the blog quebecois

Mark Steyn, writing in Maclean's in 2006 about the new "Canadian" politician, Mikey Ignatieff:

I've met him just once, a decade or so back, at a dinner party in London for Canadian expats. He left early, telling me he found all this talk of Canada frankly rather parochial. I wonder how he feels after two months on the campaign trail. For all his banshee wailing, he at least spent the last decade trying to persuade the dessicated Western left to confront the realities of our time. He won't be doing much of that as our Trudeau-in-waiting. It profits a man nothing to give his soul for the world, but for Etobicoke-Lakeshore and a mid-level cabinet post?

Until this last month, when the intellectual colossus downsized himself to Liberal talking points, the Ignatieff low point was widely agreed to be his performance in the wake of the Princess of Wales' death. "Twenty-four hours ago I couldn't imagine I would say this," he choked up to British TV viewers. "A light has left the world." That's how I feel about Ignatieff: a light has left the world to flicker instead over a party that explicitly rejects the moral doctrine he's formulated and, indeed, regards morality as no more than self-congratulation: feeling good about feeling bad. Goodbye, England's rose. Hello, Ottawa's narcissi.

Via Jack's Newswatch

Ottawa Citizen:

The day the government fell, the demonization of Stephen Harper began in earnest. Again. On March 25, in a radio interview with CBC's As It Happens, Liberal Ralph Goodale blamed the government for not giving Parliament the information it needed to make decisions "on the basis of fact, rather than just political rhetoric." He went on to say, "The prime minister is very much the solitary Darth Vader who works in the dark in the middle of the night and doesn't allow people to get close to him."

Oh no, the Liberals would never stoop to political rhetoric.

Darth Vader? That's so far past ridiculous it's crossing the border into parody; at this rate, soon the Liberals will be using the phrase "reptilian kitten-eater" and they'll be serious.

Apparently, the Liberals didn't learn much from losing the 2006 election, after they warned Canadians that Conservatives wanted "soldiers with guns in our cities." The temptation, when you're running second in the polls, is to scream ever louder and say nastier things. But hyperbole probably won't help and can backfire.

I've had my differences with editorial writer and columnist Kate Heartfield, but she turns in a well-balanced piece on Stephen Harper, warning about the facile attacks on him by his opponents.

That's an argument too subtle for many of the commenters, who doubtless have never heard of Godwin's law, either.

One of my rare forays into funk (or something very like it -- an abundance of minor-seventh barre chords, so I guess that qualifies.) As a skinny white boy, it was technically illegal to play this (cultural appropriation or somesuch), but the rebel in me, uh, rebelled.

The beginning is a bit trebly and I kind of blanked on the first two choruses (a mistake that Mister James Brown would never make), but once I settle into a groove, it almost sounds like I know what I'm doing.

National Post:

Bolivia will this month table a draft United Nations treaty giving “Mother Earth” the same rights as humans — having just passed a domestic law that does the same for bugs, trees and all other natural things in the South American country.

The bid aims to have the UN recognize the Earth as a living entity that humans have sought to “dominate and exploit” — to the point that the “wellbeing and existence of many beings” is now threatened.

The wording may yet evolve, but the general structure is meant to mirror Bolivia’s Law of the Rights of Mother Earth, which Bolivian President Evo Morales enacted in January.

[ . . . ]

Canadian activist Maude Barlow is among global environmentalists backing the drive with a book the group will launch in New York during the UN debate: Nature Has Rights.

“It’s going to have huge resonance around the world,” Ms. Barlow said of the campaign. “It’s going to start first with these southern countries trying to protect their land and their people from exploitation, but I think it will be grabbed onto by communities in our countries, for example, fighting the tar sands in Alberta.”

I can see why she's so enthusiastic about this. She's about as thick as a tree stump and has all the charm of swamp gas, so it'd be a natural fit.

By the way, if any of you do survive the initial impact and resulting third-degree burns and are heading on to Charlotte, your connecting gate is A8—that's Gate A8—and that flight is on time for its scheduled departure.

Warning: Language.

Our "rock opera," Sylvie The Water-Sprite started as a jokey excuse to get me over the hump of singing in public (well, semi-public). As it turned out, though, we started to write some good songs for it.

"I Am The Leopard" introduces the antagonist of our little morality play. I don't remember recording it, but I'm pretty sure it started out from a jam session, with me writing the lyrics and overdubbing the vocal at a later date. I can say that because I can only hear the guitar and bass on the initial track.

I always recorded the vocals separately. We didn't have proper mike stands, for one thing; and the mikes we were using weren't exactly top-of-the-line, so it was easier to deal with their idiosyncracies in hand-held mode. Also, I hadn't learned to sing while playing bass. It's a bit different than guitar.

But there's no trace of my cousin on the second track, which would have been unusual: He was much too good a musician to sit there without making some contribution -- most likely some additional guitar, or maybe keyboards, percussion or even backing vocals.

Warning: Squeal of feedback at the beginning while I plug or unplug a cable.

Lorrie Goldstein:

How much money are we talking about here?

Prof. Andrew Leach of the Alberta School of Business, estimates the plan proposed by Ignatieff would result in a Liberal government raising about $30 billion annually in new revenue from the private sector by 2020, through the auctioning off of carbon credits to major industrial emitters, that would be included under a cap-and-trade system.

(The Liberals didn’t provide any figures for their proposal.)

What the pols (a cross-party coalition would be a nice touch) in Alberta must do is get a hold of Iggy and pound it into him that every last penny of revenue lost to his harebrained scheme will be deducted automatically from equalization payments. It's going to be fun watching him explain to Quebec why their $7 daycare must be sacrificed -- for the planet, y'know.

Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper heads into the heated final days of his country's May 2 polls facing two potential outcomes: winning big, or going home.

Polls show Mr. Harper's Conservative Party is poised to give Canada something it hasn't had in seven years—a single party that holds the majority of seats in Parliament.

On Thursday, pollster Ipsos Reid showed the Conservatives capturing 43% of decided voters. That is above the 40% level that typically translates, in Canada's multiparty races, into a parliamentary majority. The New Democratic Party, with 24%, overtook the Liberals, with 21%, in the poll for the first time in 20 years, Ipsos said.

I never considered myself much of a musician (stop that unseemly cheering in the back, thank you). A songwriter -- even occasionally a good one -- yes. But I wasn't sure about my musical chops. Apart from our jam sessions, I'd never attempted to write an instrumental. So this was a first for us, for the aforementioned "rock opera." The bass was a bit thin in spots, and there were a few other problems; but overall it holds up pretty well. (If you're a aficionado of 9 minute garage rock indulgence, that is.)

The ChronicleHerald.ca:

The overreaching of Canada’s human rights commissions and tribunals into matters of free speech, as regular readers know, has been a problem for many, many years. But most politicians have lacked the fortitude to tackle the problem.

Instead, they’ve mouthed their dismay but, for the most part, left it to the courts to slap down the most outrageous decisions of these powerful quasi-judicial bodies.

The complainant’s case is argued on their behalf by the state, at taxpayers’ expense. The accused, meanwhile, must pay for their own defence. In this case, Earle, who readily admits he’s not a man of great means, asked if he could testify electronically — it being 2010, video conferencing was well beyond the experimental stage — rather than have to fly back to Vancouver and pay for lodgings. The tribunal said no. Its ruling, however, noted only that oral submissions were heard from "all parties who chose to participate."

The tribunal deserves all the scorn now being heaped upon it.

Toronto Star:

Facing charges of political sabotage by the powerful head of Sun Media Corporation, the Conservative Party has denied wrongdoing but cut ties with a key political strategist.

The move was made to distance the Stephen Harper campaign from what Sun Media mogul Pierre Karl Peladeau claimed was a dirty trick — the leak of an incriminating photo and damaging information that said Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff had aided U.S. military planners in the run-up to the 2003 Iraq invasion. The photo, forwarded to Sun Media vice-president Kory Teneycke — another former Harper aide — wasn’t of Ignatieff.

Er, seeing as I might have accidentally authored this meme, I think I should comment.

In early 2009, Michael Ignatieff had been, or was about to be installed as Liberal leader (I'm too lazy to look up the exact dates). I was doing an image search for something (I can't remember exactly what), and came across the above picture. I noted that the soldier in the middle was a dead ringer for Iggy (the photo appeared on a military-themed collection of images with no indication of their nationality or where they were taken). I thought they were most likely Americans (or possibly Brits). So I decided to make up a little story about Ignatieff and his rather muscular approach to foreign affairs.

The original post is here. You can see that I pretty obviously intended it as a joke (if there's any doubt, click on the "enhanced" popup that I included with it).

Anyway, it went over about as well as Guy Earle's act. I soon forgot about it, until I got an email about this time last year from a woman who I assumed was a Conservative Party researcher:

My name is _____ _______. I am a biographical researcher and I am preparing a narrative on Michael Ignatieff.

I came across a photo on your blog which appears to be Ignatieff and a group of U.S. soldiers wearing Santa Claus hats:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/35393854@N00/3315099894/

Can you share any details with me - is it authentic, where did it originate, etc - or direct me to a reliable source?

To which I replied:

Hi, ______:

No, it was just some random photo that I came across in a Google Image Search. The guy in the middle looked like Iggy, so I decided to have some fun with it.

I don't think she saw it on my blog, but rather on my Flickr photostream. Now, I have no real idea if this is where the whole thing started, or if our wires got crossed and the photo was assumed to be genuine; but let's pretend it did.

That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.