All Blogs Go to Heaven

This great e-land of unsolicited commentary we call blogs is expanding faster than the universe and granting e-mortality to the most humble of internauts.

This land of e-quality will unleash both the inane and the genious, intermingling with no discrimination but yours.

Will historians in 500 years parse the musings of the ancient bloggers of old? Will some blogs become classics that students visit as class projects and evaluate in lieu of book reports? Will the new sub-language forged in the fire of e-publication provide linguists with PhD theses topics for years to come?

Will our blogs hang in cyber-space like burning stars billions of years after we have looked at them? Or will they fade into disuse, burn out, or implode upon themselves? Will St Peter read our blogs before letting us through the pearly gates?

Maybe the most lasting blogs will stand as epitaphs to those who have lived in the sunlight as well as they have lived in the light of the computer monitor.

Disingenuosity, Dosanjh and Three Questions

Liberal Defence critic Ujjal Dosanjh has made a point of demanding that the Tories put the Afghanistan deployment to a vote in Parliament.

I would suggest three questions for Mr. Dosanjh to ask himself before he keeps this up.

1) Which party committed the Canadian government to this deployment over one year ago without holding a vote in Parliament?

2) How do the troops who are getting shot at and dodging explosives feel, when told that the Parliament will begin debating whether Canada should participate in this mission? Maybe, just maybe, this debate should have been sorted out BEFORE Canadian troops began risking their lives for Canada on this mission?

3) Do I really have the balls to keep this amusing charade up on camera?

Reflections on Resignations

Yesterday Québec Premier Jean Charest shuffled his cabinet slightly and dislodged a veteran cabinet minister to make way for a more popular kid. In firing Thomas Mulclair from Environment, he offered him Government Services. Thomas told Jean where to stick Government Services.

This nice story goes to prove that there are still some politicians out there with some personal pride. There are still some politicians who won't slit their mother's throat for a seat at the cabinet table. Remember, before you say anything... I said "some".

This is an ode to the parliamentary anarchists who longs for a parliamentary utopia where Members of Parliament regularly tell the first minister where to put his Crown appointments. Could it be that there are some issues worth standing up for? Could it be that some abuse won't be tolerated? Could it be that hard to drive yourself to work instead of having that ministerial chauffeur? What about a sense of perspective that favours the long term, global impact of our actions versus the short term, tangible gains to be accrued to our own person?

Whether M. Mulclair resigned on principle, or in a huff, is immaterial to my larger point. Those who resign on principle deserve respect. Those who cling to office as if it were their own moral centre of gravity deserve our pity.

Small Canada: The Small Demand Smaller!

True Crime
"Mr. Ignatieff, a former Harvard professor and a compelling intellectual figure, is trying to develop a profile, but is seen by some in the party as a "Johnnie come lately," who needs to get into the game and pay his dues in the party. Mr. Ignatieff returned to Canada after decades outside the country." - Kate Malloy and F. Abbas Rana, Liberals Talk Leadership, The Hill Times, 27 FEB 06

A Mythical Fable
Once upon a time, there was a man who left his home country study at a world renowned university. After graduating and distinguishing himself as an intellectual, academic and author for many years abroad, he decided it was time to return home and present himself for public office. So, he uprooted his family and left his cushy job in the warm gooey womb of academic bliss. He threw himself into a riding near his old university stomping grounds in his home country and began campaigning to take a seat in Parliament.

The fine residents of his home country, the journalists, and the party loyalists where aghast! How dare this uppity foreigner move here with political ambition. How dare he aspire to high office. He doesn't even know all the street names here yet! He doesn't even know what day is recycling day. How could his vast knowledge and intellectual experience prepare him to vote on laws in the federal parliament? Why would he make a better parliamentarian than the local lawyer who has been coveting this nomination for so many years, fundraising quietly and making valuable connections at the Lions Club and the local party association?

Moral?
Have we lost our minds? We've already elected our share of small minds, so let's mix it up a bit. Our Parliament could only be so lucky to full of 308 Michael Ignatieffs.

Basic Para

A 05h30, 23 janvier, la session 57 du cours de parachutisme de niveau élémentaire a débuté comme elle le fait toujours, avec un test physique de parachutiste. Tous ont relevé haut la main ce défi, ce qui a présagé un très bon cours avec un superbe esprit d’équipe. Parmi les 48 stagiaires de tous grades, la majorité sont des fantassins du Royal 22e Régiment. Par contre, plusieurs ingénieurs, artilleurs, techniciens d’approvisionnement, et d’autre métiers ont fait de ce groupe une équipe diversifiée.

Cette équipe, pleine d’énergie et d’enthousiasme, a fait face à chaque expérience avec détermination et cohésion. Durant la première semaine, nous avons concentré nos efforts à l’apprentissage des techniques de sorties de l’avion, le vol dans les airs supporter par le parachute CT-1 (un des parachutes les plus sécuritaires au monde), les mesures de sécurité, les mesures d’urgences et le maniement de l’équipement. En plus, nous avons profité de l’entraînement physique intéressant mener par l’adjoint du cours, l’adj Lamarre, et les candidats du cours Parachute Instructor. Au deuxième semaine, nous avons mis à l’épreuve certaines de nos connaissances en attaquant le tour de saut, 32 pieds dans les airs, pour permettre aux instructeurs d’évaluer nos sorties de l’aéronef, supporter par nos harnais et les lignes de suspensions. Pour la majorité du groupe, qui ont complété le cours de pré-para au 3e R22eR, ce n’étais pas la première fois que nous avions eu ce plaisir. Par contre, avec notre nouveau encadrement à CPC et notre brève expérience antérieure, nous avons effectué les sauts du tour avec et sans équipement pour atteindre la norme et pour nous qualifier à passer au J-stage, ou le stage de saut.

Cet entraînement est encadré pour créer des conditions réalistes afin de bien préparer les stagiaires pour le défi du saut réel, affirme le cplc Gonthier du 5e BNS. "On se pratique de façon réaliste pour faire de quoi de vrai." C’est un sentiment répandu parmi ses collègue. Avec un peu plus de pratique aux atterrissages, des vols, et aux procédures dans l’avion, nous avons complété les tests pour, à la fin de la deuxième semaine, nous qualifier pour le J-stage.
Les stagiaires prêts et volontaires, la température n’a pas voulu coopéré la première journée du J-stage. Avec des vents forts, et un Hercule à notre service, nous avons attendu avec impatience. Pour certains, cette qualification va servir à influencer leur carrières. Certains visent devenir arrimeur de parachute. D’autres visent être affecté à une unité ou sous-unité parachutiste. Quelques un, avec de l’expérience civile en parachutisme de chute libre, veulent se joindre à l’équipe Sky Hawks. Mais tout d’abord, tous veulent complété leur cours, se jeter en bas d’un avion plusieurs fois, et retourner à leurs unités des parachutistes fiers et accomplis. Airborne!

Damage and Disaster at Don's Dock

I was recently in Trenton for a three-week basic parachute training from 23 jan to 10 feb. One of my weekends off, I decided to profit from my proximity to my grandparent's cottage. I called my GPs to see if I could go up there. I had visited my brother in Toronto the weekend before, and we had tentatively planned to go up to the cottage the following weekend. Unfortunately, Nana and Papa were flying out to Regina, so they could not come up to the cottage with Paul and I. No problem, the boys will enjoy themselves free of adult supervision! (What could be risky with two mid-twenties boys up on the ice with chainsaws, ladders, tractors and axes?) So I picked Paul up at the train station on Saturday morning after driving N and P to the glamourous Kingston Airport at a martial hour of the morning.

We got up to the cottage after stocking up on supplies in fair Verona, where we laid our scene for about 30 minutes, before moving on past Easy St, Verona and pushing on to the cottage. I'm convinced that living on Easy St is not as easy as it sounds. I looked at the houses, and it didn't look any different than the others. Maybe it's easy inside the houses? A promising avenue for more research.

Moving on, we soon got to the cottage. I was convinced that I could drive into the cottage from the county road. There was no snow on the ground in Kingston. Well, with a big monster red or black testosterone truck I'm sure I would have made it in. Unfortunately, I'm the ambivalent owner of one Honda Civic. Say what you want about the Civic, but an ATV it is not. Needless to say, the 5 inches of melting snow prevented me from driving in. We hauled the water, food and beer into the cottage and began the slow process of heating the place up. It was fun hanging out with my little bro. We went for a long walk in the woods. We played chess. We drank hot chocolate. We listened to some Spirit of the West. We drank more hot chocolate (with stale marshmellows). We kept logs in the fire. I braved some wicked weather to make hamburgers on the barbeque. And we quickly got bored. So we drafted a water-tight plan to defeat our boredom the next day. We had a few brewskies and hit the sack.

The plan was to cut down an old 50 foot pine tree that had been overhanging the dock in a most threatening way ever since it lost its life in a valiant fight against the 1998 ice storm and a subsequent disease. This pine, despite its heroic past, was the victim of our ambitious plan to fill our morning with some good old fashioned hard labour. At our cottage, we have two principal ways of filling the time with work: We either cut down inconvenient trees for firewood, or we move inconvenient stones to more convenient places. This has the advantage of keeping us from relaxing much of the time, and gives us the satisfaction that we have accomplished something of undisputed insignificance.

So, usually its me that climbs the ladder with a chainsaw in one hand, cuts off branches while holding onto the swaying trunk of the tree 25 feet in the air. However, with age I have gotten smarter and less careless. So this time, I delegated the climbing task to my little brother, who most economists agree, has a lower life-value than I have (using current day indicators). However, he did not have to climb with a chainsaw. After having spent 45 minutes in a fruitless effort to lasso the tree half-way up, Paul finally agreed that we should try climbing up there and lassoing it by hand. This put an end to our cowboy pretensions. Paul climbed up the tree and roped the tree. We built an ingenious system to pull the tree down in such a way that it would not hit the dock on its way down. Notice that Paul is a fine arts major at Ryerson and I am an arts grad from Waterloo. Neither of us have those engineering genes that should have been passed onto us by virtue of our father's and grandfather's engineering profession. So we failed to clue into the simple physics of the equation. We figured that pulling the rope would be sufficient to sway the tree off of its natural course towards the dock. As I finished the cut in the enormous tree, the tree began to fall and the rope immediately slacked off. As soon as the rope slacked, we lost all influence on its direction. It came crashing down and glanced off the side of the dock, breaking numerous boards. We cut the tree into pieces and hauled the pieces off the ice. The dock damage would have to wait until another weekend for proper repairs.

Meanwhile, I had the difficult task of explaining to my grandfather, who was still in Regina, that we had succeeded in bringing down the tree AND damaging the dock. The whole point of cutting the tree down had been negated.

However, the two enterprising brothers had enjoyed a fine day of lumberjacking. The moral of this story is to get an engineering degree, or at least have engineer supervision when one is undertaking precision lumberjack tasks. My experience has taught me a new-found respect for gravity. I think we take gravity for granted far too often. And our dock suffered the consequences of this neglect. In the wake of the post-traumatic stress that I have brought upon myself, I will never look at a pine tree the same again. Mea culpa.

MSN World

I am becoming preoccupied by the fact that I can have no more than 150 contacts on MSN. This technical limitation requires that I make some cuts to my MSN team in order to allow new members. So how does one decide who to cut, and who stays in my electronic orbit? Do I cut the ones that rarely come online? Do I cut the ones that didn't send me Christmas cards? Well, that would solve the problem because NOBODY did! That's ok... I understand that we live in a post-card generation. This is precisely a cause and effect of our access to MSN and similar electronic communications. No seriously, how does one make the call?

I decided to cut the people who rarely came online. I still did this with great reluctance, because it seemed like such a ruthless act. I'm prepared to assume the consequences of this purge. So, moral of the story, if you wanna stay onside, stay online. I suppose it is still technically possible to remain friends with people who don't use the internet. This remains to be seen. I guess I'd have to actually leave my room and go do real stuff with real people for that to be able to work. Face to face relationships: a future social innovation?

The future is so exciting.

Schmedia

The longer I live, and let's hope this keeps on working out for me, the more I grow disillusioned with the mainstream media and what passes for news. I am an recovering CNN junkie, so I can speak with some authority on the issue. In fact, for years I was coopted by that leviathan as an innocent-looking paper boy for the Halifax Herald, and the Waterloo Chronicle.

I will not be able to tackle this issue in one post. Suffice it to say that this is likely the beginning of a theme that you will see me expand on.

Media Myth: Gordon O'Connor must be disqualified as Defence Minister because he once advised the Defence industry. This appointment is inconsistent with Harper's promise to prevent cabinet ministers from becoming lobbyists within 5 years of leaving politics.

Refuting the Globe:
Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor spent 30 years serving his country and dedicating his career to the profession of arms. He spent 6 years after his military career advising defence contractors how to go about their business with DND. He spent 2 years as the Tory critic for defence, and as a Member of Parliament. The Globe and Mail would have us believe that Gordon O'Connor is not fit for the job because of his experience in defense lobbying. Using this logic, Stephen Harper should not be Prime Minister because of his past with a lobby group. This egregious logic would preclude qualified people from many jobs.

A conflict of interest is not created by past associations. A conflict of interest is created by current conflicts. On top of all of this, Gordon O'Connor is the most qualified minister of national defense since Major General George Pearkes, VC (for those unfamiliar with VC, it stands for Victoria Cross and is Canada's highest award for valour and bravery) was defense minister in the post-war years. Let the man do his job, and we will judge his actions, not a small portion of his resumé.

Leave the man alone
Wayne Gretzky. His wife allegedly placed some bets, his colleague allegedly took bets, and he allegedly did nothing illegal. This one sentence sums up the essence of the news story. However, the pirhannas want blood, and insist on publishing photos and innuendo to the effect that maybe Wayne is hiding something. Maybe Wayne is involved. Let the story unfold, and leave the guy alone until you've got some real evidence. Remember, we're talking about grown adults betting their own money. Let's not lose our sense of perspective. I'm not even a hockey fan for godssake.

Electoral Selection of Senators

With the election of a Conservative government, Senate reform has come to the fore again. Gordon Gibson, has warned us in his 10 FEB 06 Globe article that an elected Senate is dangerous. The actual proposal will be a selected Senate, far from an "elected" Senate.

Gibson's concern, and his subsequent arguments, are based on the dubious assertion that the "Harper plan would fairly quiclky lead to a fully elected Senate with all of the democratic legitimacy that implies."

This would not come to pass. In a 14 DEC 06 speech while campaigning, Harper promised "to establish a federal process for electing senators. Alberta has already held provincial elections for individuals aspiring to the Senate. A national Conservative government will establish a national process for senatorial elections in each province and territory on an interim basis." This vague "process" will implement the Alberta model, and require the Prime Minister to advise Her Excellency to appoint senators who have received the most votes in their respective regional electoral contests.

With no constitutional change, senators will be elected once and appointed by the normal process for life to age 75. Senators will be "selected" and not "elected". They will have no claim to a political mandate. Why? A political mandate is by definition subject to expiry and renewal. Governments can last up to 5 years, and no member of parliament has an electoral mandate beyond 5 years. Senators will have to campaign once, to win the confidence of their electors, and will never again be subject to such democratic ignomy. No general elections will be held, because vacancies will occur at random on a rotating basis. This will ensure that electors have a say in who represents them in Ottawa. It will not, however, confer mandates as general elections are seen to do.

Furthermore, senators will never feel the direct pressure of seeking reelection and will thus be just as disinterested as they are now. No senator, elected 1 or 25 years ago, will ever have the claim to democratic legitimacy that a Government that is responsible to the House of Commons and elected by general election will have. The claim that they would collectively overpower the rich provinces to extort their resources is simply too wild for me to tame. The senator's claim to democratic legitimacy will always be limited by the fact that senatorial candidates must be 35 and own $4000 worth of real property. This qualification excludes much of the Canadian population.

The Senate will have no right to initiate money bills, and its power to amend and reject money legislation in favour of regional concerns and pork will be tempered by the more disinterested and longer term nature of its political dynamic. Major differences will remain between a US Senate and a Canadian Senate, and the excesses of the American Senate will be avoided by our life members.

Finally, let us remember that the constitutional principle of responsible government will be unaffected. The Government of the day will always answer to the House, and must maintain the confidence of that chamber. The House will always be the chamber of the commoners, the chamber that is primus inter pares, and the chamber that Canadians will hold responsible for the laws and the government of the nation.

Gibson objects to Harper's reform because it is not a "total review" and because it will implement piecemeal reform. He is right. However, constitutional reform is political dynamite that some political hero may one day be able to manipulate. Some day, a dark haired maiden riding a white unicorn, wearing underpants of steel will come and slay the constitutional dragon by wielding death defying amendments forged in eternal bliss. Until that day, legislative reform can go a long way to reducing the arbitrary, monarchic prerogative of the Crown to call senators indiscriminately. It will require that prerogative to defer to the choice of the constituents.

This will not be a democratic Chamber. In fact, our political institutions are aristocratic structures that have been fitted with democratic paint over the years. British parliamentary history, and Canadian parliamentary history, is a story of the increasing subjection of the prerogatives of the Crown to the rule of law. This will simply transfer the right of selecting the temporary aristocracy from the Prime Minister's Office to the people who are ostensibly represented by the senatorial class. So, if the change is so small, why is it worth doing? British parliamentary tradition is an evolutionary story of increasing accountability, openness, representation and popular government through gradual reform. Is this reform piecemeal? Yes. It is not radical, it is not enough and it is not ideal. However, it is plausible, pragmatic progress that just may change Canadian politics for the better. Stand aside, reformers. Make way for the incrementalists.