Posts Tagged ‘news’

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Canadian Foreign Policy I Agree With?

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

It’s not very often these days that I read something in the news about Canada’s Foreign Policy that I agree with.  For an example, here’s some of the stuff I tend to disagree with and read about most often:

  • Government of Canada refuses to petition the US government for the return of child soldier being held at the Guantanamo Prison.
  • Government of Canada may have known their prisoners were subject to torture in Afghanistan
  • Government of Canada will not request that the USA return a Canadian Citizen on death row to Canada for imprisonment.
  • Government of Canada will not open discussion on family planning while promoting maternal health at the G8 summit.
  • Government of Canada leads the charge against a moratorium on hunting and fishing Polar Bears and Bluefin Tuna.
  • Government of Canada does not want a legally binding climate change agreement at the Copenhagen summit.

    Then today, I find this gem:

    “And some nations, including Canada, oppose any new bank taxes.”

    It came out of this article http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/8633455.stm.  Surprisingly enough, in this rare case, I can actually say that I agree with the Government of Canada.  The idea of taxing banks to put money away for the next round of bailouts is in my opinion a very poor solution to this problem.  First, having this tax will give international banks a feeling that they are insured.  Instead of forcing them to operate more soundly and conservatively, they will instinctively feel that they can afford to take extra risks.  If things go bad, they will just get their tax dollars back in the form of a bailout, and it will be business as usual.  If things go well, they will be making huge profits, and realizing their past extraneously large bonuses.

    Second, as long as one country refuses to adopt this tax, there will be a quick move of headquarters of major banks to this new tax free haven. The implications of this could be far reaching, especially if this tax free haven also has lax regulations, allowing banks all the freedom they need to bring about the next global financial crisis.

    The way I would deal with this problem is through regulation.  By forcing banks to keep a certain portion of their assets in low-risk, cash like investments, regulating risky debt based investment hedging and derivatives, and ensuring the lending criteria on loans are significantly stringent enough to ensure that those likely to default are not eligible for loans in the first place.

    All in all, Canada seems to have a good track record of strong banks capable of surviving the economic crisis.  Our regulation system should be the standard the world looks to emulate.  Or more specifically the actions of our banks should be emulated.  Adopting a new, untested tax regime is not the answer.

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    Posted in politics | 5 Comments »

    Did The Red Cross Employ Slave Labour?

    Saturday, March 20th, 2010

    CBC Radio - The Current

    Just passing on an interesting story I picked up on while driving from Saskatoon to Qu’Appelle the other day.  The above link will play the radio episode that I heard, while the link below will take you to a written article.  Both sourced by the CBC and, as I understand, originating from an investigation done by the French Radio-Canada.

    My opinion of all this is not great for the Canadian Red Cross.  As a past, and potentially future, donator to the Red Cross I’m a little upset at they way the Red Cross seems to be treating these allegations.  Their initial approach to the whole thing seems okay to me.  After hearing a report from one of their field agents, they began with a high level internal investigation to determine if there was any truth to these allegations.  They decided there was, then hired an external third party investigator to bring in the details.  Seems reasonable so far.

    The part that I’m upset with is what they did after that.  I’m just going to sum it up with what they seem to be doing, vs what I want to be hearing from them.

    This is an isolated case, of 40 or so workers and it has been fully dealt with

    vs

    Thank you for bringing to our attention this potentially wide spread problem.  We will be sending our own field agents to Java to conduct a full review, and will compensate workers that were under compensated for their efforts in rebuilding after the Tsunami.  Expect a report on our findings in the next 6 months.

    We have a code of ethics that we make all contractors sign to prevent anything like this from happening.

    vs

    We realize that without proper inspection and follow up, we can not be certain that contractors are following our code of ethics.  In the future we will be performing regular inspections at job sites using a rotation of our own field staff.  We will take the lead from other NGOs and cancel contracts with employers who are found to be non-compliant.

    We are not directly responsible for any abuse given to workers as this is the responsibility of our contractors

    vs

    As owner’s of the project, we take full responsibility for any worker abuse.

    You get the idea.

    http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/17/mtl-red-cross-tsunami-enquete.html

    http://www.redcross.ca/article.asp?id=34473&tid=001

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    Posted in charity | 3 Comments »

    Human Bed Warmers Now at the Holiday Inn

    Monday, February 15th, 2010

    Holiday Inn Human Bed Warmers

    This has been written about in a few other blogs and news sites, so I’m just going to pass on a link rather than re-write the same stuff.

    I first heard about this on CBC Radio 1, and a quick google search will show a half dozen “credible” sources.  It’s not a hoax, but given the thoughts posted on most blogs, I can’t see it staying around for long.

    http://www.mythoughtsonthings.com/archive/2010/01/20/holiday-inn-test-human-bed-warmers

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    Posted in humour | No Comments »

    23% Chance Evidence of Dark Matter Has Been Found

    Friday, February 12th, 2010

    Here’s an interesting article from the BBC. Looks like they may have (23% probability) detected Weakly Interacting Massive Particles or WIMPS.  These are one of several particles that scientists believe could make up Dark Matter.

    Personally I find Dark Matter very interesting.  As the theory goes, everything we can see, detect, or otherwise interact with makes up only 5% of the universe.  Some days I wonder what good finding dark mater would do, since we can’t interact with it. But then I think, what if we could interact with it, once we understood it.

    Here’s some completely unscientific what-ifs that will hopefully get you excited about this stuff.  What-if dark matter could:

    • be the key to pinpointing the center of the universe?
    • could be the answer to the question of why?  What caused the Big Bang?  Has there been more than one?  Are there multiple universes?
    • be turned into ordinary matter?
    • be turned into ordinary energy?
    • could propel spacecraft much faster than the speed of light?

    The potential upside certainly deserves further investigation.  Even if I’m just making up a bunch of unrealistic unscientific Original Star Trek Style nonsense.

    Without further ado, here’s the article.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8508662.stm

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    Posted in science | No Comments »

    Nuclear Fusion

    Saturday, January 30th, 2010

    Here’s an exciting news article I found on the BBC website.  Basically, there’s been a breakthrough bringing us one step closer to Nuclear Fusion power plants… maybe.   The breakthrough involves the process of starting the Nuclear Fusion Reaction with lasers.  In the past, it was thought to be a very uneconomical process requiring almost as much energy, or more, to begin the reaction as the reaction would produce.  This breakthrough however demonstrates that this is not the case,  and puts High Power Energy Lasers in the running for the first commercial nuclear fusion power plant.

    http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8485669.stm

    Some info on Nuclear Fusion

    In it’s basics, nuclear fusion is a process where atoms are combined to produce new elements and hopefully energy.  The most favoured of these reactions for nuclear fusion power generation is the deuterium and tritium reaction.  Both deuterium (D) and tritium (T) are isotopes of Hydrogen, meaning that they have additional Neutrons for a total of 2 in D and 3 T.  This reaction produces Helium, one neutron and lots of energy.  I say it’s the most favoured because it produces the greatest amount of net energy of any fusion reactions.   Net energy being the difference between the energy given off by the reaction and the energy required to start the reaction.  Net energy is how much energy is available for electric power production.

    D + T → He + 1n + 17.6 MeV

    How do these lasers fit into the grand scheme of things?

    As mentioned above, lasers are just one of the methods being investigated to start the nuclear fusion reaction.  Another popular method is to apply a current to the reactants while being held in a plasma state.  The plasma is contained by tokamak (magnetic confinement fusion).  Already, there is a demonstration plant being built to test this technology, and bring it to a level of understanding where a commercial plant can be produced.  This project called ITER is being built in France and is expected to switch on in 2018.

    This laser technology does have some advantages to the magnetic confinement fusion method employed by ITER.  Namely:

    • The reactor core is mostly exposed, as apposed to being wrapped in a huge magnet
      • making energy removal and maintenance easier
      • allowing the use of low-activation materials in construction such as carbon fibre which would reduce the rate of irradiation to the core.

    Is the Nuclear Fusion good or bad?

    Hard to say.  It does have several advantages over nuclear fission, which is the reaction used today in nuclear plants.  For instance:

    • Abundant fuel
    • Reaction conditions are so temperamental that a runaway or meltdown situation is not possible, so it is considered intrinsically safe as any problems will just cause the reaction to stop
    • No CO2 is produced
    • Radioactive materials are mostly constrained to the reactor core itself, with expectations that it would be dangerously radioactive for about 50 years, and lightly radioactive for another 100 making storage and disposal simple when compared to todays radioactive fission waste which can require storage for thousands of years.
    • Substantial source of energy capable of replacing all current carbon based electricity for the next 150 billion years based on availability of reactants.

    Of course there are some draw backs as well:

    • Tritium is bread from liquid Lithium, both of which are radioactive.  During normal operation some Tritium will be released into the atmosphere, and a a leak could result in the release of dangerous amounts of Lithium into the atmosphere.
    • Helium is also released, while it is not currently known to impact living organisms, or to act as a green house gas, increasing concentrations of anything in the atmosphere could pose unseen risks.

    That’s basically all I know about nuclear fusion, hope you enjoyed.

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    Posted in science | No Comments »

    Canada will give 80 million to Haiti. How?

    Wednesday, January 20th, 2010

    Canada has just announced that it will send $80 million to Haiti to help with humanitarian relief.  I think that’s great, but isn’t Canada’s parliament prorogued?  Oh yes, it is.  I’m hoping that the government had previously allocated this money towards international disaster relief in it’s 2009 budget, otherwise the implications are that Canada has a new dictatorship government.  A government that no longer consults the elected house of commons, but simply suspends government and makes decisions unilaterally.  No wonder people are getting fed up with our parliamentary system.

    Anyways, we still have to ask, was this an already budgeted item or not?  I spent a few minutes searching the website for the latest budget, and could not find anything that would suggest it was.  But, I could have missed it, so I sent an email to the finance department asking if it had been budgeted or not.  I’ll report back with any response I receive.

    I did not receive any response from the finance department…

    so I wrote the opposition MP in responsible for critiquing the budget, Mr. Ralph Goodale.  Here was his response:

    Dear Mr. Lenzen:

    Thank you for your email regarding aid to Haiti.

    With respect to your questions, it all depends on how much the Government spends.

    CIDA would already have some money approved by parliament (through the budget) which can be allocated, and/or reallocated to provide aid to Haiti relief efforts.  Re-allocating money and spending within the existing budget would not require parliamentary approval, only Treasury board (a cabinet committee) approval.

    That said,  the government has promised matching funds to the donations made in Canada, so if that exceeds the amount they can find through re-allocated CIDA funds, then the government can still commit these funds, but Parliament will have to approve this money before it can actually be spent.  Parliament would approve them through a vote on the Estimates (which Parliament votes on 3 times a year – the next vote (on Supplementary Estimates) will be sometime before March 26.

    Sincerely,

    Robyn Sullivan

    Special Assistant

    Office of the Hon. Ralph Goodale, P.C., M.P.

    Wascana

    So, I guess it is possible that the Conservative government can allocate some funds to Haiti, however once their budget is reached, it will be up to parliament to approve any further spending which is done on a scheduled basis and was not interrupted by prorogation.  So, to sum it up, this is not proof of a dictatorship.

    Haiti relief article.

    http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2010/01/19/haiti-canada.html

    Prorogation of Parliament article.

    http://www.cbc.ca/politics/story/2009/12/30/parliament-prorogation-harper.html

    2009 Budget Website

    http://www.budget.gc.ca/2009/

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    Posted in charity | No Comments »

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