Congratulations kid!

My daughter was recently accepted into the Grade 9 arts program at two of Toronto's top high schools of the arts. While I have never doubted her talent, it is certainly gratifying that others see it too.

Congratulations kid!

Hybrid cars: green snake oil

Prius owners, still think you're saving the planet now?

In a recent journal article, French researchers suggest that:

the misinformed craze for hybrid vehicles especially in the USA, and increasingly in Japan and Europe, and potentially in China, could represent a red light for more innovative technologies, such as viable fuel-cell cars that can use sustainably sourced fuels, such as hydrogen.

[...]

"There is a general convergence of strategies towards promoting hybrid vehicles as the mid-term solution to very low-emission and high-mileage vehicles," the researchers assert, "this is largely due to Toyota’s strategy of learning the technology, while building up its own ‘quasi-standard’, thanks to its high-quality and reliability reputation and its high market share on the North American market." They add that, "Such a convergence is based more on customer perception triggered by very clever marketing and communication campaigns than on pure rationale scientific arguments and may result in the need for any manufacturer operating in the USA to have a hybrid electric vehicle in its model range in order to survive."

Bullshit detector

Andrew Potter points to this little gem in the Globe and Mail:

Constitutional expert Errol Mendes of the University of Ottawa said he researched the issue yesterday and could find no similar examples of a confidence motion such as the one the Tories unveiled - one involving the unelected Senate. "This is insane," he said.

In quoting such an expert, it evidently did not occur to the Globe journalists, Brian Laghi and Jane Taber, that Professor Mendes might have a stake in the game:

Professor Errol Mendes was nominated to the Privy Council Office by the Prime Minister of Canada, Paul Martin.

I guess it also did not occur to them to ask how many times a Liberal-dominated, unelected Senate has blocked the legislation of a minority Conservative government?

A lesson for tax and spend liberals

Hell, the Conservative Party might learn something too.

Dan Mitchell of the Cato Institute explains the relationship between tax rates, government revenues and economic growth:



via Café Hayek

Smearing the lense of history with Vaseline

I guess I should have paid more attention when I took a film studies course in university. Toronto Star book columnist (and former film critic) Geoff Pevere writes:

John F. Kennedy's "New Frontier" – so named by the dashing young candidate at the Democratic leadership convention of 1960 – was barely two years old when veteran filmmaker John Ford suggested the whole thing might be a lie. The context was a 1962 Ford movie called The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, a Western about a lawyer (played by James Stewart) who negotiates a bogus claim to heroism to a seat in the U.S. Senate.

At the movie's climax, a newspaper editor is informed that the real man who shot the desperado Liberty Valance isn't the man everybody thinks it was – meaning the eminent politician is something of a fraud. The truth leaves the newspaperman unimpressed.

"This is the west, sir," he says. "When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

It makes more sense now. Still, you have to wonder what benefit Barack Obama hopes to get from the Kennedy family endorsement of his candidacy when it's based on a lie.

For the Democrats and left generally, 1968 has become a kind of rallying call to unity. The year evokes a kind of lost Eden, the last moment when the communal idealism of youth culture functioned as a kind of umbrella that covered – and sheltered – everyone.

[...]

But did that country ever really exist? According to Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism– and the volume from which the above quote was pulled – the Democratic Party version of the 1960s is a "Sorelian myth. An age when the 'good guys' overturned a corrupt system, rebelled against their 'square' parents, and ushered in an age of enlightenment and decency, now under threat from oppressive conservatives who want to roll back its utopian gains." Balderdash, according to Goldberg: "Liberal baby boomers have smeared the lens of memory with Vaseline." They've printed the legend.

So much for authenticity.

Patrick Moore: Thinking nuclear

I saw Patrick Moore speak a number of years ago. At the time, I was very impressed with his practical perspective on key environmental issues. However, his conversion from a hardcore, old-style environmentalist to someone willing to work with business to achieve real environmental progress has been hard for many of his former colleagues to accept, which is probably as good a recommendation he can get.

Here are a couple of interesting tidbits from a from a recent interview with CNET:

As a co-founder of Greenpeace, even though I was a scientist, I made the same mistake in those days as all the rest of my colleagues did. We kind of lumped nuclear energy in with nuclear weapons as if all things nuclear were evil. It was an honest mistake. We were totally focused on the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War. Nuclear testing was what Greenpeace started on and we were peaceniks, and I think it's fair to say that the antinuclear-energy movement to some extent was formed out of the peace movement.

[...]

How people manage to perceive that nuclear is dangerous when no one has ever been hurt by it is hard for me to understand, but there it is. It's a scared thing and it's like many of the campaigns today that are based on scaring people about something invisible. In this case, radiation. In agriculture, it's invisible pesticide residues. In climate, it's invisible carbon dioxide. In genetic engineering, it's invisible genes. Actually, a majority of the what are being called environmental campaigns these days are basically scare campaigns based on people not being able to see what it is that they are supposed to be afraid of. You can make up all kinds of stories about things people can't see.

Turning it up to 11

It started with Spinal Tap.

Over the past decade and a half, a revolution in recording technology has changed the way albums are produced, mixed and mastered — almost always for the worse. "They make it loud to get [listeners'] attention," Bendeth says. Engineers do that by applying dynamic range compression, which reduces the difference between the loudest and softest sounds in a song. Like many of his peers, Bendeth believes that relying too much on this effect can obscure sonic detail, rob music of its emotional power and leave listeners with what engineers call ear fatigue. "I think most everything is mastered a little too loud," Bendeth says. "The industry decided that it's a volume contest."

[...]

Too much compression can be heard as musical clutter; on the Arctic Monkeys' debut, the band never seems to pause to catch its breath. By maintaining constant intensity, the album flattens out the emotional peaks that usually stand out in a song. "You lose the power of the chorus, because it's not louder than the verses," Bendeth says. "You lose emotion."

[...]

Producers also now alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. "You have to be aware of how people will hear music, and pretty much everyone is listening to MP3," says producer Butch Vig, a member of Garbage and the producer of Nirvana's Never- mind. "Some of the effects get lost. So you sometimes have to over-exaggerate things." Other producers believe that intensely compressed CDs make for better MP3s, since the loudness of the music will compensate for the flatness of the digital format.

In other words, sound quality now sucks as musicians and producers try to cut through the noise of modern life and the technological limitations of MP3s by turning up the apparent volume of their music.

While part of the blame can undoubtedly be pinned on the iPod, people also seem more than willing to sacrifice sound quality for the convenience of being able to listen to their personal music collections anywhere and any time. For example, I use my iPod almost every day -- on the subway to work, when driving my car or walking the dog -- but rarely sit down to listen to an album on my home sound system. I do appreciate good sound quality, but give me convenienceand 2,000 songs in my pocket, and high fidelity falls to second place.

No need to make winter tires mandatory in Ontario

Anyone who has ever driven in the snow knows that winter tires are a good idea. All-season radials just don't cut it in the snowy regions of the country, particularly if they have some mileage on them.

When I lived in Montreal, I had snow tires. Montreal gets a lot of snow. It was stupid not to put winter tires on your car. Hence, Quebec's recent move to make winter tires mandatory is largely redundant. Most people use them. Those that don't get into more accidents.

In published reports, the head of a Quebec task force on road safety, Jean-Marie de Koninck, pointed to statistics showing snow tires help save lives.

"There's about 10% of the people right now that don't have winter tires on and they're involved in 38% of the accidents on the road in the winter," de Koninck said before Christmas.

The simple solution is for insurers to charge lower premiums to drivers who put snow tires on their cars than to drivers who do not. Quebec's system of no-fault insurance is probably behind its move to preempt a market solution to the problem since the driver who is responsible for an accident does not bear the full cost of the damage he causes. As a result, his future insurance premiums will reflect only the damage done to his own car.

Which brings us to Dalton McGuinty.

Ontario may follow the lead of its provincial neighbour and make winter snow tires madatory for winter driving.

[...]

Premier Dalton McGuinty has said he will consider making it a law in Ontario and OPP Commissioner Julian Fantino has already said he is behind the idea.

Have you seen car insurance premiums in this province? Get into one at-fault accident and your premiums will skyrocket. What better incentive is there to put snow tires on your car than that? That is, if you really need them at all.

Here in Toronto, we don't get a lot of snow. What we do get tends to melt quickly, aided by prodigious amounts of salt.

Do the math. If you only drive in southern Ontario and avoid driving the two or three times a season when we might get a meaningful amount of snow, it makes little economic sense to spend hundreds of dollars on snow tires. Moreover, cars with snow tires are considerably less fuel efficient. If you drive on snow-free roads the rest of the time, you will be burning extra gas.

That doesn't sound like the environmentally correct thing to do. And if the climate change lobby is to be believed, it will only hasten the rise in average temperatures in Ontario.

With winter in Ontario supposedly on the endangered list, why would McGuinty even consider making winter tires mandatory in Ontario? One can only conclude that if Dalton does go ahead with this, he doesn't believe his own hype about global warming.

Robin Sears got it right

Sorry Warren, but Robin Sears got it right.

For months in advance of the campaign they fed reporters with anonymous quotes about "unhappy Conservatives" and supplied YouTube with nasty videos and their canvassers with slippery doorstep lines. As the damage to Tory began to show up in public polls, they raised the pressure with egregious performances by Dalton McGuinty fretting about creating a "segregationist" Ontario, and suggesting that Ontario would suffer the same fate as "London and Paris" if the policy were adopted. In a clear appeal to Islamophobia they successfully ground the Conservative numbers down by nearly ten points in less than three weeks. At Toronto dinner parties one heard “progressive” downtown Liberals muttering quietly that Tory’s policy would fund "some crazy imam’s Mississauga madrassa."

Update: Warren responds in the comments:

Steve, with respect, a question:

Do you think that the hundreds of thousands of Onatrians who voted for McGuinty are also bigots? Or that they are dummies, and so easily manipulated?

I look forward to your answer, as always, with interest.
Warren K

And my rather long-winded response:

Warren,

One of the things I have always admired about your work is your courage in drawing attention to the real bigots in our midst. I commend you for writing about the seamy underside of white supremacists and skinhead thugs. These guys are scum whose ideas need to be exposed and discredited.

But that is what makes your willingness to tap into such prejudice for political ends so incomprehensible. Here we have a party that exults in its inclusiveness, yet is willing to jettison such principle for electoral advantage. It is a dangerous game that will have repercussions for years to come.

You know as well as I do that we are all bigots in some way. The key is to recognize one’s prejudice. One of the things that makes Canadian society great is that despite our inherent prejudices, we tend to treat each other reasonably well and don't usually don't let our prejudices rule us.

What I found so reprehensible about Liberal tactics in the last election is that the party had no inhibitions about tapping into such underlying prejudice. The intent to tap into prejudice was clear. And it worked.

Did people consciously vote Liberal because they don’t like Muslims? I am sure that some did, and at the margin that is what wins elections. But I suspect the preferences of many more were shifted subconsciously by an underlying, mostly unfounded, discomfort about Muslims.

If anyone should know about manipulation, it is you. For the most part, elections are not won or lost on policy. If they were, then the Liberals would have lost since, beyond bland generalities, they did their best to avoid talking about policy. For election strategists, policy is simply another hook on which to ply their trade.

The past Ontario election was not about policy. Concern about faith-based schools was not even on the map for the vast majority of Ontarians before the election commenced. Yet somehow it became the central issue to the exclusion of all else. Other important issues – poverty, productivity, competitiveness, energy security, the environment, etc. – were largely ignored. But your tactics helped secure another Liberal majority government. I hope it was worth it.
Steve

Eric Lindros rehabilitates his reputation

I always thought Eric Lindros was a jerk. I never gave him a second chance after he dissed my hometown when he refused to play for the Soo Greyhounds because he thought he couldn't get a good education in Sault Ste. Marie.

Funny, the schools seemed good enough for Wayne Gretzky, who actually went to my high school. For the most part, the quality of the schools would have been the least of Lindros' problems since from my recollections the players were hardly ever in class.

In retrospect, my high school was probably the exception. It was a good public high school. In general, however, the schools in Sault Ste. Marie suck, falling well below provincial averages. Lindros had a point, even if I did not want to listen to it at the time.

Lindros also partly rehabilitates my opinion of him with this announcement:

Lindros saved one of his biggest assists for last, announcing that he's donating $5 million in support of the London Health Sciences Foundation, which includes the Fowler Kennedy Sport Medicine Clinic.

Dr. Peter Fowler, who was being honoured along with Lindros at a dinner last night, treated the hockey star throughout his career and became a good friend and mentor.

Cliff Nordal, president and CEO of London Health Sciences Centre, said he'd done some research and believes it's the single largest donation ever by a Canadian athlete.

Even for a star hockey player, that's real money. But if Lindros really wanted to make amends to the people of Sault Ste. Marie, he should have also considered donating money to their schools.

The rest of us would have had to wait

Some might call it luck. I'd call it privilege.

It was pure luck that former prime minister Jean Chrétien was part of a Monday golf foursome that included Montreal cardiologist Dr. Guy Pelletier. Chrétien, 73, told Pelletier about chest pain he had been experiencing. Pelletier advised him to see a doctor, since the pain could be related to his heart.

[...]

But the next day, with his chest pain worsening, he listened to his daughter, France Desmarais, who urged him to get treatment immediately. He cancelled a trip and went to the Montreal Heart Institute. There, emergency quadruple-bypass heart surgery was carried out successfully. His prognosis, his doctors say, is excellent.

No hospital waits for him. He shows up in the morning and has a quadruple bypass before the day is out. Somehow I don't think that is the standard of health care service the rest of us can expect. We would have had to wait.

Waiting for cancer treatment

These conclusions don't seem all that surprising:

Does Canada's publicly funded, single payer health care system deliver better health outcomes and distribute health resources more equitably than the multi-payer heavily private U.S. system?

[...]

We find a somewhat higher incidence of chronic health conditions in the U.S. than in Canada but somewhat greater U.S. access to treatment for these conditions. Moreover, a significantly higher percentage of U.S. women and men are screened for major forms of cancer. Although health status, measured in various ways is similar in both countries, mortality/incidence ratios for various cancers tend to be higher in Canada. The need to ration resources in Canada, where care is delivered "free", ultimately leads to long waits. . . We also find that Canada has no more abolished the tendency for health status to improve with income than have other countries. Indeed, the health-income gradient is slightly steeper in Canada than it is in the U.S.

While this study is not necessarily an argument to adopt "US-style" health care – it does cost a lot more – the results skewer more of the myths about Canada's health care system.

h/t: Marginal Revolution

Global warming – bring it on

David Warren offers his observations on the benefits of global warming:

As I’ve written before, the solar cycle appears to be reaching the end of its manic phase, and we should not be surprised by the onset of rather crisp global cooling over the coming decades. But even supposing the warming trend were to continue geometrically, in obedience to doomsday rhetoric, why on earth would a Canadian Conservative be alarmed?

For IF this were true, it would be Canada's lucky day. We should be gloating! The world will be starving, while we are farming the Hudson Bay lowlands. The world will be parched, while we are guzzling the fresh glacial run-off. Bring on the sun!

Moreover, a quick atlas check persuades me that there is a fairly close demographic relation, both in Canada and USA, between height above sea level and the propensity to vote gliberal (i.e. Liberal and NDP, or Democrat). Such that, a sea level rise of just 50 feet would give us a Conservative majority up here, and put the Republicans back in charge of Congress down there, while guaranteeing that neither Hillary nor Chelsea Clinton ever becomes President. (The submergence of Prince Edward Island alone would cost our Liberals four seats.)

Anyone for some beach-front property on James Bay?

Let's raise taxes for Jews and Muslims

What if a political party proposed to raise taxes for Jews and Muslims? The public reaction would surely be one of outrage. And I am pretty sure that outrage would not be limited to Jews and Muslims. Even those of us who might pay less taxes as a result of Jews and Muslims paying more would find the idea unacceptable, if not morally repugnant.

So tell me, what is the difference between a policy that would give preferential tax treatment to some religious groups and current education policy in Ontario? With a straight face, Dalton McGuinty rails against John Tory's proposal to equally fund faith-based schools of all religious denominations, yet defends the current system where Catholic schools are publicly funded and the schools of Jews, Muslims, Anglicans and Hindus are not. Parents of other faiths who desire faith-based schooling for their children too must pay thousands of dollars in tuition per child per year, while their tax dollars fund the schooling of children in Catholic schools.

There are two ways to go here: one, end all funding to Catholic schools and convert existing separate school boards into non-denominational boards, or two, equally fund all faith-based schools.

To defend the status quo is simply out of step with the values of our "multicultural" society. If the constitution is an obstacle to implementing fairness in education policy, then we should change the constitution. It is simply intolerant to champion the discriminatory treatment of other religious groups.

Shame on Dalton McGuinty and the Ontario Liberal Party.

My question for Dalton McGuinty

The CBC invites us to submit our questions for the Ontario leaders to be asked in the leaders debate on September 20th. Here's what I submitted:

Mr. McGuinty, you appear to have taken a very principled stand against public funding of faith-based education in Ontario. Does that mean you are advocating a single, secular public education system? And if so, will you be proposing a constitutional amendment to establish non-denominational school boards in Ontario, similar to what was done in Quebec?

I would be very curious as to how he might reconcile the inconsistencies of his position with his own faith-based public education and that of his wife and kids.

Once a pirate

One hundred and fifty years ago, even America's closest trade partners were despairing about our cheating ways. Charles Dickens, who visited in 1842, was, like many Britons, stunned by the economic ambition of our nation's inhabitants, and appalled by what they would do for the sake of profit. When he first stepped off the boat in Boston, he found the city's bookstores rife with pirated copies of his novels, along with those of his countrymen. Dickens would later deliver lectures decrying the practice, and wrote home in outrage: "my blood so boiled as I thought of the monstrous injustice."

[...]

In the literary realm, for most of the 19th century the United States remained an outlaw in the world of international copyright. The nation's publishers merrily pirated books without permission, and without paying the authors or original publishers a dime. When Dickens published a scathing account of his visit, "American Notes for General Circulation," it was, appropriately enough, immediately pirated in the United States.

McGuinty opens door to constitutional change

There is no other way to interpret this:

"If you want the kind of Ontario where we invite children of different faiths to leave the publicly funded system and become sequestered and segregated in their own private schools, then they should vote for Mr. Tory."

"If they think it's important that we continue to bring our kids together so that they grow together and learn from one another, then you should vote for me."

But it might be a good idea to take it up with his wife first:

Some proponents of change, however, disagree with the Premier's position. Mr. McGuinty, his wife, Terri, and the couple's four children all attended Catholic schools. Ms. McGuinty continues to teach part time in the Catholic system. York University professor Eric Lawee said he sees "tremendous hypocrisy" in Mr. McGuinty's opposition to extending funding to religious schools.

SPP Conspiracies

I'm not a conspiracy theorist and neither is Stephen Colbert. Which makes me think the protesters at the Montebello summit could be on to something.

Still, I don't quite get what they are going on about. Wudrick is puzzled too and has a great post on the incoherence of their rage. Not to belittle their cause, for many it was a good opportunity to get some fresh air, show off one's piercings and, to keep things lively, throw things at the police to see if they would strike back (which they did). In the end, however, it leaves me doubting whether the protesters have thought these issues through.

Despite what some claim, there is really nothing that secret about the Security and Prosperity Partnership. Both the U.S. and Canadian governments have had informative websites on the initiative for some time. Mexico probably does too (although I'm not inclined to search for it). There is more than enough to debate and discuss without making stuff up.

For the most part, it is hard to argue against a cooperative approach to trade and security issues. In the end, if Canadians don't like what the Harper government agrees to, they will eventually have recourse at the polls. There is nothing anti-democratic about that.

Of course, Harper will have to be on guard against U.S. efforts to load the SPP with extraneous commitments. Michael Geist points out how the U.S. managed to slip in its intellectual property priorities in the final agreement. I'm not too keen on Harper giving in on that. Still, the SPP provides an indispensable forum to address common issues and, ultimately, to protect our economic interests. It would be foolish not to participate.


Update: New source of video provided as previous source expired.

Venezuelan poor getting relatively poorer

Hugo Chavez pictures himself as the champion of the poor. Yet, the Venezuelan poor are getting relatively poorer.

Hugo's friends must be doing very well indeed. How come I'm not surprised?


h/t: Marginal Revolution

Hurtling toward have-not status

Dalton McGuinty is now arguing for more social program spending by the federal government.

Canadian premiers foreshadowed a coming clash with Prime Minister Stephen Harper Friday over his pledge to diminish Ottawa's role in creating national social programs, warning that poorer Canadians could suffer.

"I'm a bit concerned about it. Are we talking about preventing the federal government from at some point in the future setting up social programs like daycare or pharmacare? Because I don't support that," Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty said as the premiers wrapped up their annual meeting.

Not long ago, McGuinty was complaining about Ontario having to pay the bill for other provinces.

Upcoming election or not, this apparent change of heart would seem to reflect the expectation that if the Ontario economy continues to slip relative to the rest of the country, it won't be long before the other provinces are on the hook to pay Ontario's bills.

Isn't equalization wonderful?

Ode to the (multicultural) mall

We do have something in common after all. We like to go to the mall.

We might not want to admit it but the best place to see Toronto is at the mall. Where else does a nearly complete cross-section of the city exist in one spot? On those rainy, overcast Sundays, when melancholy blankets the city, I like to ride the Spadina line out to Yorkdale Mall and walk in circles with some of the up to 70,000 people who head there on weekends. Apart from being anonymous in the only crowd available, I see all sorts of Torontonians I don't run into on Queen West, the Annex or even Harbourfront – all those places we might prefer to see them. Women in hijabs parade past shellacked Holt Renfew-bound ladies, who brush by the guys who wear the baggy shirts that go to their knees, who follow the teenage girls with impossibly visible thongs, who are dragged away by weary moms into the Gap to “buy something nice.”

[...]

With its recreated streetscapes and multicultural and class mix, Yorkdale's hyperreality may be where the reality of Toronto's celebrated diversity actually exists in one place.

Blogging Weenies

Kathy has a point:

Blogging Tories are pathetic, cowardly weenie-heads

Thank God not every corner of the Canadian conservative blogosphere is inhabited by sucky baby lawyers and other grasping, careerist wimps.

But there are enough of them out there to be an embarrassment to any principled person[.]

I know Stephen Taylor is just covering his ass. No one wants to pay legal fees. But the Free Dominion case is about the most fundamental principle of our democracy: the freedom of speech. If as bloggers we cannot stand behind this principle, then what are we blogging for?

It was not long ago that individual Blogging Tories stood up for the right to publish the Danish Muhammad cartoons to protest Muslim efforts to censor the press. Even Stephen Taylor had some words on the subject:

If a modern Martin Luther had published the 95 Theses in a blog, would German embassies be burned across the "Catholic World"? More troubling is to ponder if the press would be successful in sheltering the population from these transformative messages. In the case of the Muhammad cartoons, the message is hardly transformative, yet the defiance of organizational dogma certainly is.

Is this what power does to us?

Bush has nothing to do with it

Despite wishful thinking on the part of the Toronto Star, general contempt for George Bush has likely had little effect on increasing immigration flows from the United States to Canada.

An analysis of immigration statistics done by the Montreal-based Association for Canadian Studies showed the number of Americans who moved to Canada in 2006 hit a 30-year high, almost double the number who moved north in 2000 when Bush was elected for a first term as U.S. president.

The analysis also showed the southward brain drain is being narrowed somewhat, and most of the American migrants are highly educated people who may be moving to Canada for quality of life and social reasons.

The numbers were not huge – 10,942 Americans moved to Canada last year, far smaller than the influx predicted when bogus maps of the United States of Canada began hitting the Internet in the waning days of the 2004 campaign.

Sure, the number of U.S. immigrants almost doubled. But we are talking about an increase of only 5,000 people. That would hardly be a story even if every single one of those immigrants came here explicitly because of George Bush.

If you want to go down the path of spurious correlations, one could just as easily say more Americans are moving here because Canadians have finally come to their senses and elected a Conservative government. Undoubtedly, that will motivate some Americans to overcome their reservations about moving to high-tax, socialist Canada.

That interpretation, of course, is anathema to The Star. It is far easier to interview one gay, antiwar, labour organizer from Seattle to make the case of Canada as a progressive nirvana providing refuge against the Republican fascists:

For 34-year-old labour organizer Tom Kertes, the move last April from Seattle, Wash., to Toronto was based on human rights.

"The words 'human rights' are foreign words in the U.S.,'' Kertes said.

"They only apply to other countries.''

He moved to Toronto with his partner Ron Braun and the two plan to marry, something they could not do in Washington state.

He also cited the war in Iraq and the torture of Iraqi prisoners by Americans – and the failure of the Bush administration to clearly disavow such practice – as contributing factors to what is a major decision.

Much has happened since the year 2000. The election of George W Bush coincided with the bursting of the technology bubble. Several people I know (Canadians all) who moved down to the States have since retreated back to the land of free health care after being let go by Nortel and other technology firms. They made a lot money while it lasted. And the fact that U.S. income taxes are low and the Canadian dollar was trading at 67 U.S. cents made it seem like even more.

Today, the tables are turned. Resource industries such as oil and metals are going gangbusters, while the Canadian dollar is trading a little shy of par. The unemployment rate is the lowest in more than thirty years.

With the Canadian dollar having risen more than 30% over the 2000 to 2006 period, Canadian salaries look much more attractive to any American considering the possibility of working here, even taking into account higher personal income tax rates in Canada. That is tantamount to a 30% raise.

It is a real stretch to try to read anything political into the latest immigration statistics. Economic factors are driving migration flows, no matter what Toronto Star editors might believe.

Dominion Day

I put my Canadian flag up earlier today. It looks good, so I might just leave it there.

We didn't really do much to celebrate. Anything we could have done would have paled in comparison to last Wednesday's Dominion Institute's 10th anniversary party. It was quite the bash. My daughter brought her camera along. A few of her pictures can be seen below.

Mark Warner (CPC candidate in Toronto Centre) and I talk to William Thorsell.

Chatting with Bill Graham.