WaPo

TransCanada expected to reapply for Keystone pipeline permit as soon as Friday

“With Nebraska now on board and the application being re-filed, the president has lost his always-flimsy excuse for blocking this job-creating project,” the statement said. “With energy security at stake and jobs on the line, and he should listen to the American people, not just his political base, and approve it immediately.”(Boehner)

“The fundamental facts remain; Americans are being asked to put clean water at risk for an extreme form of energy that will add nothing to our energy security,” Kleeb wrote in an e-mail. “We are subsidizing this extreme form of energy to boot with over 1 billion of our tax payer dollars used to retrofit a Saudi-owned refinery for their tarsands headed straight to the export market. A transparent process will show TransCanada’s risky pipeline is not in our national interest.”

Gloria Galloway | Ottawa | May 1

The Globe And Mail - The woman who heads the organization representing Canada’s 55,000 Inuit will let someone else lead her people into their future.

Mary Simon’s work on behalf of the aboriginal people of the North spans more than four decades. She was one of the negotiators for the Inuit when Canada’s Constitution was being crafted.

Stop me if you've heard this one before, Canuckistan:

Stephen Harper is leaving the door open once again to extending Canada’s military participation in the costly Afghanistan war.

When the Official Opposition NDP pressed the Prime Minister on Wednesday about reports the United States has asked Canada to stay in Afghanistan beyond 2014, Mr. Harper said the government would “examine all options.”

[...]

If the Prime Minister extended Canada’s military deployment beyond 2014, it would be the fourth time he has prolonged the soldiering commitment to Afghanistan – including 2006, 2008 and 2010.

Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, Mr. Harper denied reports the United States has asked Canada to keep special forces soldiers in Afghanistan past 2014, his latest promised date for withdrawal.

As our new Leader of the Official Opposition aptly noted during Question Period yesterday, Canadians "want this mission to end. It was supposed to end in 2006. It was supposed to end in 2009. It was supposed to end in 2011. It is supposed to end in 2014. When will it finally end?”"

Oh, and that last excerpted bit I highlighted, where the PM denies reports that Uncle Sam is trying to keep Canada in the Great Game for another Friedman or three? Methinks Mr. Harper is being a little coy. Mealsothinks that it's a damn good thing Afghanistan is (for now, anyway) almost completely under the Campaign 2012 Village radar.

Because, considering the collective combat exhaustion of the USian polity, the last thing the Obama team needs are ill-timed reports that it's secretly planning to continue America's excellent (and highly unpopular) imperial Central Asian misadventure past it's latest expiration date.

How about this? The Harper government is reviving the old Soviet system of controlling what scientists say, in this case environmental scientists. (Image: Isaac Mao) Take a look at this report:

Government media minders are being dispatched to an international polar conference in Montreal to monitor and record what Environment Canada scientists say to reporters.

“If you are approached by the media, ask them for their business card and tell them that you will get back to them with a time for (an) interview,” the Environment Canada scientists were told by email late last week.

“Send a message to your media relations contact and they will organize the interview. They will most probably be with you during the interview to assist and record,” says the email obtained by Postmedia News. Vancouver Sun, April 23

Why would Harper do this? Did he mistake 1984 for an instruction manual? Is he nuts? No to both. This is not about control per se, it is about tar sands, the cruel hoax that promises riches beyond imagination (they think). Harper probably got word someone would simply tell the truth about the fraud.

Mark Swan | Toronto | April 3

The Catholic Register - Now that Ontario's highest court has found most laws in the country concerning prostitution are unconstitutional, people on all sides of the debate are urging parliament to act.

In a landmark ruling likely to be appealed to the Supreme Court, the Ontario Court of Appeal rendered a decision on March 26 that legalizes brothels and allows prostitutes to hire protectors and other staff. Public soliciting and pimping remain illegal, but the court ruled that prostitutes have a constitutional right to work in safe environments.

The court suspended implementation of its decision for one year to give parliament time to amend the criminal code.

Ottawa, ON | March22

The Canadian Press - Prime Minister Stephen Harper is poised to unveil a reinvigoration of his government's muddled Americas strategy when he meets with hemispheric leaders next month.

The Canadian Press has learned that cabinet discussed a renewal of the foreign-policy directive last week. Harper is expected to discuss details of how Canada will re-engage with Latin America and the Caribbean during the Summit of the Americas in Cartagena, Colombia, April 14-15.

The previous Americas strategy, first signalled in 2007, had three pillars: security, prosperity and democratic governance. But the Foreign Affairs Department's own internal evaluation last year suggested the strategy was mostly talk and little action, citing a lack of resources and poor understanding of the policy.

Colin Perkel | Toronto | March 12

The Canadian Press - Former U.S. vice-president Dick Cheney has cancelled a Canadian speaking appearance due to security concerns sparked by demonstrations during a visit he made to Vancouver last fall, the event promoter said Monday.

Cheney, whom the protesters denounced as a war criminal, was slated to talk about his experiences in office and the current American political situation at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre on April 24.

Shelley Youngblut | Calgary | March 5

Globe & Mail - A primitive mid-Cambrian animal called Pikaia gracilens, found only in the fossil beds of Canada’s Burgess Shale, is the earliest known human ancestor, according to a study published Monday in the British scientific journal Biological Reviews.

Since the first Pikaia fossils were discovered a century ago in the Burgess Shale area of the Rocky Mountains by American paleontologist Charles Walcott, the tiny, wormlike sea dweller has been the subject of ongoing debate as to its significance in human evolution.

For the study, researchers from the University of Cambridge, the Royal Ontario Museum and the University of Toronto examined 114 Pikaia fossils, 60 of which came from the ROM’s exclusive collection, using a range of advanced imagery techniques, including scanning electron microscopy. For the first time, researchers were able to confirm that Pikaia not only had a notochord, which evolved into the backbone in all vertebrates, but also a vascular system, including blood vessels, as well as blocks of skeletal muscle tissue known as myomeres.

“The discovery of myomeres provides the smoking gun that we have long been seeking,” said researcher and Cambridge professor Simon Conway Morris, a world-renowned Burgess Shale expert. “This study clearly places Pikaia as one of the planet’s first and most primitive chordate animals – so next time we put the family photograph on the mantle-piece, there in the background will be Pikaia.”
More at the link

OTTAWA — Canada's former chief electoral officer says recent allegations of systematic voter-suppression phone calls are unprecedented in the country's electoral history.

Last week's Ottawa Citizen-Postmedia News investigation revealed evidence of fraudulent pre-recorded phone calls made during the May federal election in Guelph through services provided by the Edmonton-based voice-broadcast company RackNine Inc. Further developments in the story suggest that harassing live phone calls were made by callers posing as Liberal candidates in swing ridings. The National Post and the Toronto Star also report that more live phone calls had been made in the Thunder Bay area, with callers phoning on behalf of the Conservative Party to alert voters of purported polling location changes. Ottawa Citizen

*Harper ignores opposition calls for by-elections in ridings hit by robo-calls
*Conservatives bank on robo-call storm blowing itself out

Richard Simon | Washington | Feb 25

LA Times - It may have given Americans 'The Star Spangled Banner,' but Canadians say they were the big winners. Major celebrations are planned.

For a piece of history that gave us the rockets' red glare and bombs bursting in air, the War of 1812 tends to evoke a collective "Huh?" on the U.S. side of the border with Canada.

"The War of 1812 has no compelling narrative that appeals to the average American,'' said Jerald Podair, a history professor at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. "It's just a hodgepodge of buildings burning, bombs bursting in air and paintings being saved from the invaders, all for a vaguely defined purpose. "

Yet the vacuum of interest in the War of 1812 is about to get a pyrotechnic blast of attention for its bicentennial year.

Canadians, who consider the war a pivotal conflict in their nation's history, have made 200th anniversary celebrations a national priority and are opening government coffers to stage a splashy show. Also, a few American cities and states, mostly on the East Coast and Great Lakes where fighting took place, are planning commemorations that have some brushing off their war reenactment uniforms.

For Americans who may have napped during this history lesson, the War of 1812 is a bit of a dud, historians say.

"If you ask the average American what they think about the War of 1812, some will have a puzzled look and ask who fought in that war?" said Ralph Eshelman, a Maryland historian who has written about the war in the Chesapeake Bay region. Another historian joked that about the only thing most Americans know about the War of 1812 is that it began in, well, 1812.

February 24

BBC - A commission examining Canada's policy to separate indigenous children from their families says the abuse created a legacy of turmoil.

From the country's formation in the 19th Century until the 1970s, the children had to attend schools where they were stripped of their identity.

Many of the 150,000 children also suffered physical abuse from the staff at the church-run boarding schools.

An interim report says children left the schools "as lost souls".

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada report, They Came for the Children, says their lives were "soon to be cut short by drugs, alcohol and violence".

Enbridge Northern Gateway Pipeline Review Panel hearings in Prince Rupert, British Columbia.

spoken by Lee Brian, the 26-year-old son of an oil executive.

Here is an excerpt of his speech:

My oral evidence today comes in the form of a story, an experience I had three years ago which directly reflects the impacts this project will have on me, and my community.

The story begins after a lifetime of debating with my father -he thought it was high time for me to finally experience first-hand the magnitude and power of the oil industry.

So in the summer of 2009, I had the opportunity to spend one full month on one of the world’s largest oil refineries, producing 800,000 barrels of oil per day. At the time, it was under an expansion project to produce up to an astonishing 1.2 million barrels per day and for confidentiality reasons, the company and details of the project will remain unnamed.

Kim Murphy | St James, Canada | Feb 20

LA Times - Canada's planned Northern Gateway pipeline would send tar sands oil to its West Coast for export to Asia. Supporters see it as a defiant stance against the U.S.

The prime minister is talking about being "held hostage" by U.S. interests. Radio ads blare, "Stand up to this foreign bully." A Twitter account tells of a "secret plan to target Canada: exposed!"

Could this be Canada? The cheerful northern neighbor: supplier of troops to unpleasant U.S.-led foreign conflicts, reliable trade partner, ally in holding terrorism back from North America's shores, not to mention the No. 1 supplier of America's oil?

Canada's recent push for the proposed Northern Gateway pipeline to carry oil from the tar sands of Alberta to the nation's West Coast, where it would be sent to China, has been marked by uncharacteristic defiance. And it first flared in the brouhaha over the bananas.

Responding to urgings from U.S. environmentalists, Ohio-based Chiquita Brands International Inc. announced in November that it would join a growing number of companies trying to avoid fuel derived from Canada's tar sands, whose production is blamed for accelerating climate change and leveling boreal forests.

Then in January, President Obama abruptly vetoed a permit for the Keystone XL pipeline, Canada's $7-billion project to deliver oil across the U.S. Midwest to the Texas Gulf Coast , which environmentalists have long opposed.

Mix in a touch of nationalism, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's view that Canada needs to hedge its oil bets by diversifying its export markets, and the fight was on — not only with the neighbor to the south, but also among Canadians.

From the Ottawa Citizen

According to a major new national study, Canadian girls are experiencing substantially higher levels of emotional problems and less emotional well-being than boys.

..... Boys externalize their discontent, girls internalize it, said Juniper Glass, director of development at Girls Action Foundation, a national organization that helps develop community initiatives and programs for girls.

"Boys behave 'badly' whereas girls tend to hold it inside and direct the negativity towards themselves," Glass said. "They have low self-esteem, they self-harm, they put themselves in risky situations or they put up with not healthy relationships with their boyfriends."

Glass said girls are socialized to please others, "to be successful — in everything — to be pretty, to look like magazine images."

More programs for girls, whether they focus on sports, science or mentoring, are needed, she said — "anything that helps girls to feel like it's safe to be themselves." More at the link

I doubt it's any different in the US

OTTAWA — Hours after Public Safety Minister Vic Toews introduced a controversial bill that would give police more powers to combat cybercrime by accessing users' personal information, Toews was at the centre of an online attack that released purported details of his own personal history.

The string of tweets posted online portions of alleged details relating to his divorce proceedings. More at the Ottawa Citizen.

Canada's only experiment in guaranteed income finally gets reckoning

The Dominion, By Vivian Belik, September 5, 2011

Whitehorse, YK — Try to imagine a town where the government paid each of the residents a living income, regardless of who they were and what they did, and a Soviet hamlet in the early 1980s may come to mind.

But this experiment happened much closer to home. For a four-year period in the '70s, the poorest families in Dauphin, Manitoba, were granted a guaranteed minimum income by the federal and provincial governments. Thirty-five years later all that remains of the experiment are 2,000 boxes of documents that have gathered dust in the Canadian archives building in Winnipeg.

Until now little has been known about what unfolded over those four years in the small rural town, since the government locked away the data that had been collected and prevented it from being analyzed.

But after a five year struggle, Evelyn Forget, a professor of health sciences at the University of Manitoba, secured access to those boxes in 2009. Until the data is computerized, any systematic analysis is impossible. Undeterred, Forget has begun to piece together the story by using the census, health records, and the testimony of the program's participants. What is now emerging reveals that the program could have counted many successes.

As the years-long drought in Texas subsides, I feel this would be a good time to remind everyone that water is not only precious, but scarce.

Indeed, Africa is seeing some of the worst droughts in recorded history. Drought doesn't only affect humanity, afflicting us with thirst, famine, and war, but wildlife too. And while the famine in Somalia (not directly water-related, but...) has been declared "over", countries like Burkina Faso and Sierra Leone face dismal prospects for the near future.

Joe Friesen and Bill Curry | Toronto and Ottawa | January 26

Globe & Mail - After five years of minority governments, Stephen Harper finally has the freedom to act.

He’s no longer looking at the limited horizon of the next budget or the next election. He’s planning on transforming Canada for a generation or more. This is Stephen Harper’s blueprint for reform.

Although short on details, Mr. Harper’s speech to the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Thursday made clear the sweep of his ambition. He will change how Canadians finance their retirement. He will overhaul the immigration system. He will make oil and gas exports to Asia a “national priority” and aggressively pursue free trade in India and Europe.

How uncouth of Harper to reveal major domestic changes in a foreign country.

I'm willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt on the Keystone XL Pipeline decision. Yes, he kicked the can down the road, but these days the way Washington works delaying does seem to equal killing something. Just look at the way they keep putting off a repeal of the Bush tax cuts. So, a marginal win for Team Hopey McChange.

-

Ottawa | October 3

Cdn Govt - Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to join you this morning. This is an opportunity to exchange ideas on a key priority for our government: establishing an Office of Religious Freedom.

We announced our intention to do so in the Speech from the Throne on June 3. And I repeated our commitment most recently at the United Nations General Assembly this past week in New York.

This office will be created to promote and protect freedom of religion and belief, consistent with core Canadian values such as freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

This story slipped under the wire and is just starting to bubble up to the surface now that the office supplies are ordered.

Kate Hammer | December 19

The Globe and Mail - Stephen Harper says Canada is on a “different track,” committed to selling its oil to China even at the risk of angering Americans.

In a year-end interview with CTV the Prime Minister said though many senior American officials remain hopeful that the Keystone pipeline will get built, connecting Alberta’s oil sands to the United States, he is “very serious about selling our oil off this continent.”

Tofino, BC | December 16

CBC - Bottles, cans and lumber from the tsunami that devastated Japan in March began washing up on British Columbia shores this week, more than a year earlier than oceanographers had initially predicted.

Winds and currents have carried the items -- emblazoned with Japanese characters -- nearly 21,000 kilometres across the Pacific Ocean. They began washing up in the Tofino area on Vancouver Island's west coast earlier this week.

Jean-Paul Froment, a longtime area resident, says he's used to seeing things wash up on the beach, but has never seen such a large quantity of debris at once.

James Mackay and Niigaanwiwedam James Sinclair | December 11

Guardian - The response of the Canadian government to the emergency in Attawapiskat shows why indigenous communities are in trouble

In October, the Attawapiskat First Nation declared an emergency. And no one came to help.

The community, situated in far northern Ontario and made up of 1,800 mostly Cree citizens, has announced that its situation is dire, due to a "severe housing shortage". The community has been visited by an opposition MP and filmed. The images relayed back are horrifying. There are generations of families living in flimsy tents or shacks built from mismatched plywood and covered with tarpaulins. Mould seeps through insulation and runs down the walls. Pails of excrement are being thrown in ditches. Children have chronic skin diseases brought on by poor living conditions, others have third-degree burns caused by cheap stoves. A hundred people live in a prefab trailer, crammed into rooms with just four bathrooms for all. The temperature drops a few more degrees below zero every day. It gets as low as -40C in the winter – without the wind chill. Mothers say baby shampoo freezes sitting on the shelf.

. . . this new arrangement between Canada and the US regarding armed US police allowed in the country? Did I read that correctly? Why in the world would Canadians allow such a thing?