[. . . . ] It was a Canadian twist to one of the hottest events in the media industry -- the annual Sun Valley conference hosted by New York investment bank Allen & Co., where the most powerful people in the news and entertainment industries have gathered with institutional investors for the past 22 years.

[. . . . ] For six days, the barons of the information age mingle in a freewheeling atmosphere.

The conference is meant to be part think-tank, with high-profile speakers such as Mr. Martin, Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina and Washington Post publisher Don Graham. Two years ago, Mexican President Vicente Fox was a keynote speaker, touting the burgeoning investment opportunities in his country.

[. . . . ] But Sun Valley is meant to be much more than just a series of seminars. It is a place where deal makers are free from some of the trappings and encumbrances of power, with public-relations handlers banned. "We come to be old friends over the years," said Mr. Graham. [. . . . ]

Prime Minister Paul Martin’s former employers at Montreal-based Power Corp. brokered the release of Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 for Canadian viewing days before the June 28 federal election.

Forensic economist David Hawkins alleges that "Privy councilors and Carlyle group advisers, Paul Desmarais and Frank McKenna appear to have arranged the release of Fahrenheit 9/11 by Lion’s Gate during the last days of the election as a propaganda weapon to frighten Canadians away from the pro-American position of the new Canadian Conservative Party," in an email sent to prominent Canadian federal election analysts. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] Police say the seizure off Nova Scotia's coast of an Antiguan sailboat loaded with cocaine from South America and the Caribbean was a major drug bust allegedly involving smugglers from this province, Quebec and elsewhere.

The RCMP on Monday intercepted the 15-metre yacht, the Friendship, near the small Eastern Shore community of Moser River in Halifax County. More than 500 kilograms of cocaine was allegedly packed on the boat, a lucrative cache destined for markets in Canada.

[. . . . ] five federal agencies, including the Canadian navy, helped uncover what police say is an international drug-smuggling ring.

[. . . . ] Seven of nine people arrested in the operation, conducted as part of Project Columbie, have been charged. Most are from Quebec.

Const. Bourque said two Nova Scotians allegedly involved in the crime haven't been charged yet. [. . . . ]

Observation and common sense have told me for years that there is no relationship between the amount of money spent on education and student achievement. Now a new study to be released July 7 by the Cato Institute provides irrefutable facts that lead to the same conclusion.

Neal McCluskey, an education policy analyst for Cato, notes that while federal spending on education has ballooned from about $25 billion in 1965 (adjusted for inflation) to more than $108 billion in 2002, the promise of improved performance in the classroom and better grades remains flat. "Math and reading scores have stagnated," writes McCluskey, "graduation rates have flatlined, and researchers have shown several billion-dollar federal programs to be failures."

[. . . . ] Even after programs and spending had shown lack of results, only a very few were removed in the last 39 years.

It's the "one-size-fits-all, we-know-what's-best-for-you-mentality" of Washington that has some states complaining about the "No Child Left Behind" mandate that demands states squeeze students through standardized tests and achievement models into a mold designed by politicians and administered by bureaucrats. When these strategies fail, the government mostly does not end or change them. It throws more money at them.

Human behaviour is hard to predict and even harder to control, yet that doesn't stop researchers from trying.

Consider a recent California study published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Public Health. Researchers asked non-smoking teenage girls and boys to name their favourite movie stars.

[. . . . Read the details here.] Teen smoking is bad, but so are public policy proposals that are based on hunches rather than evidence.

Mr. Lundberg's claim about species extinction was by no mean manufactured, at least by him. Its source was a study last January in the "respected" journal Nature. This study declared, sort of, with lots of qualifications, that between 18% and 35% of the species studied could be "committed" to extinction by the year 2050.

Not surprisingly, the media weren't looking for the caveats when they broadcast the story. Biotic holocaust here we come. Kyoto or else.

The journalistic treatment of the Nature study was subsequently the subject of a paper by four members of the Biodiversity Research Group at Oxford University's School of Geography and the Environment. Its title was Crying wolf on climate change and extinction. It began, "Science needs to learn how to deal with increasingly sensationalist mass media."

But what the Oxford paper really revealed was that the media should learn how to deal with sensationalist scientists. [. . . . ]

Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi will be playing right into the hands of terrorists if he goes ahead with his plan to offer amnesty to lawless Iraqi insurgents, including those who have killed Americans.
It is amazing that Allawi can be so politically naive, so disdainful of justice, so ignorant of history and so oblivious to international optics. Allawi's rationale for giving the rebels a chance to surrender their arms and support the new government is feeble at best.

He claims the insurgency was against the Americans, which was justified because they were an occupying force. A new Iraqi government, therefore, will be a domestic affair only and, voila, there's no more reason for insurgency.

Allawi misses the point. The insurgents do not want to make peace; they want to hold power. [. . . . ]

EDMONTON -- Asian energy consumers and investors are being offered a new way to enter the oilsands action by buying into a $2.5-billion export pipeline plan, sponsor Enbridge Inc. said yesterday.

Ownership partners as well as customers are being sought in Japan and China for the proposed 1,200-kilometre Gateway Pipeline to the west coast of B.C. from Alberta, Enbridge spokesman Jim Rennie said. "We could have a project by the end of this year."

[. . . . ]"China is now the world's second-largest oil market behind the U.S., having surpassed Japan in 2003. Only a decade ago, China crossed the line from self-sufficiency into net imports. Since then China's oil demand has approximately doubled, with imports accounting for over one-third of crude supply," Cambridge said. [. . . . ]

You'll have to forgive me, but I still don't see how terror has taken a back seat to oil interests. Michael Moore tries to make the point, but he never really connects the dots. What I do see is that Cold War blinders—not oil interests—prevented this administration from taking terrorism seriously. The administration came to power believing that terrorism was more of a Clinton obsession than a national security threat. We were the big superpower. We had to worry about potential peer competitors like China and a possibly resurgent Russia, not annoying little asymmetric threats like terrorism. Clinton administration officials couldn't get anyone in the incoming Bush administration to focus on terrorism. Because of oil? No, I think because they had all left power during the Reagan and Bush I eras and had their Cold War glasses on, and they weren't prepared for the new threat of the day. They willfully ignored the threat because it was a Clinton-era problem.

On the debate about whether the Saudis left the country on Sept. 13 or Sept. 14, your book does dig into this question. But according to the 9/11 commission report, "[W]e have found no credible evidence that any chartered flights of Saudi Arabian nationals departed the United States before the reopening of national airspace." Clark has come out very, very hard on the FBI, and so your posting makes a lot of sense, and as you point out, the FBI might not have even checked the requisite databases. But the 9/11 commission has gone back and run those names and found that even if the FBI had done so, the names would have been given an OK. I'll stick with the 9/11 commission on this one. But even if one doesn't, the problem would be an incompetent FBI, not oil wealth and greed. [. . . . ]

A trip to England is an eye-opener, because even the most dedicated reader couldn’t finish all of London’s 10 daily papers. But why are so many people over there reading newspapers?

American newspapers are struggling to survive. Most cities are down to one daily paper. So a trip to England is an eye-opener, because even the most dedicated reader couldn’t finish all of London’s 10 daily papers. But why are so many people over there reading newspapers?

Part of the answer is that the free market works. The United States has always had a (relatively) free entertainment market. But in Britain, state support made television a socialist medium for many years. And while socialism is many things, it is not entertaining. London’s newspapers, on the other hand, have always been entertaining. That’s helped them thrive even in this television age.

But a major factor in the survival of British newspapers is that they make no secret of their political bias. Most papers cover the same stories, but do so through slightly different political lenses. One newspaper will tend to support the Conservative side, while another will back Labour. And the reader always knows where his paper is coming from, not simply in its editorials, but on the front page, too. [. . . . ]

During the period following the Second World War, in an economic boom known as the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle), Germany posted some of the strongest growth in its history. But as the accompanying chart shows, the country has since become sick. During the boom years of 1951-70, its economy grew at an average annual rate of 6.3%. During the following 20 years, growth fell to 2.5%; during the 1990s, it declined to 1.8%; and in the new millennium it has averaged 0.3%.

[. . . . ] One of the main influences that explains the reduced economic freedom is Germany's high level of overall government spending. The country spends 20% of its national income on social benefits alone, twice Canada's percentage. Another important factor reducing economic freedom is regulation, which is high and very pervasive in Germany -- much higher than in Canada.

[. . . . ] German government policies have produced results that make the hearts of socialists race. Germany has 50% greater income equality than the United States, and the risk of not receiving government benefits during unemployment, retirement and ill health is 60% smaller, in spite of Germany's high unemployment rate -- about 10% for many years. These socialist achievements have come at the cost of slower economic growth (as shown in the graph) and reduced levels of private consumption, now at 78% of U.S. levels.

[. . . . ] Does [Martin] reappoint Her Excellency Adrienne Clarkson and His (self-styled) Excellency, John Ralston Saul? She has mounted a furious covert lobbying effort to remain at the public trough. Her key patron is Martin mentor Maurice Strong, for whom Mr. Saul once worked at Petro-Canada.
However, my spies predict Mr. Martin will appoint a less profligate newcomer to stand in for Her real Majesty, perhaps Marc Garneau, the first Canadian in space. That might shore up Mr. Martin's francophone flank in the wake of the Grit debacle at the Quebec polls.

What about the Corp? Another decision: does Mr. Martin reappoint Bob Rabinovitch as head of the ratings-challenged CBC? The odds are: no, because Bob carries the considerable baggage of being the protege and friend of Eddie Goldenberg, the Chretien hatchetman.

Moreover, instead of tending to the Corp's tangled bureaucratic knitting, Mr. Rabinovitch has developed an affinity for jetting around the world on junkets. If he is axed, his replacement needs to be a bilingual hard-ass with private sector experience who can deal with the Corp's real problem: a dearth of top management "talent" directing and, too often, dismissing a truly talented work team. [. . . . ]

"All men, even those at the greatest distance, are no doubt entitled to our good wishes.... But if, notwithstanding, they should be unfortunate, to give ourselves any anxiety upon that account, seems to be no part of our duty."

-- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Adam Smith was very far from being hard-hearted or a proponent of "selfishness," but the above quote still appears shocking to sensitive and politically correct ears. A mildly charitable indifference to the plight of the distant unfortunate is no longer considered acceptable, particularly in a much richer developed world. However, the problem remains one of providing practical help beyond disaster relief.

This week, the African Union holds a summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, to discuss the state of the continent. It is, in a word, desperate. Well-intended aid has arguably made it worse.

A hubristic belief grew after the Second World War that foreign aid, guided by a caste of development specialists, might ease the transition of Third World countries on to the path of sustained economic growth. Inaction was declared to be morally unacceptable. Hence armies of well-paid and well-expensed bureaucrats flew forth to administer projects from behind high-walled UN and World Bank compounds.

Smith would have seen the fundamental flaw in such an approach, pointing out (as he did in his more famous book, The Wealth of Nations) that what we now call development depends on the accumulation of physical and human capital -- tools, machinery, factories and personal skills -- under a set of stable but limited political institutions which, above all, defend property rights. Under such institutions, specialization and trade, the true roots of social betterment, can flourish. In their absence, self-sustaining development simply won't happen. [. . . . ]

Police probing the murders of Edmonton and area hookers are racists who share the blame for the killings.

Those are not my beliefs. Those are the bizarre accusations of female native officials who held a well-attended news conference in Edmonton yesterday.

[. . . . ] The national president of the native women's association has leaped to the conclusion the aboriginal victims lost their lives due to "racialized violence."

[. . . . ] Certainly it is a terrible tragedy when anyone is murdered. But I do not believe that the RCMP as a whole are racist or are responsible for any of the tragic deaths of women.

This is the classic victimization syndrome. [. . . . ]

The accusations are bizarre and questions from me and other media members got few revealing answers. Brown and her associates simply seemed to have a whole conspiracy theory with few facts or figures to back it up. Association researcher Brenda Jones said that over the last 20 years there have been almost 700 aboriginal women missing in Canada - including 22 in Alberta - but police do not seem to care. Jones made the further odd claim that police refuse to release the names of 117 of those females and, as such, the women "don't even have a name, let alone a voice."

What a load of garbage.

They simply don't want my A-negative blood, not now, not ever, because the claret that flows through my veins is intolerably tainted, according to the CBS rule book.

I'm part of the dubious "permanent deferral" group (read "banned for life"), nestled uncomfortably between the Africans, homosexuals and heroin addicts.

The reason: I spent more than three cumulative months in the United Kingdom since 1980, where mad cow is rampant. The reasoning: I may have nibbled a steak-and-kidney pie or two between visits to museums and pubs, and thus carry a high risk of carrying Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

[. . . . ] But I didn't stop, and after perusing the rest of the regulations and screening questions, I've come to the conclusion the Canadian Blood Service rule book is silly -- and scary. [. . . . ]

EVERY TIME the subject of the controversial Island airport deal comes up in a press scrum, I ask Mayor David Miller the same question.

Namely, who's going to pay for his decision, along with his council comrades, to kill the $22-million bridge to the airport?

I know I'm beginning to sound like a broken record. But I never believed our suave socialist mayor would be able to make good on his election promise -- to pacify the Island-area elitists -- without costing taxpayers a bundle.

It's becoming clearer every day that the city will be on the hook for much much more than the simple "toonie" the mayor promised in the heady days after being elected.

Nevertheless, Miller always gives the same answer. [. . . . ]

VICTORIA (CP) - A B.C. government ministerial aide charged with possession for the purpose of drug trafficking was on medical leave to deal with addiction issues, the province's solicitor general said Saturday.

Marshall Smith was arrested Thursday afternoon in Victoria and charged with possession for the purpose of trafficking.

Victoria police said Smith allegedly had crystal methamphetamine in his possession. [. . . . ]

HALIFAX (CP) - An underwater camera is credited with what's described as the fluke discovery of an attempt to smuggle millions of dollars in cocaine on a cargo ship named after the prime minister's wife and operated by the company he once controlled.

The camera discovered the drugs in a grate attached to the bottom of the ship, resulting in what customs agents call a "cold hit" - a seizure that is essentially a fluke, neither the result of criminal intelligence nor informants.

"The security is not good . . . there are not enough officers in Sydney to search a vessel," said Susan Horne, president of the Customs Excise Union in Nova Scotia, which represents customs officers.

Members from the Halifax customs office were called in to assist in the search, but since Canada Customs does not have its own divers, Horne said private scuba divers were contracted to remove the bags. [. . . . ]

HALIFAX (CP) - The recent police seizure of 500 kilograms of cocaine from a sailboat off Nova Scotia's coast was more than just another drug bust - it was the death knell for a year-old, international smuggling ring, the RCMP announced Wednesday.

The Montreal RCMP launched Project Colombie in July 2003 when the force uncovered a plot by several Quebec residents and South American suppliers to import tons of cocaine to Canada and England.

Earlier this week, five federal agencies helped intercept the sailboat Friendship, which was carrying $18-million worth of cocaine from Antigua to Montreal and eventually England.

[. . . . ] Nine people were arrested Monday night in connection with the seizure and subsequent searches in Nova Scotia and Quebec.

Try and imagine the federal government ever funding a court challenge from the traditional women's group, REAL Women of Canada, to argue the fetus had a right to life under Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Regardless of what one thinks of the issue in question, the prospect would be fanciful. Pigs will fly before bias and favouritism are dispensed with in the apportionment of taxpayer cash from governments or courts. And that is precisely why the cost of a legal challenge should be borne at the outset by litigants, helped by lawyers (who, if they really believe in a case, can work pro bono), and supported by other sympathetic donors. Only after a case is won and costs awarded should money flow from the losing party -- the government, as the case may be.

And yet, the B.C. Supreme Court has ordered the federal government to pay a lesbian bookstore in Vancouver hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund a constitutional challenge all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada . . . . [. . . . ]

Conservative Party Leader Stephen Harper told his MPs yesterday that he wanted to move the party closer to the political centre and appeal to ex-Progressive Conservatives.

[. . . . ] If Harper does indeed move the party closer to the centre, he will with one stroke erase the legacy of Preston Manning and make the last decade's worth of struggles worthless. We will have ended up right where we started from.

Environmentalists who oppose the farming of Atlantic salmon off the coast of B.C. are wont to paint themselves as the little guys--underfunded, do-gooding Davids battling the wealthy, greedy fish-farming-industry Goliaths. But a new public relations campaign sponsored by the fish farmers is out to let people know the truth: that the environmentalists’ efforts are being underwritten with millions of dollars being sent up from the United States. The Society for the Positive Awareness of Aquaculture, an association of industry supporters, launched the PR campaign in late May in response to a barrage of negative publicity about the industry--much of it unfounded. In January, for example, the environmentalists attained phenomenal media coverage after touting a U.S. study that found allegedly unsafe levels of toxic PCBs in farmed salmon. In truth, government agencies on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border consider farmed salmon to be safe for human consumption. [. . . . ]

Opponents of the federal long gun registry are getting a little frustrated. For a year and a half, they have been trying their best to get themselves charged under the Firearms Act so they can challenge the law in court, using the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But no matter how they try, they just can’t seem to get arrested.

On June 14 and 15, they tried again. Confessed owners of unlicensed firearms protested outside the leaders’ debates at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa, demanding to be arrested. In a letter to Prime Minister Paul Martin, the Canadian Unregistered Firearms Owners Association (CUFOA) warned Martin that allowing them to march without charging them outside, while he debates policy inside, would “proclaim that the Firearms Act is an unmitigated farce.” On June 17, the demonstrators marched outside the PM’s riding office in Ville LaSalle.

[. . . . ] “Oscar seems very willing to prosecute me,” Byfield jokes. “Maybe he has the attitude that until now he’s been the one taking all the risks.” Byfield says he’ll be lucky if they do charge them, because the government seems to be doing its best to avoid test cases. “Everybody I know who’s attempted to get arrested to force a test case has been unsuccessful,” says Byfield. “There have been charges, but invariably these have been against people who didn’t want to get caught.” He says he believes that the registry has become so unpopular that it’s become toothless, and there’s almost no risk in breaking it anymore. At least he’d better hope so. If he were to lose a charter challenge and lose, he could face up to five years in prison.

[. . . . ] Do you think Chuck Guite received political direction from as high up as the Ministry of Public Works?

Don Boudria was the one who started to clean it up--you can't hang that on Boudria. He came in after the internal audit and that was when the Auditor General was asked to go in and audit the whole program.

But Boudria lost his job with the ministry for his relationship with Claude Boulay (the president of Groupe Everest) and Chuck Guite donated $1000 to his re-election campaign.

Did Don Boudria even know he contributed $1,000? . . . . I am convinced there was political direction. This was clearly a program or policy with political overtones. A small group of individuals could, in fact, go off the rails and no one would catch it immediately. We know Mr. Guite met on a regular basis with the chief of staff to Alfonso Gagliano and with Mr. Gagliano himself and with Jean Pelletier (former chief of staff to Chretien). And when Mr. Pelletier met with them with a list of events looking for sponsorship, they discussed which events should get it and how much they should get and which ad companies should manage which event and how much they should get paid; that is very unusual.

Ted Morton, professor of political science at the University of Calgary and co-author of The Charter Revolution and the Court Party, released a study in 2002 that found 27 separate potential violations of the charter within the Firearms Act.

The Charter of Rights has transformed Canadian politics. The Supreme Court has used the Charter to change government policy on an ever-expanding list of controversial issues -- abortion, aboriginal rights, gay rights, bilingualism, criminal law enforcement and prisoner-voting. The Court has made itself the second most powerful institution in Canadian politics after the Federal Cabinet. Morton and Knopff suggest that the Court is not so much the cause as the means by which the Charter Revolution has been achieved. Behind the judges, they argue, is a well-orchestrated network of state-funded interest groups that use litigation and the media to achieve what they can't win through democratic elections.

TORONTO -- Schoolgirl killer and rapist Karla Homolka will be released from jail next year on the birthday of one of her victims which will be another bitter pill for the murdered girl's mother. Corrections Canada confirms Homolka's jail sentence expires on July 5, 2005 -- the same day her second victim, Leslie Mahaffy, would have turned 29.

[. . . . ] Homolka's 12-year term for triple manslaughter ends her notorious deal with the devil plea-bargain for her role in killing, with her then-husband Paul Bernardo, schoolgirls Kristen French, Mahaffy and Karla's own sister, Tammy.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation called for increased vigilance over the holiday weekend, but no one thought a terrorist attack was imminent. Indeed, such warnings have become almost routine. Weather partly cloudy, threat level yellow (for elevated); business as usual.

But complacency, abetted by the Michael Moore-ish tendency to view all aspects of the U.S.-led war on terror through a cynical lens, does citizens of the Western democracies a grave disservice. However one may view the Bush administration's handling of the war on terrorism, this much is clear: The threat posed by Islamic fundamentalists is waxing, not waning. Even with vigilance, further attacks against Western targets are unavoidable. Without vigilance, such attacks have a greater chance of being catastrophic. [. . . . ]

[. . . . ] Each front page had a different look, some had identical headlines and a few used the same photograph of Paul Martin.

But what wasn't as obvious was each paper reported slightly different results when they tallied the number of seats in Parliament won by each party.

How can this happen? After all, it's simple math.

The answer: deadlines.

The only papers on the list that actually had the correct tally were the Calgary Herald and Vancouver Sun. All the eastern papers were off by varying degrees, though I'm happy to say, and I admit it's a small consolation, The London Free Press was off the least, as the nifty little graph at right indicates. [. . . . ]

Gasps and groans and mutterings of malice. Truth. It hurts.

You can hear the heat, not feel it, but hear it, from the Silly Hall seats, as courageous, crackers or just plain kamikaze Craig Burrows breaks a cardinal rule of the locals.

Never ever say anything bad about Calgary.

Render no judgment short of unabashed adoration. Blind boosterism is the byword. Nothing can be improved. Finish up all statements about the city with the following closing kudo. There is no better place in the universe than Canada's ... er ... the world's greatest place. [. . . . ]

MONTREAL - The Canada Day party held in the park just across the street from my house will be especially sweet this year. Many of the people who organize it have also been key movers in a political campaign to get back our town, Montreal West, which was extinguished by the Parti Quebecois' forced merger of scores of Quebec communities into megacities in 2000. On June 20th, following four years of activism, 15 of 27 former Montreal municipalities voted to become towns again. Even though the now-Liberal provincial government wouldn't permit a return to the old status quo, even though we de-mergerites had to get a "yes" from 35% of registered voters (at least some of whom were dead or otherwise departed) and even though the vote took place on a lovely Sunday in June, 15 towns opted to get a measure of self-government back. So today's party is going to be a celebration. It will also teach an important lesson about citizenship. [. . . . ]