CAPRU, Tuesday Edition.
Kerry Diotte: If the government is going to spend mounds of money during the recession, it shouldn't be on trips to Paris and Rome.
I was talking to a friend the other day about the economy.
The government employee said she was counting her blessings that her job will likely be safer than other people's.
"We tend to get a bit isolated from the rest of the world," she said, noting her significant other, who works in private enterprise, might be laid off soon, joining the ranks of nearly 30,000 Albertans who lost their jobs in January and February alone.
I think that sense of isolation from reality is one of the major problems facing politicians and public servants.
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In Ottawa, a federal bureaucrat was tagged for racking up more than $400,000 in expenses to take 51 trips in three years to attend seminars and workshops including in exotic places such as New York, Paris, Rome and Bali.
Todd Hirsch:
Of course, capitalism is not only about greed and deceit. In fact, we owe much of our high living standards and rising affluence to the virtues of capitalism. But rather than scheming to make a quick buck by "securitizing" bogus debt and rotten mortgages, what if those capitalist fat cats had channelled their considerable creative energies toward something that was useful?
For example, the extension of very small loans (microcredit) to those living in poverty in the Third World has shown great potential. Maybe a new brand of microlending could evolve to help North Americans without collateral, steady employment and a solid credit history. If you'd lend money to a blanket maker in Peru, why not an unemployed machinist from Windsor or a laid-off rig worker from Grande Prairie? Venture capital could take on whole new meanings and dimensions.
Peter Foster: Former leader of the Reform party (a right-wing Alberta party which has transitioned into the current Conservatives), Preston Manning, is apparently a communist because he likes science. [You know the NaPo has gone completely off the deepend when it starts to call Preston Manning a communist. Sadly, it's par for course.]
Mr. Manning, in an article in yesterday's Globe and Mail, criticizes Ottawa for having made "no explicit statement ...on whether -- or how -- it intends to harness science, technology and innovation to the task of economic recovery .... What," he asks -- appropriately using the famous formulation of Lenin -- "is to be done?"
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First, his recommendations are based on the deeply flawed notion that scientific and technological innovation is a public good that will be in short supply without government funding. Second, his recommendations come at a time when at least one branch of science -- climatology -- has been thoroughly polluted by state money, with potentially disastrous economic consequences.
Carol Goar: [Note, the Liberals were in power from the mid-90s until recently.]
Most Canadians think they live in one of the fairest, most equitable countries in the industrial world. They believe their social programs are generous by international standards.
That was true until the mid-1990s. It isn't now.
Canada spends less on social programs than most of the 30 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). We ranked 26th in a survey published last fall.
Income inequality is rising in Canada faster than in any other member of the OECD, even the United States. We have come to exemplify the winner-take-all capitalism we once forswore.
Don Martin:
The new target was Gary Goodyear, the rookie Secretary of State for Science and Technology, who was taken to task in The Globe and Mail yesterday. He had refused to confirm his belief in evolution which, the paper howled on its front page, confirmed the "rumours" Mr. Goodyear embraces the Bible's literal translation of the Earth as a six-day infrastructure project for the Almighty.
Has it been true, it would have been juicy smear material and particularly unfortunate for a science minister, but it's hard to pinpoint where ministers have manipulated policy to suit their belief in a young Earth. Stockwell Day, for one, is considered a star Cabinet minister these days.
... the timing was lousy for a Conservative government now fighting accusations it shortchanged science, innovation and technology in a budget devoted mainly to make-work construction and paving projects.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper was out doing damage control this week, handing out a prestigious million-dollar scientific award while praising the field as even more critical to Canada's well-being during a recession. "No country can hope to remain prosperous and healthy without reinvesting a substantial portion of its wealth in science and technology," he declared.
Nathalie Collard:
Très attendu dans le milieu de l'éducation, le rapport du Groupe d'action sur la persévérance et la réussite scolaires au Québec, dirigé par le banquier Jacques Ménard, ne promet pas de solution magique. Il propose plutôt une boîte à outils pour aider les communautés à se prendre en main et accompagner les jeunes vers la diplomation. L'objectif: qu'en 2020, 80% des jeunes de 20 ans détiennent un diplôme.
Pour y arriver, il faudra toutefois remettre l'éducation au sommet des priorités.
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Les coûts sociaux du décrochage sont accablants et comme le disent si bien les membres du groupe Ménard, le Québec n'a plus les moyens de les assumer.
Shorter Barbara Kay: Terrorists are evil, who hate everything and anything and would be terrorists regardless of their current circumstances. Anyone who claims otherwise is "naive."
The other school of thought -- the "big-difference" school, let's call it -- recognizes that Islamism is hatred-rather than grievance-based, as well as unprovoked, borderless and limitlessly expansionist. Frontline soldiers in this totalitarian ideology are, according to the big-difference view, incapable of rehabilitation and permanently dangerous.
Unfortunately for us big-differencers, the cultural zeitgeist in the West is dominated by no-differencers, whose political or emotional naivete leads them to banalize Islamist terrorism. Accordingly, I found two unrelated recent news items very disturbing.
Thomas Walkom: Harper is congenitally unwilling or unable to do what is necessary to help Canadians. He's now officially part of the problem.
The National Post puts up some balance with regards to the CBC. Robert Cushman:
I had the luck to grow up on the BBC. One of the best things about Britain is that it has managed, despite constant political sniping, to maintain a publicly funded nationwide broadcasting service that doesn't have to be supported by advertising and that has made an enormous contribution to the cultural life of its country. I owe a lot of my education to it. We have a comparable thing in Canada. It's called CBC Radio. We don't at the moment have it on television: at least, not to the extent that we could.