In my post about the Queen-of-Hearts treatment accorded Fr. Paul Abbass—sentence first, trial later—I wrote that the  Cape Breton Regional Police "said it had begun investigating allegations concerning a Talbot House employee." In fact, police spokesperson Desiree Vassallo chose her words more carefully than that. "We are looking further into [information received from the Talbot House Board] and will determine whether there’s anything that needs a criminal investigation," she said. While Vassallo didn't identify Abbass, everyone knew who she was talking about. Almost seven weeks have passed since Vassallo made that statement. If the police have determined that the information does not warrant a criminal investigation, then...

03 April, 2012

Contrarian reader Michael Colborne points out that NDP leader Tom Mulcair's boycott of CBC Radio's English service, if that's what it was, ended tonight with an interview on As It Happens. He sounds like a guy who can take on Harper successfully. To do that, he'd be wise to avoid peevish boycotts in future (and that's advice from someone who'd love to see him succeed)....

27 March, 2012

I'm glad Thomas Mulcair won the leadership of the NDP Saturday. He has the best shot at retaining at least some of the party's beachhead in Quebec. He's said to be tough and politically shrewd, both of which he'll need to be when dealing with the wily Stephen Harper. He clearly plans to edge the party toward the centre, ala Darrell Dexter and other successful NDP premiers, and that's a good tactic when facing a government of right wing ideologues. But I'm not without a few qualms, including Mulcair's reputation for carrying grudges, and his occasional bone-headed statements on foreign policy,...

27 March, 2012

The Citizen's Glen McGregor sends three points of rebuttal to my post this morning about his story (co-written with Stephen Maher) on rule-breaking election-eve Liberal robocalls in the Guelph riding that has been the eye of the storm over Conservative vote suppression efforts in May's federal election: The Valeriote calls did give the Conservatives a new line of defence and did further muddy the water, as evidenced in any Hansard from this week. We didn't pass on judgment on whether the defence was valid. We never equated the Valeriote calls with the faux Elections Canada calls. Both were parts of the narrative of key...

14 March, 2012

Steve Maher and Glen McGregor, the two Ottawa reporters who broke the Robocall scandal, have a long story in yesterday's Ottawa Citizen that warrants a close read. The story leads with an account of Liberal robocalls in the Guelph riding on the eve of the May 2, 2011, federal election—calls that expressed dismay at CPC candidate Marty Burke's opposition to abortion "in all circumstances." In a glaring escalation of false equivalence, Maher and McGregor say "revelations" about the automated calls "are giving the Conservatives a new line of defence against allegations of vote suppression and further muddying the events leading up to...

13 March, 2012

The Harper government has mounted a classic bucket defence* against charges it illegally steered opposition voters to faraway, fake polling stations in a deliberate attempt to discourage them from voting. Their defenders say: 1. Nothing serious happened. 2. It happened to us too. 3. There's no proof we did it. 4. In fact, it was the Liberals who did it. 5. The calls didn't work anyway. 6. Voters don't care about it. 7. It'll blow over in a day or two. Some of this commentary is just the predictable party-line pandering from pro-Harper media, but a Globe and Mail story purporting to show...

06 March, 2012

Remember the Ottawa Press Gallery's rending of garments over the "despicable" violation of Public Safety Minister Vic Toews's privacy when Vikileaks30 revealed seamy details from the public record of his divorce proceedings—details that called into question the minister's personal adherence to the family values he used to denigrate gay Canadians and oppose their exercise of equal rights under the law? The view that embarrassing details from a cabinet minister's private life are off-limits, even when they conflict with his sanctimonious public pronouncements, has suddenly acquired unanimous support among Canada's major media organizations. Why, suppressing such details is practically a sacred duty. Parliamentary reporters...

05 March, 2012

Sometimes the movies understand issues that reporters and editors seem incapable of grasping. Like the entrenched police habit of grossly inflating the value of illicit drugs they seize, values almost always reported as Received Truth. In The Guard,  John Michael McDonagh's hilarious comedy about the culture clash between an uptight FBI agent and a small town Irish cop, FBI Agent Wendell Everett, played by Don Cheadle, is briefing members of Ireland's Garda police force about a drug ship carrying $500 million worth of cocaine, when Sgt. Gerry Boyle, his small town Irish counterpart, played with impecable timing by Brendan Gleeson, interrupts. Wendell Everett: That's...

02 March, 2012

Climate change deniers like to seize on instances of unusually cold weather to debunk the scientific case for climate change. This video, from the Norwegian infotainment program Siffer, explains the fallacy. H/T Nathan Yau...

02 March, 2012

A Contrarian reader asks: Does it not seem to you that there is a major conflict of interest in the Savage-for-Mayor camp? [AllNovaScotia.com, the online news service]  lists Don Mills as one of Savage's top supporters. Since  Mills operates Corporate Research Associates, the major polling firm in the province — one that just recently reported Savage with a big lead — why would one trust anything CRA has to say on the race? A fair question, and we put it to Mills, who replied: Corporate Research Associates has been since its inception a non-partisan polling company. It is one of the reasons our...

23 February, 2012
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