Posts from our progressive community

Well I see Stephen Harper is back in Canada after his disastrous performance at the G8 Summit.

He was wrong about a Syria agreement. The other leaders did manage to cobble one together.

He was wrong about Vladimir Putin. He wasn't the odd man out at the meeting, Harper was.

He couldn't get a trade deal. Wherever he went Old Duff followed him. And when it was over all reporters wanted to know was, why is his PMO using OUR tax dollars to go after Justin Trudeau? 
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The allegedly freedom-loving Harper government can now have you jailed for ten years for wearing a mask at a protest—if the cops decide the protest is an “unlawful assembly” or a “riot.” Yup. The cops will decide. And we all... Dr.Dawg http://drdawgsblawg.ca/

Wearing a mask at an 'unlawful' assembly (example, spontaneous demonstration) now carries a maximum 10-year-prison term, thanks to Bill C-309, a private member's bill sponsored by Conservative MP Blake Richards which became law today.

No word yet on any bills making it unlawful for police to conceal their identities by removing badges while attending such events.Recommend this Post

The Sopranos Final Scene - YouTube: ""

"Try and remember the times that were good."
I wonder if it was like this for him? He will be missed.

HBO has confirmed that actor James Gandolfini has died.   Gandolfini, best known for his role as gangster Tony Soprano, died while traveling in Italy.  He was 51.

While Center For Inquiry Transnational has been caught in the midst of a foreseeable PR nightmare following Ron Lindsay’s comments and subsequent statements at the Women In Secularism 2 conference, Centre for Inquiry Canada has been caught up in their own, unrelated but ill-timed, controversy as news broke this week that National Executive Director Michael Payton had been relieved of his duties.

What follows will be the story I’ve pieced together from a few sources over the past couple days. I haven’t been directly involved in CFI Canada for the past couple years and really have no horse in this race. I’ve met Michael a couple times and he’s seemed like a reasonable guy – what I can also say for the few board member’s I’ve met (who unfortunately are all guys). I’m going to try to be unbiased but I undoubtedly have my view of things.

If you have no interest in intraskeptical politics, perhaps you may want to skip on this post.

First, the official announcement that came from CFI Canada’s Board of Director’s late last night.

Announcement from the Board of Directors

Dear Freethinkers,

After serious consideration, the Board of Directors of CFI Canada made the decision early last week to relieve National Director Michael Payton of his duties. A management team is in place and the search for a new National Director is under way. If you have specific questions, please contact info@cficanada.ca

Michael played an integral role in the transition of CFI Canada over the past year. We appreciate his dedication to the principles of CFI Canada and wish him well in his future endeavours.

CFI Canada will be launching a new website shortly and its Vancouver ad campaign this summer. Look for the opening of new and revitalized branches during the coming year.

Board of Directors

Centre for Inquiry, Canada

I had been asked a few months ago to consider pushing to become a possible replacement for Michael at the national level this fall. Based on my having no desire to lead a national organization (take a quick look at the histories of CFI Canada and Humanist Canada to see the entirely new set of challenges that job creates to understand why), the continued and growing success here in BC, and my plans to head to the UK for a year in the fall, I turned the suggestion down. The point however, is that there was a sense of disappointment at the Board level with Michael’s leadership.

I can’t really speak at all to this. Most Western Canadian CFI branch leaders seemed to be very supportive of Michael but I guess there were a number of issues in Toronto between Michael and the various directors. Couple that with a desire to have a more charismatic leader and the Board had decided at some point to not renew Michael’s contract when it expired this fall.

The issue that expedited the process though was an incident with one previous CFI Ontario director. She had resigned, giving a month’s notice, to pursue a full-time opportunity and another job. Things came to a head and Michael decided to fire her a week before she was scheduled to depart. He then proceeded to turn up at her other workplace, demanding the keys to the CFI Toronto office. The move left the former staffer feeling quite threatened and led to the Board deciding to remove Michael sooner than planned. Recognizing his work for the organization through some pretty turbulent times, he was fired without cause, allowing him access to a severance package.

The new Board, which was elected this past weekend (and is essentially the same faces as the previous Board), now has the difficult task of finding someone to take over a national organization which shares a name with a fairly tarnished brand in the USA and has its own long history of controversy in Canada.

Couple this with CFI’s corporate structure which means only about a dozen people are Associate Members, able to vote and run for the Board and the entire thing is quite messy.

Tired of unwittingly lining the pockets of the same oligarchs who would happily sell you and your democracy down the river?  Wish you could tell just who was really behind the products lining your store shelves?   Well, there's an App for that.

It's called Buycott, the handiwork of 26-year old freelance programer Ivan Pardo.

Pardo decided to create Buycott after hearing Congressional candidate Darcy Burner (D-Wash.) propose the idea of an app that allows consumers to see the corporations behind the products on supermarket shelves during her keynote speech at last year’s netroots nation. Beyond tracing the corporate family tree of everyday goods, Buycott also allows users to create and join campaigns that sort companies according to how their practices affect certain issues. For example, if you join the campaign “Demand GMO labeling,” you’ll be alerted when a product you’ve scanned is linked to one of 36 companies identified as having opposed the mandatory labeling of genetically modified food.

When you use Buycott to scan a product, it will look up the product, determine what brand it belongs to, and figure out what company owns that brand (and who owns that company, ad infinitum). It will then cross-check the product owners against the companies and brands included in the campaigns you've joined, in order to tell you if the scanned product conflicts with one of your campaign commitments.

Buycott can be downloaded for free from Apple’s App store and Android’s Google Play.

Apparently Buycott is still a bit buggy and won't work on all devices but it's an idea that has legs.

Has America come undone or has it simply reverted to its natural state as the inner sanctum of social Darwinism?  That's the subject of George Packer's new book, The Unwinding. 

Packer discusses the question of whether today's America is the "real America" in an op-ed published in The Guardian.

In or around 1978, America's character changed. For almost half a century, the United States had been a relatively egalitarian, secure, middle-class democracy, with structures in place that supported the aspirations of ordinary people. You might call it the period of the Roosevelt Republic. Wars, strikes, racial tensions and youth rebellion all roiled national life, but a basic deal among Americans still held, in belief if not always in fact: work hard, follow the rules, educate your children, and you will be rewarded, not just with a decent life and the prospect of a better one for your kids, but with recognition from society, a place at the table.

This unwritten contract came with a series of riders and clauses that left large numbers of Americans – black people and other minorities, women, gay people – out, or only halfway in. But the country had the tools to correct its own flaws, and it used them: healthy democratic institutions such as Congress, courts, churches, schools, news organisations, business-labour partnerships. The civil rights movement of the 1960s was a nonviolent mass uprising led by black southerners, but it drew essential support from all of these institutions, which recognised the moral and legal justice of its claims, or, at the very least, the need for social peace. The Roosevelt Republic had plenty of injustice, but it also had the power of self-correction.

...The large currents of the past generation – deindustrialisation, the flattening of average wages, the financialisation of the economy, income inequality, the growth of information technology, the flood of money into Washington, the rise of the political right – all had their origins in the late 70s. The US became more entrepreneurial and less bureaucratic, more individualistic and less communitarian, more free and less equal, more tolerant and less fair. Banking and technology, concentrated on the coasts, turned into engines of wealth, replacing the world of stuff with the world of bits, but without creating broad prosperity, while the heartland hollowed out. The institutions that had been the foundation of middle-class democracy, from public schools and secure jobs to flourishing newspapers and functioning legislatures, were set on the course of a long decline. It as a period that I call the Unwinding.

...The rules and regulations of the Roosevelt Republic were aberrations brought on by accidents of history – depression, world war, the cold war – that induced Americans to surrender a degree of freedom in exchange for security. There would have been no Glass-Steagall Act, separating commercial from investment banking, without the bank failures of 1933; no great middle-class boom if the US economy had not been the only one left standing after the second world war; no bargain between business, labour and government without a shared sense of national interest in the face of foreign enemies; no social solidarity without the door to immigrants remaining closed through the middle of the century.

Once American pre-eminence was challenged by international competitors, and the economy hit rough seas in the 70s, and the sense of existential threat from abroad subsided, the deal was off. Globalisation, technology and immigration hurried the Unwinding along, as inexorable as winds and tides. It is sentimental at best, if not ahistorical, to imagine that the social contract could ever have survived – like wanting to hang on to a world of nuclear families and manual typewriters.

...Much has been written about the effects of globalisation during the past generation. Much less has been said about the change in social norms that accompanied it. American elites took the vast transformation of the economy as a signal to rewrite the rules that used to govern their behaviour: a senator only resorting to the filibuster on rare occasions; a CEO limiting his salary to only 40 times what his average employees made instead of 800 times; a giant corporation paying its share of taxes instead of inventing creative ways to pay next to zero. There will always be isolated lawbreakers in high places; what destroys morale below is the systematic corner-cutting, the rule-bending, the self-dealing.

...It is no wonder that more and more Americans believe the game is rigged. It is no wonder that they buy houses they cannot afford and then walk away from the mortgage when they can no longer pay. Once the social contract is shredded, once the deal is off, only suckers still play by the rules.

It seems Charlottetown's residential areas, close to the downtown core might be at risk of ever encroaching commercial development. What does the City have working in it's favor? An uninformed public.

A couple weeks ago a neighbor says to me in passing 'did you know that a house down the street is for sale and that it might be rezoned as not residential?'. Nope. I did not know that. 'They are hosting a meeting, our City councillor will be there, and so will folks from the organization that wants to buy it, as well as the home owners'. So the meeting, was THAT night, and of course, I had prior plans, so did my neighbor. Apparently the meeting was to 'get the feel of the neighborhood'. Funny ... they didn't do a very good job at telling the neighborhood about the meeting. I wonder what the think constitutes a neighborhood? How many houses did they notify, how wide a circle of homes did they include? I am maybe 10houses from the home in question, same street, do we not share a neighborhood?

No worries, I email my City councillor that evening and say 'hey, I'm worried about this, here's why and I can't attend the meeting' and I get in reply 'this was not an official City meeting, there is a formal process which the applicant will have to go through in order to be approved'. I infer from that email 'DON'T WORRY'. Okay, phew, no need to panic, there is a process.

Skip ahead two weeks and nothing. Oh, then this morning my husband HAPPENS to see a flyer on the telephone pole outside the house that is for sale.  This flyer says that there is a rezoning request and that there is a public meeting one week from today, submit all comments by then. ?!?!?!??!!??!

That's it! That's what I was supposed to be 'DON'T WORRY' about? That I MIGHT see a poster on a telephone pole and MAYBE I'll get a chance, IF I manage to hear about it and IF I think about it for more than a day and FIND TIME to talk about it with my neighbors for more than 5min, to tell the City what I think?!

I know, I know, maybe I'll get a letter from the City in the mail as well, but there is less then a week. How is a neighborhood supposed to a) know about this and b) talk about this?!

So today I think to myself, how am I supposed to communicate with my neighbors about this? Go do to door? I have less than a week and I am heading out of town tomorrow ... so ... I write a letter, and I print off a bunch of copies, and I've been dropping them in mailboxes in the neighborhood.

I am determined that if the City won't do their job of informing the public SO THAT THEY CAN IN TURN MAKE AN INFORMED DECISION ABOUT DEVELOPMENT IN THEIR NEIGHBORHOOD that I will help them out.

Here is my letter:
______________________________________________________________________

Protecting the future of our neighborhood.

Dear fellow residents of Upper Prince St./Walthen Dr., and surrounding area. Charlottetown's residential neighborhoods may be facing new development that will change the face of our neighborhoods forever. Speaking with one of my neighbors I thought it might be a good idea if we all share our thoughts on this issue. So here goes.

As you've likely heard, at #77 Upper Prince St. a lovely, large, old house is going up for sale. The potential buyer is Chances Family Resource Centre, currently located on Euston St.. I think our neighborhood is facing a push to extend the commercial downtown core beyond it's current boundaries, into quiet residential areas of town.

Let me say officially that I have nothing but great things to say about Chances, and the work they do, their staff and their presence at Prince St. Elementary school. They are great folks, doing great work. That is not in question. My youngest child attended their 'Smart Start' preschool program and it was wonderful. I'm sure many folks are familiar with their work, they are a valuable resource. That goes without question. I wish them nothing but success, just not in my neighborhood.

In order for Chances to buy this old house and move it's offices, the building will have to be rezoned. As it stands at this time, I have heard that the rezoning may be something called 'heritage/institutional' and while that may sound different then a commercial designation it remains something 'other than' residential. And so I am worried that, regardless of what the city tries to designate this property as, what is really happening is our residential neighborhood is facing the creeping encroachment of the downtown core. Plain and simple. And so I do not support the rezoning of this building to accomodate any business or institution.

I have to wonder if the City's interest in a heritage designation is to distract from any worries we might have about commercial rezoning and if it isn't just a watered-down, sugar-coated proposal to get the ball rolling and open our streets up to future rezoning and/or development?

Our streets are full of large, old houses and these days, it's unlikely single families will buy these houses and so they are often turned into multi-unit dwellings. This is understandable, our own house is a duplex. But this type of development is still families, and our neighborhood remains residential.

Rezoning, however to allow for commerical or institutional presence in our neighborhood puts not only our street, but all residential streets near the downtown core on a slippery slope where our residential designation slowly disolves. Consider what might happen if this property changes hands in the future? Consider if we let one business/institution here, what will be our justification for denying future applications?

I suspect the City will bring up the issue of the Scouts Canada office, which currently sits quietly on Upper Prince St. All I can say to that is, I wasn't around when they moved in, I don't know what opposition if any, they faced, but I would not support their application today. If nothing else, we can say our street already has two institutions (school and scouts), it need not support another.

Perhaps the City hopes the proximity to the Elementary school creates some zone where institutions providing services to the surrounding families is desirable. I would say again, there is no need for them on our residential streets when they are just as easily accessible from the larger, main city arteries.

Currently, above Euston St., most commercial/institutional entities are located along the main city arteries of St. Peters Rd., University Ave., Queen St. and North River Rd. Euston St. seems to be the downtown core's boundary.

If the City is planning to see the downtown core expand into residential neighborhoods above Euston St., I have to wonder if they will be able to push this kind of development on areas like Brighton? Why should we be any different? Currently Chances has their headquaters on the edge of Brighton, on Euston St., I have to wonder about the reaction that neighborhood might have if they thought the 'feel' of their neighborhood was about to change with the allowance of business/institutions deeper into their neighborhood?

I've heard there will be a public meeting to discuss this property sale/rezoning. I hope folks will attend and/or make their views known to their City Councillor, Mitchel Tweel. It seems the City is poised to support this rezoning unless residents say otherwise. Clearly, the City agenda is one to allow for as much growth as possible, wherever possible. Unless we challenge this notion they'll have no reason to doubt it is a sound plan.

When you are considering your position on this development, I hope you will look beyond the institution in question, Chances Family Resource Centre, and simply look at this from the point of ANY business or institution being allowed a foothold in our neighborhood. Once we allow this to happen, it is very likely we will lose the power to control future development.

Our family would like to preserve our residential neighborhood. There is a reason we chose to live here. We'd like to protect that, and we hope we are not alone. Let's tell the City to keep business/institutions to the downtown core or along larger arteries of the City.

Let's tell the City that 'Heritage' is not enough ... we don't just want to preserve the past we also want to preserve the future of our neighborhood.

Public meeting: Wed., June 26, 7pm, Georgian Rm, Rodd Ch'town Hotel, 75 Kent St. Please submit comments to the City (PID#359539) by noon, Wed, June 26th. Councillor Tweel: mitchell.tweel@pei.sympatico.ca

_______________________________________________________________________

Not home 10min and I get a phone call. Then another. 'OMG Gail, I didn't even know about this! I can't make the public meeting, but I'm going to email the City right now'.

This is why I now know that an uninformed public is a City's best friend.  Relying on the fact that people are busy and communication within neighborhoods isn't what it used to be our Cities are like the phone companies who used to give us 'opt out' services. Except in this case it's 'opt out development' and it's NOT on the bill! (meh, murky analogy, but what do you expect, I'm tired from walking around the neighborhood!)

In any case, if this development goes ahead, it won't be because the community was simply uninformed. And I can live with that.

Tomorrow's 'to do' list: buy more printer ink.

<sigh>

Breathe deep and bend at the knees.
　

Noam Chomsky delivered some blunt warnings at the Global Media Forum in Bonn.

One was that private capital is taking over everything, even the Global Commons. 

"The commons have been steadily dismantled by the principle that everything has to be privately owned." These were the words of American political critic Noam Chomsky at the Global Media Forum (GMF) in Bonn.
"Widely regarded as the intellectual father of the Occupy Movement, Chomsky spoke about the current conflict in Gezi Park in Istanbul, saying that "the protesters are trying to save the last part of the commons in Istanbul from the wrecking ball of commercial destruction." The renowned 85-year-old linguist and philosopher gave a lecture at the Global Media Forum entitled "Roadmap to a Just World - People Reanimating Democracy."

Chomsky emphasized that our last, best hope depends on our media actually changing course and doing its job at last.

Professor Chomsky asserted that the general public can only act when they are informed. He talked about the larger forces working in the background, especially those that endanger world peace. "Here the free press enters," he said. His closing message was to ask the media to "tell the truth about important things."

Chomsky's address begins at the 8:02 mark.

Take a look at this and decide what is going on in the mind of Trevor Zinck, the disgraced MLA from Nova Scotia who pleaded guilty to embezzling money from the public purse through fraudulent claims but somehow thinks he should retain his seat.

Perhaps he has been looking to the Senate for his inspiration?

Recommend this Post

Slim Whitman, he's dead, age 90.  His song, "Indian Love Call", was all that saved mankind from maurading aliens in Mars Attacks.

Washington is positively giddy at the prospect of engaging Taliban leaders in Qatar to work out some sort of peace deal for Afghanistan.

Afghan leader Hamid Karzai doesn't want any part of it and says he's of half a mind to tell the Americans to clear out entirely next year.

So, if the Talibs want to take peace and the Americans want to talk peace, what crawled up Hamid's backside and died?    Well this is the 40th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords.  Maybe that's what is on Hamid's mind.

40-years ago Washington was looking to bail out of another failed foreign war, the war in Vietnam.   Everyone, especially the North Vietnamese, knew Washington wanted out and just needed a pretext to let them claim "peace with honour" and di di mau.   And so they inked a deal that was to grease the wheels for an American withdrawal based on peace between the North and South.  

The Americans promised Saigon that if Hanoi pulled anything, U.S. forces would be back in a heartbeat to kick ass.   Only when precisely that did happen and the North began rolling up the South Vietnamese army like a cheap carpet the Americans let the place fall.

That's what happens with unpopular wars.  Once you get them damped down, the folks at home are in no mood for a sequel.   Hamid knows there's a very good - make that an excellent - chance that Afghanistan will go the way of South Vietnam and for him, personally, that could mean dancing at the end of a very short rope from an elevated tank barrel.

Karzai doesn't have many options and zero good options.  He either rolls over for the Americans and let's them sell him out to the Talibs for a bucket of face-saving empty promises or he stands up to the Americans and takes the same consequences in the aftermath of the withdrawal of Western forces next year.   Maybe he can cut a better deal with the Chinese.

Miscellaneous material for your mid-week reading.

- Polly Toynbee writes that there's no magic involved in collecting fair tax rates from the rich - only a need for the political will to fund public priorities:
Cutting the 50% top rate suggests no great enthusiasm for rigorous taxing. Last week's ONS figures revealed gigantic avoidance of the 50% top rate. It could have been collected but George Osborne needed to prove it didn't work. The Treasury estimated raising the rate to 50% should bring in £6.2bn, but the actual return was a puny £100m.

In year one, before its official start date, high earners gamed the tax by rushing to take dividends and bonuses early. They paid more into pensions, gaining undeserved higher tax relief. Or they used trusts, or took income as capital gains. (That can be stopped, by fixing capital gains, as Nigel Lawson did, at the same rate as income tax, as the Institute for Fiscal Studies advocates.) Once Osborne announced the top rate would fall to 45%, high earners gamed it again. Incomes Data Services reports a massive delay in bonuses until after 6 April, when they leapt up by 107% in the finance sector to catch the new 45% rate. That could have been forestalled.

To Osborne it proved there's no point in taxing the rich. But the IFS says Denmark successfully collects its high top rate because it has no dodges: the rich can be taxed if reliefs are blocked. But this government never worried over income being sucked up from middle to top, with the share of national income taken by the top 1% now having risen to 14%, as GDP shifts from pay to profits. Osborne redistributes taxes the wrong way. Even raising tax thresholds sees most gain go to the top half, not to low earners.
...
Tax cheating should be Labour's chance to tell honest political truths: you get what you pay for, you can't have Swedish services on US tax ideology. Tax is the price we pay for civilisation. At elections, all parties promise the impossible, more with less and cuts in "bureaucracy" to pay for everything. Treating the public like children on tax does nothing for trust in politics. The door has opened for that conversation.- Meanwhile, Miles Corak notes that we can't make any strides toward equality of opportunity without treating more equal distribution of wealth as a priority:
Relatively less upward mobility of the least advantaged is one reason why intergenerational mobility is lower in the United States than in other countries to which Americans are often compared. But it is not the only reason. Intergenerational mobility is also lower because children of top-earning parents are more likely to become top earners in their turn. An era of rising inequality is more likely to heighten these differences than to diminish them.

Inequality lowers mobility because it shapes opportunity. It heightens the income consequences of innate differences between individuals; it also changes opportunities, incentives, and institutions that form, develop, and transmit characteristics and skills valued in the labor market; and it shifts the balance of power so that some groups are in a position to structure policies or otherwise support their children’s achievement independent of talent.

Thus, those who are concerned about equality of opportunity should also care about inequality of outcomes.- The CP reports on Canada's role in spying on allies through CSEC's electronic surveillance.

- Frances Russell comments on how both the federal ethics commissioner and the RCMP have all too willingly functioned as servants of the Harper Cons rather than the public interest.

- Finally, Sean Holman writes about the corrosive effect of excessive party discipline on Canadian democracy:
(I)t’s reasonable to assume “there’s got to be times, random chance if nothing else, that some of us disagree with what we’re voting on.”

But the fear of talking about what happens in caucus and cabinet – the private spaces where MLAs, MPPs and MPs are allowed to voice dissenting opinions about public issues – means that Canadians have little understanding of why their representatives make such compromises.
An example of that fear: during a background interview, one politician told me that, as a first-time provincial candidate, “I knew I was part of a larger franchise and I would only be able to sell drinks in the same size cup as everyone else. But I did think I would be able to at least decorate my store the way I wanted and have my own customer service approach.”
But when we sat down for what became a sweaty, two-hour on-camera interview, the politician talked about being a supporter (of) party discipline.
The politician later told me about suffering “sleepless nights” contemplating what may have been said during that interview, which I left on the cutting room floor.

One of the blessings of living in a small, coastal town is being able to observe change.  It doesn't come often.   We don't have a forest of construction cranes obscuring our horizon.   There are some two-storey buildings, a few, but that's it.  Anything higher than that is an apartment or condo.

So when the town pub, the 124-year old former railway hotel, the Rod & Gun, gets a makeover, it's news.  It's so small town that while the pub is closed for renos, the owners have bought their regulars temporary memberships at the Legion right behind it.


Change, change, change.   Humpback whales have returned after an absence of 40-years.  Back then we hunted them to extinction.  Now they seem to have figured out it's safe to come back.  Not so safe for boaters, however, as a couple have recently discovered.  These whales are big - up to 52-feet in length and 79,000 pounds and, for all their size, they like to launch themselves out of the water, often getting most of their mass airborne.







What the locals have discovered is that humpbacks don't pay attention to small boats so if they breach and you're in the way, you have a problem.   And, since they can remain underwater for 15-minutes, a sport fisherman can enter their area with no idea the whale is below until it isn't.

We're also more attuned to the reality of climate change.  One form is in species migration.  Salmon and other cold-water fish stocks are already moving out of warmer waters to the south and into our still cold Pacific waters.   Pelicans have reached Victoria harbour.  Anchovies are moving in to territory where herring once dominated.  The Humboldt squid has migrated from the Sea of Cortez to show up in mass strandings on the beaches of Tofino.  The giant sunfish, once a rarity, is being seen much more frequently basking on the surface.

In this morning's Victoria Times Colonist, the lead editorial addresses our warming climate.


At Fruit Trees and More Nursery in North Saanich, Bob Duncan gets hundreds of lemons from his tree. Over on the Lower Mainland, Art Knapp nurseries have seen a 20 per cent increase in sales of species like olives and figs.

Global warming is often debated in the big picture, but the details of gradual changes around us bring the debate down to earth. The devastating march of the pine beetle is one effect of warmer temperatures that is clearly visible across vast areas of B.C.’s forests. New crops close to home are another sign of the change.

In the Cowichan Valley, Teafarm planted 200 tea plants of the same type found in India and Sri Lanka; all but one survived. Owners Victor Vesely and Margit Nellemann plan to add more camellia sinensis this year, and hope to harvest their own tea in the next few years.

Across the water on Saturna Island, Michael Pierce’s Saturna Olive Consortium is a nursery that doesn’t sell olives but grows 12 varieties of olive trees for those who want to plant a bit of the Mediterranean in their corner of B.C. On the consortium’s website, he advises: “Growing olives in British Columbia should be seen as a grand and wacky experiment. It is not for the risk averse.”

Like Bob Duncan, however, some Islanders are taking risks, not only with lemons, but also oranges. Pineapple guavas are a smaller version of a tropical fruit that shows promise for our climate. And six kinds of figs will now grow here, where once only two types could survive, says Wim Vander Zalm of Art Knapp Nurseries.

Tea, oranges, lemons, guava, olives and all manner of figs?  Whales and monster squid and giant sunfish?   On our island we're a Petri dish for change but, then again, we have the most benign climate to absorb the impacts and adapt to change.   Most of the remainder of the world is not so lucky.

Shorter Terence Corcoran:

A Spanish-style tax revolt to defund government is the only way for Ontario and Quebec residents to avoid the fiscal disaster caused by the Spanish tax revolt.

Justin Trudeau - The $20,000 speaker?

Image Source: Huffington Post CanadaBefore I begin, let's note that I have some deep disagreements with Federal Liberal leader Justin Trudeau. For starters his position on fixing the Senate is breathtakingly naive - just appoint good guys! Any system that relies on people being Angels is doomed to fail.

He's also attacked Mulcair's Dutch Disease analysis as "divisive" despite Liberal Scott Brison using the same idea in a response to the Harper CONs' 2011 budget.

Additionally, Arthur Cramer has criticized the Liberal leader's trade policy - though I haven't looked at the deals thoroughly enough to come to a conclusion yet.

All this is to say that there are legitimate criticisms of Trudeau. The new manufactroversy - that he dared to accept money charities paid him - is not one of them.





To sum up this artificial scandal, a charity - the Grace Foundation - hired Trudeau to speak at an event. They paid him $20,000 and later claimed to have lost thousands on the event.

Grace Foundation Board member Judith Baxter
(left) in the Prime Minister's Office.

Image Source: Facebook So a charity made an unwise decision with donated money. In a world that prized accountability, what
should happen after that is some serious reflection, perhaps changes to the decision-making process or even board members at the charity. Instead, the Grace Foundation is gracelessly asking for a refund for their bad decision with donor funds.

It looks like Trudeau will comply, with Conservatives making much hay out've the whole affair.

There's a lot sickening about this ridiculous non-issue. For starters, this effective bailout of the Grace Foundation's dumb move may mean a lack of serious, structural change in the organization. In turn the Foundation might make more stupid decisions - perhaps paying $200,000 Weird Al Yankovic to hold what they think'll be "cool, hip" fundraiser next summer.

Then there's the sanctimony from Harper CON frontbenchers like James Moore over the non-issue. Rather than getting to the bottom of the $90,000 cheque written by Harper's Chief of Staff to avoid political embarrassment - a real issue completely under the Harper CONs scope of responsibility, these political clowns are berating someone over a legitimate transaction.

James Moore thinks that MPs, out've principle, shouldn't take money from charities. If Mr. Moore really is such a fan of pro bono public speaking why couldn't the Foundation just hire him? Maybe they thought going with CON MPs as speakers would be low budge and amateurish (looking at the quality of speech coming from Harper's frontbench, that might not be an unreasonable assessment).


James Moore furthers his sanctimony against Trudeau with this statement:

Moore condemned Trudeau for billing speaker's fees to charities, saying, "We look at the list of some of these charities, the whole business model seems to be built first around Justin Trudeau getting a paycheque." However, he said the only charity he's heard from is the Grace Foundation.

("MPs weigh in on Justin Trudeau charging speaking fees". Leslie MacKinnon (June 17, 2013). CBC)
CON MP James Moore was one of the
first Conservatives to receive a Grace
Foundation letter complaining about
there bust of an event where
Trudeau spoke.

The executive director of
his riding association is married
to a board member of the Grace
Foundation.

Image Source: WikipediaWhich seems to be all the more reason for wisdom at the charity's end, so they don't waste donated money. As odd as this may sound, if a charity has to pay someone to speak it should be obvious that they aren't really doing it for the shake of charity. Therefore, it's up to the charity to make sure they're getting their end of the bargain.

Maybe this charity was mislead on the rates or arrangements. But, thus far, the only complaint seems to be that the Foundation's event wasn't the hit they wanted it to be:
Ceci Flanagan-Snow, who volunteered to photograph the Grace Foundation event, said, "He [Trudeau] was hired and paid to perform a service. And to me that's fine. That was the rate they negotiated. They paid it. And to come back a year later and say our event was unsuccessful and therefore we should have our money back ... I totally disagree."

("MPs weigh in on Justin Trudeau charging speaking fees". Leslie MacKinnon (June 17, 2013). CBC)

Meanwhile, the whole manufactroversy gets sicker when one discovers that Judith Baxter - the Foundation Board member who made Conservative MP Rob Moore aware of this case of buyer's remorse - is married to Glen Baxter. Glen Baxter is executive director of Rob Moore's Conservative riding association! Needless to say, the Foundation has kept quite as reporters question how their complaining letter got into CON circles.

Meanwhile, the Federal NDP's ethics critic Charlie Angus has made some valid points about problems with missing time representing constituents to do other jobs, but still repeats some of the CON's stupid "how dare he charge a charity for a service he's arranged to provide" talking points.

All in all, with serious ethical lapses and structural issues with the Canadian Senate, widening inequality, water and housing crises on First Nations and a youth job criss, can't we focus on more important stuff than one charitable organization's dumb decision to overpay Trudeau?

In this post, I described doing reference as "a bit scary," and Impudent Strumpet asked why.

I started to write an answer, ran out of time, then found myself on my first real shift at the reference desk!

During my training and orientation weeks, I did two half-shifts at the desk during non-busy hours - a second chair, so to speak, when there is normally only one person working. But this week I had my first proper evening shift, during peak hours.

It is also exam week for high schools, so every available space in the entire library is filled with groups of teenagers studying (or not studying, as the case may be). The library actually opens up meeting rooms to accommodate them all.

So I did it: I got through my first real reference shift, and I really enjoyed it.

* * * *

But first, why reference is scary.

In the general sense, it's scary because I take the job seriously and want to do well. As a page and a circulation clerk, I observed library staff doing reference every day, and I've seen skills from the truly excellent to the truly awful. I want to use those role models, both positive and negative. I want to give customers good service and good information.

Specifically, doing reference is not necessarily intuitive. It's a learned skill. Customers often can't or don't articulate their real information needs. In other words, what they ask for is often not what they want. If you simply listen to their question, then march off to get a book, or start typing in the catalogue, chances are high that you will not find what they need, because you haven't yet established what that need is.

Instead, you must engage with the customers. You must perform a "reference interview," where you ask pointed, specific, open-ended questions, to discover what the customer is looking for. There are very specific ways of doing this that work beautifully, and a whole lot of ways that work very poorly.

Plus, the reference interview alone is not enough. There's a whole set of customer-service behaviours that go should surround it: appearing approachable in facial expression and body language, showing interest in the customer's question, giving your answer in plain, non-jargon words, taking the customer to the resource they need, or, if you're sending them elsewhere, calling ahead to that branch or department, and following up when you can.

I know all this very well, and in much greater depth than I can write about here. But I know it in theory, not in practice. There are so many things to remember, and when it's busy, I have a tendency to feel pressured and rush. That's a pitfall I must always be conscious of and work against (on every job I've ever held). No one is actually pressuring me, the pressure is entirely internal. I must remember to take a breath, take the extra few moments to do the job correctly. I don't want to rush customer A to get to customer B - that's unfair, and it provides poor service.

So, there are many pieces to put together. I want to get into good habits. I want to do a good job, for the customer, for our department, and for myself.

* * * *

On my first true reference shift in the Central Children's Library, here are some of the questions I was asked, and here's what I did.

From a mom: Do you have any books to help children learn how to use the toilet?

We have lots of great books on toilet training, but none of them were on our shelves at that moment. I took the customer's card, found five or six books in the system, and put them on hold for her.

This reference interview involved asking... Does she want books to read together with her child? Is it a boy or girl? (Many of the potty books are gendered.) Would she like me to put some books on hold for her? Where would she like to pick them up, here at our library, or is there another location that's more convenient?

From a girl, probable age 11: I want some good books to read over the summer.

This involved asking... What kinds of books she likes to read? What are some of the books she has read and enjoyed? To my delight, she said, "I like adventure stories, also animals. Animal adventures. None of that princess stuff!"

We went to the stacks together and I gave her several choices. As I selected them, she told me her brother read and loved those same books. I asked, and learned that he's an older brother, and she's excited to read what he liked. So my choices had the stamp of approval!

It turned out she didn't have her library card with her. So I wrote down all the titles, and suggested she come back soon with the list. She left very happy! I also used the opportunity to promote Summer Reading Club, so hopefully I'll see her again.

From a boy, probable age 7: When is Summer Reading Club? I heard about it at my school! (That's from our department doing outreach! Yay us!)

From a mom: Do you have any books on how to teach children what to do, for parents on how to teach?

This woman spoke very little English, and had trouble expressing her needs. After asking several questions, I thought she wanted books on parenting - although she was not familiar with the word. I wrote down the general call number for parenting books, and suggested she go to a different floor and ask at the desk there.

From a newcomer family - a mom, dad, and three children, including a baby - at the library for the first time: We are new here. What do we do? What do you have for our children?

This is a very typical question in our department, and a hugely important one. I gave them a newsletter with all our children's programming, showing them how to find programs at our branch. I showed them how to log on to the catalogue from home; they were thrilled with this. I found some Star Wars books for one of their boys. I gave them a list of all our branch libraries, which has the opening hours and a map, and explained that they can use any branch at any time. And later I found another Star Wars book and brought it over to them. They were very happy.

* * * *

In addition: I gave out puzzles for parents to do with their kids, gave out headphones for the computer, gave out many program schedules, and answered many questions about Summer Reading Club. I took a brother and sister to where Diary of a Wimpy Kid and Dork Diaries would be if there were any copies the shelf, and told them, to their great joy, that we were expecting many new copies for the summer. And every so often, I did a walkabout to see if anyone needed help and to check on the teen groups.

When the closing announcement came on, there were still more than 50 people in our department. There are always a few stragglers who stay until the last minute, but that night, we could have used a crowbar to get some of the teens out of their chairs.