Thursday, October 30, 2008

Daily Digest October 30, 2008


The new cabinet

Shuffles include:
  • Lawrence Cannon to Foreign Affairs
  • Jim Prentice to Environment.
  • John Baird to Transport
  • Tony Clement to Industry
  • Peter Van Loan to public safety
  • Leona Aglukkaq, Nunavut's former health minister, who takes over the federal Health Ministry.
  • Gail Shea, a longtime provincial minister who won the P.E.I. riding of Egmont, has been given the Fisheries Ministry
  • Lisa Raitt, the former chief executive officer of the Toronto Port Authority, becomes the natural resources minister.
  • Stockwell Day to International Trade
  • Jason Kenney to Citizenship and Immigration
  • James Moore to Heritage.
  • Jean-Pierre Blackburn, to national revenue and minister of state (agriculture)
  • Rona Ambrose to labour
  • Josee Verner to intergovernmental affairs
  • Peter Kent, newly elected MP for Thornhill, becomes minister of state of foreign affairs for the Americas
MPs who will keep their assignments include:
  • Jim Flaherty, finance minister
  • Peter MacKay, defence minister
  • Rob Nicholson, justice minister
  • Greg Thompson, veteran affairs
  • Chuck Strahl, Northern Development and Federal Interlocutor for Métis and Non-Status Indians
  • Vic Toews, president of Treasury Board

EDITORIALs

ST.JOHN'S TELEGRAM -
Pondering poisons

CAPE BRETON POST -
Deficit debate just beginning
http://www.capebretonpost.com/index.cfm?sid=184889&sc=151

MONTREAL GAZETTE -
New 'values' declaration won't have much effect

Clearing the decks

OTTAWA CITIZEN -
Terrifyingly banal

Against the faith

OTTAWA  SUN -
Lessons government needs to learn

KINGSTON WHIG STANDARD-
We need principled leaders

BELLEVILLE INTELLIGENCER -
Liberal inaction forces closure of rural schools

TORONTO STAR -
Ontario not on Ottawa's radar

Harper MIA in Asia

Our evasive A-G

NATIONAL POST -
First Nations leaders are failing their own
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=917682

The 'nut' that nauseates
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=917683

Distractions aplenty
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=917684

Routes to the ruling class
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays_paper/story.html?id=917685

HAMILTON SPECTATOR -
Grandparent ruling wrong

K-W RECORD -
Fixing health care is an uphill battle

WINDSOR STAR -
McGuinty has no idea how to stall deficit jump

REGINA LEADER-POST -
Dialing while driving -- a call for action

Martinized political memoir 'whiny, revisionist and partisan'
I
Nature best left alone

EDMONTON JOURNAL -
Canada can't see human trafficking

Register former 'grow-ops'

VANCOUVER SUN -
Now the task of the Bank of Canada is to keep deflation at bay

VANCOUVER PROVINCE -
Society should eradicate certain behaviour rather than condone it

VICTORIA TIMES-COLONIST -
Liberal delegates eerily quiet on carbon tax


ISSUES

ABORIGINAL AFFAIRS -
Faulty federal math hurts reserve schools
Ivison: . MORE...

 Lawyers table proposal to move residential schools commission forward

Blockhouse Diplomacy: A Prison Arrives in Tyendinaga


AFGHANISTAN -
Afghans Will Decide Which Taliban Leaders Join Talks, U.S. Says

More shocks for shattered Pakistan

Suicide bomber kills 5 in Kabul

Afghanistan and Opium: The Big Payoff!

Is the Taliban Stockpiling Opium? And If So, Why?

MPs warn of electoral fraud

"Real Afghan Shortgage: Copters, Spy Planes"

Canadians, Taliban fighting for Afghan support with 'psy-ops'
http://calsun.canoe.ca/News/World/2008/10/30/7248901-sun.html


CANUSA/USACAN
Canadians will miss Bush if NAFTA threatened, U.S. ambassador says

U.S. election campaign


ECONOMIC AFFAIRS
Loonie soars as U.S. greenback falls, oil prices up

September producer prices fall on energy
http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/reuters/081030/canada/canada_us_economy_prices


FOREIGN AFFAIRS
Iraq stands firm against US threat

IAEA misses the mark on Iran

India fears the dawn of Hindutva terror


HEALTH CARE RELATED
Canadian Blood Services says reserves low, asks for more donors


JUSTICE SYSTEM
Re-arrest of suspect frustrates police

Kirpan allegedly used to threaten schoolmates

 Canada a top producer of ecstasy, crystal meth: RCMP

Inmates flex muscle

 Crown appeals Montreal drowsy driving acquittal

Challenge shows anti-terrorism law has teeth


MIGRATION
Learn French, Quebec orders immigrants

 Immigrant groups uncomfortable with Charest's plan

Ontario eyes ways to help migrant workers


POLITICS IN THE PROVINCES
Election assures rosy Quebec update. Don't believe all of it MORE...

Clearing the decks. MORE...

 Quebec legislature passes motion urging Premier Charest not to call election

Quebec election train steaming ahead

Voters choose NDP candidates in B.C. by-elections

Campbell's ill-conceived carbon tax costs gov't


POLITICAL OPINION -
PM showcases experience, fresh faces MORE...

No room to manoeuvre inside box Travers: . MORE...

Next Liberal leader must enjoy pain Don Martin: . MORE...

No cash of titans? Weston: . MORE...

Not Justin time Calgary Herald: . MORE...

Lessons government needs to learn Goldstein: . MORE....

Lessons for Harper on how to make a Tory minority work McMurtry: . MORE...

How Canada's divided left can get it right Love: . MORE...

Harper faces challenges in mandate, study says

 Ottawa shuns 'misguided' bids to balance federal budget

Set to cut, prepared for deficit

Archives paid $188,000 for Martin interviews

 The race to renew the Liberal identity

 McKenna sets standard for Liberal leadership

Dion finally meets with Hervieux-Payette

Hervieux-Payette is lobbying to keep her job

 Saanich-Gulf Islands election tactics under microscope

Pension crisis looming

Pension relief in works

NDP calls for special fund to 'backstop pension failures'

Elderly Canadians warn against delays in pension upgrades

Layton: Ottawa should back talks with Taliban


PROGRAMMES
Flaherty warns civil servants, provinces to temper money expectations


Crisis used to push for single regulator

PRESSURE POINTS
Wind farm opponents turn up heat

Khawaja clung to a failed ideology


OPINION AND INFORMATION
Sacrifice of soldiers worth holiday, poll says

 Mint issues new fade-proof poppy coin

It's not over until … 'Dewey defeats Truman?'

Condemning Halifax's founder

Let Us Speculate


INFOS 
Harper présente son nouveau cabinet; cinq Québécois en font partie

http://info.branchez-vous.com/Nationales/081030/N103025AU.html
Harper dévoile son nouveau cabinet
http://www.cyberpresse.ca/actualites/quebec-canada/politique-canadienne/200810/29/01-34262-harper-devoile-son-nouveau-cabinet.php

Verner aux Affaires intergouvernementales
http://www.ledevoir.com/2008/10/30/213258.html

Cabinet Harper
Équipe renouvelée
http://www.radio-canada.ca/nouvelles/Politique/2008/10/30/002-NOUVEAUCABINET2.shtml


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Subject: RE: Daily Digest October 29, 2008.
From: "Efstratios Psarianos"

Ave, Mater Familias!
 

Salute to a  brave and modest nation - Kevin Myers, 'The Sunday Telegraph' LONDON:

Yet it's purely voluntary contribution to the cause of freedom in two world wars was perhaps the greatest of any democracy. Almost 10% of Canada 's entire population of seven million people  served in the armed forces during the First World War, and nearly 60,000 died. The great Allied victories of 1918 were spearheaded by Canadian troops, perhaps the most capable soldiers in the entire British order of battle.
Good thing to know when anyone (Americans in particular, in this case) has too much "We're the Greatest" in them. A couple of other interesting things to know:
 
   - Canada's contribution per capita was the greatest of any nation during WW-II; I suspect that UK losses from getting bombed aren't covered by this, still ...
   - as concerns Americans again, a gentle reminder that Canada was a Day One (well, Day 3-4, actually, but whatever ...) participant in both WWs, unlike the Americans; honourable mention must be made to the US' President Franklin Roosevelt, though ... he saw what was up; he built up his country's focus, capacity, and alliances in the face of a hostile (to war), isolationist Congress; and pretty much saved democracy during WW-II.
 

The Second World  War provided a re-run. The Canadian navy began the war with a half dozen vessels, and ended up policing nearly half of the Atlantic against U-boat attack.
 
The cold half, too!
 
 
Canadian participation in the war was acknowledged in film only if it was necessary to give an American actor a part in a campaign in which  the United States had clearly not participated - a  touching scrupulousness which, of course, Hollywood has since abandoned, as it has any notion of a separate Canadian identity.
Yeah! How come there were only obviously-American grunts in Starship Troopers I-III? And that despite Michael 'Smiley' Ironside being the non-nonsense seargeant and all?
 

So it is a general rule that actors and filmmakers arriving in Hollywood keep their nationality - unless, that is, they are Canadian. Thus Mary Pickford, Walter Huston, Donald Sutherland, Michael J. Fox, William Shatner, Norman Jewison, David Cronenberg, Alex Trebek, Art Linkletter and Dan Aykroyd have in the popular  perception become American, and Christopher Plummer, British.
Do tell! I'd have never known that Christopher is from rural Quebec, until I read it a few weeks ago.
 
 
It is as if, in the very act of becoming famous, a Canadian ceases to  be Canadian, unless she is Margaret Atwood, who is as  unshakably Canadian as a moose, or Celine Dion, for whom Canada has proved quite unable to find any takers.
Personally, I think Margaret Atwood IS a moose. But that's me being disrespectful, so pay no mind ...
 

Moreover, Canada is every bit as querulously alert to the achievements of its sons and daughters as the rest of the world is completely unaware of them. The Canadians proudly say  of themselves - and are unheard by anyone else - that  1% of the world's population has provided 10% of the  world's peacekeeping forces.
Not to mention James Doohan, patron saint of engineers (of which I'm one), who played Mr. Scott in the original Start Trek series. As a fire-the-engines techno-icon, he made engineering cool to uncounted thousands of us. Same goes for being Scottish too, I imagine. Plus, can you believe it, he was a trooper who debarked on D-Day! He lost a finger then, a fact that was gracefully hidden on TV.
 
Oop for the Motherland! Doone with the Fuehrer and the Klingon High Council!
 

So who today in the United States knows about the stoic and selfless friendship its northern neighbour has given it in Afghanistan?
 
Rather like Cyrano de Bergerac, Canada repeatedly does honourable things for honourable motives, but instead of being thanked for it, it remains something of a figure of fun.
 
And that DESPITE the fact that we Cyranos don't stick our nose (too much) into other countries' business.
 

Lest we forget.
Amen!
Stratos

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. . . so far the sole contribution to BELOW (30)

Tell me why I bother putting in the time?

        Joe
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Y'know, sometimes I ask myself the same thing. And then I tell myself "Noblesse oblige".
 
Stratos

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