A US polling website tries to explain the difference between the Canadian medical care system and the British health care system. And does a surprisingly good job. .. .. .. .. .. .. UPDATE: Spoilsport contrarian reader JP points out: Fivethirtyeight.com isn't quite right, is he? Or he's at least misleading: Everything BUT doctor services in Canada are owned and run by the state. Point taken, but after all, this is an American writing about Canadian health care. How much accuracy can one expect?...

11 August, 2009

Stephen Taylor, a Conservative blogger who organized a series of rallies to protest last fall's proposed coalition government, has created an extraordinary mashup of poll-by-poll results from the 2008 federal election and Google Earth. The high definition (HD) video may take a few moments to load completely. Elections Canada provides the data that drives this extraordinary tool, but not in a format that Google Earth or Google Maps can read or import. Taylor crashed his computer several times coming up with a program to translate the data into a format Google could use. Taylor's creation will shade each federal poll result according...

10 August, 2009

On trial in 1971: [caption id="attachment_1797" align="alignnone" width="600" caption="(Canadian Press Photo)"][/caption] Upon his release in 1982 : [caption id="attachment_1798" align="alignwrap" width="600" caption="(Canadian Press Photo by Halifax photographer Albert Lee.)"][/caption] With his mother, Caroline Marshall, following double-lung transplant in 2003: [caption id="attachment_1799" align="alignwrap" width="600" caption="(Canadian Press photo)"][/caption]...

06 August, 2009
CopyCon Ministers - cropped
Why is Canada's news media doing such a shoddy job covering the copyright consultations now taking place in select cities across part of Canada? At the heart of the consultations on planned changes Canada's copyright law lies a fundamental question: Should the law protect authors of creative work, or corporate intermediaries who traditionally profited from the massive effort formerly required to reproduce and distribute them? Thanks to digital technology, the cost of copying and distributing works is rapidly approaching zero. Naturally, those who once profited from copying and distributing creative works are frantically trying to stem the flow of creative works, advocating ever-lengthening copyright protection,  and mandatory enforcement of consumer-hostile technologies that prevent all copying, legal or otherwise. In many cases, they have co-opted creator organizations to their cause. Not surprisingly, news organizations tend to view this question through the lens of corporate intermediaries. With exceptions, they frame the debate in terms University of Ottawa law professor Jeremy De Beer describes as, "the caricature of toiling creators vs. freeloading pirates."
02 August, 2009

[UPDATES appended at end] Contrarian reader SL shares our ink-stained correspondent's distaste for the Saint John Telegraph-Journal's malodorous apology to Prime Minister Stephen Harper. She wonders why departing Harper Communications Director Kory Teneycke included the precise timing of his decision to resign so prominently in his resignation talking points. The second paragraph of the CBC story reads: Teneycke said he told Harper just after Canada Day and before the G8 meeting in Italy earlier this month that he was going to step down. That would be, uh, just before the Prime Minister did or did not consume the sacramental Host at Romeo LeBlanc's...

30 July, 2009
An ink-stained wretch (and contrarian reader) offers a few tart observations on the Telegraph-Journal's strangely unelaborated apology.
I find something stinking with the Telegraph-Journal's wafer story. They bent over backwards to apologize and apparently the editor and publisher paid the price. But I haven't seen any reporting that took this any further. Did the Catholic officials cited in the original stories who apparently were so mightily offended by Harper's alleged act change their tunes? Who got the quotes from the church people? What contact was there between the PMO and the TJ? Did higher ups in the church get involved? God (literally) knows.
29 July, 2009

The Canadian province most deeply committed to clean, renewable energy has been stopped in its tracks by a utilities commission ruling that rejected BC Hydro's plans to acquire clean energy as “not in the public interest.” Moneyquote: The ruling could call into question the viability of the B.C. government's policy of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by at least 33 per cent below 2007 levels by 2020. That promise, and a long term goal of an 80 per cent reduction by 2050, was put into law last year with passage of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Targets Act. Green energy stocks fell sharply on...

29 July, 2009
SJ Tele-Journal logoThe Saint John paper that broke the Wafergate scandal now says there is "no credible basis" for its story. Moneyquote:
The story stated that a senior Roman Catholic priest in New Brunswick had demanded that the Prime Minister's Office explain what happened to the communion wafer which was handed to Prime Minister Harper during the celebration of communion at the funeral mass. The story also said that during the communion celebration, the Prime Minister "slipped the thin wafer that Catholics call 'the host' into his jacket pocket." There was no credible support for these statements of fact at the time this article was published, nor is the Telegraph-Journal aware of any credible support for these statements now.
28 July, 2009

According to a New York Times report of a speech by Microsoft chairman Bill Gates in New Delhi last Friday, Canada's liberal immigration laws have led the software giant to create many jobs here. Moneyquote: [Gates] was also critical of Congress’s stance on immigration, and said he would like to see immigration exceptions for “smart people.” Canadian laws are more favorable, he said, because they allow immigrants to work if they are offered a high-paying job. Microsoft has created “a lot of jobs in Canada for that reason,” he said. Less admirably, Gates would like us all to carry government issued...

27 July, 2009
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