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Saturday, March 17, 2012
Tough love for addicts
“Dalrymple says he has observed addicts laughing and talking in his waiting area. But once inside his consulting room they appear to be in extremis. And when he takes them to task for this sudden change of health they admit they were ‘blagging.’ ”
Toronto Sun, March 17, 2012
By Dr. W. Gifford-Jones
What will happen to the 200,000 or more Canadian OxyContin addicts now that this opioid narcotic is no longer available?
For years these people have embarked on a wilful act of self-destruction. Isn’t it about time for society to get its priorities straight? To care more for those who have lived a good lifestyle, paid their taxes and, when dying of cancer, suffer needless agony because there’s no money for more palliative centres in this country.
Those who are rallying to help OxyContin addicts are making a series of illogical errors. Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin, also made a blunder. It spent needless money producing OxyNEO, an opioid version of OxyContin that resists crushing or liquefying so addicts can’t snort or inject it.
Toronto made the same illogical move when it spent millions building a protective fence to prevent people from jumping off the Bloor St. viaduct. Now instead they jump in front of speeding subway trains. OxyContin addicts will similarly resort to other addictive drugs such as heroin and hydromorphone.
But just how sick are OxyContin addicts? I have no personal experience in treating addicts. But Theodore Dalrymple, a British prison doctor and psychiatrist, has looked after addicts for years. In his book, Romancing Opiates, he writes that heroin is not as highly addictive as is claimed, and withdrawal from this drug is not medically serious.
He adds that a useless bureaucracy has been established to deal with addicts. I say “amen” to that one.
Dalrymple says he has observed addicts laughing and talking in his waiting area. But once inside his consulting room they appear to be in extremis. And when he takes them to task for this sudden change of health they admit they were “blagging.”
I think Dalrymple is right. Years ago when I was researching heroin in England I saw cancer patients on huge doses of heroin. But if there was a remission of the cancer they could be quickly weaned off this painkiller.
I realize there are hard-core addicts that will never be weaned off drugs. But our irresponsibly permissive approach to others seeking a “high” has resulted in a bureaucracy costing millions of dollars. And it’s not working. How could it be? More than 200,000 are prescription addicts, tens of thousands are using illegal drugs and in some communities half of the people are addicted to medication.
Years ago in this column I predicted this would happen if we did not follow Singapore’s law, the death sentence to those who brought heroin into the country. Now our lenient attitude to drug pushers has resulted in an over-medicated, drug-addicted society.
Now that we have the problem what can be done about it? I’d bet my last dollar that a huge number of those taking illegal drugs and OxyContin are being treated with the wrong prescription. They don’t need more doctors, social workers or politicians handing out more money for methadone facilities and injection sites.
What they require is a tough sergeant major stationed in northern Canada. His orders would be simple: “Up at 6 a.m. and start chopping wood.” It would result in a speedy cure.
I can already hear the hollering from the do-gooders. But I don’t give a damn if some readers think I’m a Hard-Hearted Hannah. I’ve been part of a group trying to raise funds for more than a year for more palliative care centres for dying patients in this country. And because we’re dealing with death, rather than what people consider a more respectable problem, like heart disease, we have few donations.
So if this country was bursting with dollars and could provide care to everyone, I wouldn’t give a damn how addicts were treated. But we’re not wallowing in dollars. And it’s unjust when those who choose to endanger their lives get more financial assistance for methadone centres and injection sites than those who are dying in agony.
Hippocrates, the father of medicine, preached that punishment was a form of medicine. I agree, and a good start for OxyContin addicts would be chopping wood. What do you think?
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See the website www.docgiff.com.
For comments info@docgiff.com.
http://www.torontosun.com/2012/03/14/tough-love-for-addicts
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Thursday, March 15, 2012
Pseudo Conservatives
“Because of this dramatic increase in debt, a larger portion of provincial revenues will be devoted to interest payments instead of funding important public programs or improving the competitiveness of B.C.'s tax regime.”
Financial Post, March 14, 2012
By Niels Veldhuis
Sitting down with my morning cup of coffee and Saturday's National Post, I was delighted to read Andrew Coyne's scathing criticism of the federal Conservatives' record in office, based on comments he was to make at this year's Manning Networking Conference (Is there a conservative in the House?, March 10).
"Where has conservatism gone?" Coyne asked. Unfortunately, Post readers didn't have to look far for the answer - the adjacent page to be precise.
There we read that B.C. Premier Christy Clark, who also spoke at the conference, was introduced with glowing praise as having delivered the "most conservative provincial budget in the country." This noteworthy "praise" originally came from Gary Mason of The Globe and Mail, who appropriately finished his sentence with "at the moment."
You see, to date only two provincial budgets have been delivered, Alberta's and British Columbia's. Neither deserves a "conservative" label.
Alberta's first budget under Premier Alison Redford embraced the province's recent deficit tradition. Alberta is now in its fourth deficit year and Ms. Redford's government proposes to continue running deficits for another three years.
Worse still, Ms. Redford's government is pinning its hopes of growing its way out of the deficit on rosy revenue growth forecasts averaging 8.4% over the next three years. With that sort of dough expected, Alberta's Finance Minister repeatedly trumpeted how the budget contained no tax increases - five times in a short speech, to be exact. That claim, however, came with a huge asterisk that the government wants to have a "discussion on taxes" (read increase taxes), likely after an election this spring.
On the spending side, Ms. Redford's government proposes to hold program spending growth to an average rate of 3.3%, assuring us that they "will be disciplined enough to spend no more." Forgive me for being skeptical. In last year's budget, they promised to hold spending growth to 1.9%, but then nearly doubled the growth in spending to 3.6%.
Over in B.C., Premier Clark's first budget was hardly better. After four consecutive years of budget deficits totalling $5.6-billion, Ms. Clark's government is finally planning to return to a surplus position in 2013-14.
To balance the books, the B.C. government is relying on a host of new tax increases, including a reduction in the amount of income British Columbians can earn tax free, increased Medical Services Plan premiums, reneging on an earlier promise to eliminate the small business tax rate, higher tobacco taxes, and a "provisional" one-percentage point increase to the general corporate income tax rate in 2014-15.
The tax increases in the budget are partly to help pay for several new boutique tax credits targeted at particular individuals and businesses. Perhaps that's what made the budget conservative. These gimmicky credits mirror those implemented by the federal Conservatives in recent years.
The most troubling aspect of the B.C. budget, however, was the alarming increase in government debt. Mainly as a result of increased capital expenditures, the B.C. government's debt will expand by 30% over the next three years to $66billion. As a percentage of the province's economy (GDP), the provincial debt will increase from a low of 18% in 2007-08 to 28% by 2014-15 - approximately the same debt level the Liberals inherited from the previous NDP government back in 2001.
Because of this dramatic increase in debt, a larger portion of provincial revenues will be devoted to interest payments instead of funding important public programs or improving the competitiveness of B.C.'s tax regime. Not to mention the added debt will be a drag on B.C.'s economy and an unfair burden on the next generation of B.C. families who will be responsible for repayment.
With increased spending, higher taxes and expanding debt, it's nonsense to call this "the most conservative provincial budget in the country."
For examples of truly conservative budgets, one needs to look back to the 1990s, when governments across the country of all political ideologies - NDP, Liberal and Conservative - enacted spending reductions to achieve balanced budgets.
Such actions, while difficult in the short term, lead to better results in the medium and long term, including balanced budgets, declining debt, lower interest costs, tax relief and a more prosperous economy. Indeed, Canada's remarkable fiscal transformation (federally and provincially) contributed significantly to our outstanding economic performance from 1997 to 2007.
With eight provinces and the federal government yet to deliver 2012 budgets, let's hope they apply the lessons of the 1990s, rather than produce similar budgets to Alberta and B.C.
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Niels Veldhuis is vice-president, research, at the Fraser Institute.
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Nary+conservative+budget+sight/6297673/story.html
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Monday, March 12, 2012
It is not about women’s rights
| Rush Limbaugh swerved headlong into a thorny thicket concerning who pays for a woman’s contraception - and Bill O’Reilly followed. Some excerpts from Jesse Kline’s essay in the National Post. |
“The real problem is forcing faith-based institutions to pay for services they find morally objectionable.”
National Post, March 12, 2012
By Jesse Kline
A heated political debate has been playing out in the United States for the past couple weeks, and it has left many people scratching their heads: Why in the 21st century is a developed country debating issues surrounding birth control? But this is not an unexpected outcome. It's what happens when we take decisions out of the hands of private individuals and organizations, and leave politicians to force their will upon the populace.
The media firestorm erupted after influential conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh made some controversial comments about Sandra Fluke, a Georgetown University law student who testified in front of Congress in support of a government mandate that would force faith-based institutions to provide contraceptives as part of their private health insurance plans. "Fluke said it's too expensive to have sex in law school without mandated insurance coverage. It makes her a slut, right? It makes her a prostitute," said Limbaugh. And that's not even the most inflammatory thing he said.
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"You want me to give you my hard-earned money so you can have sex?" asked Fox News host Bill O'Reilly. Well, no, not exactly. We're talking about a mandate on private organizations, not taxpayer funding.
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Of course, people on the left have been just as disingenuous with their rhetoric. MSNBC's Chris Matthews described Limbaugh's remarks as "an astounding assault on women's rights."
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But this has nothing to do with women's rights, as many in the media have tried to frame it, and everything to do with the government forcing religious institutions to pay for services that they deem to be morally objectionable.
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Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood, said: "It's absolutely incredible to see that birth control itself is a topic of political debate in this presidential election."
The reason is simple. It's because Obama-care places government mandates on what used to be private decisions, such as the type of coverage organizations must provide and whether individuals purchase insurance at all.
When decisions are made in the private sphere, people and organizations are able to account for their unique circumstances - including ethical and economic considerations. When government steps in and imposes a one-size-fits-all solution, individuals are left worse off. Why leave such important choices to politicians - the same people who have unable to … pass a balanced budget in years?
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Our ability to make decisions in the best interests of ourselves and the organizations we belong to is worth preserving; but it's a power that has been slowly eroding as people continue to look to government to solve their problems. Sadly, governments are always all too happy to oblige.
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http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/about+women+rights/6286398/story.html
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Putin’s true victory
| Anne Applebaum dissects Vladimir Putin’s recent win. |
“The Russian election may have been staged managed, but it is still a win for an autocrat.”
Slate, March 6, 2012
By Anne Applebaum
The Russian election may have been stage managed, but it’s still a win for an autocrat.
During a democratic election, we journalists usually cover certain bases. We analyze the candidates and their views. We print polls reflecting the public's views. Afterward we discuss the vote—who won, who lost, and why.
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In truth, what matters during a managed election is not the election but the management. How convincing was the propaganda? How expertly did the authorities deflect dissent? The point of a managed election, after all, is not to pick a winner but to reinforce the legitimacy of an illegitimate regime.
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The regime also scored some points by not overstating its victory too much. Had Vladimir Putin followed in the footsteps of President Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus, who claimed an utterly implausible 80 percent victory in 2010, he would have made himself look foolish.
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But there were also some important failures. Putin's victory speech on Sunday was a big one. Before voting had even finished in Russia's far east, he declared himself the winner using the kind of emotional language usually deployed at the end of a long war. He denounced "attempts to destroy Russia's statehood and usurp power," and he appeared to weep as he told supporters, "I promised you we would win. We have won. Glory to Russia!"
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… he can't assume that all challenges to his legitimacy will now automatically disappear. Above all, he must be careful not to make himself look silly.
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Once again, he is president of Russia. The struggle to rid Russia of his corrupt and venal regime has only just begun.
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One man’s collusion …
| Is the U.S. Justice Dept. muzzling innovation? |
“On March 8, the U.S. Justice Department announced plans to sue Apple and five other major U.S. publishers for alleged price collusion.”
National Post, March 12, 2012
By Marni Soupkoff
It's almost like the government can't stand success. Other people's, that is. Apple was flying high last week after unveiling a much-anticipated new and faster iPad on Wednesday and seeing its share prices rise as result. Enter the U.S. Justice Department, which on Thursday announced that it plans to sue Apple and five major U.S. publishers for alleged price collusion.
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The Apple case is an excellent example of how disturbingly subjective antitrust law can be, since what Apple did can just as easily be construed as competition-broadening as it can be deemed collusive, depending on one's point of view. The way the Justice Department sees it, in anticipation of the 2010 release of the iPad, Apple and the publishers conspired to raise the price of e-books by shifting to an "agency" model of pricing. In the agency model, the publishers set the prices of the e-books and Apple takes a 30% cut of the sales. The publishers forbid other sellers, such as Amazon, from offering the books at lower prices.
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The agency model may have made e-books pricier, but it also made it possible for more e-book sellers to afford to get into and stay in the market. And isn't that ultimately what competition is really about? It is not as though there is now an e-book monopoly locking up the online book bazaar.
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As a recent Wall Street Journal article explained, there's a school of thought that such diversity would be destroyed by moving away from the Apple approach: "William Lynch, chief executive of Barnes & Noble, gave a deposition to the Justice Department in which he testified that abandoning the agency pricing model would effectively result in a single player gaining even more market share than it has today, according to people familiar with the testimony."
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Apple has been a fantastic innovator and people across the world are continuously reaping the benefits of its ground-breaking technology. Do we really want the government stepping in to muzzle such a company in the name of "protecting" consumers' interests? Haven't consumers made it pretty clear what they think of Apple's products?
Any company that can do better remains welcome to try.
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http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/collusion/6286401/story.html
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Sunday, March 11, 2012
Canada’s productivity puzzle
“ ‘everything I have ever done on productivity’ is a failure, to the point that ‘if asked today what policy changes should be implemented to promote productivity growth I would need to say I do not know.’ ”
“Delve into that overall productivity performance, and you find it is largely driven by sharp declines in the manufacturing sector. Why is that?”
National Post, March 6, 2012
By Andrew Coyne
Government in Canada having reached the summit of efficiency, politicians have lately taken to scolding the private sector for failing to do the same. In language reminiscent of war-bond drives, businesses find themselves increasingly exhorted to raise productivity, as if they were letting down the side.
“Governments are doing their part,” Tony Clement, then the Industry Minister, complained, in a typical outburst. “Where’s business? When is business going to do its part?” Often this takes the form of a sporty metaphor. Government has been investing, according to the Finance Minister, Jim Flaherty: “We have to now ask the private sector to step up to the plate.”
Now, sticklers may point out that the economy is not, in fact, a baseball team, and that businesses are under no actual obligation to raise productivity, except as and so far as it is of benefit to their shareholders. They will make the required investments if it is in their interests to do so, and only then.
Nevertheless, there is a germ of truth somewhere in this rhetorical petri dish. Policy makers have gotten a lot of things right over the last 20 years. They’ve freed trade, cut corporate tax rates, beat inflation down to near zero. Yet productivity growth in Canada has lagged behind that of most other developed countries. As recently as 2000, Canadian workers were roughly 85% as productive as those in the U.S. Since then that ratio has fallen to 70%.
So baffling is this “productivity puzzle” that some economists have all but given up trying to understand it.
Notable among these is Don Drummond, the former Finance Department economist lately observed redesigning the government of Ontario. Yet even he declares himself stumped. In a recent paper he confesses that “everything I have ever done on productivity” is a failure, to the point that “if asked today what policy changes should be implemented to promote productivity growth I would need to say I do not know.”
Steady on. Even if governments have made some progress in unwinding past policy failures, they still have plenty of work to do. All of the literature on productivity stresses the vital role of competition as a driver of productivity. Yet important sectors of the Canadian economy, for example transportation and telecommunications, remain protected, over-regulated backwaters, sheltered from foreign or domestic competition. Governments at every level continue to hand out billions in subsidies to businesses of all kinds, rewarding inefficiency and distorting investment; billions more are dispensed out the back door, via tax preferences. Income tax rates have been slashed for corporations, but remain as high as ever for individuals. And so on.
It’s possible, moreover, that the productivity problem has been overstated: that, to the extent Canadian business has failed to invest or innovate, it may not be on account of an inexplicable failure to exploit opportunities to improve efficiency, but rather has more rational causes. There are three ways in which this might be true.
The first has to do with the rapid rise in prices over the last decade for the commodities Canada exports, such as oil: as economists say, there has been an improvement in Canada’s “terms of trade.” One way to raise living standards is to increase productivity: if you can make each thing for less cost, you get more things. But another way is by charging other people more for the things you make. So part of our productivity problem may simply be a reflection of our good fortune as a nation in possessing resources that are in high demand around the world.
The flipside of that, second, is the decline in manufacturing, driven in part by the rising “petrodollar” of which the Ontario premier has recently complained. Until about 2000, Canada’s productivity growth tracked fairly closely with that of the United States, only falling off after then. Delve into that overall productivity performance, and you find it is largely driven by sharp declines in the manufacturing sector. Why is that? A recent Statistics Canada study finds that factory production has fallen so far below capacity that firms are using capital less efficiently, giving up economies of scale they would previously have enjoyed.
A third factor may be the rapid growth in Canada’s labour force in recent decades, a combination of the baby boom and the increasing numbers of women in paid work. Notwithstanding the best efforts of government, Canada’s labour market managed successfully to absorb these newcomers; on the brink of the financial crisis, in 2008, the employment rate hit an all-time record 63%. With so much labour on hand, firms had less need to invest in new machinery: it was cheaper to just take on more workers.
But over the next few decades, the labour force is projected to grow much more slowly, if at all. That’s concerning: if productivity growth does not rebound, living standards will take a hit. But it’s possible that we will see our recent experience reversed: that businesses will respond to the relative shortage of labour by investing in more machinery, thus raising productivity. In other words, it’s possible the problem will fix itself.
Still, I wouldn’t want to bet the farm on it. Mr. Drummond figures governments have put in place about 70% of the reforms he would advise. Rather than casting about for entirely new prescriptions, how about we get cracking on the 30% that remain?
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'Fakegate' latest climate clash
“ … if you're a warmist you are being rewarded for speaking an inconvenient truth, whereas if you are a skeptic, you are a ‘shill.’ "
Special to the National Post, March 7, 2012
By Peter Foster
A few weeks ago, a number of websites received copies of allegedly confidential documents from the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based libertarian think-tank that organizes conferences featuring skeptics of catastrophic man-made climate change. Most of the documents, which purported to come from a "Heartland insider," related to Heartland's donors, but one was a "strategy" document that suggested that the institute was trying to subvert the teaching of climate science in schools. Here was the smoking gun that ardent warmists had long sought.
The problem was that the strategy document was a forgery.
Soon afterwards, Peter Gleick, a prominent environmentalist and president of the Pacific Institute, admitted that he had obtained the genuine documents by imitating a Heartland board member. He claimed that he had received the strategy document separately. His ethical lapse (or crime) appeared the more egregious because he was chairman of the task force on ethics at the American Geophysical Union, and had previously addressed a congressional committee on scientific integrity.
He was a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the National Center for Science Education. He had also been the winner of a MacArthur "Genius" award.
Textual analysis of the smoking-gun strategy document led some to suggest that the likely author was Mr. Gleick himself, although this has not been proved. Megan McArdle of Atlantic magazine noted wryly that the document read "like it was written from the secret villain lair in a Batman comic. By an intern."
Mr. Gleick claimed that he donned a false identity merely to confirm the accuracy of the strategy document, which he said had been given to him anonymously. This, he admitted, was "a serious lapse of - professional judgment and ethics."
However, Mr. Gleick justified his actions by claiming that "the scientific understanding of the reality and risks of climate change is strong, compelling, and increasingly disturbing, and a rational public debate is desperately needed."
Mr. Gleick's "deep regret" and "personal apologies" were also leavened by the claim that "My judgment was blinded by my frustration with the ongoing efforts - often anonymous, well-funded and co-ordinated - to attack climate science and scientists and prevent this debate."
But wasn't the debate meant to be "over"? In fact, shortly before he had released the allegedly incriminating cache, Heartland had invited Mr. Gleick to a public debate. He had turned the offer down. Andy Revkin of The New York Times noted that Mr. Gleick had "destroyed his credibility and harmed others," but went on to say that "The broader tragedy" was that his actions had set back the prospect of the country having the "'rational public debate' that [Gleick] wrote - correctly - is so desperately needed."
However, Mr. Gleick and his supporters appear incapable of "rational public debate."
What is intriguing about the aftermath to what British journalist James Delingpole called "Fakegate" is the vituperation that has been unleashed not against Mr. Gleick but against Heartland, while Mr. Gleick has been treated as some kind of slightly misguided "hero."
Naomi Klein tweeted that Mr. Gleick "took big risks to bring important truths about the deniers to light." But what important truths? That they received donations? David Suzuki claimed that Mr. Gleick had done nothing worse than the Climategate hacker(s). He/she/they had been cheered on by Heartland, thus Heartland was hypocritical. He accused Heartland of lying about "the most serious threat to humanity."
Was that the kind of rational "debate" for which Mr. Gleick and Mr. Revkin were calling?
Other Gleick supporters pulled out the whole sophistic bag of tricks: those who questioned catastrophic man-made climate change were "deniers" who ranked with creationists or homeopaths. Philosophers came forward to argue that Mr. Gleick's actions were in fact ethical because aimed at the "greater good" and weren't "for gain." He was compared to Winston Churchill and Daniel Ellsberg, the man who released the Pentagon Papers. His action was "moral," claimed Scientific American's John Horgan (who dragged in philosopher Immanuel Kant as backup) "because he was defending a cause that he passionately views as righteous."
Unfortunately, however, being "righteous" doesn't necessarily go with being right, and can be a major barrier to seeing others' points of view.
Warmist website DeSmog Blog declared that Mr. Gleick deserved "gratitude and applause" for his fraudulent activities. The Guardian's George Monbiot claimed Mr. Gleick was a "democratic hero" and dumped on Daily Telegraph skeptic Christopher Booker for once having taken a speaking fee of $1,000 from Heartland (Mr. Monbiot is reported to have received $20,000 from filthy Canadian capitalist Peter Munk to promote climate catastrophe in a Munk Debate, but of course if you're a warmist you are being rewarded for speaking inconvenient truth, whereas if you are a skeptic, you are a "shill.")
There was lots of condemnation of bullying right-wing "ideologues." Mr. Gleick was just a David facing the Goliath/Golem of corporate power. The problem was that Heartland is hardly a Goliath. Its income is smaller than that of the David Suzuki Foundation and is minuscule compared with organizations such as WWF and Greenpeace. It is micro-minuscule compared with the tens of billions that governments have poured into the cause of climate alarmism.
The late Stephen Schneider, a prominent climate catastrophist, suggested that in 1989 that scientists had to offer up "scary scenarios" to get attention. He claimed that scientists were thus in an ethical bind. "Each of us," he said, "has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both."
Mr. Gleick demonstrates, however, that once you abandon honesty you also likely abandon effectiveness. Insofar as that effectiveness relates to peddling ideology cloaked in science, less of it is much to be desired.
Climate scientist Judith Curry, of the Georgia Institute of Technology, suggested that Mr. Gleick's idea of scientific integrity in fact amounted to loyalty to the UN's climate "ideology," which involves demonizing deniers and the fossil fuel industry.
This week, Heartland announced a legal team to "represent the organization in connection with Peter Gleick's fraudulent conduct." Mr. Gleick has reportedly retained the lawyer used by Andy Fastow of Enron. Forensic investigation into the origins of the fake strategy document continue.
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http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Fakegate+latest+climate+clash/6262240/story.html
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The 12th Imam is knocking on Ahmadinejad’s front door
“What would the U.S. use to take out Iran’s nuclear facilities if it decided a military strike was needed? Almost certainly the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP) – the most powerful ’bunker buster’ in existence: a 13,000 kilogram weapon – developed in parallel with Iran’s underground Fordow Nuclear Fuel Enrichment Plant – that can smash through 20 metres of reinforced concrete before exploding.”
National Post, March 11, 2012
By Richard Johnson
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Email: rjohnson@nationalpost.comTwitter: @newsillustrator
See more of Richard Johnson’s work at: newsillustrator.com
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/09/israel-iran-graphic-how-do-bunker-busting-bombs-work/
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Human origins traced to a worm
"It's very humbling to know that swans, snakes, bears, zebras and, incredibly, humans, all share a deep history with this tiny creature no longer than my thumb."
Cosmos, Agence France-Presse, March 6, 2012
OTTAWA: The origins of humans and other vertebrates have been traced to a worm that swam in the oceans half a billion years ago.
A new analysis of fossils unearthed in the Canadian Rockies determined that the extinct Pikaia gracilens is the most primitive known member of the chordate family, which today includes fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles and mammals.
The research, published in the British scientific journal Biological Reviews this week, identified a notochord (or rod) that would become part of the backbone in vertebrates, and skeletal muscle tissue called myomeres in 114 fossil specimens of the creature. They also found a vascular system.
"The discovery of myomeres is the smoking gun that we have long been seeking," said the study's lead author, Simon Conway Morris of the Cambridge University in England. "Now with myomeres, a nerve chord, a notochord and a vascular system all identified, this study clearly places Pikaia as the planet's most primitive chordate. So, next time we put the family photograph on the mantle-piece, there in the background will be Pikaia."
Humans' humbling origin
The first specimens of Pikaia were collected by early explorers of the Burgess Shale in 1911. But the animals were overlooked as an ancestor of earthworms or eels.
It was not until the 1970s that Morris suggested the 5-cm-long, sideways-flattened, somewhat eel-like animal that likely swam by moving its body in a series of side-to-side curves could be the earliest known member of the chordate family.
"In particular, it was our use of an electron microscope that allowed us to see very fine details of its anatomy," said co-author Jean-Bernard Caron, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Toronto in Canada. "It's very humbling to know that swans, snakes, bears, zebras and, incredibly, humans all share a deep history with this tiny creature no longer than my thumb."
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http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/5378/human-origins-traced-a-worm
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Saturday, March 10, 2012
Soft totalitarianism in the classroom
“The Alberta HRC was the kangaroo court exposed by Ezra Levant when he was prosecuted for more than two years for publishing the Danish Muhammad cartoons, and which ordered a Christian pastor in Red Deer never to speak about homosexuality again - including in private correspondence - because someone complained about his letter published in a local newspaper.”
“Education policy has for several generations now been creeping into ever more sectors of civil life. Having done such a bang-up job of teaching little Edith to read and write and do algebra, the education bureaucracy is eager to ensure that she has proper eating habits (first graders sent home shamefacedly when they bring brownies rather than celery sticks for snack time) …”
National Post, March 8, 2012
By Father Raymond J. De Souza
Who decides what children get taught when it comes to moral and religious questions? Parents or the state?
These questions are being asked in Alberta, as a result of the provincial government's proposed new Education Act. The bill incorporates the Alberta Human Rights Act into the law governing schools and education, presumably giving aggrieved students, parents and teachers the right to file complaints with the Alberta Human Rights Commission (HRC). Why the government of Alison Redford would wish to bring the thoroughly discredited bureaucratic apparatus of the human-rights commission into the education system is baffling.
The Alberta HRC was the kangaroo court exposed by Ezra Levant when he was prosecuted for more than two years for publishing the Danish Muhammad cartoons, and which ordered a Christian pastor in Red Deer never to speak about homosexuality again - including in private correspondence - because someone complained about his letter published in a local newspaper.
The real courts slapped the human rights commission senseless on that one, but not until the accused had been comprehensively abused by the one sided process. Freedom of the press, freedom of religion, fundamental legal rights of due process - none of these carry much weight at the human rights commissions. Sensible people around the country are endeavouring to have their pernicious scope restricted. Alberta's government, on the other hand, seeks to expand their purview so they might be able to harass every teacher in every classroom in the province.
Which led to an odd protest at the legislature here on Monday by several hundred home-schooling families, worried that the new Education Act's drafting would expose parents to human rights prosecutions if determined activists didn't care for their religious and moral teaching. The protest was odd because the education minister showed up at the rally himself, saying that his proposed law would do no such thing; and affirming the principle that the parents were advocating, namely that the parents' right to teach their children should not be impeded by the state's various bureaucratic arms.
But sweet words are no match for a determined bureaucrat of ideological zeal. Alberta's parents - home-schoolers and otherwise - are right to be vigilant. Ill winds are blowing across the land when it comes to parental rights, religious liberty and education policy.
Quebec's new "ethics and religious culture" curriculum aims to promote religious tolerance by teaching that religious differences don't matter. If you are a Muslim parent who wants to teach your child that Islam is superior to being an atheist or being a witch, the education system will be undermining that view in class. Quebec will brook no exceptions to the new groupthink: No child is permitted to be exempt from class when the teacher instructs her that her pious parents are teaching her falsehoods. The Supreme Court of Canada affirmed this soft totalitarianism last month, saying in effect that parents ought to get with the program and get over their religious, moral and cultural obligations to instruct their children. That is the narrowing of liberty to the point of eliminating it; everyone is free to teach his kids what he wants at home, just as long as the state gets to teach the little ones the opposite at school
In Ontario, a battle is going on between the province and Catholic school boards and various private schools about bullying. The province's position is that stopping bullying in the schools requires that schools sanction the view that their moral teaching about sexuality, especially homosexual acts, is wrong. The schools' position is that if you want to stop bullying, then teach the children not to bully each other, and sanction them when they do. But the bureaucratic state is never satisfied with merely proportionate measures. So Ontario proposes, in effect, forcing schools that exist for a religious purposes - whether Catholic or otherwise - to compromise that mission on the diktat of the education bureaucracy.
It's a battle that will only grow more intense in the years ahead. Education policy has for several generations now been creeping into ever more sectors of civil life. Having done such a bang-up job of teaching little Edith to read and write and do algebra, the education bureaucracy is eager to ensure that she has proper eating habits (first graders sent home shamefacedly when they bring brownies rather than celery sticks for snack time) and the correct ideas about social policy (high schools facilitate access to birth control but make bottled water contraband).
And those parents who do not wish to lazily hand over the formation of their children to the state? They now have to fight to discharge the duties that are properly theirs, as they did here in Edmonton on Monday.
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Quebec’s creepy French-language purists
“It is hard for anyone who is not from Quebec … to understand how bizarre is the mindset of the province’s language police and its associated bureaucracy.”
National Post, March 8, 2012
By Jonathan Kay
At Toronto’s Royal Ontario Museum on Wednesday night, scholars Antonia Maioni and David Bercuson debated the proposition that “Canada is not bilingual, binational, or bicultural.” Their arguments were published in Thursday’s National Post, with Maioni standing up for Canada’s dualistic character, and Bercuson dismissing it as a myth.
Based on the latest news out of Quebec (outlined in the paragraphs below), I am awarding game, set and match to Bercuson, who noted that bilingualism is strictly a one-way street. Or, in his words: “It’s … more than a little ironic that English-speaking Canada has been expected to embrace bilingualism when the very cause of so much bilingualism — to show francophone Quebecers that they are equal partners in Canada — has been scorned by Quebec itself, which postures as a unilingual French province.”
Now here’s that promised news item, courtesy of Montreal’s Gazette:
The city of Huntingdon [Quebec] is vowing to keep serving its citizens in the ‘two official languages’ after the Office québécois de la langue française [OQLF] asked it to transmit its communications to residents in French only. In an email to the municipality in January, the OQLF noted it had received a complaint against the city of Huntingdon.
It was a written, bilingual communication from the city that sparked the complaint, although Huntingdon Mayor Stéphane Gendron said that’s all they know. The city’s communication with citizens is always bilingual, Gendron said. By transmitting bilingual communications to its residents, the city of Huntingdon gives the impression of being a bilingual city and, as a result, ‘doesn’t fully play the exemplary role expected of a public administration body’ in terms of the French-language Charter, the OQLF’S email said.
The first thing that must be said is: Huzzah for mayor/media-pundit Stéphane Gendron. It pains me to say that, given his status as one of the most poisonously anti-Israel hotheads in the country. (In the past, he’s used his V-network TV platform to accuse Israel of conducting a “genocide,” and being “les Nazis des temps modernes.”) But sometimes devils dance on the side of angels (or vice versa — take your pick which costume fits the “real” Gendron), and this is plainly one of those instances. Gendron runs a town that is at least 40% Anglophone. And he’s doing the right thing by standing up for his constituents.
If more local politicians had Gendron’s moxie, Quebec’s government might eventually be embarrassed into relaxing its Kafkaesque language policies. Outside of the Kurdish regions of Turkey and the Russian areas of eastern Europe, Quebec’s government is the only one in the developed world that has a policy of actively discouraging local officials from dealing with constituents in a language they understand.
It is hard for anyone who is not from Quebec (I lived there until I was 26) to understand how bizarre is the mindset of the province’s language police and its associated bureaucracy. To give but one example: Some years ago, a friend of mine, “Miranda,” worked as a clerical worker at a (largely English) clothing manufacturer in the northern part of Montreal. One day, her facility received a visit from the OQLF. The visiting Franco-gendarme roamed around the premises, taking photos with a film camera. But my friend and her colleagues weren’t overly worried: They had scrupulously followed rules governing French-language interoffice communications, posters, and the like.
Then, the next day, Miranda got a call from a friend of hers who worked at a local 1-hour film-developing studio (remember those?). “You wouldn’t believe this,” she said. “But I’m looking at pictures of your office. Someone from the government just dropped off the rolls.”
“The photos don’t show any English, I hope,” said Miranda.
“Oh, but they do,” said her friend.
It turns out that someone in the office had put a piece of cake in the communal fridge, and stuck a post-it note on it that said (in English!) “Bill’s banana bread.” Why Bill felt the need to identify the food, or that it was his, no one knows. But the OQLF worker — whose mandate apparently included the inside of kitchen appliances — was quite fascinated by the note, and took several pictures of it.
To my knowledge, Bill, his pain de banane, and his illegal post-it note never became the subject of an official complaint. Maybe Bill got off with a warning. Or perhaps he became an informant. If this happened today, the OQLF presumably would just install an in-fridge web-cam to keep track of the situation.
In many ways, Quebec is a very different place from what it was when I moved away in 1994. Its population is richer and more diverse. Montreal, in particular, has become a leader in high-tech fields such as biotech and computer animation. And yet, in its sour, small-minded, defensive and utterly parochial attitude toward language, the province’s bureaucracy and language puritans are still locked in the age of René Lévesque.
Meanwhile, well-meaning Anglo Quebec liberals such as the aforementioned Prof. Maioni lavish earnest praise on “the Quebec nation as a rampart for French language and culture,” and assure us that our “multicultural experience” is “rooted in the prior existence of two distinct cultural and linguistic settings, even as it contributes to shape these two settings.” In cheering on Canada’s “bilingual, binational and bicultural” character, the McGill professor also urges us to “recognize, and even celebrate, that multiculturalism is rooted in two distinct cultural worlds.”
Actually, Prof. Maioni, it’s a little difficult for any of us to “celebrate” all of these bi wonders when a provincial government — your provincial government, in fact — has adopted a systematic policy of denigrating the English language as a second-class tongue, and even soliciting complaints from creepy French whistleblowers who out local governments for the crime of serving citizens in a Canadian official language they actually understand. The accusation that the town of Huntingdon “doesn’t fully play the exemplary role expected of a public administration body’ in terms of the French-language Charter,” in particular, is one of the creepiest, Soviet-smacking sentences I have seen printed in any government document in this country.
David Bercuson is right: The idea of Canada being a “bilingual” country in any sort of requited sense is a scam. Bilingual, bicultural, binational (and whatever other “bi” you want to throw in) pieties comprise a sort of lie that Anglo elites tell themselves as part of the perceived price of keeping Quebec in the country. The job of actual truth-telling, meanwhile, is left to hotheads such as Mr. Gendron.
Long may he dance with the angels.
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Quebec town defies Quebec language police
The Montreal Gazette, March 8, 2012
Quebec's City of Huntingdon is vowing to keep serving its citizens in the "two official languages" after the Office quebecois de la langue francaise, Quebec's language watchdog, asked it to transmit its communications to residents in French only.
In an email to the municipality in January, the OQLF noted it had received a complaint against the City of Huntingdon.
It was a written, bilingual publication from the city that sparked the complaint, although Huntingdon Mayor Stephane Gendron said that's all they know. The city's communication with citizens is always bilingual, Gendron said.
By transmitting bilingual communications to its residents, the City of Huntingdon gives the impression of being a bilingual city and, as a result, "doesn't fully play the exemplary role expected of a public administration body" in terms of the province's French-language charter, the OQLF's email said. It also noted a publication can be transmitted in another language afterward to people who make the request.
"I don't understand. Does it hurt someone to receive a bilingual publication," Gendron asked?
About 40 to 44 per cent of Huntingdon's population is anglophone, Gendron said. Huntingdon's municipal council unanimously adopted a resolution on Monday that refers to the "racist and discriminatory" policy. It proposed refusing the OQLF's requests about the English language in its territory and asks the National Assembly and the Quebec government to change the province's French-language charter to allow municipalities like itself to serve residents in the language of their choice — French or English.
Chantal Gagnon, a spokeswoman for Quebec Culture Minister Christine St-Pierre, said there is no question of opening up Quebec's French-language charter, for which there has been a consensus for the past 35 years.
Huntingdon is about 75 kilometres southwest of Montreal.
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© Copyright The Montreal Gazette
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Tuesday, March 06, 2012
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Obama seems reluctant to bomb Iran
“When we were briefed before the Osirak raid, we were told that a successful mission would delay the Iraqi nuclear program for only three to five years. But history told a different story. After the Osirak attack and the destruction of the Syrian reactor in 2007, the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs were never fully resumed.” –Israeli pilot
National Post, March 3, 2012
By David Frum
Will Barack Obama strike Iran — or agree to an Israeli strike — to stop the Iranian nuclear program?
This week, the U.S. President offered his most detailed answer to date, via an interview with Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic Monthly. The piece is headlined: “As President of the United States, I don’t bluff.” He insists again that he has taken nothing off the table, and talks about his readiness to fight if he must. But the real news in the piece (or so it seems to me) occurs deeper in the body of the text.
Obama: “Our argument [to Israel] is going to be that it is important for us to see if we can solve this thing permanently, as opposed to temporarily. And the only way, historically, that a country has ultimately decided not to get nuclear weapons without constant military intervention has been when they themselves take [nuclear weapons] off the table. That’s what happened in Libya, that’s what happened in South Africa.
And we think that, without in any way being under an illusion about Iranian intentions, without in any way being naive about the nature of that regime, they are self-interested. They recognize that they are in a bad, bad place right now. It is possible for them to make a strategic calculation that, at minimum, pushes much further to the right whatever potential breakout capacity they may have, and that may turn out to be the best decision for Israel’s security.”
Let’s decode those words. The president is conveying five ideas here:
- He believes that any military strike against Iran will be merely a temporary solution. He not only states that belief explicitly in the first quoted sentence, but he goes on to imply that a strike will open the way to “constant military intervention.” That strongly suggests that the answer to the question at the top of this column is “no.”
- The president is claiming that the “only way” — not the cheapest way, nor the fastest way, but literally the “only” way — to reach a permanent solution is for Iran to abjure weapons “themselves.” Which again suggests that the answer to the question at the top of the column is “no.”
- To persuade Iran to abjure weapons, the United States will have to make some kind of deal. “It is possible for them to make a strategic calculation that, at minimum, pushes much further to the right whatever potential breakout capacity they may have.”
- The president believes persuasion of Iran to be feasible because the Iranian leaders are at bottom rational actors: “Without in any way being naive about the nature of that regime, they are self-interested.”
- But even if the deal does occur, the best case scenario is not very good. Iran will be stopped just short of “breakout” — i.e., the actual ability to manufacture a weapon. Nor will Iran exactly be stopped. It will more be “paused” — its breakout capacity pushed “to the right,” i.e., into the future.
You may wonder: Doesn’t the mention of Libya give the game away? Eight years after Muammar Gaddafi struck a deal with the United States to end his nuclear program, Washington supported an insurrection against the Gaddafi regime. Aren’t the Iranians likely to draw the lesson: Deals with the Americans cannot be trusted, and so we will never voluntarily relinquish our bomb program?
From an Israeli point of view, too, the President’s words are not overwhelmingly reassuring. Those words make an especially poignant contrast to the op-ed in Thursday’s New York Times by one of the Israeli pilots involved with the country’s 1981 destruction of Saddam Hussein’s Osirak nuclear facility:
“When we were briefed before the Osirak raid, we were told that a successful mission would delay the Iraqi nuclear program for only three to five years. But history told a different story. After the Osirak attack and the destruction of the Syrian reactor in 2007, the Iraqi and Syrian nuclear programs were never fully resumed. This could be the outcome in Iran, too, if military action is followed by tough sanctions, stricter international inspections and an embargo on the sale of nuclear components to Tehran. Iran, like Iraq and Syria before it, will have to recognize that the precedent for military action has been set, and can be repeated.”
But that’s not the direction in which President Obama’s thought is trending. He’s trending in a very different direction: Toward negotiations, inducements and a very limited definition of success.
Don’t say you weren’t warned.
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http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2012/03/03/david-frum-obama-seems-reluctant-to-bomb-iran/
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Premier Dad’s Nursery
“Big expensive government is dangerous for reasons more profound. It weakens us. It transforms makers into takers. The power of the modern state is deep, subtle and dangerous: If uncontrolled, in the words of Tocqueville, ‘Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.’ "
Financial Post, February 28, 2012
By Marcel Boyer and Tom Velk
Big governments spend too much, borrow too much, and tax too much: They push their way to the front of the economic queue and grab resources before private spenders can get them.
When the government's treasury enters the capital market it bids money and economic energy away from all other players, driving up interest rates and reducing credit availability for everyone else in the market. The projects that get built by government, when it is in command all this borrowed and taxed-away money, are constructed, at least in part, with political goals in mind: to buy votes, to please constituents, to enrich supporters, to pay off ideological debts. In order to avoid the tax burden resulting from the big government's agenda, the citizenry employs lawyers and accountants to discover loopholes and financial tricks, while other clever rascals learn about back alley dealings and corrupt practice.
Because so much of the national dividend is absorbed by government, there is not much profit left in the marketplace. And so entrepreneurs with new products, engineers with imaginative solutions, investors willing to take dramatic risks all become endangered species. The after-tax, after government "take-home pay" for these most productive citizens is reduced so that they partly withdraw from the economic playing field, impoverishing us all.
Don Drummond, former chief economist at the TD bank, currently Matthews fellow in global public policy at Queen's University, chairman of the Commission on the Reform of Ontario's Public Services, submitted the commission's report earlier this month. The report deals only with the elementary and obvious problems, in an almost exclusively spreadsheet style, of excessive government debt and spending. Because it fails to talk seriously about the deep changes that have occurred in the relationship between the state and its citizens as a consequence of big government, Drummond's policy solutions won't repair the damage big government has done to our civil foundations.
The report says Premier Dalton McGuinty's government is spending beyond its means. Without a "sharp degree of financial restraint" Ontario's direct public debt will soon reach Quebec levels: 50% of GDP. It says that Ontario's tax base is weaker than it used to be, its labour force less skillful, its productivity impaired, and its export capacity reduced because of the strong dollar. This is downbeat but unremarkable stuff.
The authors of the report are better accountants than public policy economists. Yes, they get many numbers right. They report that for 20 years Ontario's public sector grew more than twice as fast (7% a year) as the private sector. We learn that one-half of the total cost of Ontario's government program spending goes to pay salaries and benefits for bureaucrats. We are told Ontario ran the biggest provincial deficit in the country every year since 2008-09. Ontario's unemployment rate has been higher than the national average for the past five years. Personal income used to be 20% higher than it was in the rest of the country: it's now 0.5% lower. Ontario's traditional high-wage high-skill workforce is close to retirement. We are shown a long list of programs necessary to maintain a modern welfare state (at least deemed so by their bureaucratic operatives, special interest beneficiaries, and profiteering suppliers) while many Canadians accept these outlays despite their ballooning costs.
And then starts the accountancy: aggregate program spending to grow by no more than 0.8% per year for the next five years. Some programs are hit harder than others: health care is allowed to expand at 2.5% a year, post secondary education 1.5%, basic education 1%, social programs 0.5% and all other programs are expected to shrink at -2.4%. Taking account of population growth and inflation the scheme means that "real program spending for every man woman and child in Ontario must fall by 16.2% between today and the year 2018, a drop that is almost certainly unprecedented." It's not just unprecedented, but naive. Worse, it is almost mere arithmetic.
Big expensive government is dangerous for reasons more profound. It weakens us. It transforms makers into takers. The power of the modern state is deep, subtle and dangerous: If uncontrolled, in the words of Tocqueville, "Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
If we are to escape the nursery, government's role in our lives must be redefined. The Drummond report attempts to rein in the government Leviathan with weak, constrained and non-credible weaponry and therefore can be expected to generate very little real change, unfortunately. Political wisdom in the matter of energetic government requires us to go beyond a spreadsheet.
Most of the 360-plus recommendations of the commission deal with a reshuffling of powers across different but similar structures in the delivery of public and social goods and services, while a few of those recommend a change in ways and means by which such services are rendered, timidly opening the door for competition among alternative providers. But it fails to convincingly argue for credible changes in the respective roles of public and private sectors, in accountability of the different parties, in personal and organizational responsibility, in revamped universality to concentrate state efforts on the needy.
For reforms capable of changing the omnipresent mammoth and self-perpetuating government bureaucracy, one will have to wait for another or a few other commissions.
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Marcel Boyer is a fellow at Cirano and Tom Velk is director, North American studies, at McGill University.
http://www.nationalpost.com/todays-paper/Escape+nursery/6219450/story.html
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