Top Tory senator asks that attendance rules be reviewed

The government leader in the Senate has asked the Standing Senate Committee on Internal Economy, Budgets and Administration for a review of the rules about attendance in the upper chamber, days after Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau lashed out at a journalist who revealed he had the poorest attendance record for this session of Parliament.

In an interview airing on CBC Radio's The House, Conservative Senator Marjory LeBreton told host Evan Solomon she has asked the standing committee also known as the Internal Economy Committee to look into the number of days senators are allowed to miss and whether they ought to justify their absence, in light of what she called the "inappropriate" behaviour displayed by Conservative Senator Patrick Brazeau.

Harper’s Conservatives slide behind NDP in national poll

The federal New Democrats are leading in voting intention across the country.

A new poll from EKOS and iPolitics shows the NDP sitting at 32.4 per cent nationally. The Conservatives sit second, having slipped to 29.3 per cent support, followed by the Liberals at 19.2 per cent.

While the jump to first place is a big one for the NDP, the real story is not so much its progress, but the decline of Conservative Party support.

The National Post on union kids' camps: Threat or menace?

Confession time: Years ago I sat on the board of a church camp.

I sent my kids there. One year one of my daughters was a counsellor at the camp.

And at that camp, they taught those kids … and here comes the confession part … Christian doctrine!

Real Christian doctrine, too, stuff right out of the Bible about helping the poor, kindness to the imprisoned and letting he who is without sin cast the first stone.

This is not the sort of thing the raw-meat fundies who support the Wildrose Party and Prime Minister Stephen Harper's so-called Conservatives think of as being Christian at all. The Bronze Age rigours of the Old Testament are more to their taste.

Mr. Harper, come camping with me

Dear Prime Minister,

At last, the House is out! Summer’s here, and C-38 all-nighters are behind us. With 12 weeks of holidays waiting, I’d like to invite you and your family to join me on a journey into Canada’s wilderness. It’s a getaway that I’m confident will be good for you and, by extension, good for the country.

You’re busy, so let’s keep it short – just three days, a mini-sojourn from the ceaseless pace of the job. It’s the chance to take a deep breath, feel the wind on your cheeks and the sand between your toes.

White people, here’s your one-time Canada Day special: Native people apologize back!

Canada Day has always been a mixed bag for Canada’s native people. It makes us think of many things: patriotism, flags, sunburned cottagers, barbeques and exploding fireworks. That’s the good stuff.

For some, though, it’s a reminder that it was four years ago when Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized to the first nations, Inuit and Métis inhabitants of this country for the imposition and effects of the infamous residential-school system.

Since then, much has been said and written about that apology: Did it go far enough? Too little too late? What’s next? That is something I am afraid only educated, wealthy white men in positions of power can decide.

In Greece, anti-immigrant Golden Dawn party rides wave of xenophobia

ATHENS—He doesn’t walk alone.

Not to his convenience store in the morning. Not to his apartment at night. Not anymore. When Tipu Sultan Mirza Mohamed moves, three or four fellow immigrants from Bangladesh move with him.

Protection.

The Bangladeshis of Athens now travel in packs because the thugs travel in packs. In the last month, supporters of Golden Dawn, the virulently anti-immigrant far-right party whose logo is a modified swastika, have beaten, among many others, an Egyptian fisherman sleeping on his roof, two Algerians sleeping near a beach, a Pakistani man and Bangladeshi man walking in a subway station, and an Albanian standing on the street.

Woman says she was denied sedation for cataract surgery because of OHIP fee cuts

When Sharon Phillips was wheeled into the operating room at Oakville Trafalgar Hospital on Monday, she was prepped and ready to undergo cataract surgery.

When her ophthalmologist was about to start the procedure, 65-year-old Phillips nervously stopped him with a question: “Wait a minute, where’s the sedation?”

She was shocked to find out there wouldn’t be any, and then angered when reportedly told that it was because of recent OHIP fee cuts to “conscious sedation,” a procedure that involves an anesthetist giving intravenous medication for pain, anxiety or comfort. Patients stay awake but are dozy.

What is killing the dolphins in the Gulf of Mexico?

Strandings — when dolphins or other marine mammals wash up onshore, either dead or alive — are occurring at “unusual” rates in the Gulf of Mexico, worrying scientists.

From February 2010 to June 17 there have been 757 dolphin and whale strandings in the northern Gulf of Mexico, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Five per cent of the mammals stranded alive, while 95 per cent stranded dead, the federal agency reports.

Germany re-surfaces as Europe’s Imperial power

BERLIN—On a recent June evening, the annual music festival had overtaken Berlin, and the early summer blossoming of the ever-present linden trees had filled the streets with perfume. Hence the city, always alight with throngs of streetside young people drinking 60-cent beer, seemed especially alive. Happy. Distanced, let’s say, from the eurozone debt crisis — insolvency in one country, the bailout of another, stratospheric bond yields across the way.

In Friedrichshain, a hip neighbourhood in the former East Berlin, Hannah Horeis could be found enjoying a beer and a hand-rolled cigarette, chatting with her friend, Anna Enge, whose 3-month-old son, Conrad, was nestled into a baby Snugli and a deep sleep. The mise en scène screamed young intellectuals, especially Horeis, with her cool demeanour and serious gaze, that cigarette poised in mid-air.

Tories slash funding for young offenders by 20 per cent

OTTAWA—The Conservative government has slashed 20 per cent of federal funding for youth justice programs in Canada, cutting $35.6 million used to supervise and rehabilitate young offenders, the Star has learned.

Justice Minister Rob Nicholson made no mention of the drastic cut Wednesday in a news release that trumpeted “continued support” for the Youth Justice Services Funding Program.

It is a key federal initiative that has directly transferred money to provinces and territories to deliver services to troubled youth ever since the original Young Offenders Act was passed in 1985.

Instead, Nicholson said only that starting next spring, the Conservative government will “continue” to fund the program at $141.7 million annually.