My grand-daughter was born December 3, 2018

She will not reach 12, apparently, before life on this planet is doomed to be inhabitable for humanity.

I take that very seriously. As soon as I became a father, that kind of thing started to matter - vibrantly; excruciatingly. Until then, it served as ...what? An excuse for nihilism? Bottoms up!

With my wife, I share a four-cylinder, gas-guzzling SUV, but at least we live in a highly energy-efficient condo in Montreal, heated (and powered) exclusively from renewable hydro-electric power, thanks to Robert Bourassa and other prescient Quebec politicians. We use public transit as much as possible, walk, or use shared services to economize, and understand that our gas costs more if we fill up on the island of Montreal, so we only take the car when we really have to.

And I expect this will be the last internal combustion vehicle we own - and appropriately so. Energy usage will not decline, but here in Quebec, I feel that we really understand that reality as a fundamental concept, alongside the practicality of maximizing our facility to harness whatever renewable energy resources we can access.

I have listened to the voices telling us the oil in Alberta and Saskatchewan will replace higher carbon-footprint coal used in China currently (to manufacture products we buy to assuage our Dollar-store need to consume, consume, consume extra plastics to make our lives more fulfilling - and yes, that rabbit-hole I have plunged myself into on many occasions myself). I call bullshit on that "need" to get the tarsands product to tidewater. Justin Trudeau is nominally championing that in order to (lamely) show he is not like his dad; as if he could somehow square that policy with being on the right side - i.e.: the non-suicidal side.

What to do?

I like JT because he espouses ideals that are high-mindedly progressive towards correction of bias and prejudice generally. But for all our sakes, this is the time to realise there is a bigger, more pressing crisis that requires his leadership. Time to stop playing nice and put his clout to the one issue that merits war-like attention: arresting climate change.

After all, what planet does he presume his kids and mine might inhabit?

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The Inconvenient Truth about Thomas Mulcair's "Four-Car" Garage Swiftboating

So my dad and "Tom" (Thomas Mulcair) met up at Briarwood Park in Beaconsfield the other day.

Yeah, really. Two grandfathers laughing it up with a couple of toddlers. They didn't know each other beforehand, but my dad can still spot a pol with a national profile, and the wily salesman that he is, he was none too shy about starting up a conversation.

I had no idea the leader of the Opposition was my dad's neighbour, nor that he had long-since been, for roughly 30 years, since about the time we ourselves moved there from Sherbrooke.

Will wonders never cease? I wanted to know: What street does he live on? Beaconsfield Blvd? The ritzy Hyde Park perhaps? No, no, probably the more laid-back hippie-wetdream champagne-socialist Kirkwood Avenue?

"Lynwood, I think," was my dad's reply.

"Lynwood?"

"Lynwood."

I defy anyone to find a more pedestrian, unpretentious, straight-up homey suburban road in this entire country than Lynwood Drive in Beaconsfield, Quebec. Go ahead and Google-map it if you don't believe me.

So interestingly, I was out visiting my folks just the day after learning of this, bringing my own two kids and upping the grandkid quotient in hopes of divining a follow-up visit from the potential next Prime Minister of What We Hope Will Still Be Somewhat Recognizable as Canada After The Harpercons Have Had Their Way.

I reckon this was about the same time this despicable smear job was being prepared for print, replete with skillfully photoshopped pic of a "four-car" garage (nobody could own a house with that much garage space unless they were psychotically trying to guzzle enough tarsands-derived gasoline to ...insert maniacal slobbering laugh... bloody-well guarantee climate change hell for all the misbegotten creatures of the Earth, of course).

Yeah, Dr. Evil has nothing on our Tom.

For what it's worth, I am not a big fan of Mr. Mulcair, although he is a darn sight better than probably 90% of the people you might find yourself hemming and hawing over on Election Day.

Anyway, on my way down to visit my folks last Sunday, I decided to venture down Lynwood Drive, perhaps the only road in that southwest sector of Beaconsfield where I never once took up delivery of the Gazette in the late 1980s.

I just wanted to see which was the nicest house on that street, the kind of house a man of his stature might deem worthy of himself to have as his domicile. I have to say, I went right past 109, purportedly Mulcair's address, without even considering it, it was so ordinary.

What does this tell us? That Mulcair owns perhaps the middlest of middle-class cottages, while the homes (former and present) of such Canadian political luminaries as Pierre-Elliot Trudeau (Town of Mount Royal) and Brian Mulroney and Jean Charest (Westmount, both) are among the poshest of posh to be found on the island Jacques Cartier named Ville-Marie over 350 years ago?

Big whoop.

And with Warren Kinsella piling on pathetically, (complain about something real, Warren, okay?) all I can say is that my respect for Mulcair has just shot up ten-fold.

And as for that "four-car" garage? Take heart Tom, because if that's the best they can do, they got nothin'.

Jack Layton: A real gentleman and a citizen politician - 1950 to 2011

I am privileged to have once met and interviewed The Honourable Jack Layton. He was introducing three local candidates at Bar Bobards on boulevard St-Laurent during the 2006 election.

At least two of those candidates, it should be noted, were fervent Québec nationalists whose acceptance speeches left little doubt they were steadfastly looking for a platform to push Québecois separatism.

I should note that I had previously formed a rather withering opinion of Jack's father (the Honourable Robert Layton) when as a cub reporter during the 1988 election, I saw him in action as a Mulroney Progressive Conservative incumbent, getting booed at an all-candidates debate for suggesting Lac St-Louis water would become clean enough to drink if Mulroney was given a second mandate. As it turned out, Robert Layton was easily re-elected by West Island voters who ultimately voted for him as default support for passage of the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

Utterly honest
So I was curious to ask son Jack, back in 2006, why he'd spoken so reverently of his father - who had himself succumbed to prostate cancer some four years earlier - on the two occasions I had come out to see him speak as NDP leader. Well, Jack looked me square in the eye and said he had great respect for his father, but that didn't mean they saw eye-to-eye on very much, politically. In fact, he related, that was the one area they were always at loggerheads, notwithstanding having a loving and respectful relationship as father and son.

Can you imagine a more honest, human, and respectful answer? Not I. And I have no idea if my question - which I only posed because I had never heard him asked it before - caused him to rethink his stump speech. But I never again heard him speak of his father's influence when introducing himself as the NDP leader, as if he had determined the astute voter might be as confused as I was, given their almost diametrically opposed politics.

It is in this spirit that I remember and revere the man whom I unfortunately must still blame (partially, at least) for putting Harper in the PM chair, by whipping his party to vote down the Martin government; something historians will doubtlessly argue was or wasn't a seminal moment in the NDP's existential journey as an independent political force.

A mixed legacy on policy
I also recall his insistence on going cap and trade instead of carbon tax when the latter made more sense, and finding his reasoning on that choice rather wanting. I recall with sadness his decision to have his party vote against a 2007 (?) Liberal motion to end the Afghanistan mission in July, 2009, based on the fact they really should be brought home immediately (he was quite right on that point of course), which unfortunately ended up with the misguided mission continuing on much longer. Also, Jack's reticence at allowing Green Party Leader Elizabeth May to be included in the 2008 election debates rankled.

Meanwhile, I championed Jack Layton grandly for forcing the 2005 Martin budget to be amended to halt planned corporate tax cuts while increasing social spending in the period where the NDP held the balance of power. I even voted for one of his throw-away candidates while living in the Outremont riding after Paul Martin had parachuted a former Bloc-Québecois founder (Jean Lapierre) in to take Martin Cauchon's place.

And yesterday morning I cried - yet not so much as on last July 25, when we all saw death tapping impatiently on Jack's shoulder - to hear of his passing.

Despite anything else, Jack Layton was a good egg. He tried. He fought. He brandished humour and a forthrightness that was touching and palpable in both official languages. He worked with dedication to his ideals with true and rare conviction. In short, he stood for something, and he made sure that it was a something he could get fully behind. Then he would make a convincing argument that you and I and every other Canadian could get behind it too.

As long as we listened to our hearts.

What next?
Now, a huge gabble of neophyte NDP Québec MPs will have to find their way in the HoC. They also must prove their worthiness to their constituents, despite being stripped of the coattails of the one guy in whom the voters put their full-throttle faith. And that was no small leap of faith either. These voters bravely abandoned their BQ candidates who had mostly done nothing less than tirelessly represent their constituents' interests in Ottawa with pride and passion for several years.

No, the Bloquistes can only blame their party's connection with separatism on their historic defeat to the mostly unknown Dippers that won their constituents' votes based almost solely on Jack Layton's endorsement. Continued NDP support in Québec will be a very tough sell, regardless of Thomas Mulcair's considerable respect in this province.

But that sort of speculation should be explored another day. For today, I am pleased that our Prime Minister has been honourable enough (against type) to bequeath a state funeral for Jack Layton.

Hard to believe as I type his name that he is no longer with us.

Jack, all in all, you did good by us Canadians. Posthumous gratitude in spades. Many, many thanks. RIP, if that is at all possible for you!

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Shout out to the Saudi Arabian delegation

Hey guys, when you start allowing the women of your country to drive, then you can share your opinions with the rest of the world on global warming.

Until then, just shut it.

The New Collection-Based Economy

How bad will it get?

One of the scariest examples of the world economic melt-down is the experience of Iceland. Yes, the tiny but proud country with the Björk-based economy likely did themselves no favours relying on the quirky but prolific pixie-like recording artist for over 45% of their GNP.

(I know that's true cuz I saw it somewhere in an Onion article once...)

All kidding aside, Iceland's real problem was that their banks' finances were way too heavily beholden to the Bullshit Bush financial model, where carefully concealed Bullshit is repackaged to become the investment option of choice for organizations worldwide.

It wasn't Björk's fault the Icelandic banks found themselves holding six times as much debt as real capital to cover it late last year.

The relative health of Canadian financial institutions should be a source of comfort for those of us lucky enough to live here, right? Well, not entirely:

Lost in Traslation?
Apart from the obvious need for political cover, I really don't see the point in Quebec Premier Jean Charest's decision yesterday to haul the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec onto the carpet after suffering its worst year on record.

"As with all other investors, the first element that explains our return this year is the global financial crisis that broke out in the fourth quarter," said Caisse president and CEO Fernand Perreault.

However, he said the fund's decision to delve heavily into asset-backed commercial paper (ABCP)also cost it dearly. The Caisse invested $12.6 billion in the form of short-term debt, making it the largest holder in Canada.

With the market for the debt frozen, ABCP accounted for $4 billion of the Caisse 's total losses in 2008.

Perreault now admits investing so heavily in ABCP was a bad idea.

"In hindsight, we placed too much confidence in these securities …. It was a mistake to accumulate so much ABCP," said Perreault.

"We mistakenly believed that these products were as safe, or almost as safe, as other money market instruments."

Of course, the decision to go so heavily into asset-backed commercial paper can be easily explained by the usual Quebec excuse of the unfair language barrier sticking a knife in our backs. (Mais Jean, c'n'est pas juste! We thought they said "acid-backed paper". We thought it had industrial applications, hôtie...)
[Note to Icelandic bankers looking for some kind of excuse: you're welcome, and don't worry, we won't bill you.]

What knee-jerk Quebec media don't understand is that mammoth funds like the Caisse handles are too big not to be a reflection of the underlying economy on the whole. Yes, Quebec lost 25% of the supposed value of its nationalized pension fund (if you choose the highest benchmark as your relational point), but what else did we expect? Of course the fund managers did the same things as their counterparts worldwide who were using paradigms for risk that assumed triple-a securities were rated accordingly.

From there, the need to get in the game and follow the other lemmings takes over naturally. If everyone else is doing it, it must be okay, right? Over the cliff with us!*

The Bush Trickle-down Bullshit Model
Not if the "assets" on the backs of all that paper amount to utter Bullshit.

It all boils down to the Bullshit right-wing deregulation of the financial markets in the United States. The United States under their Bullshit President and their Bullshit Republican-controlled Congress became a bastion of utter Bullshit generally. And if the right-wing "trickle-down" concept applies to anything, then surely it applies to Bullshit (especially when coupled with governmental leadership).

Because as Bullshit ruled the White House, so did Bullshit rule the way American financial markets were run.

As did it rule the way American companies were run.

Right down to American household economies, where buying a house with nothing down and a 40-year amortization on a mortgage with no principal paid-down in the first few years became common-place. And then, they get a new flat-screen TV and cable and end up watching home renovation shows where the illusion is propagated that 22 minutes later you've got a beautiful, modern kitchen gleaming in the morning sunlight. Add some happily-scrubbed children's faces, munching on microwaved pizza pops and you're in the Promised Land.

So it becomes normal to not just over-leverage your household income, but to dream about over-leveraging it even more (like all the other lemmings in your neighbourhood), and go to that beautiful church-like Home Reno warehouse store and get a Home Reno Platinum Card (fine print showing 28.75% interest, compounded daily, subject to change at the issuer's discretion), and spend, spend, spend to make your own home the temple You Deserve since you don't have any other spirituality to cling to and make sense of your daily existence.

That's what it meant to be a good little consumer in the consumer-driven economy of the Bullshit George W. Bush America.

Dead Stop
And what are we left with? A world where the Bullshit has trickled down world-wide. Hence Iceland. Hence pension funds exposed to have little real value. Hence world-wide panic that filters down to a financial and economic dead stop.

No one is paying anyone for anything unless they absolutely have to. So the new economy is a collection-based economy. At least that is how it appears when I look in my email inbox, where I see the hard-working little application at Workopolis.com has sent me links to the day's new job postings - and more and more of them are related to people trying to lean on other people to pony-up (three out of four today):

Your Job Search Results
We’ve found new jobs that fit what you’re looking for! Click the links below to find out more.

AN UNNAMED COMPANY
Bilingual Customer Service Rep- English/French Required (2/25/2009)

GROUPE MONTPETIT RESSOURCES HUMAINES INC
Collection administrator bilingual - (english and french) (2/25/2009)

HSBC Finance
Collector (2/25/2009)

HSBC Finance
Collector (2/25/2009)

Please, World, Scare me Some More
Meanwhile, with the unknown effects of what's looking more and more like runaway global warming, will all this seem quaintly anti-climactic a generation from now?

Antarctic glaciers are melting faster than previously thought, which could lead to an unprecedented rise in sea levels, scientists said Wednesday.
The warming of western Antarctica is a real concern. "There's some people who fear that this is the first signs of an incipient collapse of the west Antarctic ice sheet," said Colin Summerhayes, executive director of the Britain-based Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.

Sea levels will rise faster than predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, Summerhayes said.

An IPCC panel in 2007 predicted warmer temperatures could raise sea levels by 76 centimetres to 120 centimetres this century, which could flood low-lying areas and force millions to flee.

"If the west Antarctica sheet collapses, then we're looking at a sea level rise of between one metre and 1.5 metres," Summerhayes said.

Researchers found that the southern ocean around Antarctica has warmed about 0.36 F in the past decade, double the average warming of the rest of the Earth's oceans over the past 30 years, he said.

Obama doesn't have a monopoly on change. A complete shake-up of society is upon us.

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*Turns out the meme of lemmings mindlessly running over a cliff to their deaths is another piece of US-propogated bullshit - this one exposed long ago by the Canadian CBC. The staged lemming "mass suicide" part comes just over a third of the way in.

Peevey Stevie's ungratiousness not befitting a Canadian

With US President Barack Obama going so far out of his way to publicly thank Canada today for the contribution in effort, monies and blood (he even mentioned our 108 dead in the Afghanistan conflict), would it have been so much trouble for our Prime Minister to say, "You're welcome, Mr. President"?

Canadians used to be known for having good manners. I'm also not impressed with Harper for again playing down the difference between Obama's proposal of meeting absolute greenhouse gas emission targets, and his own government's history of doing virtually nothing and of undermining worldwide efforts to take decisive action on the issue.

Easy for You Guys to Say Dept.

Four former Canadian Prime Ministers (comprising what? four or five years' experience in the PM chair among the lot?) all agree they ignored a serious issue while in power and now want to get on the right side of history by wagging their fingers at today's party leaders with a report calling for immediate action to fight global warming.

The report calls for a $30-a-tonne price tag on emissions, and says a "staggering" investment in green technologies is required.

The document has been signed by four former prime ministers, Joe Clark and Kim Campbell, both Progressive Conservatives, and Liberals Paul Martin and John Turner.

The names of Jean Chrétien and Brian Mulroney are conspicuously absent from the document, even though both were contacted by the group, Roy told the Globe and Mail.

I find it a bit rich for Martin in particular to be on board here. He, more than anyone else in this lot, is responsible for Canada being slow to enact meaningful measures that could've made a difference on his watch. I guess it's better late than never, eh?

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Arctic Ice gone by 2013?

Do I hear 2080?
2080

Do I hear 2050?
2050

Do I hear 2030?
2030

Do I hear 2013?

This is almost like listening to an auctioneer. Even though the average global air temperature has declined from last year, we still appear to be on our way to an historic low of arctic sea ice:

Most of the cover consists of relatively thin ice that formed within a single winter and melts more easily than ice that accumulated over many years.

Irrespective of whether the 2007 record falls in the next few weeks, the long-term trend is obvious, scientists said; the ice is declining more sharply than even a decade ago, and the Arctic region will progressively turn to open water in summers.

A few years ago, scientists were predicting ice-free Arctic summers by about 2080.

Then computer models started projecting earlier dates, around 2030 to 2050; and some researchers now believe it could happen within five years.

(emphasis mine)

No wonder we're seeing signs of Tories and extraction industries licking their lips, eh? Elizabeth May knows the score and she's calling them out: The Tories don't want to fight global warming. They're ready to welcome it in fact. It might be good in the short term for the Canadian bottom line, but just ask Westmount-Ville-Marie Green Party candidate Claude William Genest why the consequences of unchecked global warming are being deemed a crisis.

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Canada: Part of the Global Warming Problem

Greenpeace has done a lovely job creating a fake Alberta tourism site to educate us (through cutting humour) on the massive environmental toll being paid for the benefit of getting at all that juicy tar-sands oil. From the government-sanctioned and wanton destruction of pristine boreale forest, to the ghastly and toxic "Tailing ponds" left in their wake, this surely will count as one of the most shameful pillagings of mother nature in human history.

And that's not even taking into account the cumulative effect on greenhouse gas content in the atmosphere. Burning fossil fuels to get at other fossil fuels that will eventually be burned (and require more fossil fuels to transport them to and from refineries using fossil fuels via fossil fuel burning trucks on tarmac roads made in part from fossil-oil products...) And whoops, our heads are spinning wildly before we even consider the effect of losing all that good carbon-trapping forest!

We really have to find a better way to deal with our collective hunger for energy. There is probably no greater effect we can have than to change our mindset of what is normal behaviour.

For example, I recently discovered that I can walk all the way to and from work (if I set aside 40-45 minutes to do so). And it is an enjoyable walk at that, coming with the health benefit of getting a degree of exercise. Previously, I would take a 15-20 minute bus trip at rush hour, having waited anywhere between 2 and 20 minutes for the bus to arrive, then be sandwiched-in uncomfortably while the bus jerked and heaved to deal with Montreal traffic.

Weather permitting, my wife bikes the kids to daycare, which is conveniently only a half-kilometre away from home, and around the corner from the studio where she works. We also chose to live in a neighbourhood where it is often possible to shop on foot - except for the big haul grocery buys. Our home is insulated and heated with electricity, but certainly could be more energy-efficient, and that's something to be investigated soon.

That's partly because I am in a neighbourhood that was designed to be more energy-efficient - back in the 1920's. But some of our friends live in the suburbs, designed post-WWII - with three times the living space to heat or cool (completely detached), huge lawns to tend, long commutes to work and no option to walk to the pharmacy or dentist, etc. While I am proud to be living more energy-efficiently, I can't say I'm not jealous of the space they have, but at least I live near a huge park for the kids to play in.

If we stop building communities on the premise of having cheap and abundant energy, and go back to tighter quarters and smaller-scale neighbourhoods the way we used to between the wars, this would go a very long way towards decreasing our energy thirst, at least in high-density population areas.

Now that energy prices are moving towards being value-costed, the North American lifestyle might just revert, especially if more people start thinking and living the way we do. And I sense this is already beginning to be reflected in the growing market value of the properties in densely-built older urban communities such as my own.

Now if only we can go back to rail transport as the primary means of moving goods around! (More on that in a future post.)

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Sell-Out

Well I believe in this
And it's been tested by research
He who fucks nuns
Will later join the church

--The Clash (from "Death or Glory")

I guess it's pretty comfortable in Stornaway, eh Stephane?

OTTAWA — The Liberals have refused to bring down the minority Conservative government over its alleged failure to combat climate change.

Only 11 Liberals voted for an NDP non-confidence motion condemning the government for failing to respect international climate agreements and for its refusal to adopt opposition-approved legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Other Liberals MPs were present but didn't vote.

With oppositions like this, who needs electoral majorities? Certainly not the Super Secret Harper Imitation Tories, who themselves introduced measures to reduce carbon emissions amounting to a sell-out of the environment:

The Harper government unveiled measures on Monday that would force new oilsands projects to capture and store greenhouse gas emissions and ban construction of new dirty coal plants beginning in 2012.

Note how they slipped the word "new" in there twice, so that conveniently leaves all existing oilsands projects and coal plants completely off the hook. Some of our federal leaders took issue with the new measures:

In Ottawa, politicians panned the new measures. NDP Leader Jack Layton said the plan was "a licence to pollute."

Green party Leader Elizabeth May criticized the capturing techniques as expensive and unproven.

"Right now, it's not cost-effective and there are far more cost-effective ways to reduce carbon dioxide emissions — improving the efficiency with which we use energy and shifting to other energy sources beyond coal and oil," she said at a news conference.

The government has admitted that the technology likely won't be up and running until 2018.

Notice which major federal party leader had nothing to say? Uh-huh. The one who ran for his party's leadership as the candidate focused on sustainable development and making sure Canada lives up to its Kyoto commitments because climate change was too vital not to act immediately.

Around these parts, that's known as a sell-out.

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