It occurs to me that the end of the penny will bring with it the gradual demise or dis-use of a number of penny-related expressions. I’m sure they’ll stay in our vocabulary for decades still; after all, the US penny is still in circulation, and our language is slow to adapt to change at any rate. But I wonder if our grandchildren’s generation will know what we meant by some of these expressions. So in honour of the beginning of the end of the Canadian penny, here’s my top 10 for expressions that we’ll now have to change:

10. Cut off without a penny.

9. A penny saved is a penny earned.

8. Penny for your thoughts?

7. Here are my two cents.

6. Penny-ante

5. In for a penny, in for a pound.

4. Penny-wise and pound-foolish

3. Not worth a red cent

2. Pinching pennies

1. …And the penny drops.

RIP, Canadian penny. I can’t say I’ll miss you weighing down my purse. But it does feel like the end of a chapter in history.

Depending on when a new CBA is reached, the league – according to TSN Hockey Insider Pierre LeBrun – has 50-game and 48-game schedules drawn up. A 50-game season would start on Jan. 15 and a 48-game season would start on Jan. 19.  The existing 2012-13 NHL schedule was already canceled through Jan. 14.

Now, there are an awful lot of people — even here in hockey-mad Montreal — who are responding with “who cares?” Fed up with the labour disputes and with the bickering between millionaires and billionaires, they’ve long since declared a curse on both houses and have merrily gone about finding alternative sources of entertainment. There’s a very real question about whether the NHL can truly recover from this, and if so, how long it might take.

But I’ve missed hockey. A lot. I daresay I’m not the only one. In absense of hockey, we naturally look for other blood sports to draw our attention. The red square protests, the Charbonneau commission, the ugliest Quebec election in decades, the rekindling of the language wars… we desperately need a distraction from all of it. And if the bleu-blanc-rouge can provide one, even in a compressed season, well, I’ll take it happily.

Welcome back, hockey. Don’t do it again.

When I started this blog a decade ago, it was as an outlet for all of the thoughts that were screaming to get out of my head. It was barely a year after 9/11, Quebec had a wildly unpopular PQ government, Israel was reeling from some of the worst years of the second intifada, I was a recent graduate from a university where campus tensions were at an all-time high, and I felt like I had things I needed to say.

Blogging was a relatively new method of communication at the time. It took off like wildfire because it provided a quick and easy way to frequently update a website. Before I launched the blog (on Blogger at the time on a Geocities domain, no less), I had a website that was coded by hand, in HTML written in Notepad of all things. I’d posted a number of rant-style “thoughts”, but the update process was cumbersome. And nobody much was reading it.

Then, I discovered blogs written by people who were saying smart things about the issues I cared about. Blogs not only provided commentary, but they provided interaction via commenting and trackbacks. It was an early form of social media that created community and led me to discover others — some like-minded, some on other side of the fence — who wanted to discuss, debate and analyze.

I wrote my inaugural post without expecting much. Ten years, 2,500 posts, more than 6,000 comments and countless friends, contacts and connections later, this blog’s still going. But much has changed. I’ve migrated from a hosted Blogger solution to my own WordPress, added my own domain name, and refreshed the look and feel (though it’s overdue for another facelift).

The world has also changed. In 2002 there was no Facebook, no Twitter, no Instagram. This blog was the outlet for a lot of those random thoughts, one-off posts, links and amusing images. Today, those social channels have become much more efficient means of sharing that type of content. I blog much less frequently today. Back in 2002 I was posting several times a week or even a day, but now I might post a few times a month, if that. My posts have become lengthier, because the shorter posts tend to be tweeted or shared to my Facebook page instead.

The topics of conversation on the blog have also changed. I’m a decade removed from the happenings at Concordia and can’t really comment on them anymore, and Israeli and Mideast politics make me weary and depressed so I don’t post as much on the subject anymore. These days, I focus much more on Canadian and Quebec politics — and when there’s no lockout, hockey.

Very few of the people on my blogroll from back in ’02 are still at it. Independent blogs have largely been swallowed up by larger corporate-funded media outlets. Some of the early bloggers became media celebrities, journalists or social media gurus. Others have moved onto other things. I have a lot less time these days and I blog in multiple places, so my attention is certainly divided.

But from time to time, this space still serves its original purpose as an outlet for the things I have to say. Even if those things have changed, too.

Ten years. If you’ve been reading since the beginning, thanks for sticking with me. And be sure to check out the Hall of Fame for some trips down memory lane.

I was on a plane for most of the evening, and while I was able to watch the results come in on satellite TV (thanks, WestJet!), I didn’t have internet access so no liveblogging of results. It was like a throwback to the pre-Web 2.0 years when you actually had to rely on traditional media sources for information. Well, unless you’re Barack Obama, author of the Tweet heard around the world.

The big vote

The race was close all night, but the nail-biter didn’t materialize. While both candidates were neck-and-neck in the popular vote for much of the evening, most of the highly contested swing states went one by one to Obama: New Hampshire, Iowa, Wisconsin, Virginia were called one by one for Team Obama. You could see the wind go out of the sails in the Romney camp as each one was declared, but Ohio finally solidified things shortly after 11pm ET. At that point, it was all over but the fat lady, whose singing will be heard in Florida just as soon as all those folks standing in line have a chance to vote.

Latest US election results 2012, as of 2:30AM ET on Nov 7th. Source: CNN.

So what happened to give the Obama team such a wide margin of victory, despite a 7.9% unemployment rate and widespread anger and disillusionment with the status quo?

There was no doubt that Obama had the easier path given the distribution of electoral college votes, so this isn’t a surprise to many. Hurricane Sandy was a horrifying tragedy that was also auspiciously timed for the Obama team, as it highlighted environmental issues, allowed Obama to command instead of campaign, and made Romney look foolish for his past comments on FEMA. And Romney dug his own grave in Ohio with his auto industry bailout comments.

But mostly, I think that Mitt just failed to impress much of anyone. His campaign gaffes, flip-flopping and lack of any clear agenda or policies didn’t quite capture the attention of the moderate or independent voters. And his record as a Massachusetts moderate didn’t exactly fire up the “base” of Christian conservatives. Romney is an utterly unremarkable candidate running for an utterly messed up party, and the question isn’t “how did he lose?” so much as “how did he come so close to victory?”

Other key races

• In Missouri, douchebag-extraordinaire Todd Akin was defeated in his challenge to Senator Claire McCaskill’s seat. Legitimate rape THIS, Akin!
• Likewise in Indiana, Tea Party Senate candidate Richard Mourdock, who infamously declared that rape resulting in pregnancy was “God’s will”, was defeated by Democrat Joe Donnelly. Yeah, you guys see that vote breakdown? 53% of all voters were women.
• In Wisconsin, not only did the Obama team defeat Romney in VP candidate Paul Ryan’s home state, but Tammy Baldwin was elected as the first openly gay member of the US Senate. Way to go, Cheeseheads!

On the issues

Ballot initiatives across the country also added to this progressive trend:

• Abortion wasn’t only a hot topic in senate races. The swing state of Florida, on the verge of being called for Obama, resoundingly voted down a ballot initiative that would have limited abortion rights and prevented public funding for abortions. Like I said, don’t mess with women.
• Same-sex marriage was a hot topic on ballot initiatives, and for the first time in US history, it wasn’t one step forward, two steps back. Maine passed an initiative to overturn its ban on same-sex marriage, and Maryland made it officially legal — the first time in the US that gay marriage has been approved by the voters, as opposed to enacted by the courts or by legislators. Results are still pending in two other states, but Washington State is on the verge of authorizing a referendum to legalize same-sex marriage. Only Minnesota risks taking a step back on the issue, with results of a ballot initiative for a constitutional ban still too close to call. 
  
• Medical marijuana initiatives passed in Colorado, Massachusetts and Washington State. The Bloc Pot would approve.

Real change?

Arguably, the country is more divided than ever, with a margin of less than 1% currently separating the two sides in the popular vote. Certainly, the US has enormous challenges ahead, most notably the fiscal cliff that threatens to throw all of us, including us Canadians, back into recession. Obama’s second four years are likely to be harder than his first.

But I don’t think that’s the real story tonight. From the senate races to the ballot initiatives, there’s a wind of change in the air. Despite the fact that most voters cited the economy as their #1 issue, it’s notable that Romney, who campaigned on nothing but the economy, couldn’t pull off a victory.

Change is slow and not always steady. There are setbacks and divisions and WTF moments. But I truly believe that more and more Americans are declaring that they want equality, healthcare, rights for women and gay folks and old folks and all folks. They’re calling for meaningful action on the environment and climate change, on workers’ rights and human rights. And that, more than anything, is extremely encouraging.

Good on ya, my American neighbours. Way to go on making sure that sanity prevailed. The world thanks you.

Here’s CNN, reporting a statistical tie in the popular vote but an edge to Obama in the electoral college:

Here’s Yahoo News‘s election blog, “The Signal”, calling a wide margin for Obama:

Here’s blogger Ezra Klein in the Washington Post, also predicting victory for Obama, albeit with a smaller margin:

And finally, good ol’ FOX News, home of the Truthiness:

Here’s hoping that FOX is once again posting misleading wishful thinking in the place of fact. I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

For what it’s worth, I predict that Obama will win, though I think it will be close.

QS is probably reacting to the upswing in popular vote that they enjoyed in the last election, which didn’t translate to seats but provided them with a foundation. Khadir has been a controversial, polarizing figure for most of his political career, and QS might be banking on more success next time around with a different face on their posters. Too, they may be reacting to the news this week that the NDP is considering forming a provincial party in Quebec, which would provide a federalist alternative for voters on the left who are unimpressed with their current options. QS is unabashedly separatist, but gets a lot of support from the progressive groups regardless of their stance on national unity, and a provincial NDP could siphon off some of that support… eventually.

Meanwhile in Laval, Mayor Gilles Vaillancourt plans to announce his resignation on Tuesday, according to new reports. He’s been hunkered down ever since the testimony of the Charbonneau Commission basically followed a trail of corruption right to his doorstep.

And here on the island, speculation is rife that Mayor Gerald Tremblay will step down as well. The wolves are circling here too, and Tremblay has a negative-a-thousand percent chance of getting re-elected or holding onto his job. Though there has been no official word yet, he probably has no choice but to step aside. The only question is whether there will be anyone worthwhile to take his place.

The opposition at city hall pretty much consists of bigots and crackpots — which is why so many of us knowingly voted for the crooks in the first place. But with anger over the impunity of the corruption — and the ill-timed tax hikes — at an all-time high, there may be no choice but to let those chips fall where they may. Personally, I don’t believe that the next mayor will be any better, since the corruption at city hall is so institutionalized as to be practically part of the walls. As Henry Aubin points out, simply booting the mayor without getting someone better in as a replacement won’t help much. It’s like covering up mould and mildew with a coat of paint; it does nothing to solve the underlying issue.

The Charbonneau Commission is bringing to light all sorts of allegations that most Quebecers assumed to be true for a long time. However, it risks being used — by the PQ, by the opposition — as a sort of witch-hunt tool. If all it does is to bring in regime change, the corruption will simply change hands to the new politicians. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

Update 11/05: Tremblay has made it official.

“BCE failed to persuade us the deal would benefit Canadians,” said chairman Jean-Pierre Blais, who took over the post earlier this year and has quickly put a populist stamp on the regulator. “It would have placed significant market power in the hands of one of the country’s largest media companies. We could not have ensured a robust Canadian broadcasting system without imposing extensive and intrusive safeguards, which would have been to the detriment of the entire industry.”

Anglos are breathing a sign of relief because this will save TSN 690, Montreal’s English-language sports radio station (and official home of the Habs, when the NHL isn’t on lockout). Rival media conglomerate Quebecor is breathing a sigh of relief, because its dominance in the francophone market won’t be challenged by a Bell/Astral giant.

But there’s a bigger issue here, and one that should be of interest to all Canadians who are concerned about the extreme amount of media consolidation that we’ve witnessed in our country over the past couple of decades. When two or three companies are allowed to control both the media and the messaging via television, radio, newspapers, digital and mobile channels, we all suffer. Just about every Canadian has a nightmare story about one of the telecom giants (and Bell figures at the top of most of those nightmare story lists). Canadians already pay the highest cell phone rates in the world, and that’s only getting worse due to the lack of competition in the marketplace. The telecoms are all working hard to produce exclusive content, and are licensing it to their rivals for high costs. The limited choice in television service offerings is leading many Canadians to simply pull the plug rather than put up with poor service and content offerings for high prices.

Canadians are fed up. And plenty of them spoke up at the CRTC hearings. There were 9,700 interventions filed, and while many of them were from rival media conglomerates such as Rogers, plenty of others were from the general public. They were standing up to say that having one company in charge of nearly half of what we see, hear, read and watch isn’t in anyone’s best interest.

I’ve been really hard on the CRTC in the past for being in the pockets of the telecom companies and shirking its mandate to protect the consumer. Thanks to this decision, I have to issue this blog’s first-ever kudos to the CRTC. It’s a step in the right direction.  Keep it up.

Players, owners, settle this thing already. We need our hockey back.

- – -

Venezuelans went to the polls today in an historic election that, for the first time in 14 years, provided some hope that the country would extract itself from the iron rule of Hugo Chavez.

The results are being watched worldwide. Venezuela is one of the world’s largest producers of oil and the Chavez regime has firmly allied itself with Cuba, Iran, Bolivia and against the USA. Obviously there are wider geo-political implications here.

And the world’s Jewish community is watching closely too. As Ben Cohen writes in Ha’aretz, Chavez’s opponent, Henrique Capriles, is a Catholic with Jewish lineage and a descendent of Holocaust survivors, and the antisemitism card was widely used by the Chavez camp during the election campaign:

Chavez’s strategy in dealing with the Capriles campaign has avoided actual policy debate. He has focused instead on demonizing his opponent as, variously, an “imperialist,” a “capitalist,” a “little bourgeois,” and – inevitably, given Capriles’ Jewish origins and Chavez’s historic willingness to deploy anti-Semitism for political purposes – a “Zionist.”

These attacks have highlighted the vulnerability of the Venezuelan Jewish community, whose numbers have declined from 30,000 – before Chavez came to power – to just 9,000 now. As a September study by Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism noted, “recent years have witnessed a rise in anti-Semitic manifestations, including vandalism, media attacks, caricatures, and physical attacks on Venezuelan Jewish institutions.”

This election is about all Venezuelans, not just the small and besieged Jewish community, of course. People reportedly lined up for hours across the country, and transplanted citizens cast their ballots from around the world. The turnout is being reported at over 70%. And while some early exit polls are predicting a narrow Caprile victory, it’s bound to be close — raising questions about whether Chavez will respect the result in the event of a loss.

The riot was a culmination of more than five years of tensions at Concordia between the radical left-wing CSU groups, which were dominated by members of the pro-Palestinian group SPHR, and pro-Israel groups like Hillel.

Concordia Hillel had invited Benjamin Netanyahu, who at the time was the former Israeli PM, to speak on campus. The radical anti-Israel groups saw this as a reason to mount a mass protest, which quickly turned into a full-fledged riot. Protesters smashed windows, hurled antisemitic slogans at ticket-holders, assaulted and beat up several attendees, and were eventually contained by police. Five people were arrested and faced charges in connection with the riot. The rioting also inspired two documentary films, a rash of ill-advised free speech restrictions on campus, and worldwide infamy for my school.

I’d graduated from Concordia the previous spring, after spending three years on campus dealing with the events that led to that flashpoint, and they were fresh in my mind. As it happened, September 9th 2002 was my first day of my first post-university job, and news of what was happening back at my former campus filtered to me as I was sitting in my new office immersed in training materials.

In a way, the riot was the catalyst that inspired me to start this blog a couple of months later. I focused a lot on the goings-on and events at Concordia for the first couple of years, though the posts eventually tapered off as I gained more distance from my university years. But at the time, as a recent graduate with a lot of friends still directly involved in the day-to-day events on campus, I had a lot to say, and this blog gave me a platform to share news and views about the events that followed.

Now, a decade later, Benjamin Netanyahu is once again Israeli Prime Minister, the radical Left is busy bringing down Quebec governments and staging pots and pans protests, and Concordia University is in the hands of a new generation of student leaders who, since 2003, have been mostly moderates. However, some students have noted that the situation isn’t necessarily any less hostile to Jewish students, just quieter. Concordia has hosted an “Israel Apartheid Week“, an event by the ever-present SPHR, for the past 8 years running. Despite the presence of a couple of new pro-Israel student groups at Concordia, the tensions continue. It’s not difficult to see why Jewish students continue to choose McGill over Concordia by an overwhelming margin.

Furthermore, on university campuses across North America and Europe pro-Israel students are still dealing with having their right to free speech denied, barrages of anti-Israel propaganda from campus activist groups, “boycott Israel” events and other such nonsense. A recent study by the University of California, published in July of this year, found that:

“Jewish students are confronting significant and difficult climate issues as a result of activities on campus which focus specifically on Israel, its right to exist and its treatment of Palestinians. The anti-Zionism and Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movements and other manifestations of anti-Israel sentiment and activity create significant issues through themes and language which portray Israel and, many times, Jews in ways which project hostility, engender a feeling of isolation, and undermine Jewish students’ sense of belonging and engagement with outside communities.”

Another report released earlier this year found that “More than 40% of students confirm anti-Semitism on their campus; some 41% of students have encountered anti-Israel remarks made in class by professors.” From North America to Europe, the situation for Jewish students remains pretty grim.

As Quebec students continue to lobby for free or cheaper education, it’s worth asking just what sort of education they will be receiving.

Normally, I embrace my outsider status. I’m the liberal in a room full of conservatives, the conservative in a room of Liberals. I’m a Jewish person among non-Jews and an atheist among Jews, a bilingual Quebecer in the RoC and a federalist anglo Canadian in Quebec.

I’m accustomed to being the dissenting opinion, the devil’s advocate. I love to debate and I admit I sometimes emphasize the differences just to challenge preconceived notions. In a single day, I can go from seamlessly defending the federalist position to my sovereigntist friends, then meet up with my parents for dinner and try to explain where sovereigntists are coming from and that they have some legitimate points. Even in cases where I am part of the majority, I do my best to pull myself out of the context and take up the dissenting argument, sometimes for the mental exercise and sometimes because I think it’s important. I don’t always succeed in seeing things from the other point of view, but I sure as hell try.

See, the thing is, I abhor echo chambers and mob mentality. I think we humans have a natural tendency to gravitate towards those who think and believe like we do, and in doing so, we fail to truly understand one another or to see things from one another’s point of view. And that’s dangerous. Very, very dangerous. Green Day said it best: “Down with the moral majority; I wanna be a minority.”

But sometimes, you know, it gets lonely.

Now we have Pauline Marois, who has just been elected — by the slimmest of margins — to lead a minority government. She will have to get her agenda past at least one of the opposition parties in order to prop up her government and avoid triggering an election. She spent the entire campaign trail vilifying minorities, spewing racist and xenophobic hatred against anyone with a different skin colour, ethnic background, national origin or — most of all — mother tongue. How ironic (and poetic) that after preaching so much hatred of minorities, she now gets to lead one.

In her victory speech, she appeared to have grasped the implications of this minority government situation rather quickly. Sounding amazingly conciliatory in contrast to the tone she had taken during the campaign, she congratulated the other leaders (which was met with a chorus of boos in the crowd, I might add), tempered her agenda by speaking of cooperation, and even did the unthinkable and spoke a couple of sentences in English. I don’t trust her further than I can throw a truck, but I’m sure I’m not the only anglophone who was watching last night and was actually kind of impressed.

(What happened afterwards was a horrific tragedy, appears to have been the act of a lone crazed gunman, and should be roundly and unequivocally condemned by all decent human beings no matter their political leanings. Violence has no place in politics. We settle our differences at the ballot box, not at gunpoint. Not that this post has anything to do with that. But it needs to be said, with emphasis.)

Anyway, as it turns out, my minority wasn’t as lonely as it seemed during the campaign, where all I would have to say to anyone was that I was voting for the Charest Liberals, only to be greeted with dirty looks and “you WHAT???” I joked to a few people that I would be the only person in my (solidly Péquiste) riding voting Liberal this time around. Turns out, I was one of over 5,000 in my riding… and one of 31% in the whole province. That’s right, the PQ only won 0.7% more of the popular vote than the Liberals did, and their victory hangs on a measly 4 seats. The “silent majority” that Charest had heralded months ago did not materialize, true, but the “silent minority” was much bigger than any of the pundits or pollsters predicted. Sure, many of those people held their noses and cast their vote — myself included. I’m not thrilled with the Liberals. But I think they were a damn sight better than any of the alternatives. And it might’ve been nice to feel during the campaign period that this level of support existed.

I’ve voted for the Charest Liberals when they won a majority government before. So yes, I was technically part of a majority then. But even then, I was a minority — an anglophone, a take-for-granted vote, someone who, I’m told, doesn’t “get” Quebec despite living here my whole life.

So if I’m not a majority in Quebec, surely I am in Canada, right? English-speaking, federalist, born here, not part of any visible minority group… I’m basically the definition of majority when it comes to Canada, right? Not so much. In May of last year, I watched with dismay while the rest of Canada, province after province, went Tory Blue. On that night, I felt a wave of sympathy for Quebec sovereigntists because Quebec clearly chose another path and I could understand how they felt. How we felt. Disconnected. Disillusioned. Not a part of this. A minority within our own country. I’m a heck of a lot more connected to my Canadian identity than to my Quebecois one, but I don’t understand the direction that our country has chosen to turn, and I feel increasingly out of step with it as well. A member of a centre-left minority whose political party of choice was essentially wiped off the political map last May.

It’s a curious facet of the human experience, this instinct we all have to define “us” and “them”, to create artificial divisions and to seek out those among whom we feel comfortable, secure and like family. It’s a defensive reaction, but it’s an understandable one. At heart, most of us revert to our five-year-old selves when we’re afraid. All we really want is someone to say “I understand you. It’s okay.” So we form political parties and social alliances and groups, and we band together and we find common causes to band against, and sometimes it gets really ugly, but sometimes it feels really great, too. I was disgusted by those who threw smoke bombs on the metro, but I could understand those who were out with the pots and pans this spring. I didn’t agree with them, but I understood their desire to feel like they were participating in something bigger than themselves, to feel like they belonged.

Quebec is my home. I was born here, my parents and grandparents were born here. But it often feels like there’s no group for me here. There isn’t a single political party in Quebec that truly represents my views, or even comes close. The Liberals are sort of the best-of-the-worst alternative. But it’s hard to deny that I’m very often out of step with the discourse around me.

Normally, that’s okay. Vive la différence, and we are normally (again, with the exception of the terrible events of last night) very good at having not-always-polite-but-usually-respectful political discourse. I’m happy to debate, to educate or be educated, and to agree to disagree when it’s all said and done.  I’ll even happily go out for a beer afterwards.

I’m tired, though. I’m tired of always focusing on how we differ instead of on all the ways in which we’re alike. And there are so many ways, but they always seem to get ignored in politics in favour of emphasizing those differences for political gain. I’m tired of always being an outsider, never part of the group. Never part of the “nous” that Pauline Marois referred to in her campaign, no matter how long my family has been here or how much French I learn. I’m tired of scanning Twitter and reading the many thousands of posts that overwhelmingly reflect the exact opposite of how I think and feel, and I’m tired of the sense of alienation that comes from the feeling that I will never, ever get to experience what it feels like to be part of a majority in this province.

And then the sun rises the next day, and I pick myself up and I remind myself of all the reasons why it’s good to be a minority. Why it’s a strength, not a weakness.

Welcome to being a minority, Mme Marois. I don’t think you’ll necessarily enjoy it. But I hope you learn something.

Here’s why I think that’s a dumb idea.

Polls can be wrong. They often are. Witness the last federal election, or, more recently, the provincial election in Alberta. Countless other examples. Polls have a margin of error; they rely on small sample sizes; people lie or change their minds. Just because you heard things would go one way in the polls doesn’t mean they can’t go entirely another way.

You don’t know what everyone else will do. The Quebec electorate is notoriously unpredictable and can turn on a dime. So-called “strategic” voting assumes that you do. But if you’re wrong? Your strategic move could end up delivering exactly the opposite result. For instance, voting for the CAQ in a riding where the Liberals are assumed to be out of contention (or vice-versa)? That could put the PQ in power, if there’s enough vote-splitting between the Liberals and the CAQ.

You could end up voting for someone even worse… and what if they win? In my riding, a longtime Pequiste stronghold, the only party running even close to the PQ in the polls is Quebec Solidaire. Now, I know a lot of people like QS, but they pretty much stand for everything I disagree with the most — anti-democracy, hard-line socialism, nationalism, anti-Israel, pro-anarchy, you name it. A “strategic” vote for the QS might make logical sense in terms of preventing a PQ majority, but I’d never do it. After all, they could lose, and then I’ll have voted for a party I don’t believe in and actually hate intently for nothing. Or, worse yet, they could win… and then I’ll have helped elect a local MP from a party that I pretty much loathe with every fibre of my being. Not to mention, the QS holding the balance of power would very likely help, not stymie, the PQ’s drive towards sovereignty. Nope, better to be one of a few people voting Liberal in a riding where they have no hope. At least I’ll be able to look myself in the mirror the next morning.

It hurts democracy by providing all the wrong incentives to politicians. Jean Charest lost a lot of respect at the outset of the campaign when, right out of the gate, he warned anglophones and federalists not to vote for the CAQ or anyone else because it would play right into the PQ’s hands. Now, I’m a Liberal supporter, but I wasn’t the only one who was pissed. Meanwhile, Marois has been using similar tactics, warning hard-core separatists not to vote for Quebec Solidaire or Option Nationale lest they cost her a majority. The fact is, people don’t like to be told to vote “against” something; they’d sooner vote “for” something. And in an election where most people are holding their noses and voting for the least-worst option anyway, outright calls for strategic voting merely encourage this type of behaviour among politicians. If we ourselves admit to voting tactically instead of for what we believe in, how can we then turn around and accuse the politicians of failing to give us something to believe in? It’s up to us to demand it from our representatives.

There will be a September 5th. One way or the other (or the other… or the other…), we’ll wake up Wednesday morning to election results. And, regardless of how things turn out, you’ll have to live with how you cast your vote. The only vote you’ll never regret is the one for the party that best represents the vision of the Quebec that you wish to live in on September 5th. Any other vote will only leave you with a sour taste in your mouth, no matter how things turn out.

Remember to vote on Tuesday. And when you do, vote your conscience.

According to the Directuer général des élections du Québec, there have been 33,547 donations in 2012 to date to Quebec’s political parties, totalling just over $5.3 million dollars.

Of those $5.3 million dollars:

• 41% was raised by the Liberals
• 34% by the Parti Québécois
• 17% by the CAQ
• 5% by Québec Solidaire
• 2% by the Option Nationale
• 1% by other parties

Money doesn’t equal votes, of course. One might expect that the more business-friendly Liberals would raise more money than the more union-friendly PQ. When you look at the number of individual donations as opposed to the sum of the dollars raised, the breakdown shifts entirely:

• 42% of all donations were to the PQ
• 26% to the Liberals
• 15% to Québec Solidaire
• 13% to the CAQ
• 4% to Option Nationale
• 1% to other parties

That’s almost a complete reversal, and is probably more indicative of numbers on election day, since one person = one vote regardless of wealth. The PQ is well ahead on sheer donor volume, suggesting that if donor support translates to the ballot box, it will likely not only form the next government, but in all probability win a majority.

It also suggests the economic breakdown of voters by party. For instance, Quebec Solidaire has raised 5% of the money with 15% of the donations, suggesting many small donations versus fewer larger ones. This fits with its radical-left communist stance and its young, student-oriented base of support. In contrast, the Liberals and, to some degree, the CAQ, seem to be supported by wealthier voters, more willing to donate amounts closer to the $1,000 personal limit. It should come as no surprise that the PQ is actively calling for this limit to be reduced to $100, while the Liberals are against. Like most things in politics, cui bono?

Where the numbers get interesting is when you look at who is gaining momentum. In 2011, a similar analysis showed that of $6.7 million dollars raised by the provincial parties, roughly 52% went to the Liberals, 31% to the PQ, and 7% to the CAQ, formed only in November of last year. That suggests that the CAQ’s fundraising has siphoned money mostly from the Liberals, who fell 11 points in the scale, versus the PQ, which fell only 3. Does this also indicate that the CAQ’s voter support will mainly come at the expense of the Liberals, perhaps splitting the vote in close ridings and leading to the election of a PQ candidate? Not necessarily, but very likely, especially when you consider how this mirrors what recent polls are telling us.

Finally, if you’re interested to know who is donating to whom, a simple search on the DG’s website will tell you that as well. For example, the Saputo family donates to the Liberals, as do the Bronfmans and the Desmarais. Guy Laliberté has in the past supported the PQ, the Liberals and the ADQ.

While it’s true that Charest has always been better at campaigning than at governing, after nearly a decade in power, it’s likely to be somebody else’s turn at the helm. And while Quebec public opinion can turn on a dime (just ask the NDP), all indications are that the “somebody else” will be Pauline Marois and the PQ. And in this election, the anger against Charest’s Liberals — over the tuition hike issue, over the corruption scandals, and over various ills, perceived or real over the years — will be tough for him to overcome with mere campaign promises.

Marois, for her part, has done a good job of positioning the PQ as the de facto alternative for those angry with the status quo. The party was in freefall and chaotic disarray a few months ago, but by falling back on their two stalwart issues — language and unions — they’ve managed to rebound impressively. The student movement claims it will remain neutral, but in reality, it has no love lost for the CAQ and its plans to also hike tuition, and the Quebec Solidaire is unlikely to form a government. So the PQ, with its red-square-wearing stunts, becomes the default choice. The students rarely vote in droves, but the union folks do, and we can expect a lot of separatist rhetoric combined with chants of “solidarité” in the streets over the next few weeks.

Will a PQ government mean another referendum? Not necessarily. Marois is promising a lot of fighting with Ottawa but is remaining coy on the r-word, perhaps recognizing that people are tired of talking about the issue. Still, though, there is less support than ever from the ROC for Quebec staying a part of Canada, and with nearly two decades gone since the last go-around, anything can happen.

But I for one am not panicking. Life will go on. Quebec is unlikely to separate, even with a PQ government. Ironically, the rights of anglos and minorities sometimes do better during a PQ mandate, while they’re busy governing, than during a Liberal mandate, when the PQ can snipe from the opposition sidelines.

Prediction: PQ minority government.

You and I didn’t exactly get off to the best start. Last year, I wrote you a letter about how badly I wanted to like you, but how, after a few bad dates, I’d decided that the relationship was not meant to be.

Flash forward one year, and these days, I’m singing a different tune. I decided to give you another chance, and while it hasn’t been perfect, this is actually turning into a pretty decent relationship. One I could see lasting long term.

So what changed since last June?

Location, location, location

The biggest problem I had when I tested out Bixi last year was that there was never any place to park my bike. I’d arrive to my office in Vieux-Montréal at morning rush hour, and all the spots would be gone. It was too big a risk to take, since no parking spots meant costly and frustrating delays.

When I started my new job last September, I resolved to turn over a new leaf with respect to my commute. No longer was I working downtown, fighting with thousands of other commuters for a Bixi spot. No, instead, I was working in St-Henri, a “from” instead of a “to” area.

In the mornings, the Bixi racks would empty out, as local residents took out bikes to head east to their downtown offices. My westbound commute was literally against Bixi traffic, and I found that it was relatively easy to find a parking spot for my bike every morning. Furthermore, my building has convenient showers and changing rooms so I can freshen up and change my clothes, rather than spending the day all sweaty and gross.

Suddenly, Bixi became an attractive option again. My commute got longer, sure; the ride down takes me about 30 minutes as opposed to 15. But it still takes me less time to get to work by Bixi than it does by métro.

I signed up for an annual membership last fall after a couple of test rides, and found that I enjoyed my commute a lot more.

As for the commute home, to be honest, I’ve been mostly using the métro to get back up. Your bikes aren’t bad, but they’re not the most comfortable to ride, and the uphills are killer. Especially the Atwater tunnel; I’ve yet to figure out how to pedal the heavy monstrosity of a bike up that hill. Still, on a few days when public transit was particularly bad (more on that later), I did do the uphill ride, and it’s nice to know that it’s a viable option.

Improved communication

Your customer service has gotten a lot better, thanks to some hard lessons about social media. Financing scandals aside, your reps seem to be making a concerted effort this year to listen and respond to comments and questions on Facebook and Twitter.

You may not think so, but it makes a big difference. When a station moved seemingly inexplicably, when I had a website problem with my invoice, and when there were questions about a system outage, just knowing I could contact someone to get the information I needed did a lot to inspire more confidence in the system.

There’s still some work to be done on this front. The (mis)handling of the Bixi Poésie issue is a case in point. Comments on your Facebook page seem to be answered at random, and I’ve noticed that those posted in French have a higher likelihood of being answered than those in English — something that doesn’t bode well for Bixi’s potential attractiveness to tourists. And your phone customer service reps haven’t quite caught up to your social media folks in terms of responsiveness. But I’m seeing an improvement since last year, so kudos for the step in the right direction.

Expanded bike path network

We still need more, but the City of Montreal is doing a decent job expanding and maintaining the network of bike paths and lanes. It’s made cycling through downtown more practical and less dangerous. The De Maisonneuve path is still overcrowded at rush hour, and I hate how all the traffic lights are synchronized for cars instead of for cyclists. But I must say, I really enjoy the start of my ride each morning, cycling through Parc Lafontaine.

Best of the worst?

The main reason I have been using and enjoying Bixi these days actually has nothing to do with Bixi at all, but with the student protest movement, construction season, festival season, and the associated public transit and traffic woes.

My morning routine goes something like this: Wake up, get ready, listen to the radio for the news, and take a gamble on which option — car, métro, or Bixi — is likely to get me to work on time with the fewest headaches.

And lately, between the construction, the police blockading roads and student protests every day or two, and various smoke bombs and other related or unrelated métro shutdowns, most days, the answer to that question has been Bixi. When you acted quickly to add extra depots and bikes in response to a massive métro shutdown, that did a lot to encourage me that biking was the way to go.

In other words, it’s not that Bixi’s so much better; it’s that everything else has gotten worse. STM is no longer “more reliable than Bixi”, and that’s made a difference.

Still room for improvement

In summary, my one year later status report is: Improvement shown, but still more work to be done. Some things to work on include:

• Bike maintenance issues. Already this season, I’ve encountered a dozen broken bikes, some of which I had to return immediately. Broken seats and chains and flat tires are the most frequent issues I’ve encountered. I don’t particularly mind the advertising on the bikes (though it is a bit of an eyesore, but I’m happy to let sponsors pay for part of the cost of my membership) but vandalism seems to still be a problem.
• Water bottle racks, please? I know Bixi is intended for short rides, but frankly, as we get into the hot summer months, a 45-minute ride in the hot summer sun requires hydration. Simply adding a water bottle rack to the bike design would do a lot to help out on that front.
• Annoying website issues persist. The map is clunky and hard to read, the site won’t remember my login from one session to the next, and system data is frequently outdated. Luckily there are alternate sites, like nixi.ca, with far superior user experiences. I don’t have a smartphone but the fact that there’s no official Bixi app yet, I find shocking, considering the practicality for most users.
• Too-short season. We had a late start to winter and an early spring this year. Why, then, couldn’t the Bixi season be extended? I don’t necessarily think we have to keep Bixi up and running all winter, but a bit of a longer season would be nice when the weather allows. After all, we’ve paid for “annual” memberships, right?
• Management issues. Bixi has been in the news a lot lately for issues related to its mismanagement and questions about whether Montreal will continue to be able to manage international sales. The latest news on this front is encouraging, but there’s still a lot of uncertainty related to the ownership and management of the service.
• Network efficiency issues. There are still some big problems with the redistribution of bikes from full stations to empty ones, though admittedly, my route these days is such that this impacts me far less than it would impact others. Still, from what I gather on Bixi’s site, most of the comments and complaints are about the lack of bikes or the lack of spots in certain areas. This isn’t an easy logistical problem to solve, and I appreciate that you’re doing what you can, but a few more of those “depot” stations would go a long way towards cutting back user frustration.

Map of Bixi after morning rush hour, with downtown stations full and residential areas empty. Source: Nixi.ca.

Clearly, there’s still a ways to go before Bixi becomes as reliable as other methods of transport. But, despite all of that, Bixi, I have to say, félicitations for the improvements since last year.

Sincerely,

A still-not-entirely-satisfied-but-getting-there Bixi customer.

According to the organization that represents university heads, CREPUQ, Concordia is the Montreal school with the highest dropout rate. UQÀM is hard on its heels. Université de Montréal is substantially better, though still worse than the Canadian average. McGill is the only Quebec university that graduates a greater share of its students than the national average.

[ . . . ]

That’s because the academic disciplines from which the boycott draws most of its participants, according to the boycotters’ website (tinyurl.com/7hk59pr), are the same disciplines that, according to CREPUQ (tinyurl.com/8yzzvoa), have the highest dropout rates. These typically include geography, fine arts, education, literature, sociology, anthropology and political science.

Aubin’s analysis — both of dropout rates and of areas of study — completely ignores/disregards CEGEP. Surely any analysis of post-secondary dropout rates or of the value of trade diplomas versus university education needs to take the CEGEP system into consideration. I don’t have statistics handy, but the CEGEPs typically have higher dropout rates than either universities or high schools. And they’re free. Because of that, students have the freedom to experiment, to switch programs, to veer off from one course only to circle back on another course later on. All without wasting any money, other than failure fees or some textbook costs. But those who do graduate are either completing pre-university programs or are getting those trade degrees that Aubin thinks we desperately need.

And here, I disagree with Aubin’s conclusion. A healthy society doesn’t just need more trained monkeys to fill jobs; we need thinkers and educated people with ideas. We need people to challenge the status quo. We need not only employees but entrepreneurs, not only functionaries but luminaries.

The thing is, not everyone is cut out to be a luminary. And in the fight for “accessible” education, we tend to forget that providing people with the keys to the castle doesn’t mean they’re all going to be kings and queens. Life is, after all, what you make of your opportunities.

There’s a spurious correlation at work in Aubin’s article. Studying geography, sociology, liberal arts or political science does not cause one to drop out. But these disciplines tend to attract the most politicized (in Quebec, that means far left-wing) students and professors.  They also tend to have less clear career paths for students after graduation, which may be contributing to those same students’ disillusionment with university education — and with their prospects for success in general. Hence the higher rate of participation in the protests, compared to, say, business or engineering majors.

When I was at Concordia, the Arts & Science and Fine Arts faculties regularly rabble-roused in campus politics, while the JMSB (business) and Engineering faculties routinely stayed out of such things. I remember the oddity of being a marketing student in a communication studies class, the frequent scapegoat for a room full of self-described “anti-capitalists” who liked to wax poetic about the evils of corporations. Some of them have since graduated, and are probably working for the aforementioned “evil” corporations. Others are still out rabble-rousing. Plus ça change.

That’s not to say that there isn’t an important point being made in Aubin’s article. McGill is the only university in Montreal with lower-than-average drop0ut rates. It’s also the only university to attract a majority anglophone student body, largely from other provinces. As a Léger poll published in the Gazette last month indicates, there’s a stark difference between how education is valued among anglophone, francophone and allophones in this province:

Among younger Quebecers, we see the same divergence. About 85 per cent of Quebec allophone students and 80 per cent of Quebec anglophone students see a university degree as a minimal requirement [for success], compared with just 40 per cent of francophone students surveyed by Léger.

It’s a classic chicken-or-egg situation. CEGEP has been free and university has been cheap for over four decades. Like a ten-dollar diamond, nobody attributes much value to a cheap university degree.

“Accessible education” should mean that anyone who deserves to go to university should be able to, regardless of financial circumstance. It doesn’t mean that university should be open to everyone, whether or not they care about getting a degree. Because then, it becomes a farce of itself.

If you think your ethnic-sounding last name is preventing you from finding a job in Quebec, you may be right.Candidates called Tremblay or Morin are 64 per cent more likely to get an interview than someone with the same qualifications whose name is Ben Amin or Traoré, according to a study released Tuesday by the Quebec Human Rights and Youth Rights Commission.

A research assistant applied for 581 jobs from December 2010 to May 2011 under false names, half of them foreign-sounding and the other half typically francophone Québécois. Both types of fictional job-seekers had equivalent qualifications and had been educated in Quebec.

Nearly 40 per cent of candidates with francophone-sounding names, like Sébastien Bélanger, were offered an interview, compared to only 22.5 per cent of those with ethnic-sounding names, like Mahmoud El Kamal.

For years, the usual suspects have been calling upon immigrants — some of them second- or third-generation — to learn French, get educated locally, and better “integrate” into Québec society. This research illustrates the nasty little truth that none of it matters. Employers don’t want French-speaking “ethnic” employees; they want pur-laine québécois ones.

It’s the kind of discrimination that won’t be solved by taking French classes. The only way I really see this changing is by having more diverse senior managers and company owners. Because like it or not, people still like to hire people who are most “like” them. Not getting an interview is the kind of thing that’s really impossible to prove in a human rights case. It’s quiet discrimination and nobody ever ends up having to answer for it.

As the reasonable accommodation hearings showed us, there’s a lot of xenophobia buried just under the surface of our supposedly “open, tolerant” society. Louise Beaudoin turned a few heads last year with her statement that “multiculturalism is not a Québec value“. Apparently, neither is equal opportunity. Unless your name is Tremblay, that is.

Flooding at the Palais de Congres. Photo Credit: Veronique Benhamou. Source: Montreal Gazette.

While the flooding did not cause any catastrophic damages in the traditional sense of the word, it did raise chilling echos of the Flood of ’87, and more recently, flooding in 2005. Each time this happens, it only underscores the urgent state of disrepair of our roads, sewers, water mains and infrastructure. But nobody ever seems to do anything about it.

Many homeowners are also discovering the hard way this morning that flood insurance does not exist in Canada. No insurance company offers it; you cannot buy it even if you want to. Extended clauses for water damage specifically exclude flooding. This is something that desperately needs to be changed, through regulation if necessary.

I was lucky; my apartment’s up on the third floor and escaped any damage. I got a bit drenched walking outside in the rain, and an event I attended at a local pub was a bit hindered by the fact that the pub’s kitchen had flooded so they weren’t serving food, but that’s about the extent of it.  A number of my friends were not so lucky, with flooded basements and exploding toilets and drains.

As for the student protesters, I’m thinking they could’ve put their pots and pans to good use: bailing water.

1. It’s about ideology, not money.

Have you had conversations with the red-square folks lately? I have. I live in the Plateau; a good many of my neighbours, acquaintances or even friends are wearing red badges these days. They’re not all violent anarchists throwing bricks on the metro; many of them are educated professionals with considered reasons for supporting this movement. But if you talk to them, you’ll quickly understand that those reasons have little to do with dollars and cents, and everything to do with ideological bent.

In fact, if you should point out that this move will still keep Quebec’s tuition the lowest in the country, that bursary extensions for students with family incomes of under $65,000 will mean that only the upper middle-class and upward will be affected by the hikes, or that even after the hike, the inflation-adjusted tuition will still be lower than what their parents paid in the 60s, the red square folks will shut down all those points. Instead, they’ll come back with allegations of “systematic corruption”, “social injustice” and “large-scale societal change”. They’ll talk about their hatred of Charest, they’ll bring up large corporations and their profit motives, and they’ll wax poetic about quasi-socialist ideals that don’t exist in practice in any country on earth.

It’s become a zero-sum game because the government doesn’t understand the playing field that they’re on. This isn’t about a few hundred dollars over five or even seven years. It’s about the way the government represents “power” to a movement who believes that all power is inherently corrupt. Perhaps the irony is that they fail to look in a mirror. Which brings us to…

2. The protest leaders aren’t really students.

Quebec’s system has very strong legal protections for unions to protect members from management. But who protects members from their unions? The irony is that the student union leadership is just as corrupt as the governments that they decry.

Oh, some of them may register for a token class per semester to maintain their student status, but the union leaders and organizers aren’t really students — not in any way that counts. The actual students — the ones who want to earn their degrees — are the biggest victims of all. They’re the ones being blockaded from their classes, being forced to lose a semester and the associated fees, and being prevented from getting the education they’ve worked hard for. They are being held hostage by a handful of aspiring politicians using student government as a stepping stone for their own goals, and by a large group of pseudo-anarchists.

I’m not suggesting that the majority of protesters are non-students. I’m saying that the ones leading the negotiations (or lack thereof) and taking a hard line against any kind of solution have the luxury of having nothing to lose and everything to gain. They’re aspiring to careers as union leaders, negotiators or maybe PQ or Quebec Solidaire politicians. They don’t really believe that they’ll graduate and join the corporate workforce at any point. And in a classic case of “if I can’t have her, no-one can”, they’re prepared to throw out the hopes and dreams of all the students they supposedly represent in the process.

3. It’s a language issue.

Quick: What do McGill University, Westmount, the West Island and the Montreal Gazette have in common? It’s no secret that the support for the student protests has been overwhelmingly low in the English-speaking community, and is much higher among francophones. And it’s no coincidence, either.

I’ve already said that this is about ideology, not money. And anglophone Quebecers have long been shut out (or have distanced ourselves, depending on who you ask) from the national Quebecois identity. The idea that students should shut up, go to class, and work to earn their success, dammit… well, that’s an English-Canada take on the subject. Just read the editorials in the French press and compare them to the ones in the English media, if you don’t believe me.

As Mike Spry translated for RoCers in his widely-circulated column, Quebec is the Canada we should want:

The student protest is just one element of the Canada I see in Quebec. The Globe and Mail’s editorial board wrote Tuesday morning that Quebec Premier Jean Charest’s compromise with the students was “sending a message that Quebec’s social entitlements will not last forever.” They went on to describe these entitlements: $7-a-day daycare, lowest tuition in Canada, subsidized hydro-electricity, and reasonably priced pharmaceuticals. The use of the word “entitlements” was a poor choice, but one the Globe obviously chose as a slight of those who believe that such “entitlements” are an essential part of the fabric of this nation. Here, it has a negative connotation that suggests that Quebec is Canada’s petulant child. Instead, I see these as the social necessities that are fundamental to not only the human condition, but also the success of a social democracy.

It would be unfair and simplistic to say that francophones have more of sense of entitlement than anglophones. But we don’t exist in a vacuum here. The popular narrative of Quebec — the one that paints all anglos as rich, corrupt Westmounters living in their ivory towers and making money off the backs of the poor, francophone workers — has persisted, even despite copious evidence that the economic facts of the province no longer reflect this reality, and haven’t for decades.

In short, “Anglo” is shorthand for everything the protest movement is fighting against. It’s no wonder so few of us feel like this is our fight.

4. It’s an election year.

When Pauline Marois and the PQ MNAs donned the red square at the Assemble Nationale, they did more than just take up the cause of the student movement; they became its ideological sponsors. And sure, some in the anglo media argued that this would cost them support. That’s living in a bubble, though. It’s been surprisingly easy for Marois and company to distance themselves from the more violent extremists while embracing the cause of the “average protesting student” in the name of accessible education for all. (Francois Legault and his CAQ party have tried to get in on the action, too, but they’ve done a much less effective job, since they’ve mostly been fence-sitting.)

Ever since the PQ promised, in a fit of idealism, a world with “free tuition for all” back in ’76 — along with a rosy future of a utopian separate Quebec, of course — it’s the dream that refuses to die. Even though subsequent governments, even PQ governments, have admitted that this is an impractical and unrealistic idea, the seeds of it have remained, and today’s student protesters believe that it forms an inalienable part of their rights as Quebec citizens. If you have trouble grasping this one, just substitute “higher education” with “healthcare” and “Quebec” with “Canadian”. For most Canadians, medicare is something we assume is our basic, natural-born right, a part of our national identity and something we’ll fight to keep — even despite the practical problems with spiralling healthcare costs.

Well, this is part of the national identity of the Quebecois psyche when it comes to education. True, the sovereignty movement has evolved and changed since 1976. But as I noted after the last federal election when the media in the ROC was talking about the trouncing that the Bloc Quebecois took at the polls, believing that sovereignty is dead is simplistic and naive.

The PQ was in freefall just a year ago, bleeding members and support and fading into obscurity. Luckily for them, Quebecers are notoriously fickle and trend-influenced when it comes to politics (just witness the aforementioned “orange crush” that swept the province in the last federal election). The PQ has two standby issues: language and “social justice”, and didn’t hesitate to stir both up. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that the student protests were orchestrated by the PQ — Charest did that all on his own when he put the tuition freeze — long known as the “third rail” of Quebec politics — back on the table. But they haven’t hesitated to fund, support and exploit the protests for their own political gains.

And it’s working. By positioning the fight of the students as part of the plight of the common man against power and corruption, the PQ stands to make big gains. True, young people don’t vote, but union workers do. Most of the unions are supporting the student protest on grounds of ideological “solidarity”, and this is the PQ’s sweet spot.

Jean Charest and the Liberals have been in power for 10 years. In all likelihood, when Quebecers go to the polls in 2013, it will be someone else’s turn. Marois, by supporting the student movement, has done a lot to ensure that someone will be her and the PQ. Of course, then, she’ll have to grapple with the same budget deficit as Charest is facing. And she won’t be able to propose this as a solution. But no worries, the PQ’s long-standing solution always exists:  Neglect infrastructure, wave flags, and tax the rich to the point where they pick up and move themselves and their tax dollars to Ontario. But hey, at least the students will be happy.

5. The Charest government has already lost.

Many in the student movement painted Line Beauchamp’s resignation as a victory — the first domino to fall in their ultimate goal of toppling the Charest government. Of course, the Liberals hastened to put a replacement in place and to reassure Quebecers that this move doesn’t mean that they’ve caved.

The truth is, the government caved the minute it started negotiating. Just as they caved in 2005. The student movement isn’t interested in 7 years instead of 5, in expanded bursaries or oversight committees or in any of the increasingly desperate offers of the government. They want nothing more or less than Charest’s head on a platter. And if they should waver, their PQ backers will be there to ensure that they don’t back down.

Charest’s only way to win this fight would have been to take the democratic high ground early on and to state his position, and not back down from it. Polls show that between 55 and 65 percent of Quebecers support the tuition hikes. Charest needed to declare that he has the backing of the silent majority, and that this needs to happen. And he needed to clearly state that he would not negotiate on the basis of violence or fear, and would not allow Quebec to become what Josh Freed refers to as a “mobocracy”. You don’t get to be right simply by being loud, and Charest could have taken up the cause of ordinary people (particularly those most affected and inconvenienced by the students’ me-first attitude) to showcase his leadership qualities.

Unfortunately, that ship sailed the minute the government put their first counter-offer on the table. Since then, the PLQ has been negotiating with itself, offering more and more in exchange for nothing. And as a result it’s unlikely that the PLQ will survive this crisis, regardless of the outcome.

ETA 5/19: Both Lysiane Gagnon in La Presse and Josh Freed in the Montreal Gazette have written columns in the past two days about two or maybe three of the above points. Hmmm, maybe they’ve been reading my blog?

In that time period, they have increased the price of my bill 14 times, for a total increase of more than $24 a month more for the same services. That’s more than a 30% price increase, for those who aren’t counting. During that same time period, they’ve made serious billing errors five times, one of which cost me several months of follow-up calls, and they’ve had countless service outages. I’ve phoned up their retentions department as a matter of rote for these past few years, each time wasting my time in order to go through the motions to negotiate the discount that I know they’re going to give me anyway, like a dance where everyone knows the steps but we still have to suffer through the music.

But none of that is why I’m on the verge of finally pulling the plug (pun intended) on my cable service.

No, the simple reason is as follows: None of the TV that I want to watch is available through my cable.

Quick quiz: What are the five best shows on TV right now? The answers may vary, but in my opinion, no such list is complete without the inclusion of Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Big C, Sons of Anarchy, and maybe the Colbert Report thrown in for good measure. With the exception of the last one, which airs on the Comedy Network here in Canada, I can’t actually watch any of those shows on TV.

Mad Men and Breaking Bad air on AMC, Sons of Anarchy airs on FX, and The Big C, which airs in the States on Showtime, airs on a delayed schedule on Superchannel. Guess which of those channels is carried by Videotron? That’s right, zero.

In contrast, our friends in Ontario who are slaves to the dreaded Rogers, or even the folks here who are signed up with Bell-Hell via satellite, can access almost all of these shows as they air, and be part of the Facebook and water-cooler conversations that ensue. Meanwhile, law-abiding Videotron subscribers are left waiting for the DVD release, while the less law-abiding resort to illegal downloads to get their fix of whatever show strikes their fancy. And the channels I pay for languish unwatched.

The trouble is, Videotron doesn’t care about me. I’m anglophone, and as such, I represent only a tiny segment of their customer base. For every one customer who wants to watch Mad Men, Videotron figures there are a few dozen who would rather watch Star Académie. The company has been extremely slow to add English channels to its lineup, and I don’t expect this to change anytime soon.

I’ve resisted taking the step of cancelling cable for one reason: Hockey. The one channel I watch regularly is RDS, just because it has exclusive rights to the Habs’ games, and really, there’s no point in watching a hockey game if it’s not live. RDS still doesn’t offer a streaming package, so I’ve been paying out the nose for a bunch of channels I never watch, just for the privilege of having hockey on TV. But as the price of cable keeps climbing, it’s getting harder and harder to justify this expense, especially when I could just as easily watch at my favourite pub around the corner and spend the money on a beer or chicken wings.

Hundreds of thousands of Canadians are cutting the cord on cable. Will 2012 be the year when I finally follow suit? Well, let’s just say that the next time I contact the retentions department over at Videotron won’t just be a rote request for a discount.

Hockey discontentment

The Habs just wrapped up their worst season in recent history. After finishing dead last in the East and the third worst team in the entire league. This season saw local favourite Mikey Cammalleri shipped off to Calgary in the middle of a game, coach Jacques Martin fired mid-season and replaced — albeit temporarily — by “maudite anglais” backup Randy Cunneyworth, and — finally — some housecleaning in the front office that saw Pierre Gauthier and Bob Gainey get the long-awaited boot.  The prospect of drafting high is small consolation to the fans, and it’s clear that we’re in for a long painful rebuilding process. Meanwhile, there might not even be any hockey at the start of next season, as the threat of lockout looms. Might be time to start taking an interest in another sport. The Montreal Impact just went MLS this season… any footy fans out there?

Weather discontentment

It was an unseasonably (some would claim unreasonably) warm winter, with very little snow and summer-like temperatures that saw crowds of spectators take in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in shorts. For those of us who actually like winter — and, y’know, for businesses who make money from it — it was a lousy year. Sure, the naysayers will be happy, but I’m still bemoaning my waste of a ski season. Enough with this global warming already; I miss winter, dammit!

Student discontentment

I’ve been saying it since my student days: Quebec’s tuition freeze needs to go.  And it looks like this time, it might well happen, as Jean Charest has sworn he won’t cave. Of course, the student union groups are having none of it, out protesting shit-disturbing as they claim they’ll settle for nothing less than free education. Never mind that the numbers don’t support their cause, or that the whole concept of a student strike is nonsensical when you consider that the only people it hurts are the students.

Public opinion is not on the side of the student groups this time around (unless you consider the ever-opportunistic PQ, always trolling for votes). Even many students have had enough, with at least one case of a successful injunction by a student who just wants to go to class and (gasp!) get the education he’s paying for.

The fact that Quebecers pay by far the lowest tuition in Canada and still will after the hike, or the fact that enrollment is lower here than it is in provinces with higher tuition, or even the generous increases in bursaries, none of those arguments are going to sway anyone. And that’s because the so-called students — who are actually political wannabes with romanticized notions of the 60s who enrol in one class per semester so they can live off the student fee contributions of actual students — don’t want to compromise; they just want their names in the paper, and maybe a chance to smash stuff.

And before you go accusing me of being dismissive of an important issue, we’ve lived this all before. Many times. I’ve written about it before. Many times. The only difference is that this time, something might actually change.

The “Dear Leader” of the People’s Democratic Republic of Death Camps can count, among his accomplishments, mass starvation, imprisonment in horrific gulags, and systematic murder in gas chambers of his own people, bringing nuclear weapons to his country, and being ranked dead last in the freedom index year after year.

We do not rejoice at death. But for all of the nonsensical Godwin’s Law invocation out there, Kim Jong-Il is one of the few who can be aptly compared to Hitler or Stalin without it seeming the least bit like hyperbole. If anything, the horrors of his rule are under-reported, because of how sealed off North Korea is from the world.

And while Kim Jong-un,  his successor and son, appears to be cut from the same cloth, and North Korea’s dark days show no sign of ending anytime soon, I don’t think there’s anyone who could possibly argue that the world has suffered a loss with his passing.

The first person who writes a flowery obituary for this despot will make me want to puke. May he rot in hell.

Now, admittedly, this concept might be better if more of the people in the blog’s photos actually said what they were doing to help the 99%, besides writing statements on paper. But the spirit ain’t bad.

The Occupy Wall Street movement has its share of problems, namely, the lack of any coherent demands, the lack of focus, and the general sense of a movement with lots of gripes but few answers. But they’re not wrong to point out the negative consequences of large income disparity in the US. And while the income gap isn’t nearly as dramatic in Canada, there’s a strong sense that we’re moving in that direction.

The fact is, while these people claim to be in the so-called 1% of Americans, and most of us aren’t, we’re pretty much ALL of us part of the luckiest 0.00001% in the world – we hit the mother of all jackpots just by being born here in Canada, having enough food to eat, a roof over our heads, security and safety and education and healthcare and the chance to grow to be an adult. It’s worth it for all of us to think about how we can do more to give something back.

(Not for nothing, but this goes back to my long-standing call for Quebec to raise university tuition for those who can afford it and increase bursaries and financial aid for those who can’t. More access to opportunity benefits everyone. Just sayin’.)

The Coalition Avenir Quebec (or CAQ, for short, which really brings to mind a whole host of new acronym joke possibilities) was, if you recall, ahead in polls even before it existed. And now, Legault’s generic statements about wanting to move Quebec “forward” and “focus on the issues that matter” sound just like the tired same-old-same-old, even on the day he announces something that’s supposed to be shiny and new.

Barry Wilson of CTV Montreal called Legault the “flavour of the month” in an editorial that pretty much points out the obvious: Quebecers vote according to fads, which fizzle quickly. Witness the ADQ, which rose to official opposition status under Mario Dumont before virtually disappearing from the electoral map in the following election. Witness the meteoric “Orange Crush” rise of the Federal NDP this past election, which crashed and burned almost days afterwards when people figured out that they’d voted for unqualified candidates who couldn’t speak their language and had never even been to their riding.

Legault is repeating tired old clichés and avoiding saying very much. He’s getting a lot of media attention for it. He’ll have his fifteen minutes in the sun.

But it won’t last. We’ve seen this before. When it comes to politics, there really is nothing new under the sun.

Gomez is the Habs’ highest-paid player. He had 7 goals and 38 points last season. He hasn’t scored a goal in a game that counts since February 5th.

Just to put that in perspective, here are some other NHLers who are making around the same amount of money this year, along with their goal and point totals from last season:

• Jarome Iginla – $7 million – 43 goals / 86 points
• Eric Staal – $7.7 million – 33 goals / 76 points
• Rick Nash – $7.5 million – 32 goals / 66 points
• Henrik Zetterberg – $7.75 million – 24 goals / 78 points
• Shea Weber – $7.5 million – 16 goals/ 48 points (and he’s a defenceman)
• Ilya Kovalchuk – $6 million – 31 goals / 60 points (in what was considered a slump year)
• Daniel Briere – $7 million – 34 goals / 68 points
• Joe Thornton – $8 million – 21 goals / 70 points
• Steven Stamkos – $8 million – 45 goals / 91 points
• Daniel and Henrik Sedin – $6.1 million apiece – A combined 60 goals / 198 points!

Now, I have no love lost for Count Jacques-ula as a coach. But for those who are quick to blame the coach and excuse the front office, just think about who a competent GM might have gotten for those $7.5 million bucks.

Gadhafi was captured alive and unharmed as troops from the National Transitional Council overran his hometown of Sirte on Thursday, Jibril said. But a gunbattle erupted between transitional council fighters and Gadhafi’s supporters as his captors attempted to load him into a vehicle, Jibril said, leaving Gadhafi with a wound to his right arm.

More shooting erupted as the vehicle drove away, and Gadhafi — who ruled Libya for nearly 42 years before rebel forces overthrew him in August — was hit in the head, Jibril said, Gadhafi died moments before arriving at a hospital in Misrata, Jibril said, citing the city’s coroner.

This is a symbolic milestone in Libya for those who were seeking an end to Gadhafi’s brutal regime.

But life isn’t a chess game, and you don’t win with checkmate. Libya’s real struggle to emerge from the darkness has only just begun, and initial signs are not promising.

In another sign that Quebecers are rejecting decades of political debate surrounding the Quebec sovereignty issue, the poll found that respondents were reluctant to identify themselves with traditional ideological brands. Only 19 per cent identified themselves as sovereignists, 20 per cent as federalists, 17 per cent as nationalists and eight per cent as autonomists.

The biggest portion of respondents – 37 per cent – did not identify themselves with any of those categories.

Which raises the question of terminology and phrasing. I’m not convinced that the national identity debate is dead; I think it’s just going through a re-branding. Words like “nationalism” and “sovereignty” are turning off the current generation – in both languages. But the sharp divide still remains, possibly reinforced by the Harper government’s massive lack of popularity here in Quebec.

Another thing going on here might be a sense of security. Quebecers, thanks to two generations of protections, now feel like their identity is less threatened than ever before. At the same time, they’re extending beyond borders. The struggles of today are more global and less local in scope, and the nationalism debate is going to naturally seem outdated to a bilingual francophone from HoMa who is organizing a G8 protest and campaigning for human rights in North Africa.

The point is, I don’t think that Quebecers feel more Canadian than they do in the past. I think they’re just less interested in talking constitutional debate.

Still, this is the first cautionary piece of good news that we’ve seen on the federalist side in ages. I’d like to see some reinforcing polling numbers over time, but it could mean good news in terms of how the next provincial election debate will be shaped. Especially if Francois Legault keeps beating the “beyond sovereignty” drum and forcing the other parties to talk about something else. Like, maybe healthcare, or infrastructure, or the economy, or issues of real concern to Quebecers of all political stripes.

One can hope, anyway.

I’m only a casual observer of the ins and outs of Ontario politics. Unlike the minefield of the Quebec political landscape, Ontarians are more traditionally divided along left-right lines. For the most part, I think McGuinty has been a decent-to-good leader, and I’m relieved that Ontario dodged the Hudak bullet. But this was far from the resurgence of the Liberal banner that people at the federal level were hoping for.

It’s worth noting that the turnout for this election hit a record low – just the latest example of a disturbing trend showcasing widespread disillusionment with the political process.

Here’s hoping we step it up against the newly-reformed Jets on Sunday.

I’m not an Apple product aficionado. I don’t have an iPhone or an iPad or a MacBook Pro. I’m not part of the Apple cult(ure).

But there’s no denying that Jobs was one of the most influential visionaries of the century. His inventions have changed the fabric of our society. And he died young, but he made his life count.

In his words:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

RIP, Steve.

After much prayer and serious consideration, I have decided that I will not be seeking the 2012 GOP nomination for President of the United States. As always, my family comes first and obviously Todd and I put great consideration into family life before making this decision. When we serve, we devote ourselves to God, family and country. My decision maintains this order.

If there is a god, he’s probably applauding this decision. Though not for the reasons that Palin might have assumed.

Tina Fey, on the other hand, must be disappointed.

It’s been a time of new initiatives and new beginnings for me. New job, new outlook, new projects… I do love the fall and the fact that Rosh Hashanah  always seems to signal a renewed sense of motivation in my life.

Wishing you and yours all the best for a happy, healthy and sweet New Year.

François Legault, who is on a 17-stop tour across Quebec to seek feedback on his ideas to reform politics in the province, says he is “humbled” by polls suggesting he would win a provincial election if it were held now, even though he still has not formed a party.

That, right there, says everything you need to know about the wisdom of the electorate. Or, more accurately, the lack thereof.

Quebecers don’t actually care about silly things like party platforms or issues. We just care about what’s new and shiny this week. (Orange Crush, anyone?)

“We deeply regret to inform you that the Honourable Jack Layton, leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada, passed away at 4:45 am today, Monday August 22. He passed away peacefully at his home surrounded by family and loved ones,” the statement read.

Layton led a party that I often didn’t agree with. I wasn’t a big fan of him as a politician, either. I mocked his used-car-salesman demeanour, his debate tactics, his party’s habit of apologizing for extremism or drawing false moral equivalencies, and even his moustache.

All of that aside, though, his death is a tragedy, just as any death from cancer is a tragedy. It also comes at a time when the country is, more than ever, in the iron grip of a Conservative party that is doing frightening things to our political landscape. The NDP’s historic gains in the May election, which vaulted them into official opposition status, meant that Layton was expected to play a major role in doing whatever he could to keep the Tories in check. Now, of course, this duty will pass onto someone else.

Canadians of all political stripes – left, right or the kitchen sink – will mourn Layton’s passing, and rightly so. I didn’t always agree him, but  even where we disagreed, I recognize that he was acting for what he believed was his vision for Canada. My condolences to Olivia Chow and to the rest of Layton’s family and friends.

You can read the text of Layton’s last letter to Canadians here.

In the first incident, Egged bus number 392, traveling from Beersheba to the southern resort city of Eilat, was ambushed by a three-man terror cell. Over a dozen people were wounded in the attack, which took place on Highway 12, about 30km north of Eilat, near the Ein Netafim junction.

Soon after that a second incident was reported, involving multiple roadside bombs and rocket fire at IDF forces patrolling the Israel Egypt border fence.

A third incident was reported at around 1pm, involving yet another shooting on a bus and a private vehicle traveling south. Five people reportedly suffered mortal wounds in the attack.

There’s no official word yet on whether lax security along the Egyptian border was responsible for the attacks, but carefully-worded statements seem to suggest as much:

“This was a grave terror attack at multiple scenes. It reflects Egypt’s failing hold on Sinai and the rise of terror elements,” Barak said. “This terror attack originated from Gaza. We will exhaust all measures against the terrorists.”

Israel has mostly been dancing on the head of a pin with respect to Egypt’s situation since Mubarak was outsted. On the one hand, nobody in Israel is going to come out publicly in support of an oppressive, dictatorial regime that the people clearly are glad to be rid of. On the other hand, there are legitimate concerns about what the next government will look like, and if terrorist elements hostile to Israel will gain control. Unfortunately, today’s attacks could only be a preview.

Update 8/20: Things go from bad to worse after what was apparently a suicide bombing that killed several Egyptian security forces members near the border. Egypt, of course, was quick to blame Israel, not terrorists, for the deaths, and now Egypt is withdrawing its ambassador to Israel and is accusing Israel of violating the ’79 peace treaty. The situation in Gaza is heating up, the UN – with Lebanon sitting on the Security Council – won’t condemn the terrorist attacks (who’s surprised?), and Hamas is threatening more attacks. With the 30+ years of cold peace with Egypt a hair’s breath from shattered — and without even mentioning what’s going on in Syria — there’s no word to describe the matzav right now other than “clusterfuck”.

Update #2: Meryl is, of course, all over the stories as they (d)evolve.

Cartoonist Yvon Roy has proposed three new designs to Transport Quebec for road signs:

The critical problems with the Ville-Marie were known about as early as 2008. And, as with the Turcot, the Champlain Bridge, the Mercier Bridge, and – tragically, the De La Concorde Overpass that collapsed in 2006, city and provincial officials are long on finger-pointing and blame, and short on solutions.

The best example of a picture saying a thousand words might have come from the Catholic Church, which, last April, posted a billboard urging people to pray before driving across the Champlain Bridge.

Looks like when Josh Freed predicted that we might soon be prisoners on the island of Montreal, he was a little too close to the mark.

Well, sort of right. We’re a smaller country with a smaller economy, so of course the total number is proportionally smaller as well. But what you may not know is that Canada’s public debt has been steadily rising over the past five years, and now sits at an all-time high of $564 billion dollars. That’s nearly $17,000 per Canadian – which, granted, is much lower than the $46,000 per American that our neighbours to the south are on the hook for. Still, that’s 17 grand for every man, woman and child in Canada, and I suspect that if you were asked to pull our your chequebook, you might balk at coming up with that amount.

This happened on Stephen Harper’s watch – the same Stephen Harper who got elected on a fiction of being good for the economy. As you can see by the chart below, the previous Liberal governments had balanced the budget and were steadily lowering the public debt each year… but the Conservative government since 2006-07 has increased it to its all-time high levels and is continuing to spend:

Sure, you might argue, the Liberal government years were years of relative economic prosperity in the world, while the Tory government has been navigating Canada through a global recession. But how, exactly, does building more federal prisons, buying military fighter jets, and pouring money into the Harper government’s promotional campaigns constitute responsible spending during recessionary times?

What’s happening in the US ought to serve as a cautionary tale for us Canadians on how debt can spiral out of control and severely weaken our economy when irresponsible politicians are at the helm. Of course, liberals and conservatives (and NDPers) will never agree on where to spend and what to cut. But anyone who voted conservative because they believe that Harper is good  economy needs a bit of a reality check. As the Tory government has shown time and time again, a balanced budget is not a priority for them. And Canadians will be paying the price… to the tune of almost $17 grand apiece – and rising.

In the end, Terry DiMonte lasted around 3½ years in Calgary. While there, DiMonte – one of Montreal’s most famous radio morning-men – made it clear he missed his beloved Habs and still bled bleu, blanc et rouge and apparently he wasn’t faking that Montreal nostalgia.Wednesday afternoon, CHOM ignited no small amount of chatter on social-media like Twitter and Facebook – and even in the real world – when the Montreal classic-rock station announced that DiMonte is returning to helm the morning shift at the FM rock outlet.

There’s no chance that Ted Bird will be back with him… he clearly burned that bridge with his acrimonious departure last year. But even without the Terry and Ted show, this is fantastic news.

Terry DiMonte is one of the last great voices of radio. He’s intelligent, witty, sensible, and actually funny without being obnoxious. His return only underscores the fact that they don’t make ‘em like this anymore, because there has been literally nobody who’s even come close to filling his shoes in the past four years.

Oh, I heard all the platitudes. It won’t be so bad, people said. Give them a chance. They’re not so scary. They won’t do anything that they didn’t do as a minority (not like that was very reassuring, either).

Yeah, right.

In politics, it’s customary to review the “first 100 days”. Unfortunately, Harper and his cronies have been so busy doing shit, that waiting until 100 days for this review seemed excessive.

(And yes, I know it’s not really the first 50 days of majority government. The 41st Parliament only convened on June 2nd, which is in fact less than 3 weeks ago. That’s a frighteningly short period of time in which Harper has already managed to do an awful lot of damage. But it has been 50 days since the election, so I think the post title is appropriate.)

Let’s look at what’s happened in the 50 days since the May 2nd election, shall we?

• Workers’ rights have taken a serious beating, with back to work legislation being tabled against Canada Post, and threatened against Air Canada (who struck a deal to avoid it). In the case of Canada Post, arguably the legislation is against the crown corporation, which has locked out the workers. And those of you who know me understand that I have rather ambiguous feelings about labour unions that have too much power. But, especially in the case of Air Canada – a private company with competitive options for the consumer – the Tory government’s swift response against any labour rights whatsoever crosses the line even for me. There’s a happy medium in there, and this ain’t it.
• Senate appointments for three Tory MP candidates who lost in their ridings called into question not only the appointment process itself, but Harper’s own promises to reform it. Canadians didn’t even blink. Beyond that, he’s threatening to abolish the Senate altogether if they don’t cave to his extortion cooperate with his reforms.
• Asbestos exports are once again being defended by the Tories, who apparently feel that cancer is okay as long as it happens to people in other countries.
• Job cuts in the public sector are coming pretty much right away. One of the first areas to be hit? Auditors. Cause, y’know, Harper doesn’t want anyone actually noticing how badly he’s been cooking the books – and how badly he plans to continue doing so.
• And that doesn’t even take into account the fact that Harper is about to appoint two judges to the Supreme Court – something that will have ramifications for decades.

When you consider that there are still most of 5 years to go in his term, and that nothing prevents him from being re-elected, it’s downright terrifying.

I wanted to like you. I really really did.

I’d heard such great things about you in your first two years of operations. How your system was innovative. Green. How it was encouraging more people to cycle, reducing traffic congestion, and promoting healthy habits. How convenient and easy and affordable it was. How nice it was to be able to take a bike whenever you want, without having to worry about getting it home, locking it up, maintaining it, or having it stolen.

I didn’t sign up for the first two years, because I lived walking distance from my office. Now, I’m just far enough to have to take public transit, but I thought that Bixi would be a superb solution for 4 or 5 months of the year. This summer, I decided, was the year I would Bixi.

I had some concerns, to be sure. The ride home from my office includes some relatively steep uphill, and I wasn’t sure how much fun that would be on the clunky, heavy Bixi. I’d heard that it was occasionally hard to find a docking station or a bike. A city built on a hill, like Montreal, is inevitably going to end up with a bunch of bikes at the bottom of the hill — especially when Bixi so conveniently gives you the lazy option of biking down and metroing back up. I was a little nervous about biking in downtown city traffic, after being so out of practice on two wheels. But the network of bicycle paths, well maintained by the city and conveniently linking home to office, encouraged me to give it a try.

A first test

It was early May and after weeks of cold and rainy weather, the sun had finally come out. I left the office on one of those perfect spring days, and I just couldn’t bring myself to face the dark tunnel of the metro when it was so beautiful outside. So, on a whim, I entered my credit card at the Bixi station nearest to my office (in Vieux-Montreal, near Square-Victoria) and paid $5 for a 24-hour membership. I punched in the code, wheeled a bike out of the dock, and off I went.

It was a bit wobbly for the first few minutes, and I found the frame to be a bit big for my height and size, making the handlebars awkwardly far from the seat. Still, I got used to it pretty quickly, figuring out how to use the gear shift and controls and even the built-in bell. Not bad. Just like riding a bike.

The path along the waterfront was great. The uphill along the Berri bike path was a bit of a challenge, and I was huffing and puffing by the time I got to the top of Sherbrooke. Still, that just encouraged me even further; surely, biking that route daily would be a great way to get back into shape. And I couldn’t wait to try it downhill the next morning.

When I got to the Bixi station nearest to my apartment in the Plateau, I was at about 27 minutes out of the free 30 that you get with the one-off membership. (Annual subscribers get 45 minutes for free). Unfortunately, there were no free docks available, but I was able to enter my credit card and obtain credit for an extra 15 minutes. The next station over had free docks, so I headed a couple of blocks away and parked it, no problem. I was high on Bixi at that point, ready to sign up on the spot.

The next morning, however, didn’t go so well.

Before leaving the house, I checked the Bixi website, and saw that all three stations near my apartment were listed as having several bikes available. I set out and walked to the nearest one, entered my credit card to get an unlock code and… nothing. There were bikes there, but the ability to rent one was greyed out on the terminal. I thought it was just me at first, and tried it again, but nothing. Nada. Zip.

So I walked two blocks away to the next station. Once again, there were a half-dozen bikes available, but there didn’t seem to be any way of renting them. Frustrated now, I walked over to a third station, where the exact same thing happened.

I dug out my cell phone and called the customer service number, and was placed on hold for nearly 15 minutes (at 20 cents a minute on my PAYG, I might add). I started walking toward the metro, since I was nearing a half-hour late for work and I couldn’t keep standing around by the bikes like some kind of loser. When I finally got through to an agent, I reported the problem. Apparently there was a system-wide problem where all the stations in Montreal were experiencing technical difficulties that morning, and nobody was able to rent bikes.

The whole system is down, I argued. I can’t use the 24-hour membership that I paid for. Surely I’m entitled to a refund.

We’ll request it, he said. But there’s no telling if you’ll get it or when it will be. And no, I can’t give you any way to follow up on that request.

At this point, the wasted time was far more valuable than the wasted $5. I hung up.

So far, a 50% failure rate wasn’t looking too encouraging, and was making me reconsider the whole endeavour.

Second test

Flash forward three weeks. By this point, I’d decided that I would give Bixi another chance. In the last week of May, I signed up for an annual membership online. Come June 1st, I didn’t renew my STM monthly pass, figuring I’d buy individual tickets for those days when I couldn’t Bixi, and rely on biking the rest of the time. I even went out and picked up a snazzy new helmet.

A week later and it was June already and my key still hadn’t arrived in the mail. This was compounded by Canada Post’s strike – not Bixi’s fault, of course, but just an added frustration. Still, the weather was nice, and I’d already used far too many individual STM tickets, so I decided to take out another 24-hour membership while I waited for the key to show up.

This time, the problems started almost immediately. The station nearest to my house had 4 bikes (out of 9 spots), but every single one of them was broken – 3 flat tires and one broken chain. I’d been hearing about an increase in defective bikes, speculated to be caused at least partly by vandalism. Apparently the rumours were true. Anyway, I dutifully went to the next station a couple of blocks down and picked up a bike and was off.

My ride to work that morning – all downhill – took exactly 11 minutes. It was fun, coasting downhill in the summer breeze. I could really get used to this as my primary means of commuting, I thought.

Before I’d left the house, I’d checked the site to see if there would be any docks available near my office. There appeared to be a significant number available at the nearby stations,  so I figured I’d find one by the time I got there.

Unfortunately. that was not to be. I went to five different Bixi stations to try to park the bike. Each one of them thought it had available docks, but the docks were broken and didn’t recognize the parked Bixi. To make matters worse, the stations – assuming they had available spots – didn’t allow for a time credit for an extra 15 minutes of time.  I tried using the tool on the station to find spots at nearby docks, but none were found other than the broken ones. Another hapless Bixi-er who I met at one of the stations had his iPhone app loaded, and was looking for parking. He said it indicated that there were no available docks anywhere in the neighbourhood, or anyplace close by.

Once again, out came the cell phone and I called the customer service line. Once again, I was put on hold for nearly 15 minutes. This may not seem like a lot, but when you’re being charged by the minute for your phone, by Bixi for your overtime, when you’ve already wasted 20 minutes going station to station, and when you’re late for work on top of everything else, it’s a serious hassle.

When the agent came on the line, I explained the issue and he checked the system. He suggested two nearby stations that he said had docks available, but I’d just come from both of them and knew those docks were broken – which I reported as such. His next suggestion was for me to stay with the bike while he called dispatch to send a technician out. But when he put me on hold to check how long that would take, he said that nobody could come anytime soon. Instead, he wanted me to keep the bike – bring it into my office or whatever – and he said that I would be refunded for the extra usage charge later.

Yeah, right. I explained I’d requeted a refund nearly a month earlier for the last time I tried Bixi and had problems. That had never arrived. Why should I trust him? Besides, I had nowhere to store the Bixi. That’s the whole reason I was using Bixi in the first place, so I wouldn’t have to lock it and store it and be responsible for it.

Three strikes, you’re out

I explained that I’d signed up for an annual subscription but the key still hadn’t arrived. Cancel it, I said, Cancel it and refund me my money, as well as today’s money, since after this experience, it’s obvious that Bixi is just more trouble than it’s worth. There’s no way I will be able to rely on it as any kind of daily means of transportation.

As of right now, that refund is still pending. Not to mention, the hapless bike, which I left at the broken dock, and half expect to be charged for, despite clearly letting the agent on the phone know that I’d already spent nearly an hour with him and if he couldn’t offer any kind of solution for me, then it was no longer my responsibility. If they try to charge me for it, I’ll fight it, of course.

Bixi, you were a great idea in theory. But you have too many problems this year. Ridership is up, sure, but you have far too many broken bikes and broken docks. There are no bikes available in the Plateau in the mornings or downtown in the afternoons, and vice-versa for the docking stations. The redistribution of bikes from one station to the next, which from what I understand was relatively efficient last year, seems nonexistent this year. There don’t seem to be enough employees or resources to cope with the multitude of problems. And Bixi is getting into PR problems regarding its financial viability, the ads on the bikes, and its business model.

In short, it’s a great idea that is being poorly executed. And in the meantime, I have unfortunately gone back to public transit. the STM may have frequent metro breakdowns, bus re-routings, and all kinds of other issues, but it now has a claim to fame, too: More reliable than Bixi.

And how sad is that?

And everyone is asking, what the hell happened? How could a party that had a commanding lead in the polls, whose leader won a 93% confidence vote less than two months ago, and who most pundits predicted had a virtual lock on winning the next provincial election, be self-destructing like this?

The ostensible catalyst – a vote on a private member’s bill that would have guaranteed naming rights for a new arena in a bid to attract an NHL team back to Quebec City – was merely the trigger; the ingredients of this turmoil have been marinating much longer than that. That vote has been shelved now anyway, though it’s entirely beside the point.

So what happened in a mere two months?

Well, the NDP happened, for one thing. The media wanted to claim that the Layton sweep of Quebec – and the Bloc Quebecois self-destruction that accompanied it – meant that Quebecers had moved past sovereignty, and were embracing their role as part of a united Canada. Bloggers claimed that sovereignty is dead in Quebec.

Those of us who live here know different. We know that the NDP win here, coupled with the Tory win just about everywhere else, actually led to an increase in support for sovereignty in the aftermath of an election that made us feel more alienated from the rest of Canada than ever.

And the defecting MNAs from the PQ know it too. They see the tide turning, and they’re getting impatient. They’re pushing for a sea change. No more “winning conditions”, no more of Marois’s strategy – so eagerly backed just two short months ago – of putting referendum timing on the back burner and concentrating on winning elections and on governing. They don’t want to govern a province; they want a country. And they feel like fifteen years since the squeaker referendum of 1995 is fifteen years too many.

This position is being made clear by Jean-Martin Aussant, the fourth PQ member to defect and the most openly blunt about his reasons:

“I’m here to work on sovereignty. And I don’t think she’s the one Quebecers will want to follow, at a very high rate, towards sovereignty,” Aussant told a news conference.

“That’s a very cruel statement. It’s a hard one to say. It’s probably a hard one to hear, from them, but that’s what I think.”

And now former Premier Bernard Landry is speaking out, too:

Landry says the PQ has become too complacent and its members, who want a more strident pursuit of the party’s raison d’etre, are now pushing back.

“There are other things (causing this),” Landry told Radio-Canada on Tuesday. He said the pursuit of power should take a back seat to principles — like the quest for independence.

Such a move would represent a strategic shift for a party which, for more than 15 years, has placed its emphasis on governing or winning government — and has simply expressed its hope to hold a vote on independence eventually, whenever the conditions are right.

“Rene Levesque did not found this party to govern the province of Quebec,” Landry said Tuesday. “The obsession should be public service — not taking power. It’s better to take power later — but to take it with dignity.”

The Pequistes who are dialing up the sovereignty-now talk aren’t doing so off the cuff. They’re seeing the same things we are; hearing the same conversations, feeling the same winds in the air. They’re seeing how Stephen Harper in power and Jack Layton in opposition is making many Quebec soft nationalists re-evaluate just how Canadian they feel after all. And they feel like it’s time to strike while the iron is hot.

On the surface, the self-destruction of one sovereignty party and the turmoil of the other would be good news for federalism. Under the surface, it’s anything but.

While hate crimes remain primarily motivated by race (and black Canadians remain the most-targeted by hate crime), the data also showed the number of reported hate crimes perpetrated against Arabs and West Asians doubled (to 75 from 37). There was also a 71 per cent increase in hate crimes committed against Jewish people.

Statistics Canada analyst Mia Dauvergne says two factors might have influenced the result: While there may have been a real increase in hate crimes, it is also possible that more crimes are being reported as police forces across Canada set up special hate-crimes units.

Regular readers of mine know of my general discomfort with hate crime legislation. We also know that these are the kind of statistics that, on their own, don’t mean very much; how a crime is reported is less about what happened and more about the circumstances involved.

But if this trend continues, it’s very disturbing. Especially when it leads to fostering of secondary hate, such as resentment between minority communities who are vying for the dubious label of “most victimized”.

The True North Sports and Entertainment group announced on Tuesday that they have completed a deal to purchase the Atlanta Thrashers and move them to Winnipeg in time for the 2011-12 season.

And, right on target with the wish-I-could-punch-him asinine comment is Gary Bettman:

“Hockey in Canada has never been stronger,” said Bettman. “We get to be back in a place we wish had not left in 1996.

Considering the source, that’s rich.

Meanwhile, Vancouver kicks off the Stanley Cup Final against Boston tonight, aiming to not only kick some serious Bruin ass, but to bring the Cup home to Canada for the first time since the Habs did it in ’93. And with history on their side and the stronger record, I see no reason why they shouldn’t pull it off.

Go Canada!

ETA: If you’re American and reading this, and you happen to be a bit confused about this whole hockey thing, Pete McMartin wrote you a primer.

The good news? He can’t be elected as long-term leader.

The full speech is available to watch on video here.

Or, you can read the text of the speech here.

1. The right moves further to the right. The Tories, after spending five years walking all over Canadians as a minority, now get to walk all over Canadians even more as a majority. Harper believes – as he should, with these numbers – that he has a mandate from Canada to impose his agenda and move the government rightward. Forget the Shit Harper Did; what about the Shit Harper will do?
   
2. The left moves further to the left. The official opposition is now the NDP, not the Liberals. The same NDP who has campaigned on anti-Israel platforms; who cozies up to the labour unions; who believes that quota systems will provide equality.  The NDP is positioning itself as the de facto Tory alternative, and with nearly three times as many seats as the Liberals, it clearly believes that it is the voice of the left – or the potential leader of any merger or move to unite the progressive parties. Ironically, the jubilant Layton doesn’t seem to grasp that he had more power in fourth place in a Tory minority than he does in second place in a Tory majority.
   
3. The middle disintegrates. The Liberal party is in shambles. They lost over half their seats and most of their star MPs. They lost official opposition status. They will have to regroup and rebuild. And the common sense centre, the great balancing force against polarization, is severely crippled. Moderation is what suffers in this outcome.
   
4. A weaker official opposition. A Harper majority is a scary enough prospect. But now 102 NDP MPs – many of whom are complete political rookies – will be heading to Ottawa to serve as the official opposition. Even seasoned Liberal MPs would have had a hard time keeping the Harpers in check. There’s no way that inexperienced political neophytes from the NDP will be able to pull it off. Harper’s now got a majority with no strong opposition; he can basically do whatever he wants and get away with it.
   
5. Bloc collapses, but sovereignty gets a boost. The big news of the night was the Bloc Quebecois’s collapse from 47 seats to 4 amidst the Quebec “orange crush”, and Duceppe’s defeat and resignation. It should be good news for federalism? Right? Wrong. I’ve never seen so many Quebecers feel disenfranchised and alienated from the rest of Canada. This is going to provide a huge boost to sovereignty. I’m about as staunch a federalist as it gets, but even I have to admit that I see their point. Quebec voted overwhelmingly left-wing progressive NDP; the rest of Canada (except for Newfoundland) voted overwhelmingly Conservative. Is there any point in arguing that we’re not different here in La Belle Province?
   
6. Human rights? What human rights? With as many as four Supreme Court seats opening up to be stacked by Harper-crony Conservatives during this term. Abortion rights, gay marriage, rights of women, rights of minorities, immigrants’ rights… you name it, it’s on their agenda for attack.
7. No more funding for arts and culture. That is, unless the Calgary Stampede is your idea of a cultural event.
8. Technology and innovation? Not on Harper’s watch. With important issues facing our country around telecom consolidation, internet billing and metering, privacy, digital rights management… the only party who didn’t respond to Canadians’ concerns about internet and digital policy is the one now holding a majority in Parliament. Four or five more years for the rest of the world to advance while Canada lags behind? Will we even have an economy when Harper is done with us?
9. Canadians get slapped around; claim we fell down the stairs. We have a government who ignores us at every turn, walks all over us, and breaks the law with impunity. We get a chance to toss it out on its ear. Instead, we go crawling back to it. Domestic abuse on a grand scale, anyone? Basically, we’ve just sent Harper a message that he can get away with anything. And he will.
10. Harper plans to reward his “base”. The Alberta-native social conservative movement has been waiting a long time in minority to get rewarded for its efforts to put Harper in power. All this time, he didn’t revisit socially conservative issues because he didn’t have a mandate and knew that the opposition wouldn’t let him get away with it. Now, all these interest groups want their pound of flesh. Our flesh.

The silver lining is, it’s only 4 or 5 years. The question is, will we recognize Canada after all that time?

First, there was his speech at the annual White House Correspondent’s Dinner, where Obama held the floor like a seasoned comedian and managed to get his digs in at Donald Trump while he was at it:

Does he have the Colbert Report‘s writers on his speechwriting staff? Because that was one brilliant piece of satire.

Then, tonight, his address to the nation on the death of Osama Bin Laden struck all the right notes, inspiring some Canadians to comment on my Twitter feed that they wished they could vote for him tomorrow instead of one of our guys:

Say what you will about the man, but he certainly has the gift of oratory. Why can’t any of our politicians give speeches like that?

Bin Laden’s death may not mean much in the grand scheme of the so-called “war on terror” in practical terms. But cynically speaking, it’s likely to give Obama’s re-election chances a big boost.

Dozens of terrorist attacks, including Istanbul, Madrid, London, and last week in Marrakech, later.

2,340 coalition casualties in Afghanistan, including 155 Canadians, later.

Thousands of Afghan civilian casualties – too many for any body or organization to properly count – later.

Osama bin Laden is dead, says the President. It’s been almost ten years since the September 11th attacks, and since the world’s largest manhunt was launched for the man responsible. In those ten years, the world has changed so much that it’s almost unrecognizable.

Ten years ago, bin Laden’s death might have actually struck a body blow at the terrorist infrastructure. Today, it will probably make little more than a dent. After all, they’ve had ten years to reorganize and restructure, to recruit and train. Ten years during which Osama was little more than a figurehead, and the network has decentralized. Ten years for other international terror groups to “step up” and grow up.

(Oh, and ten years for the US to invade Iraq, for there to be civil war – and now reconciliation – in the Palestinian territories, for governments to change hands in western nations and for massive rounds of civilian unrest and protest across the middle east. A lot can happen in ten years.)

At best, this announcement will give Obama a temporary bump in the polls as he kicks off his 2012 re-election campaign. At worst, it will make bin Laden into a martyr among his followers and trigger additional attacks. In all likelihood, it will make very little practical difference.

It does feel like the end of an era, in a way.

• The NDP will win 10 seats in Quebec. With polls showing an NDP surge in support, this could be the breakthrough that Jack Layton was looking for. I don’t, however, believe that Gilles Duceppe’s seat (my riding) will be one of them. I think he’ll hold onto his seat here, albeit by a slim margin.

• The Liberals will under-perform. No, it won’t be a  total collapse, a la Progressive Conservatives circa Kim Campbell. They’ll hold onto their safe seats and maybe even steal a couple from the Tories in places where the anti-Tory vote goes Liberal. But the surge in NDP support in Quebec will mostly be at the expense of the Bloc, everywhere else in Canada it will mostly come at the Liberals’ expense.

• NDP/Liberal vote splitting will help the Tories. A cynic would say that the Harper camp is exaggerating the groundswell of support for the NDP, in a classic divide-and-conquer strategy in order to try and engineer a majority. I’m not quite that cynical, and I think the NDP’s support has emerged for a variety of other reasons. But I do think that the Conservatives will pick up a handful of seats due to NDP/Liberal vote splitting. That being said…

• The Conservatives will be held to another minority government. I think that there’s enough anyone-but-Harper support out there, helped by initiatives like Project Democracy, to stave off the dreaded Harper majority. I hope.

• The Greens will once again fail to pick up any seats. Their support has stagnated and there aren’t any ridings where their candidates are demonstrating a lead – or even a close second.  The party began as a sensible alternative to the status quo, but has shifted more and more towards the fringe, policy-wise, in the past few years. And with all the mainstream parties (except for the Tories) making environmental issues a big part of their platforms, there are fewer reasons than ever to vote Green.

Remember to vote!

Rival Palestinian groups said they reached an agreement Wednesday on reuniting their governments in the West Bank and Gaza after years of bitter infighting that weakened them politically and caused the deaths of hundreds in violent clashes and crackdowns since. Even as the tentative agreement revived hopes among Palestinians that they might be able to form a unified front, unity between the rival groups Fatah and Hamas appeared unlikely to jump start negotiations with Israel for an independent Palestinian state.

There’s no way that Hamas and Fatah will be able to avoid going at one another.

Update: Why this deal is bad news for Israel.

4 out of 9 of Canada’s Supreme Court Justices have mandatory retirement dates within the next five years. Guess who appoints Supreme Court Justices? That’s right, the Governor-General in “consultation with” (read: direction by) the Prime Minister.

And who do you think Harper will stack the courts with, given the opportunity? Given his government’s record, I only shudder to imagine.

The Supreme Court wields an enormous amount of power. And to show what can happen with years of stacked appointments, we need only to glance at our illustrious neighbours to the south, the United States:

Think it couldn’t happen here? Think again:

Pro-life supporters successfully influenced an as-yet unannounced government decision to deny funding to Planned Parenthood, says a Conservative seeking re-election.

Brad Trost, incumbent for Saskatoon-Humboldt, addressed the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association’s annual convention Saturday and thanked its members for their help in killing federal funding for the group.

In a recording of the speech, obtained by the Liberals and provided to the Toronto Star and Le Devoir, Trost claims a number of parliamentary victories for the pro-life movement, including a decision to deny funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

This is all part of a decision that was rendered by the Conservative government to exclude abortion funding from its maternal health plan for developing nations. Having denied access to abortion to women in other countries, now the government is setting its sights on our rights as Canadians.

And, lest you think that it’s only women’s reproductive rights that are under attack, rest assured that Stephen Harper doesn’t discriminate like that; he’s determined to attack all women’s rights.

But don’t worry, Stevie. You may hate women, but women hate you too:

Now here’s hoping that more Canadian women get jolted out of apathy and turn out and vote.

(Hat tips: Kirsten, Andrea, and the good people over at ShitHarperDid.com.)

Read the platforms here:

• Liberal Party of Canada
• Conservative Party of Canada
• New Democrat Party of Canada
• Bloc Quebecois (in French)
• Green Party of Canada

Then, when you’re done, check out the candidates in your writing. Read up on their voting records, if they are already MPs. Read their blogs, find their  Facebook pages, check out anything they’ve written or published. Make sure you know who you’re voting to send to Parliament on May 2nd.

An uninformed electorate gets the government that it deserves. So get informed.

BMO’s survey compared 11 items, including golf balls, Blu-ray movies, running shoes and cars.

There is no denying Canada is smaller and that means less competition, which in turn means higher prices.

But Michael Mulvey, marketing professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, also noted some of the biggest difference in prices between the U.S. and Canada are in the areas where there isn’t free trade, such as telecomunications.

I’ve ranted about the higher telecommunications prices before. Those are due to price-fixing by the corrupt CRTC — something not mentioned in this study.

But for consumer goods where actual competition exists, how do we explain the price gap?

Taxes, for one thing. The study is comparing pre-tax prices, so you might think that’s not a factor. But there are taxes all the way down the chain of distribution, not just at the end-consumer point. That 15% you pay in combined GST and QST is merely the tip of the iceberg. The higher taxes down the line help pay for our essential social programs, like medicare, but they do make things more expensive.

Another factor that is mentioned by the study is the size of the country, and the fact that distribution and shipping is more expensive when you have a sparser population in a less concentrated area. This helps explain why prices would be more in, say, Yellowknife. It doesn’t explain why something retails in downtown Toronto for 20% more than it does across the border in Buffalo, NY.

The rapid rise of the dollar is another factor. When the Canadian dollar was worth 60 cents US, we understood the price gap. Now that it’s above par, it’s frustrating to see this gap. But the price adjustment period takes longer to catch up than the loonie takes to rise in the first place. The gap is closing somewhat — just more slowly than we might like.

But the main reason is merely supply and demand. In a market economy, prices are less about what something costs to produce and more about what the market will bear. We pay more because we pay more because we pay more. It’s circular. If people stopped buying things that were too expensive, the prices on them would drop. They would have to.

Lots of people would like to complain, protest or mobilize to correct this. What they don’t understand is that these prices aren’t being fixed by the government, and the economy cannot – and should not – be centrally managed in order to make people happy.

We do have choices. We can drive down to Burlington or Plattsburgh, shop in lower US dollars, and come back across the border — and pay duty (or not, as every good Canadian knows the tricks of how to avoid that at some point. Not that I’m endorsing that, mind you.) We can order online and pay the extra shipping charges, though the vast majority of US online retailers won’t ship to Canada, frustratingly enough.

Finally, a little perspective: Prices are higher in Canada than they are in the USA, but they’re lower here than they are in a lot of other places in the world, including South America, most of Europe, some places in Asia, or Australia. We constantly compare to the Americans because we’re so close; it’s hard not to get jealous and feel like the outsider with our face pressed to the glass when we get American ads on TV, radio or digital media splashing prices around that are inaccessible to us. But if you saw what people were paying elsewhere for the same items, you might appreciate our prices a bit more.

If, like most Canadians, you don’t happen to live in a swing riding, here are the top 10 reasons why you should go out and vote anyway:

10. The polls can be wrong. Even if you think your riding is a “safe” seat – either for your candidate, or for an opposition one – the polling data could be wrong. Your vote may well count more than you think.

9. Parties get funded based on the number of votes they get – roughly $1.75 per vote. By voting for your favourite party or candidate, you’re funding the party and strengthening it for future elections.

8. Voter turnout keeps falling, and was at a historical low of only 58.8% in the 2008 federal election. That means that the Tories were voted in by only 22% of eligible voters. To elect a government that truly represents the population, the population has to turn out and vote.

7. Get your issues heard. Voting for a certain candidate sends a message to other candidates and parties that your issues are important. This might affect how they vote on key issues in Parliament.

6. If everyone assumes that their vote won’t count, then maybe they’ll all stay home and your vote will actually count more than you think. Candidates have lost supposedly “safe” ridings before because of this. It could happen again.

5. Second place doesn’t matter? Sure it does. A strong second-place showing could mean momentum for a candidate or party next time around. It could lead the party to target the riding for more funding or election spending, believing that it is “in play”. It could buoy more people to vote for that second-place candidate next time, in the belief that there’s a chance of beating the incumbent.

4. Egypt. Tunisia. Bahrain. Saudi Arabia. Iran. Libya. All the people in the world out risking their lives to demonstrate for the right to vote, which we so casually take for granted.

3. Voting is a right, a privilege, and a responsibility of living in a democracy. Take it seriously.

2. If you don’t vote, you forfeit your right to complain.

1. If you don’t vote, you don’t get any chocolate cake.

• Vote Compass: An online quiz on issues that is supposed to help you see which of the major parties holds views most similar to yours. Surprisingly accurate for such a short quiz.

• How’d They Vote? Contains a running database of all federal MPs and their voting history in Parliament. A good way of knowing where your local MP stands on issues.
• Cyberpresse 2008 Interactive Map: Google Maps interactive overlay for every riding in the country, showing the 2008 vote breakdowns by polling district. Fun to play with, and shows just how close some of the ridings were.
• Election Prediction Project: The folks at EPP are at it again, making riding-by-riding predictions based on commentary and past results, rather than trying to extrapolate popular support percentages like the pollsters. They have a decent enough record that their site is worth a look.

If you know of any other useful sites or tools, let me know.

• 4 out of 5 of the party leaders are unchanged. Only Iggy is new this time around, though his post-election political days are probably as numbered as Stephane Dion’s were.
• The party positions and platforms are largely unchanged since 2008 as well, at least on the big issues.
• Elizabeth May is once again angry about being excluded from the debates – and, like last time, I predict she’ll probably get her way.
• Jack Layton is still sporting his used car salesman ‘stache.
• The Tories are once again sitting in comfortable minority-government territory, at once unlikely to lose and unlikely to form a majority.

So remind me again why we’re going to all this expense and trouble?

I would love to see the Tories get the boot. Between the long-form census debacle, the convenient-for-Harper prorogation of Parliament, corruption scandals, arts funding cuts, attacking women’s right to choose,  social engineering in the guise of economic policy that punishes anything other than the “traditional” family values, and Harper’s megalomania, the reasons abound. I simply cannot believe I live in a country where we keep electing this party.

Unfortunately, the only hope for replacing the Tories, the Liberal Party of Canada, is still in shambles. Ignatieff’s personal popularity is fairly low (no doubt made worse by those horrible Tory attack ads), the vote-splitting on the left bolsters the NDP and Greens at the Liberals’ expense, and the Bloc is standing at nearly 50% popularity here in La Belle Province.

My vote, which I have no problem saying will be for the Liberals, is a wasted vote, since I live in Gilles Duceppe’s riding and unless he gets morphed into an alien and starts singing Vegas showtunes in the shower, he’s going to run away with it here. But I will still trudge out and cast my ballot – on my birthday, no less – even though I know it won’t do any good at all.

No, I’m not a huge fan of Michael Ignatieff. I liked Stephane Dion a lot better, even though he failed to rally widespread support. But I’d much rather have a party in power that I agree with ideologically on most points, as opposed to one that I believe is steadily taking the country in the wrong direction.

The CBC has launched a short but fairly accurate online tool to help you gauge your political positions vis-a-vis the major parties. Check it out. And make sure you vote, because if we’re paying for this pointless election anyway, you might as well get your voice heard.

(Even if I do sometimes wish I could vote for the onion ring.)

The couple, Sergine and Joel Le Moaligou, are strict vegans who chose to feed their daughter, Louise, no solid food, giving her only breast milk.

After Louise died in March 2008, a post-mortem exam showed the child weighed just 5.7 kg (12.5 pounds) when she should have weighed about 8 kg (17.5 lbs).

The cause of death was listed as a pneumonia-related illness. But the autopsy also revealed the child suffered from a severe deficiency of vitamins A and B12, which may have left her susceptible to infection.

The vitamin B12 deficiency could be linked to the mother’s eating habits, since the only source of the vitamin is meat, dairy or vitamin supplements.

The couple reportedly did not follow their doctor’s advice to take their daughter to hospital when they went for her nine-month checkup and found she was suffering from bronchitis and was losing weight.

The court has heard that the parents chose instead to treat her with cabbage poultices, mustard, camphor and clay.

Good. They should pay for what they did to their innocent child. If this case sets a precedent and sparks a debate on the issue, even better.

If adults want to be stupid, fine. It pisses me off but it’s their decision. But don’t take your stupidity out on your kids – you’ve already saddled them with your genes; no need to make it worse.

So far, all of the uprisings across the Arab world have been domestic matters, deliberately so. By upping the ante against his own citizens to the point where the world had no choice but to intervene, Qaddafi has internationalized this crisis, and don’t think that he hasn’t calculated that into his plans. After all, every dictator needs some misdirection in the form of a foreign imperialist invader in the form of the United States or one of its “little Satan” allies. This could shift the whole tide and tone of this movement.

Obama, to his credit, doesn’t sound so eager to willingly take up that role. Action is needed in Libya, but Obama recognizes that there’s an optics problem if the US were to lead the charge. France and the UK sound tepidly on board, but support from elsewhere may be more moral than physical.

And with world attention still focused on Japan, everything else – Libya included – is taking a back seat. It’s hard to say who that benefits right now.

Of course, the question that nobody’s asking just yet is, what’s next? What happens after Qaddafi? What happens when any opposition movement gets tainted by the notion of being propped up by the Europeans or the Americans? Will whoever sends in troops be able to anticipate an exit date?

Stay tuned. This story isn’t getting any smaller.

Update: Canada is officially involved.

It still hurts to re-watch. And not just because we all know the outcome.

With the news that no discipline would be forthcoming from the NHL, Montreal fans – understandably – went a little nuts, demanding justice, decrying the NHL, and calling for heads to roll.

On the hit: It was ugly, that’s unquestionable. It was illegal, that’s also unquestionable, and Chara got a game misconduct for it. It was frightening to watch, because we know how it turned out. And it was part of a high-energy, high-speed game, delivered by a guy who isn’t known for using his size to injure but certainly has it in him. And the fact that Pacioretty was having his breakout season and playing first-line solid hockey only made it that much harder of a blow to absorb.

On intent: Did Chara mean to hurt Pacioretty? He says no. I’m inclined to believe him, with a caveat: I think that, within the context of hockey, he was trying to get back at Pacioretty and this was a continuation of the feud that they had going on for a few games. In other words, I don’t think this was just an accidental check gone wrong. Since a Habs-Bruins playoff matchup is a strong possibility, I’d even allow that teams start to play dirty and there’s some intent to injure going on with good players. But it’s not the same as intent to injure, off-ice, and I’m sure that’s what has the league wringing its hands at how to mete out punishment.

On bias: Mike Murphy had to make this call because Colin Campbell was biased, what with his son Gregory playing for Boston. This isn’t the first time that Campbell has needed to recuse himself from a disciplinary decision, either. I still think he should have resigned the minute his son made it to the NHL. But it does argue that there’s too much discretion in these kinds of disciplinary decisions. Either way, the rules need to be clearer, and there can’t be so much in the hands of one man.

On criminal prosecution: Nope, don’t agree with it here. Despite the massive public pressure and outcry in the wake of the NHL’s decision not to suspend Chara (and seriously, people, tying up the 9-1-1 line for hockey? Not cool.) I don’t believe that there’s any place for criminal charges in hockey, unless the incident was outside the boundaries of the game and crossed the line to something else entirely. Trying to get the courts involved is just another way of absolving the NHL of responsibility for this kind of stuff. It happens within the parameters of the game, which makes it the NHL’s responsibility.

On violence in hockey: Is the game too violent? Is there too much fighting? Should we make them all wear bubbles and carry sticks made out of foam? Hell no. I like my hockey fast-paced, hard-hitting and tough, and I suspect most of the league’s fans do too. But there’s a difference between a clean hit and a dirty one, and that’s where I think the system is broken.

The bottom line: If you rob a store and wave a gun around only meaning to scare the clerk, but you accidentally shoot him, sorry, you’re going down for murder.

Likewise, I think the rule should be simple in hockey: If you injure a guy on an illegal play, accident or not, you’re out as long as he is. If he misses the season, so do you. If you end his career, you’re gone too.

Implement this rule, enforce it a few times so the players understand it’s serious, and watch the ugly headshots disappear like magic.

Speedy recovery, Patches.

First, Mel Gibson. Now John Galliano:

The French fashion house Christian Dior said Tuesday that it had started procedures to dismiss its chief designer, John Galliano, following accusations that Mr. Galliano made anti-Semitic outbursts at a Paris bar.

[ . . . ]

The video, posted on the Web site of the British tabloid The Sun, appears to show Mr. Galliano taunting other patrons at the bar, La Perle, declaring in a slurred voice that “I love Hitler” and that “people like you would be dead,” and “your mothers, your forefathers” would all be “gassed.” It was unclear when the video was recorded.

Of course, the notion that these outbursts were caused by drunkedness is laughable. Being drunk makes you lose your filters; it doesn’t turn you into a racist.

I’m uncomfortable with hate speech laws in general, and even though Galliano was clearly off his rocker on the offensive scale, the criminal charges against him make me squirm. But Dior firing him seems like an eminently sensible decision from a business standpoint, especially with spokesperson and Oscar-winner Natalie Portman speaking out against him. And such opinions are sadly all-too-common in France, which does has these laws on the books for a reason. I highly doubt that “I was drunk” will hold up as an excuse in court.

Then again, maybe he should speak to Mel Gibson’s lawyer for some coaching.

(HT: Marco).

A friend and former professor of a California man whose yacht was hijacked by Somali pirates said that Scott Adam wanted to combine his love of adventure with his faith by spreading Bibles around the world.

Religious fanaticism and recklessness… that’s sure to turn out well. I’m not saying he deseved to get hijacked or anything. But then, the Darwin Awards exist for a reason, don’t they?

Update: It now appears that Adam and his three compatriots have been killed by the pirates. Snarkiness aside, of course I would never wish that sort of fate on anyone. And it underscores the urgent need to do something about the situation in Somalia, which hasn’t had a functioning government since 1991, and whose chaotic anarchy has given rise to the piracy industry in the first place.

Last week, the CRTC ruled that usage-based billing, the model used by large Internet providers such as Bell Canada and Rogers Communications to charge customers extra for exceeding monthly download limits, will apply to smaller providers, too. Until now, those smaller providers could offer unlimited Internet packages; the ruling means they no longer can.

There have been hints already from Industry Minister Tony Clement that the federal government may quash the controversial ruling, and the prime minister has asked for a review of it. But the government’s blunt ultimatum to the CRTC suggests any review would be pro forma.

This was a terrible decision by the CRTC – yet another in a long line of them that have backed Big Telecom’s demands over the rights of the consumer and the marketplace. Usage-based billing would have stifled innovation and choked off advancement, it’s true. But let’s not forget that, thanks to the CRTC, Canadians pay the most in the world for cell phone plans, pay for incoming text messages (despite another Harper campaign promise… anyone remember that?), and enjoy tons of lovely censorship of TV and radio. All because the CRTC is supposed to protect the interests of all Canadians, but only protects the interests of three: Bell, Telus and Rogers.

As for the government, let’s not forget that this is one decision, taken under overwhelming public pressure, in the face of hundreds of other decisions that have gone against consumer interests. The real solution isn’t to review this one decision; the real solution is to review the CRTC’s overall mandate and existence.

And I’m not even talking about the ads that were pulled.

Meanwhile in Darfur (yeah, remember Darfur?), fighting has been escalating once again, while the world ignores it and focuses on South Sudan.

Okay, not in so many words, but that was the gist of the Pequiste leader’s remarks to the press after a group of Sikhs were denied entrance to the National Assembly. They were there to speak out against Bill 94, a racist piece of claptrap that would deny services to Muslim women wearing face coverings, for instance, and is supported by an overwhelming 95% of Quebecers. This law as written won’t impact the Sikh community specifically, but the people who came out to speak up were there to represent the 5% of people who disapprove of the Quebec government’s attempt to further infringe on religious freedom for xenophobic reasons.

Now, there is a very legitimate question about the kirpan, and whether any kind of weapon – ceremonial or otherwise – should be permitted past security screening at the National Assembly. Beaudoin could have taken the high road, saying “we would like to hear from all Quebecers, and we invite the views of the Sikh community on this issue, and we regret that security concerns did not allow us to admit them” or something to that effect. It wouldn’t have solved the tricky kirpan debate, but it would have signalled an openness to at least discuss it.

But Beaudoin chose the low road. Specifically, she said that:

“Religious freedom exists, but there are other values,” she added. “Multiculturalism may be a Canadian value. But it is not a Quebec one.

“And we haven’t signed the constitution of Canada because it contains this notion of multiculturalism.

“I think we can be different.”

If by “different”, she means “more xenophobic”, then she’s hit the nail on the head. At least there’s no hypocricy in Beaudoin’s position. It’s getting harder to call racism one of Quebec’s “dirty little secrets” when it’s being promoted so openly. Quebec has never wanted to be pluralistic, accepting or tolerant. If the disastrous reasonable accommodation debates showed us anything, it’s that most people in Quebec would prefer us to turn into France and do away with religious freedom altogether.

Meanwhile, the Liberals missed an opportunity to take a strong position against Beaudoin and company. Charest’s team waffled on the issue, staying quiet and basically stumbling through an attempt to walk the fine line between not pissing anyone off and not pissing anyone off. All of that to cover the dirty little secret that, if it weren’t for the fact that the Liberals rely on the “ethnic vote” to get elected, most of them would be as opposed to multicultural values as their Pequiste compatriots. That’s some strong leadership we’ve got in Quebec City, folks.

My logical follow-up question to Louise Beaudoin is therefore this: If multiculturalism isn’t a Quebec value, how can we change that and turn it into one?

At halftime in July, I’d managed to accomplish 46% of the things on the list. How did I do in the second half with the other 54%? Well, let’s see.

1. Go to Morocco. - Made it there, thanks to volcano, almost didn’t make it back
   
2. Go camping at least twice next summer. - does camping out on a couch count?
3. Find my dream apartment and move into it. - don’t know if it’s my dream, exactly, but it’s a vast improvement and I’m officially moved in as of last week – just under the wire
   
4. Get my own washer/dryer and finally stop dragging my laundry around like a friggin’ nomad. - new apartment has ‘em both
5. Get a dishwasher. - new place has got one of those too
   
6. Replace my 12-year-old car with something newer and zippier. - zoom zoom
7. …or else get rid of it and join CommunAuto. - opted for the new car instead
8. Successfully fight that unfair, BS speeding ticket. - court date hasn’t happened yet; stay tuned
   
9. Complete and edit my NaNoWriMo 2009 project. – um, not so much
10. Participate in NaNoWriMo 2010. – sat this year out
    
11. …and win. - you can’t win if you don’t play
    
12. Buy those new dishes I was eyeing at the Ottawa kitchen store. – and I love ‘em
    
13. Buy a spice rack. – new kitchen, new spice rack
    
14. Paint my kitchen yellow. (I’ve always wanted a yellow kitchen, for some reason.) – not yet, but I intend to this spring
    
15. Go skiing at least three times. - I’ve been skiing for the past five days straight, so I’d say I killed that one
    
16. Go snowshoeing.
17. Visit Cathy. – and Casey, of course
    
18. Visit Andrea and Jim. - yay Mars!
19. Convince Andrea and Jim to come visit more often. - mission accomplished
20. Host Etrek Montreal-fest 2010. – y’all are welcome
21. Eat breakfast (other than coffee) more days than not. - coffee and a granola bar counts, right?
22. Buy a vegetable steamer.
23. Find a new volunteer project.
24. Celebrate Canada Day someplace where people are actually happy to be Canadian. - yay Mars
25. …with fireworks. - yay Martian neighbours
26. …and some typically Canadian music like Blue Rodeo or Great Big Sea. - when I’m up I can’t get down
27. Buy new socks and throw out the ones with holes in them.
28. Reprise Buy Nothing Week.
29. Roast marshmellows over a fireplace. - does a backyard fire pit count?
30. Have a board game brunch. - several times over
31. Eat crepes at CDL. – mmm, crepes
32. Host a wine and cheese. - mmm, cheese
33. Host a fondue party.
34. Make homemade sushi.
35. Play poker.
36. …and win.
    
37. Finish reading Don Quixote. – I gave up
38. …in time for the January book club meet-up. - yeah, not so much
39. Watch the rest of the UK version of Life On Mars. – haven’t had a chance to yet
    
40. Attend the St. Patrick’s Day Parade - but of course
41. …and fail to remember much about it later. - wow, I was far too sober this year
42. Turn 30. - kinda inevitable
43. …with minimal freaking out. – 30 actually feels pretty good
44. Go to New York City. (I heart NY). – great mother-daughter trip this past fall
45. Go to Quebec City. - didn’t make it there this year, sadly
46. Get through the winter without succumbing to the winter blahs. – it was a short winter, so that helped
47. …and weighing less than I do now. – hah!
48. Win tickets to something on the radio. - haven’t really tried
49. Get a letter to the editor published in the newspaper. – haven’t submitted any. Wow, I’m lazy!
50. Attend the Salon Passion Chocolat. - missed it
    
51. …and the Jazz Fest. - yep
52. …and the Comedy Fest. - Tim Minchin rules!
    
53. …and Bluesfest Ottawa. Great Big Sea
    
54. …and Nuit Blanche. – it was too bloody cold
55. …and the FrancoFolies. – it rocked
56. …and FantasiaFest. – that film was weird
    
57. …and a bunch of other festivals. - Beerfest!
58. Keep walking to work every day, as long as I live within walking distance. - it’s the only way to travel
59. Pack lunches and avoid the takeout trap. – managing on average four out of five days – not too shabby
60. Pay someone an undeserved compliment. – won’t say who
61. Learn to sew well enough to hem my own pant legs and sleeves. – my tailor can rest assured he’ll still be getting lots of business from me in 2011
    
62. Don’t get the flu. - epic FAIL
63. Call my grandfather. - often
64. Learn CSS.
65. …and update the look and feel of this blog so it’s not so ugly. -sorry, folks, still uglyville
66. Blog more often. -
    
67. Read the Israeli news headlines more regularly. - in spurts, but I try to keep up
68. …in Hebrew, to keep my language skills from going completely rusty. – I think my reading skills are nearly gone, sadly
69. …and listen to online radio or watch online TV broadcasts in Hebrew, too, for the same reason. - doing better on this score
70. Update my online (Flickr) photo albums. - mostly up to date
71. Update my offline (printed) photo albums. – yeah, not so much
72. Buy fruits and veggies from the farmers’ markets instead of the supermarket. – I heart Marche Jean-Talon
73. Vote. - there haven’t been any elections
74. …in an election where my vote actually makes a difference. - yeah, like that’ll happen
75. Visit the Contemporary Arts Museum on freebie Wednesday.
76. Go to at least one rock concert. – went to three, by my count
    
77. …by a band that has been around for less than 15 years. - KT Tunstall in November
    
78. Watch the Cannes Lions winning ads.
79. Carry on an entire conversation with a francophone without letting on that I’m anglo. – this works better in Morocco (and in France) than it does in Montreal
80. Try 10 new restaurants in Montreal. – I’ve lost count but surely it’s been more than 10
81. Find a good answer to the inevitable questions about my name that doesn’t involve exasperation, or a long backstory. – it’s like Sara, with an i
    
82. Clean the oven.
83. …using baking soda (?) - sorry Urban Green Girl, but it doesn’t work as well as you said it would
84. Organize my DVD collection.
85. Set out to buy clothes and actually end up with clothes. – some of them are even pink
86. …and no shoes. – I think I did this once
87. Master the art of the experience brief. - I didn’t, but Jasmin is working on it
88. Get more (consumer) insightful. - oh, definitely
89. Retrieve my old electric keyboard and actually remind myself how to play it.
90. Reduce the procrastination to a manageable level. - Sporcle is evil
91. Pay my taxes. – they come off my paycheque automatically, so this one has been easy
92. …and put the refund towards travel. – see #1
93. Win my 2009-10 fantasy hockey pool. – I placed second
94. Draft Ovi in the 2010-11 fantasy hockey pool. - sadly, no, and Malkin has been underproducing
    
95. Go to at least one Habs’ playoff game – contingent on them actually making the playoffs, of course. – went to three of ‘em. Helped that the Habs made it to the conference finals.
96. Keep kosher(ish) for Passover. – um… the less said the better. my mom might read this.
97. Couchsurf. - repeatedly
98. Host couchsurfers. – several of ‘em
99. Help at least three friends plan trips. – it’s the next best thing to traveling myself
100. Invent a new smoothie recipe. - bananas and kahlua – surprisingly good together
101. Watch the Olympics on TV. – glued to the set
102. …and see the Canadian team win the hockey gold. (Hey, I can hope, right?) - epic WIN!
103. Improve my Spanish from a 20-word vocabulary to at least a 50-word one. - still on the to-do list
104. Watch Mad Men Season 4.
     
105. Upgrade from Windows XP to Windows 7. - on my netbook, but not on my desktop yet
106. …preferably without losing my mind in the process. - TBD
107. Go apple picking in the fall.
108. Sell my old backpacks.
109. Clear out my closets and drawers. – now I have no clothes left
110. …and participate in a clothing swap.
111. …and donate whatever I cannot swap to charity.
112. Drink more green tea instead of coffee. – I heart david’s tea
113. Finish the pile of books that are sitting on my “to read” shelf. - I have a new pile now
     
114. Get my grandmother’s chicken soup recipe from my mom.
115. …and learn to make it.
116. Convince my mom that the world isn’t going to end in 2012, regardless of what the Mayans said. - I’m still not sure she’s entirely convinced
117. Go karaoking. - we all live in a yellow submafine
118. Go kayaking.
119. Laugh a lot.
120. Spend less time in front of the computer making these lists, and more time actually doing the things on them. - been too busy to blog, does that count?

Grand total? That’s 76 out of 12o items accomplished, or 63% of the list. That’s up from 46% at halftime, making the second half of the year arguably less productive than the first. On the other hand, I did accomplish some biggies, like the new apartment, so I’ll say it’s a wash.

What are my resolutions for 2011? Stay tuned…

Happy New Year, everyone!

A man slipped away from the scene of a week-long armed standoff in Newfoundland and got a lift out of town to buy smokes while police guarded what turned out to be an empty house for nearly 16 more hours, the RCMP said Monday.

The Mounties said the man snuck past their security perimeter on Friday night after they gathered on one side of his house to pump water into it with high-pressure hoses in an effort to resolve the standoff in Bay Bulls, N.L.

“In essence, we had one side of the house fully covered and positioned and another side that wasn’t,” Sgt. Boyd Merrill said in an interview.

Right, because it’s not like it would ever occur to someone to try the other door.

This is the kind of amateur-hour tale that you might expect from a small, underfunded local police department, not from the highly-trained and professional RCMP. I don’t think that this is quite what they meant by the Mounties “always get their man”.

(Please, no Newfie jokes, or Red Rabbit and Damian Penny might get together to kick your asses.)

“The United Nations is a wonderful idea in principle, except for the little problem of giving barbarians a vote.”

That’s courtesy of PZ Myers, in a blog post WTFing the UN’s move to remove sexual orientation from a resolution that protects people from being summarily executed. In other words, according to the UN, it’s okay to kill gay people for no reason. Which, obviously, must make perfect sense to the vast majority of backwards, human rights-abusing, Israel-bashing, hyopcritical members of the corrupt-to-irrelevance UN. Anyone still taking them seriously at this point has got to be smoking something strong.

(HT: Andrea)

Several members of his family have wed there, including the Queen’s sister. Princess Margaret in 1960, William’s aunt Princess Anne in 1973 and his uncle Prince Andrew in 1986. All three marriages ended in divorce.

Hmmm. I wonder if the happy couple believes in omens.

My Quebec resembles the Swiss or Swedish kind of socialism way with shelter and food as a basic human rights, one where large decisions are made in a perpetual referendum where everyone vote and gets a say in where tax money goes. Out with representatives and in with True democracy.

Alexandre expanded on the thought in a follow-up comment:

The democracy you describe is strangely similar to the one I have in mind, one where each issue debated at the political level needs to be voted on by mini-referendums (by computer votes, secured, etc.). Ultimately, we could downsize the government significantly and use that kind of system to steer all the debates. Do you want an investigation on the construction industry: Yes, No… Political parties would then have 1 month on big issue and 2 weeks on smaller issues to inform, convince and steer the population to vote and then the vote would be held and the PEOPLE would chose the outcome, totally oblivious to any party in power at the moment, with no veto, no muzzling, just the people choosing their way. That would be true democracy.

I’ve heard these arguments before. They’re the basis for the anti-Charest petition, and, in fact, are at the heart of the political system itself. How much of an obligation do politicians have to vote according to the mood of their constituents? How far can – or should – they go in using opinion polls as a basis to govern? And at what point do they no longer represent the people who put them in office, by ignoring them too much?

We don’t live in a democracy. We live in a representative democracy. That means, we vote every once in a while for people to represent us and make the decisions of governing on our behalf. If we don’t like their decisions, we can vote them out of office. But we don’t put every decision to a direct vote, and I don’t think we realistically could, or even should.

A pure democracy would be impractical. It would get bogged down with the logistics of endless votes. It would cause a self-selection bias with low turnout and only the fringe minority casting ballots. It would force people to make decisions on issues that they know little or nothing about, because – unlike politicians – they have day jobs and can’t possibly keep up with every issue that elected officials and their paid staff spend time on.

And, more importantly, a pure democracy would be irresponsible, even if we could implement it practically. Why? Because a majority-rules only system has no built-in protections for minorities. “Do you want an investigation into the construction industry?” seems like a fairly straightforward question - if the population wants it, do it; if not, don’t.  But what about other questions, like, “Should people have to prove that they can speak French before being allowed to vote?” A 2007 CROP poll showed majority support for the idea, which went much further than even the Marois-proposed legislation at the time. How about, “should people be allowed to wear a hijab in the workplace?” Do we take France’s example and strip the rights of religious minorities, just on the majority’s say-so?

And hey, just look at what happened when the Habs started letting people vote on the three stars of the game. Agree or disagree with the old star rankings, at least they were usually reflective of the game itself, and players from the opposing team would earn stars if their performance merited it. Now, with Price getting top star virtually every game, it’s turned into a joke. Good thing it means next to nothing. But now imagine a similar system in place for things that actually matter.

Governing is already largely about a popularity contest. If governments stray too far from what the people want, they pay the price on election day. It’s why they already rely so heavily on polling data and public opinion in order to govern. But to take it a step further and assume that all significant decisions should be taken to a vote would be to make matters all that much worse.

No, I’m not in favour of the nanny-state approach or the “father knows best” idea of governing. I don’t think our politicians know best. I think we need lots of scrutiny and checks and balances to avoid letting them do whatever they want.

But I also think that decisions sometimes need to be made that aren’t just reflective of what the mood of the people is on a particular day. Sometimes, people with a little bit of inside or expert knowledge about a situation are better qualified to make the kinds of day-to-day decisions that it takes to run a government.

And that’s why a pure democracy wouldn’t work, and a representative democracy – to borrow an old, tired, Churchill-ism, is the worst system, except for all the other ones we’ve tried.

“The guy on the line told me: Oh, it’s no problem. Your cellphone has unlimited Internet, so you can just connect your phone to your computer.”

 After Rooney asked three times if there would be an extra charge, Alexandra stayed on the phone with a customer service representative for about an hour to figure out how to connect the phone to the computer to get Internet service.

 A week later, all of Rooney’s phones were disconnected. She borrowed a phone and called Bell customer service.

 “When I spoke to the agent, he told me I had a very high balance,” she said. “He told me $47,000, and then told me I had to agree to pay a minimum payment of $300 for my phones to be reconnected.”

 Since that day, Rooney’s phone bills have not been less than five figures. Her most recent bill was for $12,000, and Bell has cut off her phone service six times.

It took Rooney over four months to get the issue resolved:

On Tuesday, Rooney got a call from someone named Gina, who said she worked at the office of the president. She apologized on behalf of Bell, and said it was unacceptable for it to take this long to settle her problem. The woman told her all charges had been reversed, and her current balance was $181.16.

“When I heard, I was so happy that I cried,” Rooney said. “She told me, she understood why I went to the newspapers about this because it’s been since July. I gave them a lot of time to handle this and they didn’t. She was really nice.”

From now on, the woman told Rooney she no longer has to contact customer service and if she has any problems, she has a special number to call.

Francoeur said the settlement of Rooney’s problem had nothing to do with the fact that a reporter contacted the company on her behalf, and that the problem would have been solved this week anyway.

Yep, that was my experience back when I was a Bell customer, too. Months of running around in circles on the phone with various customer service agents accomplished nothing. Only going to the top – in my case, to a VP – finally managed to solve anything. Which begs the question of what, exactly, the point of having a customer service department is in the first place. I mean, could nobody below the level of the president see that there was clearly something wrong with a $47,000 phone bill?

Rooney says she’ll probably remain a Bell customer, which sounds crazy but is likely because, in her rural area, she has no choice. As for me, I fully divested myself a few years ago and will never look back.

It wasn’t exactly “Don’t Tread on Me” or “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” But when John Tyner, a 31-year-old software programmer from Oceanside, Calif., refused a TSA “groin check,” he uttered words soon to adorn boxers and briefs of freedom lovers everywhere: “You touch my junk, and I’m going to have you arrested.”

Tyner refused what he considered “a huge invasion of privacy” while attempting to board a flight at San Diego International Airport. He “opted out” of the full-body scanner, which leaves nothing to the imagination, settling for the traditional metal scanner and a basic pat-down. But the groin check, in his view, went too far.

Tyner had turned on his cell phone’s video camera and placed it atop the luggage he sent through the X-ray machine. The conversation between him and a TSA supervisor was, er, revealing. The supervisor explained that if he refused, he would not be allowed to fly and would be escorted out. Tyner responded: “OK, I don’t understand how a sexual assault can be made a condition of my flying.”

“This is not considered a sexual assault,” the supervisor said.

“It would be if you were not the government,” replied Tyner.

“By buying your ticket you gave up a lot of rights,” countered the supervisor. Oh. We wonder if Benjamin Franklin, having said that those willing to sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither, would submit to a groin check.

[ . . . ]

Then you have the airport peep show with TSA scanning the body image of passengers. Napolitano defends this practice, saying: “The officer assisting the passenger never sees the image, and the officer viewing the image never interacts with the passenger.” Purveyors and viewers of online porn can say something similar.

[ . . . ]

We know who’s trying to kill us. Yet to avoid charges of profiling we go through what Rep. John Mica, one of the authors of the original TSA bill, calls “a big Kabuki theater” that gives the appearance of airtight security while adding little.

We should adopt techniques, used with great success by the Israeli airline El Al, in which passengers of interest are observed, profiled and, most important, questioned before boarding planes, not submitting everybody to naked scanners and groping. “It’s not an Israeli model, it’s a TSA, screwed-up model,” says Mica.

As a fairly frequent traveler, I find the idea of having to submit to a huge invasion of privacy – not to mention a potential health risk – as a precondition of flying distasteful. I would find it distasteful even if I thought it was the least bit effective. But it’s not, which makes it all that much worse.

On the other hand, a train trip last week was remarkably hassle-free. Enter the train station, get your ticket punched, board the train. Not even so much as a metal detector. Foolish? Maybe. But far more civilized.

I’m not arguing that we should abolish airport security altogether. Clearly, there’s a need for some practical measures. But what the TSA is doing is crossing a line, and I’m not the only one to think so.

A mysterious blogger who set off an uproar in the Arab world by claiming he was God and hurling insults at the Prophet Muhammad is now behind bars — caught in a sting that used Facebook to track him down.

The case of the unlikely apostate, a shy barber from this backwater West Bank town, is highlighting the limits of tolerance in the Western-backed Palestinian Authority — and illustrating a new trend by authorities in the Arab world to mine social media for evidence.

Residents of Qalqiliya say they had no idea that Walid Husayin — the 26-year-old son of a Muslim scholar — was leading a double life

Known as a quiet man who prayed with his family each Friday and spent his evenings working in his father’s barbershop, Husayin was secretly posting anti-religion rants on the Internet during his free time.

Now, he faces a potential life prison sentence on heresy charges for “insulting the divine essence.” Many in this conservative Muslim town say he should be killed for renouncing Islam, and even family members say he should remain behind bars for life.

“He should be burned to death,” said Abdul-Latif Dahoud, a 35-year-old Qalqiliya resident. The execution should take place in public “to be an example to others,” he added.

At a time when the United Nations is trying to pass a resolution that would make blasphemy illegal, it’s important that we see cases like these as cautionary tales of what we can expect when we allow political correctness to trump free speech. There is no free speech in the supposedly secular, liberal Palestinian Authority. None whatsoever. There is no free speech in Iran, or in Saudi Arabia, or in Egypt, or in Pakistan, or in most of the countries sponsoring the resolution. And while the supposedly pro-freedom left marches and protests against the supposedly imperialist Israel and in support of the poor, suffering Palestinians, it can never be pointed out often enough just where the free speech limits exist in that part of the world.

Nor is it only in the Arab world where these laws exist. Ireland passed anti-blasphemy laws last year. Laws against blasphemy or religious defamation exist, to some varying degree, in the Netherlands, in Germany, in Greece, in Finland… even Canada’s hate speech laws allow for a lot of grey areas and potential abuse depending on which way the political wind blows.

These types of “anti-blasphemy” resolutions and laws are just tools wielded by extremists to silence any voices of freedom or dissent. Speech – whether or not it’s offensive – should be protected, and the right to satirize, insult, offend or simply denounce religion is a right that we need to protect, for all our sakes. And that, in a nutshell, is the basis for my position on freedom of speech.

Under the portability requirement, every Canadian is entitled to full medical coverage, no matter where he or she lives, and provincial health insurance plans are supposed to be good anywhere in the country.

But that tenet is showing cracks at the Quebec-Ontario boundary. Quebec patients are turned away or pay out-of-pocket for medical services outside their home province, essentially denied portability.

[ . . . ]

And physicians inside Quebec have their own issues to contend with. Louis Godin, head of the Fédération des médecins omnipraticiens du Québec, says the government needs to resolve the problems in its home province before appeasing doctors elsewhere. Two million Quebeckers don’t have a family physician. Meanwhile, in the four faculties of medicine, 250 family-medical spots remained vacant over the past four years because doctors are paid roughly 30 per cent less than their counterparts elsewhere in the country. There’s a lack of medical infrastructure, especially along the boundary, which has resulted in a number of doctors moving to private clinics or simply picking up and leaving for other provinces.

Basically, what this means is that there are much longer waiting lists for elective procedures inside Quebec, due to a severe shortage of doctors and resources. So people go to Ontario to get health services. If they pay up-front and ask to get reimbursed by RAMQ, they’ll only get part of their money back — if they’re lucky. And many doctors in other provinces will refuse to see Quebec patients, because they’re strained enough meeting the demand from the local populace, and because of the bureaucratic roadblocks that get thrown up when they themselves try to bill RAMQ for their services.

This is an inevitable consequence of a system that makes federal promises but relies on provincial jurisdictions to carry them out. Quebec’s healthcare is a mess, and understandably, the rest of Canada doesn’t particularly want to enable or subsidize the mess.

If the Quebec government were truly serious about fixing healthcare, it would pay doctors as much as they’re getting paid in other provinces, make more spots available, and commit funds for infrastructure and services, to stem the steady tide of doctors across provincial borders. Canada already has a hard enough time hanging onto doctors who are seduced by the private salaries and perks south of the border in the US. But this inter-province competition needs to stop.

Of course, it won’t happen. Quebec will point a finger at Ottawa, at once demanding more funding, and then loudly decrying it when it’s offered as “interference” in a provincial matter. Biting the hand that feeds — nothing new for La Belle Province.

So if you’re living in Quebec and are one of the rare few with a family doc, consider yourself lucky. And if not, well, best hope you don’t get sick anytime soon.

This is nothing new for the UN, which has regularly seen topsy-turvy things like Libya being elected to the UN Human Rights Council. The moral authority of the UN has basically been at zero, since the one nation, one vote structure means that small states with human rights abuses get to dominate the conversation.

But this time, Iran – a country where women are executed for adultery – presuming to speak up for women’s rights was just a step too far for nations like Canada and the USA, who successfully blocked its bid for a seat on the board:

Led by the U.S., several countries helped gather opposition to Iran’s campaign. They were joined by human-rights groups, who pointed to the recent sentence of death by stoning for Sakineh Mohammadi Ashtiani, an Iranian woman convicted of adultery.

Before anyone gets too excited, though, it should be noted that this is just one blip in the UN’s steady march to redefine human rights in a topsy-turvy, Orwellian fashion:

You might think the regime’s habit of murdering women for imaginary crimes would earn it universal condemnation – especially from places such as the United Nations. You would be wrong. In April, Iran was given a seat on the UN Commission on the Status of Women, whose goal is “gender equality and the advancement of women.” No one explained how stoning women to death advances gender equality. This is a moral inversion so twisted that it defies satire. If you still harbour any illusion that the UN is truly interested in the rights of women, please abandon it now.

Iran’s ludicrous appointment was a consolation prize for its failure, despite fierce lobbying, to gain a seat on the UN Human Rights Council. That would not have been as bizarre as it sounds, given that its members include the rights-conscious nation of Saudi Arabia. The Human Rights Council is dominated by a bloc of Islamic and African states that refuse to condemn Iran for anything. Instead, the council spends most of its time denouncing Israel and the United States. “It’s tragic,” says Ms. Namazie, who fled Iran in 1980. “It’s like asking apartheid South Africa to sit on the commission for racial equality.”

The UN Human Rights Council has long been a joke. UN Women, the new agency, promises to be much of the same. Same shit, different day.

An Australian rural community desperate to encourage new families to move in and revitalize the town is offering to rent farm houses to interested families for one Australian dollar a week. The hamlet of Trundle, 215 miles northwest of Sydney, has a population of 380.

 Like neighboring communities, it has struggled with years of drought and is hoping that the cheap rent — the equivalent of 95 U.S. cents a week — will bring in new life and help fill up schoolrooms.

Maybe Jimmy McMillan should consider moving Down Under.

But before Obama panics too much, he might want to consult this list of Midterm study strategies, compiled by me back in the eighth grade:

• Eliminate distractions. Minesweeper, SuperNES, listening to your mom fight with your sister down the hall, trying to mediate a mideast peace settlement… all these are distracting to the study process.

• Prioritize the material. Midterm exam questions are usually about things that have been covered recently on the curriculum, and are therefore foremost in the minds of teachers – er – voters. Spend more time on recent issues like the tea party, and less time on the stuff that was covered at the start of the term and that everyone’s forgotten about by now anyway, like, y’know, healthcare.

• Plan your time. Midterms take place in the middle of the term, as their name suggests. While you’re studying for them, you also have to juggle other assignments and a social life. Oh, and national security and economic concerns, too. Make a schedule and stick to it. Use whatever tools work for you, like an agenda book or, if you prefer, a highly-paid team of executive secretaries.

• Find the right study buddies. Pick people who are smarter than you and copy their notes, or arrange a cram session with them in the library. If you can get them to write your speeches for you, too, all the better.

• Remember that it’s not worth as much as the final. Even a bad grade on a midterm can be made up for with a strong final exam, which is usually worth a bigger percentage of your overall grade. Time to put it behind you and focus on what’s important: Beating Sarah Palin in 2012.

For actual news about the US midterm election, in case anyone’s interested, check out the CBC’s interactive maps.

Unlimited wireless data plans are almost unknown in Canada, and that’s a strategy telecom carriers elsewhere are starting to emulate as they look for ways to cope with booming demand and capacity limits.

BCE’s Bell Canada, Rogers Communications and Telus Corp  – Canada’s “Big Three” telecoms – command profit margins that are the envy of the industry. They have an historical advantage over their peers because Canadians accept that they have to pay for as much capacity as they use.

Or, maybe it’s because the CRTC is more interested in protecting those profit margins that are the “envy of the industry” than in protecting consumers, in our price-fixed, oligopolistic market.

And it’s got consequences. Less affordability translates to lower smartphone penetration, which means companies have less incentive to stay ahead of the curve on wireless development, which means Canada will – as usual – continue to lag behind the rest of the world when it comes to innovation. That’s bad news for everyone… unless, of course, you happen to be an executive at Bell, Rogers or Telus.

We’ve lagged behind the rest of the world long enough. We’re supposed to “accept” things that are unheard-of in the rest of the world, like punative three-year contracts with ridiculous cancellation fees, “system access fees” of $8.95 a month, being charged for incoming voice minutes and even text messages, and ridiculously high data plan pricing. Us Canadians don’t “accept” that we have to pay as much for data as we do; we’re forced into it because we have no choice. That is, no choice other than opting out of owning a smartphone entirely, which is the choice I’ve made.

Instead of admiring our market, the world should be mocking it. And instead of protecting the anachronistic, anti-competitive marketplace, the government should scrap the CRTC and throw the doors open to real competition. Until then, consumers and businesses will be the big losers.

A former Harper cabinet minister’s politically radical idea that Quebec be required — by law — to hold an independence referendum every 15 years is being swiftly mocked.

Michael Fortier, the Tories’ one-time public-works minister, argued Thursday that mandatory referendums would actually help Quebec move beyond its eternal unity debates.

Referendums brought Canada to the brink of rupture in 1980 and 1995 but, Fortier says, mandatory plebiscites would at least ensure 14 years of peace between votes.

His idea was emphatically ridiculed by the Prime Minister’s Office and Quebec’s federalist politicians Thursday.

But is it such a dumb idea? Really, what Fortier was calling for was to have designated periods, spaced far apart, for the national unity question to be discussed, and for everyone to shut up about the sovereignty debate the rest of the time.

There’s just one problem with that theory: We don’t need any more referendums in order to shut up about sovereignty. We just need to stop talking about it. Which, need I point out, we pretty much already have been… until Fortier opened his big mouth.

While a sighting this week of a strange, lighted object above Cavendish Mall is “probably explainable,” astronomer and UFO-studies buff Chris Rutkowski said Thursday, from his perspective, the jury is still out on the question of whether Earth is receiving visits from extraterrestrials.

But there is little chance a private member’s bill would be able to get through the Commons and Senate by the time the 2011 census process starts in March.

I’m not sure which is the saddest part of the story here: The Conservative disdain for and lack of understanding of the far-reaching implications of their decision? The fact that this is the first time in years that I can remember that the Liberals actually did something I can support? Or the fact that our government apparently can’t get even a single thing done in five whole months?

Oh yeah. Here.

Let’s compare the two. Here’s Obama:

“That month makes a difference,” the president said. “It means that kids are losing a lot of what they learn during the school year during the summer. It’s especially severe for poorer kids who may not see as many books in the house during the summers, aren’t getting as many educational opportunities.”

[ . . . ]

“We have got to identify teachers who are doing well. Teachers who are not doing well, we have got to give them the support and the training to do well. And if some teachers aren’t doing a good job, they’ve got to go,” Obama said.

And here’s his fictional model, Congressman Matthew Santos, played by Jimmy Smits on the West Wing, circa 2005:

“America is 49th in the world in literacy. That’s down 18 spots in the last four years. Why? Well, for starters, the 180-day school year, that’s based on the agrarian calendar. But we’re in a global economy now. Japan’s at 243 days; Germany’s at 240. ”

[ . . . ]

“… which is why we need to end teacher tenure and get rid of failing teachers.”

Life imitating art? In the case of Santos/Obama, it’s certainly not the first time.

Quebecers quickly organized large street demonstrations when the government announced it would charge taxpayers a $200-a-year health premium, then bill patients another $25 for each hospital visit.

[ . . . ]

Quebec’s user fees would have brought an estimated $500 million a year to the provincial treasury.

 The province says it now has to find another way to fill that budget shortfall; health care costs in the province are now more than $20 billion per year and are projected to grow five per cent annually.

Here’s a thought: How about we start by scrapping $20 million annual budget for the Office de la langue française?

This event is touted as a great chance to change people’s habits. In fact, it’s anything but. It’s just a stunt, designed to get some media attention while changing exactly nothing. This is the seventh year that this event is being held, and in that time, car usage has gone up, not down. The small closure zone and the fact that it takes place at off-peak hours will mean that most people probably won’t even notice it. And those who do notice were either already part of the converted, or will just be further put off by the ongoing attack on car users without providing viable alternatives.

Hey, anti-car activists, here’s a novel idea: Instead of focusing endlessly on disincentives to car usage – of which there are already plenty – how about focusing on some incentives to alternative modes of transport?

Speaking to a closed meeting of Jewish American leaders in New York late Tuesday, Abbas made clear that he wants to continue the dialogue with Israel and signaled that he was backing away from his ultimatum.

“I cannot say I will leave the negotiations, but it’s very difficult for me to resume talks if Prime Minister Netanyahu declares that he will continue his activity in the West Bank and Jerusalem,” Abbas said, according to a transcript of the event obtained by The Associated Press.

Abbas urged Israel to extend the building restrictions for several months while the sides negotiate the final borders between Israel and a future Palestine. “At that time, Israelis will be free to build in their territory and the Palestinians the same,” he said.

This could just be a stall tactic on Abbas’s part, sure. But the reality is that Israel cannot indefinitely put life on hold for nearly half a million of its citizens, while a peace that everyone knows will not happen is endlessly discussed just to boost Obama’s ego.

A lot of people think that these rounds of peace talks are futile. I don’t. Increasingly, I think they’re dangerous, because at the end of each round of failed talks, Israel has conceded that much more and has moved the starting marker for the next round. It’s a war of attrition, all right, only going the other way. And where does it stop?

A Kentucky man accused of strangling his wife is poised to claim excessive caffeine from sodas, energy drinks and diet pills left him so mentally unstable he couldn’t have knowingly killed her, his lawyer has notified a court.

Crazy as it may seem, this defence has apparently worked at least once before. Because, after all, it is America, the land where personal responsibility is a dirty word and where everything is somebody else’s fault.

But this was the kicker in the article:

The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — published by the American Psychiatric Association showing standard criteria for the classification of mental disorders — defines overdose as more than 300 mg. That’s about three cups of coffee.

Wow. I guess that means that everyone who works in the ad biz is crazy. Then again, we kind of already knew that.

According to Vick, Israelis don’t care about peace, peace negotiations, or about the Palestinians because they are simply having too good a time: sunbathing, swimming, café-hopping, profiting from start-up companies, and, according to polls cited by Vick, utterly disconnected from “politics;” indeed Vick suggests that Israelis resemble Californians more than they resemble Egyptians. These are all points which scream: Israel does not fit in; if Israelis were only more impoverished, more indolent, and paradoxically, even more “laid back,” they might be recognizable as indigenous to the region, a true part of the Middle East.

These are Vick’s thoughts, not mine.

[ . . . ]

Here is what Vick utterly fails to comprehend, namely, that the Israelis are not merely tired, disenchanted, living in la-la land a la southern Californians (hence, the Jewish star made of daisies on the cover). The Israelis are actually showing the entire world how to embrace life, even as they live, trembling, in the shadow of death. They are teaching the world how to “love life more than they fear death.”

That, and the fact that Israelis have had to learn to live in a state of constant war and fear since the birth of the nation. They want peace, but they’re not going to put their lives entirely on hold waiting for it to happen.

Of course, TIME’s editors have probably just caught onto the fact that Israel-bashing sells. It’s like the twenty-first century version of “if it bleeds, it leads”. And in these troubled times for the publishing industry, can we really blame them?

Yes. We can.

(Hat tip: Dana)

Price won’t win any popularity contests if he keeps posting mediocre numbers and displaying a bad attitude. Halak is truly a class act, and the way he was treated by Gainey and the Habs’ management was disgusting. I hope he gets the success – and credit – he deserves in St. Louis.

A team of researchers from the Hebrew University has developed a treatment that completely destroys HIV-infected human cells in laboratory cultures, according to an article published last month in the scientific journal AIDS Research and Therapy.

The therapy, developed by scientists from the university’s Alexander Silberman Institute of Life Sciences and the Institute of Chemistry, destroys cells infected with HIV without damaging adjacent healthy cells.

Yep, keep calling for those academic boycotts, haters. Have fun with that.

Terrorism as a fame vehicle? Somewhere, William Hung is wishing he thought of that.

1. Idiots are their own worst PR nightmare. Let ‘em talk long enough, they’ll shoot themselves in the foot. No need to do it for them.

2. Laziness is an addition, just like alcoholism. And it has enablers. Don’t be one. Next time someone asks you a question instead of looking it up themselves, send them this link: http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com.

3. It seems to me that people are much less shutter-happy than they were a few years ago, and are more likely to put away the camera. Has the novelty of digital allowing us to take thousands of photos worn off? Do we have photo fatigue?

4. Food really does taste better on pretty new dishes.

5. I used to think that writers were just being hyperbolic when they talked about sirens “screaming”. Now I know better. They mean it literally.

6. Summer’s not over yet. There’s still almost a month to go until NHL Preseason begins.

Here’s my recommendation: None of them.

With the possible exception of no-touch icing – which is long overdue - most of these new rules would just fix things that aren’t broken, or turn the NHL into a laughingstock. I mean, two-on-two overtime? No icing while shorthanded? I realise that R&D camp is a chance to try out wacky ideas, but seriously, what are they smoking over there in Ontario?

Meanwhile, the proposed new rules do nothing to address the problems that were introduced with the last round of rule changes, such as teams playing for the shoot-out, ugly hits from behind, and malicious intent to injure.

What I’d like to see? Well, for starters, let’s eliminate the shoot-out during the regular season and go back to ties if it’s still even after OT. The shoot-out can be moved to the post-season, where it can be used to replace marathon games that go on until one of the teams drops of exhaustion. Next, let’s add some zero-tolerance rules for illegal hits that carry penalties that actually mean something. And finally, let’s encourage exciting games by respecting the game and its traditions, unless provided with a compelling reason not to.

Americans increasingly are convinced — incorrectly — that President Barack Obama is a Muslim, and a growing number are thoroughly confused about his religion. Nearly one in five people, or 18 per cent, said they think Obama is Muslim, up from the 11 per cent who said so in March 2009, according to a poll released Thursday. The proportion who correctly say he is a Christian is down to just 34 per cent.

Some of this could be considered backlash for Obama’s apparent cardinal sin in promoting the principle of freedom of religion with respect to the plans to build a mosque in downtown NYC, near the World Trade Center site. Because everyone knows that the US is a Christian theocracy, and the Constitution be damned. And of course, freedom of religion simply means freedom to practice the “right” religion.

But between the conspiracy theorists who don’t believe Obama is American, the racists who question whether he’s black, white or purple, and now the growing segment of Americans who want to make an issue of his religion, you have to wonder where the percentage of Americans are who would honestly say that they do not care.

Why should Americans be so afraid of electing a non-Christian anyway?

It’s an obvious fallout of a culture that emphasizes that the personal is political, and that not only tolerates but expects its leaders to put personal religious conviction ahead of public interest when making decisions. The arguments haven’t changed much since Kennedy – a Catholic (gasp!) was elected in 1960. Separation of Church and State? Hogwash. They want a leader who is seen going to church and quoting the bible in speeches. Which is why any hint, suggestion or misconception about Obama is such a big story.

Us Canadians, in contrast, have a stronger tradition of making the distinction between the personal and the political. Jean Chrétien was a Catholic prime minister who refused to bow to religious pressure when passing legislation for same-sex marriage, for example. We expect our politicians to have personal lives that are just that – personal.

Barack Obama is Christian, not Muslim. But it would be nice to think that maybe one day, Americans would be happy to elect a Muslim president. Or a Jewish one. Or a Buddhist one. Or – imagine – an atheist one. Oh, the horror!

And the Gazette publishes this under the inflammatory headline: Smokers cost Quebec $930M a year.

Erm, did anyone think to ask how many of those people are actually in the hospital for health issues even remotely related to smoking? Or, more prosaically, what proportion of the general population either smokes or used to smoke?

I think this blog needs a headdesk tag.

Palestinians are indeed victims of mistreatment. But you won’t hear much about what they endure, unless someone can pin the blame directly on Israel. Conditions in Gaza, for example, have made for a tough existence there. But human-rights activists have turned a blind eye to the systematic assault on individual freedom that has beset the population ever since the Islamic militant movement Hamas took over in 2005.

Read the whole thing.