The Mound of Sound

To me, Stephane Dion has been a total disappointment. Unfortunately, Bob Rae and Michael Ignatieff didn’t really inspire me much either.

The Liberal Party needs someone to put some life back into it and that has to be someone truly exceptional, someone not just Liberals but other Canadians can also rally behind, someone like Louise Arbour.

I can think of no finer person than Louise Arbour to be the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and this country’s first, elected woman prime minister.

Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, war crimes prosecutor at the International Court of Justice, United Nations High Commissioner for human rights – I don’t know anyone else in this country with credentials like that.

LouiseArbour is a known quantity. Her career speaks for itself. Intellect, integrity, experience, reputation – she’s got it all and as much or more of it than anyone else. Her kind doesn’t come along very often, sometimes it takes decades. We’re fools if we don’t at least try to bring Louise Arbour into the top ranks of our party.

Yes! A setback for the Oil Patch, finally.

A Federal Court justice has put Imperial Oil’s Kearl tar sands project on hold, ordering the company to explain how it concluded that intensity-based targets will reduce the potentially damaging effects of the project’s greenhouse gas emissions to a level of insignificance.

Justice Daniele Tremblay-Lamer obviously wasn’t impressed with Esso’s hogwash. From The Edmonton Journal:

“The evidence shows that intensity-based targets place limits on the amount of greenhouse gas emissions per barrel of bitumen produced. The absolute amount of greenhouse gas pollution from oil sands development will continue to rise under intensity-based targets because of the planned increase in total production of bitumen. The [environmental assessment] panel dismissed as insignificant the greenhouse gas emissions without any rationale as to why the intensity-based mitigation would be effective to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions, equivalent to 800,000 passenger vehicles, to a level of insignificance.”

Counsel representing the environmentalist groups who opposed Imperial were more than pleased with the result:

It sends a clear message that environmental assessments must be open, honest and transparent, said Sean Nixon, a lawyer for Ecojustice, formerly called the Sierra Legal Defence Fund.

Ecojustice represented the Pembina Institute, the Sierra Club of Canada, the Prairie Acid Rain Coalition and the Toxics Watch Society of Alberta.

“It will be interesting to see if the panel can explain in a rational way how intensity-based measures can lessen the impact of greenhouse gas emissions,” Nixon said.

The U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Canadian Louise Arbour, is expected to resign soon after four contentious years in the post.

The former Supreme Court justice has been known for her clashes with the Bush regime over the Iraq war, the death penalty and American excesses in its “war on terror.” From the Washington Post:

Arbour, “…said the U.S.-led counterterrorism struggle has set back the cause of human rights by “decades” and has exacerbated a “profound divide” between the United States, its Western allies and the developing world. “The war on terror has inflicted a very serious setback for the international human rights agenda,” she said.”

Arbour, a former U.N. war crimes prosecutor who secured the indictment of the late Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, said that bedrock principles once taken for granted — including the prohibition against torture — have been eroded, and that what she considers Washington’s excesses have undercut her efforts to crusade for human rights, particularly in places where political repression is greatest.

Human rights advocates largely praised Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, as a tough, principled lawyer who has offered the United Nations’ most forceful critique of the United States’ use of harsh interrogation techniques and the transfer of suspects to countries where they stand a chance of being tortured. They note that she has done more to expand the presence of U.N. rights monitors around the world, making reports on abuses from Baghdad to Katmandu routine.

But she has also been a lightning rod for American conservatives, including the former U.S. envoy to the United Nations, John R. Bolton, who scolded her in 2005 for using Human Rights Day to criticize U.S. anti-terrorism tactics instead of highlighting rights abuses by countries such as Burma, Cuba and Zimbabwe. Even supporters say she has trod lightly over abuses by some of the most powerful U.N. members, including China and Russia, leaving the United Nations increasingly silent on some of the world’s most pressing human rights issues.”

Needless to say her rumoured resignation will be welcome news to Washington and to human rights abusers worldwide. There’s one Canadian we can all be very proud of. This country would do well with a lot more Arbours and a lot fewer like Harper, Levant and Flanagan.

In a few months we should have a good idea of the role Muqtada al Sadr and his Mahdi army intend to play in the American presidential election.

My guess is that, should McCain emerge as a clear favourite, the Shiite militias will take to the streets declaring open season on American forces. There have been recent reports that the Sunni militias, those the Americans armed to take on al-Qaeda, may also be planning to turn on the US forces.

Why? To restore Americans to a state of heightened fatigue to the war without end in Iraq. Neither the Shia nor the Sunni see any long-term advantage in a protracted American presence in their country. The Sunni are worried that the Shiite government and security services are getting too entrenched, backed by the U.S. and Iran alike. The Shia likewise view America’s rearming of the Sunni militias with fear and distrust.

A big reason behind John McCain’s popularity is a belief that Bush’s “surge” is working which leaves Americans feeling more optimistic about the Iraq war. Low US casualty rates have created an illusion of success. McCain’s platform of late has been to finish it up and leave victorious.

That impression works for the Iraqis if a Democrat wins, especially Obama. It’s in their interests to make conditions seem peaceful enough for a President to get on with extracting American forces.

If, however, they foresee an inevitable battle with American forces, better to engage that sooner when there’s time for it to have an adverse impact on McCain before Americans go to the polls.

Iraqis on all sides are watching the rival campaigns unfold and weighing what outcome they want in November and just how to get it.

America’s all-time Moron in Chief has just sent his Middle East peace initiative up in flames. His administration’s own credibility is utterly gone and so is that of Fatah stooge Mahmoud Abbas.

Vanity Fair has dropped a bombshell – after Palestinian elections that led to victory for Hamas, Bush, Rice and deputy national security advisor Elliot Abrams backed an armed uprising under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan that sparked a civil war in Gaza.

http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/04/gaza200804

The Vanity Fair link keeps going down. You can also find the article here:

The report seems more than plausible and it’ll be enough to turn the Palestinians against Abbas. If he gets out with his life, he’ll be lucky. Abbas, with a well earned reputation for corruption, now stands exposed as an American operative to boot.

Bush has issued a blanket denial – as if he had any other choice – but the damage is done. There’s no more room for pretending to be an honest broker. His turn at the Middle East Wheel of Fortune is over but the way it ended, mired in scandal, will be a fitting legacy for his entire administration.

H/T to Red Jenny

Having dodged a bullet at the Commons ethics committee, Brian Mulroney was praying that the public inquiry into his nefarious dealings with KH Schreiber might somehow be called off.

Sorry, dude, it’s on. Justice min Nicholson says it’s going ahead and, better yet, Schreiber gets to stay here until it’s finished.

Jeebus I wonder what you have to do to get intervenor status at that thing?

The Commons ethics committee didn’t get very far but it did expose a whole pile of raw nerves , issues that the inquiry is going to look completely rigged if it chooses to avoid. That, I think, would be more damaging to the Tories than if they had called the whole thing off.

Enquiring minds want to know. Now where’s that guy, Hladun?

The OECD isn’t some raving, left-wing outfit. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is the club for the wealthiest nations on the planet. That’s why, when the OECD calls for urgent action to counter global warming, pollution and other environmental hazards, even you deniers ought to take time to listen.

Here’s something else in the OECD’s latest report – all these remedial measures are – wait for it – AFFORDABLE! You’re not going to have to wind up living in a cave. From Reuters:

Canadians are academically top-heavy and, unless we change that, it’ll cost us.

A report in today’s Toronto Star notes that Canada ranks #1 as having the greatest percentage of its working force with a college or university education.

“The latest census data shows that Canada stands first in the developed world in the proportion of people who hold credentials from either college or university – 48 per cent, compared with 39 per cent in the U.S. or 32 per cent in Australia.

The data also shows Canadian women outnumber men at university, more than half of immigrants have a university degree compared with 20 per cent of Canadians born here, one in five post-secondary grads has taken a business or marketing-related course – but only 10 per cent of young adults hold a certificate in a skilled trade.

Too, the census reveals a young generation studying different fields than their parents – more chefs than mechanical repair, for instance, more computers than construction, more transportation than health services.”

This is all well and good until your toilet backs up or you need a machinist or some other skilled trade. There we’re in trouble. Canada is facing a critical shortage of skilled tradesmen (& women).

From welding to drywalling there are not enough young people entering our trades.

Nothing new to this story. It’s a problem that’s beset some sectors of industry since the 60’s.

My Dad was in the specialty steel business in Ontario. Most of his customers were tool and die companies working for the automotive and aeronautical industries. Those companies were dependent on highly skilled machinists and tool makers but there were never enough.

The Soviets actually helped ease Canada’s problem. Their invasion of Hungary in ’56 and Czechoslovakia in ’63 brought quite a few highly skilled tradesmen to Canada as refugees. By the time the 70’s rolled around, a lot of them owned their own, highly profitable tool and die companies. After they were absorbed, however, the trade shortage problem returned.

Why? A major reason was that the apprenticeship process wasn’t sufficiently attractive to draw newcomers. Kids could earn a lot more taking an unskilled factory job than they would ever receive during their years as an apprentice.

Another problem is our public attitude to labour of any sort. We’re snobs, plain and simple, and before long we may come to regret our snobbery.

When I entered law school I was surprised at how many of my classmates admitted they were there largely due to their parents. Some had absolutely been groomed for it from childhood. It was mandated.

The upshot? We’re awash in lawyers and bereft of machinists. Make sense? Of course not.

From one end of this country to the other we need to change all this and, while government and the private sector need to do a lot more, so do we as individuals and, especially, as parents. Remember, Jesus was a carpenter.