My Two Cents on the Decision of the Mulroney/Schreiber Inquiry

For once, I agree with Gagnon.

Regardless if Mulroney did or did not take any kickbacks, my respect for the man remains unchanged. He is still one of the best PM this country ever had. He implemented fundamental reforms and controversial (but good) policies to improve the economic and social well-beings of Canada.

A public inquiry should not have been ordered. The federal government should have left this file alone, or just order an RCMP investigation. There is nothing to gain to have a public inquiry into this matter. All it does is to waste another hundreds of millions of taxpayers' dollar.

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PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2007.11.26
PAGE: A19
BYLINE: LYSIANE GAGNON
SECTION: Comment Column
EDITION: Metro

Mr. Harper should drop the inquiry

LYSIANE GAGNON

At Montreal's annual book fair, a week ago Saturday, Brian Mulroney - the author - was supposed to be one of the main guests. But only a trickle of people lined up to request a signed copy of his 1,200-page memoir.

The next day, at a nearby stand, Jean Chretien, who also published his memoirs this fall, attracted far more attention, even though Mr. Mulroney is - or was, until very recently - considerably more popular than Mr. Chretien in Quebec. (Mr. Mulroney didn't show up for his second scheduled appearance that day.) Mud sticks. Mr. Mulroney may never recover from the smear campaign mounted against him by a shady character who faces multiple accusations of fraud in Germany, and the opposition parties who are now exploiting the affair for their own partisan motives.

Still, the one who is most to blame in this low-level soap opera is Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who clearly lost his bearings.

All he had to do, as Jean Chretien wisely suggested, was to say that if an illegal act had been committed, this was for the police to investigate. Instead, he lamely gave in to the cries for a public inquiry, imposing on us another costly, mudslinging operation that will probably amount to nothing much, except lost reputations and wasted paper.

At least the Gomery inquiry was into the activities of a party that was still in power. But a full public inquiry into the private business of a man who retired from politics 14 years ago? An inquiry, to boot, whose star witness will be an alleged fraudster who already contradicted himself several times and who was obviously ready to say anything to avoid extradition? (Hans Leyendecker, a journalist who has investigated cases of political corruption in Germany, told La Presse that he stopped talking to Karlheinz Schreiber because the lobbyist systematically led him down blind alleys. Too bad Mr. Leyendecker didn't give this piece of advice to the Canadian reporters who gullibly scribbled down everything Mr. Schreiber told them from his prison cell.) Of course, Mr. Mulroney committed a tremendous error of judgment in accepting cash payments. But frankly, are his private transactions a priority for Canadians in 2007? Can't today's politicians find something more useful to do? Never mind Mr. Mulroney himself called for a public inquiry. He has his own agenda: To take revenge against those he believes mounted a vendetta against him, including everyone from former Liberal justice minister Allan Rock to his perceived arch enemy journalist Stevie Cameron. If Mr. Mulroney wants to clear his name, all he has to do is to write another book.

Mr. Harper's second mistake was to ostracize Mr. Mulroney, going so far as to forbid Conservative MPs, senators and senior party officials from even talking to him - a base attack against a man who gave the Conservative party two huge consecutive majorities, whose governmental legacy was one of the most brilliant in Canadian history and who had been one of Mr. Harper's most trusted advisers.

Yet, the Prime Minister treated Mr. Mulroney, who has never been found guilty of an illegal act, as a convicted criminal.

Why wouldn't the presumption of innocence enjoyed by all Canadians, including those who shoot people in front of witnesses, apply to a former prime minister? It's enough that the parliamentary hearings scheduled to start tomorrow will turn into a partisan circus. Let's stop here. Mr. Schreiber should be quickly sent to his fate in Germany and Mr. Harper should scotch the silly idea of holding an inquiry into the minor events of two decades ago. Nobody would object if the Prime Minister reversed his thoughtless decision, except the journalists who wasted months of their lives looking into such trivial matters and the big law firms that would be the only beneficiaries of a full-scale inquiry.

lgagnon@lapresse.ca

Cougars on the prowl in Kenya

Rich, older female taking advantage over poor young men.......

At least these women are not looking for picking up minors.

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Cougars on the prowl in Kenya

JEREMY CLARKE

Reuters

November 25, 2007 at 7:54 PM EST

MOMBASA — Bethan, 56, lives in southern England on the same street as best friend Allie, 64.

They are on their first holiday to Kenya, a country they say is "just full of big young boys who like us older girls".

Hard figures are difficult to come by, but local people on the coast estimate that as many as one in five single women visiting from rich countries are in search of sex.

Allie and Bethan -- who both declined to give their full names -- said they planned to spend a whole month touring Kenya's palm-fringed beaches. They would do well to avoid the country's tourism officials.

"It's not evil," said Jake Grieves-Cook, chairman of the Kenya Tourist Board, when asked about the practice of older rich women travelling for sex with young Kenyan men.

"But it's certainly something we frown upon."

Also, the health risks are stark in a country with an AIDS prevalence of 6.9 per cent. Although condom use can only be guessed at, Julia Davidson, an academic at Nottingham University who writes on sex tourism, said that in the course of her research she had met women who shunned condoms -- finding them too "businesslike" for their exotic fantasies.

The white beaches of the Indian Ocean coast stretched before the friends as they both walked arm-in-arm with young African men, Allie resting her white haired-head on the shoulder of her companion, a six-foot-four 23-year-old from the Maasai tribe.

He wore new sunglasses he said were a gift from her.

"We both get something we want -- where's the negative?" Allie asked in a bar later, nursing a strong, golden cocktail.

She was still wearing her bikini top, having just pulled on a pair of jeans and a necklace of traditional African beads.

Bethan sipped the same local drink: a powerful mix of honey, fresh limes and vodka known locally as "Dawa", or "medicine".

She kept one eye on her date -- a 20-year-old playing pool, a red bandana tying back dreadlocks and new-looking sports shoes on his feet.

He looked up and came to join her at the table, kissing her, then collecting more coins for the pool game.

Mr. Grieves-Cook and many hotel managers say they are doing all they can to discourage the practice of older women picking up local boys, arguing it is far from the type of tourism they want to encourage in the east African nation.

"The head of a local hoteliers' association told me they have begun taking measures -- like refusing guests who want to change from a single to a double room," Mr. Grieves-Cook said.

"It's about trying to make those guests feel as uncomfortable as possible ... but it's a fine line. We are 100 per cent against anything illegal, such as prostitution. But it's different with something like this -- it's just unwholesome."

"One type of sex tourist attracted the other," said one manager at a shorefront bar on Mombasa's Bamburi beach.

"Old white guys have always come for the younger girls and boys, preying on their poverty ... but these old women followed ... they never push the legal age limits, they seem happy just doing what is sneered at in their countries."

Experts say some thrive on the social status and financial power that comes from taking much poorer, younger lovers.

"This is what is sold to tourists by tourism companies -- a kind of return to a colonial past, where white women are served, serviced, and pampered by black minions," said Nottinghan University's Davidson.

Many of the visitors are on the lookout for men like Joseph.

Flashing a dazzling smile and built like an Olympic basketball star, the 22-year-old said he has slept with more than 100 white women, most of them 30 years his senior.

"When I go into the clubs, those are the only women I look for now," he said. "I get to live like the rich mzungus (white people) who come here from rich countries, staying in the best hotels and just having my fun."

At one club, a group of about 25 dancing men -- most of them Joseph look-alikes -- edge closer and closer to a crowd of more than a dozen white women, all in their autumn years.

"It's not love, obviously. I didn't come here looking for a husband," Bethan said over a pounding beat from the speakers.

"It's a social arrangement. I buy him a nice shirt and we go out for dinner. For as long as he stays with me he doesn't pay for anything, and I get what I want -- a good time. How is that different from a man buying a young girl dinner?"

Interesting Article

I don't necessary agree with all Selick's arguments. She got a point, which may reflect a minority of food bank users.

If I follow Selick's assumptions, wouldn't it true for the majority of families visiting their local food banks very frequently, so that they can save on their grocery bills?

There maybe a small portion of people that are taking advantage of the food bank, but I don't see the majority users are taking that road.

Selick assigned the value of people's pride way too low.

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PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2007.11.20
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues & Ideas
PAGE: A21
BYLINE: Karen Selick


Food banks are ridiculous

Food bank use has grown by 14.3% since 2001, according to the Ontario Association of Food Banks' recently released Ontario Hunger Report 2007. In Trenton, Ont., (my backyard), it's growing at the astonishing rate of 10% to 15% a month, says the local newspaper.

Surprise, surprise. Did the people who run food banks never hear the expression, "Build it and they will come"?
It's really simple: give stuff away for free and there will be takers. Every merchandiser knows this. That's why stores offer two-for-one sales, free gifts to the first 50 customers, and so on.

Food banks have actually helped create the very problem they claim to be remedying -- people running out of grocery money before the next paycheque or welfare cheque -- by helping eliminate the stigma that used to accompany begging for food.

It's mortifying admitting to people you know -- family, friends or neighbours -- that you can't afford groceries this week. But with a food bank middleman between you and the anonymous donors, nobody who actually knows you will learn of your predicament.

There's also the comfort of seeing the many other food bank users. You needn't be ashamed -- you're not alone in this plight.

And food bank volunteers try to be non-judgmental, to eliminate users' embarrassment as much as possible. In the words of Ontario's Cambridge Self-Help Food Bank: "We work to dispel the societal attitude that people who access a food bank are 'not good enough' and are 'less than' everyone else. Our goal is to have everyone walking out feeling better than when they came in."

So once you've made that first trip, and walked out feeling good, it'll be even easier to go back. In fact, you can start revising your budget with that in mind. Spend a little more on non-necessities and let the food bank fill in the gap with tuna, rice and peanut butter. It makes perfect economic sense.

Food banks are actually a ridiculous idea. In a country devastated by war or natural disaster, it might make sense for charities to bring donated foodstuffs to local relief centres and hand them out. In Canada, it makes no sense whatsoever. Food is everywhere. Supermarkets plan it that way. They build their stores where people live, and keep their shelves fully stocked. All a hungry person in Canada needs in order to fill his belly is cash -- something that can be donated to him far more efficiently than food can be.

It's just plain wasteful for food banks to operate parallel to the existing food distribution system. The rent, utilities, insurance and all the other expenses involved in retailing food have already been paid once by the supermarkets before donors purchase items to donate. When the food bank incurs its own expenses for rent, utilities, insurance, etc., it adds an unnecessary layer of costs to the process of getting food to consumers.

Even shelving costs are duplicated. A supermarket receives whole cartons of the same item. Clerks can shelve everything in minimal time, reducing labour costs. But food bank donations are disorderly jumbles of everything. It takes additional labour to collect, sort and shelve it. Even volunteers' labour still represents a hidden cost. The shelving task has already been done once. Why undo it, then re-do it? It would make more sense for volunteers to spend their time earning income at their usual occupations,

then donating the money to poor people to spend at supermarkets.
Donors and volunteers are wasting another opportunity too: the income tax reduction they'd get by donating cash to a charity, instead of canned goods or labour.

The illogic of food banks is so obvious that only one explanation makes sense. Charities can't simply collect cash and give grocery money to the needy because donors know it wouldn't all be spent on necessities. Some would be spent on cigarettes, booze or bingo. Years ago, when I prepared budget statements for clients on legal aid, I was astonished at how much some poor people spent on such things.

Middle-class or wealthy Canadians shouldn't accept guilt when anti-poverty activists hint that the existence of food banks proves some moral deficiency in the economic system. Far from it. Food banks simply conceal problems that are too taboo to discuss these days.

-Karen Selick is a lawyer in Belleville, Ont.

Where is the Proof??

Given that I am no longer in middle/high school or college, what are the alternatives to experience if the female behaviour described below is true or not?????


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PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2007.11.19
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues & Ideas
PAGE: A19
DATELINE: WASHINGTON
BYLINE: Kathleen Parker
SOURCE: Washington Post Writers Group

The perils of 'hook up' culture

WASHINGTON -If you're younger than 30 or maybe even 35, you may not recognize the word "date" as a verb. But once upon a time, dating was something men and women did as a prelude to marriage, which -- hold on to your britches -- was a prelude to sex.

By now everyone's heard of the hook-up culture prevalent on college campuses and, increasingly, in high schools and even middle schools. Kids don't date; they just do it (or something close to "it," an activity that a recent U.S. president asserted was not actual sex), and then figure out what comes next. If anything. As one young woman explained "hooking up" to Washington Post writer Laura Sessions Stepp (author of the book Unhooked): "First you give a guy oral sex and then you decide if you like him."

This conversation took place in the family room of the girl's home. Immediately after that definition was served, the mother offered Stepp a homemade cookie. And we thought cluelessness was for teenagers.

Too often, what follows the hook-up is emotional pain and physical disease, the combination of which has created a mental-health crisis on American campuses.

That diagnosis comes from Miriam Grossman, author and psychiatrist at UCLA and one of five women, including Stepp, who spoke recently at the Washington-based Ethics and Public Policy Center about sex on campus.

Grossman is most concerned that politically correct ideology has contaminated the health field at great cost to young lives. As Grossman sees it, when the scientific facts contradict what is being promoted as truth, then ideology has trumped reality. Speaking to a packed room of mostly women, Grossman noted that while some in the audience had attended college during the free-love days, the world is far more dangerous now. Today, there are more than two-dozen sexually transmitted diseases, some of which are incurable.

The consequences are worse for young women, says Grossman. In her psychiatric practice, she has come to believe that women suffer more from sexual hook-ups than men do and wonders whether the hormone oxytocin is a factor. Oxytocin is released during childbirth and nursing to stimulate milk production and promote maternal attachment. It is also released during sexual activity for both men

and women, hence the nickname "love potion."
Feminists don't much like the oxytocin factor, given the explicit suggestion that men and women might be physically and emotionally different. But wouldn't a more truly feminist position seek to recognize those hormonal differences and promote protection for women from the kind of ignorance that causes them harm?

Physically, young women are getting clobbered by STDs with potentially deadly results. If a young woman begins having sex as a freshman in college, there's a 50% chance she'll have the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) by her senior year. While most cases of HPV are harmless, the virus causes nearly every case of cervical cancer, says Grossman. Stacey, one of the college students featured in Grossman's book Unprotected, contracted HPV even though a condom was used. But HPV, like herpes, lives on skin that may not be covered by a condom. An HPV expert tells college women, "You'd be wise to simply assume your partner has HPV infection."

Your "partner." What happened to your dearly beloved? He -- and she -- disappeared with coed dorms and the triumph of reproductive health ideology. While coed dorms replaced obstacle with opportunity, ideologically driven sex-education programs promoted permissiveness and experimentation.

Because sex ed is based on the assumption that young people are sexually active with multiple partners, kids have been led to believe by mainstream health professionals that casual sex is OK. That's a delusion, says Grossman, because scientific data clearly indicate otherwise. Casual sex is, in fact, a serious health risk.

Rather than spread that word, sex educators have tweaked their message from urging "safe sex" to a more realistic "safer sex," any elaboration of which would defy standards of decency. Interested parents can find out for themselves by visiting one of several university-sponsored sex advice Web sites, such as Columbia's GoAskAlice.com.

To all good and bad, there is an inevitable backlash, and casual sex has lost its allure for many students. Having learned painful lessons from their elders, they are seeking other expressions of intimacy.

At Duke University recently, Stepp asked how many in her audience of about 250 would like to bring back dating. Four out of every five raised their hands. It would seem that young people are not hook-up machines, but are human beings who desire real intimacy and emotional connection. Toward that end, parents might buy Grossman's book for their children--and themselves. Serve with cookies.

Anybody Found the Conclusion a "Surprise"???

The conclusion of these two articles are the same: a job is the best welfare (for employable individuals).

I am sure most people (other than hardcore lefties) wouldn't find it too surprising.

I just hope that the Quebec government will take a good look at these two articles, look into the studies these articles sited, and amend their policies to eliminate poverty. The last time I heard about the Quebec government's plan to eliminate poverty was pretty scary.

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PUBLICATION: National Post
DATE: 2007.11.05
EDITION: National
SECTION: Issues
PAGE: A15
COLUMN: Lorne Gunter
BYLINE: Lorne Gunter
SOURCE: National Post

The Poverty Industry's Latest Numbers Game

Why have anti-poverty groups recently been so obsessed with the allegedly growing gap between rich and poor in Canada? Because it is just about the only bit of "bad" news left on the poverty front. It's the only angle they have left to pressure politicians for more social spending -- and, of course, continued funding for anti-poverty groups.

The past decade has witnessed a tremendous success in the eradication of poverty. Even using Statistics Canada's overly loose definition of poverty, rates have fallen dramatically since 1996. Where a decade ago nearly 16% of Canadians were living with low incomes, today under 11% are.

After accounting for inflation, seniors' incomes have risen 15%, leaving just 6.1% of Canadians over 65 in low income.
The poverty rate for single moms has fallen from 52.7% to 29.1%; still too high, but a vast improvement in just a decade. Their median incomes have risen from $21,900 to $30,400, and the increase has been almost entirely from higher market earnings rather than social payments. Where just 10 years ago 60% of single moms' incomes came from government, now just 25% does.

Even the number of children living in poverty has fallen more than a third since 1996.
To be sure, pockets of dire poverty persist. According to John Richards of Simon Fraser University, who recently analyzed the issue in a study for the C.D. Howe Institute, aboriginals, the undereducated, the mentally ill, the physically handicapped and immigrants trapped in ethnic ghettos remain poor at unacceptably high levels. He also found that high effective tax rates on the "near poor" discourage some from moving from social assistance to work.

But for the vast majority of Canadians, the news is good. Moreover, that good news is even better than official statistics indicate.

StatsCan has no measure of absolute poverty -- the inability to provide life's basics such as food, clothing and shelter. Instead, Canadian poverty numbers are based on the agency's Low-Income Cut-Off, or LICO, which is a measure of relative poverty. Persons who must spend 20% more of their income on necessities than the average family in their area are considered to be "living in low income." While such a life may be difficult, it is likely not what most taxpayers would consider "poor." The real number of poor -- those Canadians who cannot provide the essentials of life--is likely half the official LICO rate.

Which brings us back to the recent focus on the gap between rich and poor.
It is true that the pre-tax, pre-transfer income of the top 20% of earners rose faster than the income of the bottom 20% in the past 10 years. Where the gap in yearly income between the top 20% and bottom 20% was $84,500 in 1996, it was over $105,000 in 2006. The ratio of income from employment, investment and private pensions was approximately 11 to one in 1996. Today it is nearly 13 to one.

This is the number anti-poverty advocates have been focusing on ever since StatsCan released it in the spring.
But it is a phony number. No one lives in a pre-tax, pre-transfer world.
What matters in the real world is how much money you have after governments take their cut and after you have received your GST rebates, child tax credits, public pensions, disability and so on.

The post-tax, post-transfer income gap in Canada -- the real-world income gap -- was 5.6 to one in 1996 and it is 5.6 to one today.

This is the gap that matters, and it hasn't increased even a fraction in the past decade. All the wailing and hand-wringing over the allegedly growing gap between rich and poor is nothing more than a cynical attempt to convince taxpayers and politicians that poverty is still a problem requiring huge government outlays and, of course, well-funded anti-poverty groups.

There might be another reason anti-poverty activists have shied away from the good news: The improvement in poorer Canadians' status had little to do with the social spending they so adamantly endorse.

As Professor Richards points out, "the introduction of new provincial welfare protocols probably explains much of the last decade's increase in the employment rate among groups with high rates of poverty." Provinces made it harder to get welfare, so employable welfare recipients went out and found jobs. As a result, poverty went down.

It's true the economy has been strong for the past decade, producing lots of new jobs and higher pay. Had the economy not been so strong, the poverty picture might not be as rosy. Still, cutting people off welfare probably had more to do with lowering poverty than did the strength of the economy, and far more than any social program.

Remember that in the late 1980s, Ontario had its strongest economy in the past 50 years, yet welfare rates in the province still doubled during that period because the Liberal government of the day kept raising welfare rates. It wasn't until rates were cut --and it made more sense for most recipients to work than live off welfare -- that poverty rates went done.

Work, not welfare, eliminates poverty.

lgunter@shaw.ca

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PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2007.11.06
PAGE: A23
BYLINE: MARGARET WENTE
SECTION: Comment Column
EDITION: Metro

Why we're winning the war on poverty

MARGARET WENTE A terrific thing happened to single mothers and their kids over the past decade. They've become a lot better off. Single mothers today are far less likely to be poor and far more likely to have jobs. And their income has shot up.

This is bad news for the poverty industry, which depends on single mothers and their children to sell the public on its anti-poverty crusades. It's tough to make your case when your pool of sympathetic victims is drying up. It's even tougher when the economy and employment rates are booming. But the worst news of all (for poverty activists) is that the boom times are not the main reason why welfare rolls are shrinking. The main reason is dramatic social policy reforms.

This is the conclusion reached by John Richards, a respected public policy analyst at Simon Fraser University. His new study for the C. D. Howe Institute, called Reducing Poverty, finds that the best remedy for poverty is - guess what? - a job.

Back in 1994, when the national welfare rate peaked at nearly 11 per cent (13 per cent in Ontario), that idea was heresy. The best remedy for poverty was then thought to be more welfare. But Canada was in the red, and governments were forced to slash welfare to get a grip on their finances. Everyone predicted that more poverty would inevitably follow.

Something else was happening, too. The three biggest provinces began to realize that their poverty policies didn't work. Even during boom times, the welfare rolls didn't shrink and the poverty rate didn't budge. In Alberta, a senior civil servant named Mike Cardinal realized that welfare was doing awful things to aboriginal communities.

Over the next few years, Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia all tightened eligibility requirements and cut benefits. "Get a job" became a policy goal.

Social workers were now directed to divide people into two distinct groups - those who were "employable" and those who, because of mental or physical disabilities, were not. The idea was to restrict welfare access for the "employable" and give them job training or help with child care or whatever else they needed to get a job. At the same time, benefits for the truly disabled would be made far more generous.

In B.C., the number of people on welfare who were deemed "employable" shrank 90 per cent, while the group deemed unemployable tripled.

There were two other important elements to this tough/soft love approach. The federal government tightened up on unemployment insurance.

It also increased child benefits, which supplement wage rates for low-income families.
Here's what happened: From 1994 to 2003, the number of people on welfare across Canada fell by half. It's now under 6 per cent - the same rate as in the 1970s. In the decade between 1996 and 2005, the poverty rate (as defined by Statistics Canada) fell from 16 per cent to 11 per cent. The war is far from over, but the progress is impressive.

The most dramatic changes were to single-mother families. Their poverty rate fell from 56 per cent to 33 per cent. In 1996, single mothers made a median income from work of only $8,600 (after tax).

By 2005, that figure had nearly tripled, to $22,200 (all rates in 2005 dollars). In other words, more single mothers were employed, and their earnings had gone up.

Canada's welfare reform happened piecemeal and by stealth. Although nobody really noticed, we've headed down the same path as the United States and Britain. In all three nations, both welfare and poverty rates have markedly declined.

The difference is that, in the U.S. and Britain, there's been a certain convergence among liberals and conservatives about what works. Not in Canada. You can be excused if you are under the impression nothing's changed. "It's still the rhetoric that poverty is as serious, or more so, than ever," says Mr. Richards. Especially if you listen to the poverty industry.

mwente@globeandmail.com