada:

"Numerous regional and ethnic groups demanded cabinet representation according to their numbers, but MacDonald wanted no more than thirteen ministers because he believed that a larger number made fruitful discussion and reasonable compromise difficult, if not impossible. After much negotiation and near failure Sir John succeeded in forming Canada's first government. Ontario received five ministers, Quebec four, and New Brunswick and Nova Scotia two each. Presbyterians, Catholics, Anglicans, and Methodists were all represented, as were the French, English, Irish, and Scottish."

Donald Swainson, Sir John A. MacDonald, The Man and the Politician, 2nd ed., 1989.

Welcome

I've often had ideas that I thought I should write down, not only to remember them, but to see if they were really good ideas or not. I also hope that everything I write here will be worth reading for somebody. So welcome, and don't be afraid to leave your comments and criticisms.