Fees for access to information requests unwarranted: commissioner

OTTAWA — Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird is flouting demands from the federal information commissioner that his department stop charging fees for access-to-information requests.

Information Commissioner Suzanne Legault said trading cash for information is not the way it's supposed to work — but she has no plans to challenge the ruling in court.

"Fees must not constitute a barrier to access," the commissioner wrote in her final ruling on the matter. "I recommend that the minister direct his officials to cease charging fees for search and preparation time of electronic records."

But Joseph Lavoie, Baird's spokesman, said the department has no intention of changing its fee structure for access requests.

"Until such time as the fee regime is modernized, the minister supports the department's view that the correct interpretation of the regulations authorizes the current practice," he said.

Big government conservatives are more electable than libertarians – just ask Rick Santorum

Last night I found myself discussing Canadian politics with the talk show host, Charles Adler. The subject was a new poll that reflects on the profound political changes sweeping North America.  L’Actualite reports that 37 percent of respondents feel that their country is more Right-wing than it was ten years ago, while just 15 percent say it was more Left-wing. Certainly the popularity of Stephen Harper’s Conservative government would appear to validate that opinion. Now in his seventh year as Prime Minister, Harper has pursued “severely conservative” policies that have kept recession at bay. One liberal commentator called Harper “George Bush without the warmth and intellect.”

But there’s a paradox within L’Actualite’s findings: Canadian voters might accept that the Right has won the philosophical argument but they still like aspects of social democratic policy. The newspaper reports that “56 percent of respondents agreed that the federal government has 'an important role' in redistributing wealth and intervening in the economy 'even if it means increasing taxes.' On the other hand, 36 per cent disagreed, while eight per cent were unsure.” Men were more supportive of federal intervention than women and opposition varied from region to region. But the bottom line is this: regardless of its increasingly conservative values, Canada still wants government goodies.

Cue the outrage over forbidden donations in Alberta politics. Not.

Even the evidence the Tories are kicking government funds back to campaigns fails to stir a rise


Over the past four months, many Albertans have taken their first-ever stroll through the province’s election law. Consider the list of entities that are forbidden from contributing to partisan causes—provincial parties, riding associations or candidates. It starts out quite commonsensically. Roman numeral one, corporations owned by the province. Number two, municipalities. Number three, Metis settlements; four, school boards; five, public post-secondary institutions.

In recent months, the Alberta Progressive Conservatives have been caught accepting donations from all five of these types of “prohibited corporations.”

Calgary Lab Services, a subsidiary of the province’s health super-board that recently took over cancer testing from Calgary’s Tom Baker Centre, gave $4,700 to the PC party between 2004 and 2010. The chief operating officer of the company, Chris Mazurkewich, admitted that “this shouldn’t have happened.”

We’re about to lead the G8 in ‘cuddly’

On one hand, scoring a couple panda bears from China is quite a coup for Stephen Harper. On the other, the Prime Minister still needs to break it to Peter MacKay that neither of the pandas is voiced by Jack Black. Such are the cruel nuances of foreign policy.

But in a time of financial uncertainty, Harper’s efforts should produce tangible results. The Conference Board of Canada estimates that in 2013 the pandas alone will result in a 5.3 per cent increase in our Gross Domestic Adorability. That should be enough to ensure Canada leads the G8 not only in “cuddly” but also in “wuddly.” Your move, economic turmoil.

Harper rushed off to China last week after being spurned by the U.S. on the Keystone XL pipeline. Time for some foreign policy on the rebound. Only a few years ago, the PM belittled those who would sacrifice the Canadian values of freedom and human rights in pursuit of the almighty petro-dollar. This time around, he was saying different things about the petro-dollar. Mostly he was saying, “Gimme.”

And China’s government? Hey, maybe it isn’t really all that totalitarian anymore! Maybe it’s barely more than halfitarian! As Harper noted in a speech: “Today, the drive in from the airport is a powerful picture of how millions of people are bettering their lives through industry and investment. Without a doubt, this is its own kind of liberation.”

Canada’s police chiefs support Internet surveillance bill

OTTAWA—Canada’s police chiefs came to the defence Monday of the Conservative government’s proposed Internet surveillance bill amid mounting backlash over the legislation.

The nation’s top cops said during a Vancouver news conference the public doesn’t need to fear the bill.

“People need to focus and keep their eye on the ball,” said Warren Lemcke, Vancouver’s deputy chief constable.

“We can’t monitor your emails. We can’t monitor your phone calls. We can’t monitor your surfing unless a judge allows us to do that.”

Among other things, the bill gives authorities access to Internet subscriber information without requiring a warrant and there are concerns that it violates the privacy of Internet users.

The president of the Canadian Police Association said cops aren’t interested in monitoring the communication of Canadians who aren’t committing crimes.

Oilsands impacts posing 'financial risk' to Alberta, says PCO

OTTAWA — Collateral damage from Canada's booming oilsands sector may be irreversible, posing a "significant environmental and financial risk to the province of Alberta," says a secret memorandum prepared for the federal government's top bureaucrat.

The memorandum, released by the Privy Council Office through access to information legislation, also raises doubts about recent industry and government claims that oilsands companies are reducing heat-trapping gases produced by each barrel of oil.

The industry has suggested a shift in oilsands extraction to use steam to remove synthetic crude oil from natural bitumen deposits on site can reduce land disruption and provide for reductions in energy and emissions. But the memo, prepared for Wayne Wouters, the clerk of the Privy Council Office — the lead department in the federal government's bureaucracy — said this shift is actually accelerating the industry's impact on climate change, with emissions growth projected to be greater over the next decade than all other Canadian economic sectors combined.

"While the industry has taken steps to reduce emissions, the shift from mining to in-situ production, which is almost three times as emissions intensive as mining, is resulting in a continued acceleration of emissions from this sector," said the memo.

"The industry's approach to tailings, meanwhile, has been widely criticized, including in a recent Royal Society of Canada report, as representing a significant environmental and financial risk to the province of Alberta."

How Slavery Led to Modern Capitalism

When the New York City banker James Brown tallied his wealth in 1842, he had to look far below Wall Street to trace its origins. His investments in the American South exceeded $1.5 million, a quarter of which was directly bound up in the ownership of slave plantations.

Brown was among the world's most powerful dealers in raw cotton, and his family’s firm, Brown Brothers & Co., served as one of the most important sources of capital and foreign exchange to the U.S. economy. Still, no small amount of his time was devoted to managing slaves from the study of his Leonard Street brownstone in Lower Manhattan.

Brown was hardly unusual among the capitalists of the North. Nicholas Biddle's United States Bank of Philadelphia funded banks in Mississippi to promote the expansion of plantation lands. Biddle recognized that slave-grown cotton was the only thing made in the U.S. that had the capacity to bring gold and silver into the vaults of the nation's banks. Likewise, the architects of New England's industrial revolution watched the price of cotton with rapt attention, for their textile mills would have been silent without the labor of slaves on distant plantations.

Afghan drug war debacle: Blair said smashing opium trade was a major reason to invade but 10 years on heroin production is up from 185 tons a year to 5,800

The West is losing the heroin war in Afghanistan – ten years after Tony Blair pledged that wiping out the drug was one of the main reasons for invading the country.

Despite spending £18billion and a conflict which has so far cost the lives of almost 400 British troops, production of the class-A drug by Afghan farmers rose between 2001 and 2011 from just 185 tons to a staggering 5,800 tons.

It increased by 61 per cent last year alone.

Such has been the failure to combat the problem that more than 90 per cent of the heroin sold on Britain’s streets is still made using opium from Afghanistan.

The United Nations yesterday warned that the situation was out of control.

Declaring that the West had lost its war against the drug, a glum UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon added: ‘Time is not on our side.’

The UN figures make grim reading for those who backed the invasion.

Cutting the supply of heroin was one of the prime reasons given by then-prime minister Tony Blair in 2001 for sending in British troops.

Beyond environment: falling back in love with Mother Earth

Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh has been practising meditation and mindfulness for 70 years and radiates an extraordinary sense of calm and peace. This is a man who on a fundamental level walks his talk, and whom Buddhists revere as a Bodhisattva; seeking the highest level of being in order to help others.

Ever since being caught up in the horrors of the Vietnam war, the 86-year-old monk has committed his life to reconciling conflict and in 1967 Martin Luther King nominated him for the Nobel Peace Prize, saying "his ideas for peace, if applied, would build a monument to ecumenism, to world brotherhood, to humanity."

So it seems only natural that in recent years he has turned his attention towards not only addressing peoples' disharmonious relationships with each other, but also with the planet on which all our lives depend.

Thay, as he is known to his many thousands of followers, sees the lack of meaning and connection in peoples' lives as being the cause of our addiction to consumerism and that it is vital we recognise and respond to the stress we are putting on Earth if civilisation is to survive.

Santorum Defends 'Phony Theology' Remarks, Doubles Down On Religious Critique Of Obama

A more congenial Rick Santorum doubled down on several controversial, and religiously laden, remarks in an interview Sunday morning on CBS's "Face the Nation," where he defended his recent claims that prenatal testing results in abortions, that federally provided education was "anachronistic," and that President Obama's policies are not "based on the Bible."

"I've repeatedly said I don't question the president's faith," Santorum told host Bob Schieffer, denying what some have said was a signal that Santorum had challenged the legitimacy of Obama's Christianity. "I've repeatedly said that I believe the president's Christian -- he says he's Christian. But I am talking about his worldview, the way he addresses problems in this country, and they're different than most people view it in America."

In a speech to Tea Party conservatives on Saturday in Columbus, Ohio, Santorum had dismissed Obama's politics as being based in "some phony theology."

"It's not about you. It's not about your quality of life. It's not about your jobs," Santorum said. "It's about some phony ideal, some phony theology. Oh, not a theology based on the Bible. A different theology."

An incredulous Bob Schieffer began his interview with Santorum Sunday by asking, "What in the world were you talking about?"