Your daily supply of ever so polite punditry from Canada.
Thomas Walkom asks the most important question about our mission in Afghanistan.
Stephen Harper now says that Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan can never be defeated. Never.
I find this admission breathtaking. The Prime Minister has hinted before that the war in Afghanistan is far tougher than he once thought. But he has never been so categorical.
And his new position raises the obvious questions: If the Taliban can't be beaten, what are Canadian troops doing in Afghanistan? If the Taliban can't be beaten, why are our soldiers still dying? If the Taliban can't be beaten, why are Canada and its NATO allies encouraging the Afghan government to keep fighting a war that, according to Harper, it may be able to "manage" but can't possibly win?
Gary Mason:
I have no idea how much we're paying all these lawyers defending the Mounties, but as a taxpayer footing the bill, I'm a little offended by it all. The scales of justice in this case are weighed dramatically against the victim.
Before stepping down from the witness box for a final time, Constable Millington was asked if, in retrospect, he would have done anything differently.
He replied no, not much.
Which, of all the things he said in two days of testimony at the inquiry, was the scariest of all.
Joe Fiorito
What is the point of having a kitchen worth more than my house if you are not going to cook in it?
Hey, moneybags, here's a tip you might find useful in the days ahead: you know those knobs on the front of your stove? Yes, I mean your stove that cost more than my darling's car. If you grasp the knobs firmly and turn them clockwise, the burners will light up.
You can cook on that thing.
John Barber presents the incredible benefits of a real high speed rail network in Ontario (Albeit the same arguments work for Alberta).
Of all the possible forms of new infrastructure the current crisis will call forth, they say, the most advantageous would be an electric rail network that transforms a sprawling region into a closely linked network of urban nodes.
"You can't go any faster by automobile," Professor Christopher Kennedy, the study's lead author, said in an interview.
"Even if you don't have congestion, you can't go fast enough. But if you go for a regional strategy that's based on high-speed rail, you can link places like Niagara, Waterloo and Toronto so they're actually within commuting time."
Stéphane Gendron crois que c'est le temps pour une réforme électorale au Quebec (et au Canada).
Andrew Hanon has some sobering facts about food bank usage in what used to be boomtown Edmonton.
But that's changing. Jobs - and wealth - are starting to rapidly vanish here as the global economic crisis sinks its teeth in.
"We're seeing a big increase of people coming in," said Susan Kreczy, who runs the food bank in St. Albert, one of the most affluent communities in Western Canada. "A lot of white-collar people are coming in, and they're citing job losses. There are a lot of tradespeople, as well."
Others, she added, are just trying to make ends meet because their employers are cutting back on their hours of work.
...
Kreczy said she's seeing people who've never had to ask for charity before.
"They're totally humbled by it. Some have said they used to donate to us, now they're having to come in," she said. "It's a pretty difficult step for them to take."
Even though people are clearly suffering from the recession, Kerry Diotte wants the government to cut spending further, because that's clearly the solution to the problem.
We're officially in a recession and we already have a predicted budget deficit for this fiscal year of $1.4 billion. That's the amount of cash the government will spend over and above what it budgeted.
Spending has risen more than 70% from 2003 to 2008 and there's no thought to pare it back despite our tough economic times and our $35 barrels of oil.
David Suzuki
This is science that has been rigorously peer-reviewed and that has been agreed upon by the vast majority of the world’s climate scientists, as well as more than 50 scientific academies and societies, including those of all G8 nations. There has been no peer-reviewed scientific study that has called into question the conclusions of the IPCC, which represents the consensus of the international scientific community.
So why does the debate still continue? Why are we fiddling while Rome burns? Well, as Prof. Budescu’s research shows, some people don’t really understand how science works. And people with vested interests, many of whom work with the oil and coal industries, are all too willing to exploit that lack of understanding by sowing confusion.
Don Martin
Let's concede the obvious. Neither Stephen Harper nor his Finance Minister saw the recession coming. Their fall update was a delusional document forecasting fiscal dreams that will never materialize. And without a concerted effort by all parties and the Senate, the five-week-old stimulus package might not reach the construction sector before the summer.
If you have a favourite Canadian pundit that I'm missing, please let me know in the comments and I'll try to include them in future editions of CAPRU.