Photos: Autumn in the Greater Toronto Area

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's update on my photo site features autumn scenes around the Greater Toronto Area. The album includes a trip to downtown Hamilton, extensive coverage of the village of Swansea including a Heritage Toronto Walk, meetings of the Historical Society, and dedication of a mural on Remembrance Day, attending a Royal Canadian Air Farce taping, visits of the Royal Canadian Pacific and Spirit Train, the Federal election, progress of the Toronto Railway Historical Association, model trains at the Toronto Train Show and Scarborough Model Railroaders, and more.

Margin Notes: Pirates, Police, Duceppe, Calendar

TORONTO, ONTARIO - Just about everyone has heard about the increasingly bold attacks by Somali pirates to take over just about any type of ship off the eastern coast of Africa. What I cannot believe that I had not heard until reading an opinion piece by Katie Stuhldreher in the Christian Science Monitor was that the whole piracy crisis started with violation of local fishermen's rights by foreign fishing vessels. Of course, a Somalia with a functioning, legitimate, and adequately powerful government is a pre-requisite to returning the region to some degree of normalcy, but I had no idea how the pirates' self-legitimacy was traced to loss of fisheries.

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This exhibit at Toronto's Police Museum on 5-December-2008 introduced the visitor to cannabis paraphernalia

I checked out anti-crime measures on a much more local level this week by going to the Toronto Police Museum on College Street between Bay and Yonge. This was a worthwhile visit, as amongst other things I learned that the Toronto Police first used a one-way radio in 1935, and had two-way radios starting in 1946, which both struck me as quite early. Other highlights included an early semaphore-like traffic signal and a 1920's-era jail cell.

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Another thing I finally did in my third holiday season in the Toronto area was to take the Neighborhood Bus Tour of the Cavalcade of Lights. I don't recommend doing it--just walk down Yonge Street, through Yorkville, and around Nathan Phillips Square, and the majority of the lights on the tour will be seen. The tour guide I had didn't even provide any notable quotations.

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The quote of the week had to go Bloc Quebecois leader Gilles Duceppe, who may be the only leader who will come out of the current political crisis strengthened in any way. Asked about whether he would support a Conservative budget in January, Duceppe stated (in English), "Well, if my grandma had wheels, she'd be a tractor." Apparently, this is a French saying to point out the absurdity of a premise. Duceppe's grandmother didn't have wheels, and the Conservative budget won't be supported by the Bloc.

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Speaking of Duceppe, much has been made about the fact that Canadians outside Quebec do not have the opportunity to vote for his party. I would like to see someone run a poll to find out how many people WOULD vote for a Duceppe-led party outside of Quebec. I would not be surprised if there would be a measurable amount of people that would look past the separatist portion of his beliefs and decide that Duceppe is a more realistic and effective proponent for social justice than the Liberals or even Jack Layton of the New Democratic Party.

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Layton and Liberal leader Stéphane Dion appeared together at the pro-coalition rally in Toronto on Saturday. One wonders when Dion's final public appearance as a party leader will be. As Chantal Hébert stated on The National, "Cats may have nine lives, but Stéphane Dion has nine deaths." He might only be on number four or five, though my count is closer to twelve.

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Twelve, of course, being the number of months in a year. It's time to think about calendars for the year 2009. While I recommend supporting groups such as the Friends of the 4449 steam locomotive or the Swansea Historical Society in Toronto by purchasing their calendars, I do make my own railroad calendar each year with a photograph for each month that I took in that same month of the preceding year. My 2009 calendar is finished and a preview is available. If you'd like one, contact me and I'll make sure you're in on the less expensive bulk order. It was a little weird to find my 2008 calendar essentially everywhere I went on my November trip to Washington state.

Radio Pick: Going Going Gone on TBOOK

TORONTO, ONTARIO - This week's radio pick comes from Wisconsin Public Radio.

As I try to ignore the "war on Christmas" at this time of year, I look instead for things that we all have in common, and To The Best of Our Knowledge provided such a nugget this week. I never thought of it this way before, but post "peak-oil" and other environmental disaster scenarios represent a "ecological apocalypse" similar to religious visions of apocalypse according to Colin Beaven. A variety of views on eco-revolution were presented in a 53-minute program.

Listen to To The Best of Our Knowledge "Going, Going, Going Gone"

Holiday: CBC Sounds of the Season

Host Matt Galloway and a guest reacted to an ironic sports joke during the taping of CBC Radio One's "Here and Now" during the "Sounds of the Season" on 5-December-2008

TORONTO, ONTARIO - On Friday, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) held its annual Sounds of the Season fundraiser for the Daily Bread Food Bank. Held in the Glenn Gould Studio in CBC's headquarters building on Front Street in downtown Toronto, the event featured live broadcasts of the two long-form, drive-time local Toronto broadcasts (Metro Morning and Here and Now) and the taping of two Saturday programs (Fresh Air and Big City, Small World), all broadcast on Radio One (CBLA 99.1 FM in Toronto).

Despite getting in line well in advance of the door opening for the afternoon drive-time "Here and Now" broadcast, I was not seated until the second hour of the show, but I was still able to enjoy the final two hours of the program. What truly surprised me was that the program was being done completely live--no delay whatsoever as is now common even on supposedly-live broadcasts in the digital era. When I turned on my walkman just to see how the top of the hour national news was being handled, I was surprised to hear in my earbuds exactly what was directly reaching my ears in the 350-seat auditorium.


CBC Newsman Robert Fisher and Traffic Reporter Jim Curran, both broadcast veterans, at the Sounds of the Season broadcast on 5-December-2008

That made the smoothness of the broadcast all the more remarkable. Despite the live audience, despite the substantial number of guests (all music for the three hours was performed live), despite the unfamiliar surroundings, the broadcast was nearly mistake-free. If I hadn't been watching him with my own eyes, I would never have known that host Matt Galloway was not in his normal studio, and the same applies to news anchor Robert Fisher and traffic reporter Jim Curran. I have seen this so many times from the CBC now that I am convinced that they are the best in the world.


Juan Cloran and Blair Williams performed a scene from "It's A Wonderful Life" during the CBC "Sounds of the Season" on 5-December-2008

Many of the normal "Here and Now" features and guests came by during the broadcast, from theatre critic Lynn Slotkin to "News at Six" host Bernie McNamee, but what really made the broadcast were the special features. Probably the most unique segment was the performance of about ten minutes of "It's A Wonderful Life" done by the Canadian Stage Company, a direct throw-back to the early days of radio.


The Barenaked Ladies performed "Green Christmas" and "Jingle Bells" during the broadcast of "Here and Now" during the CBC "Sounds of the Season" on 5-December-2008

The variety of musical genres is diverse on a normal day on "Here and Now", but on this day, the live performances spanned an amazing range. Cuban rapper Telmary was followed by How Do You Solve a Problem Like Maria? winner Elicia MacKenzie and the cast of the Mirvish production of The Sound of Music. Indo-Canadian singer Bageshree Vaze sang in Hindi while the Barenaked Ladies played games with English--and I've only mentioned half the performers.


Daily Bread Executive Director Gail Nyberg provided Matt Galloway with an update on fund-raising during the "Sounds of the Season" on 5-December-2008

Of course, the purpose of the day was raising money to feed the hungry, and by the end of Here and Now, more than $116,000 and more than 7000 pounds of food had been collected.

The live broadcast of "Here and Now" ended with a sing-a-long of "Deck the Halls". I'll probably never sing with Elicia MacKenzie, the Barenaked Ladies' Steven Page, and Robert Fisher at the same time ever again.

Politics: Only the Liberals are Shaky

TORONTO, ONTARIO - I wanted to substantially avoid Canadian politics for awhile since parliament is prorogued until late January, but there is a point that needs to be made. All this material about the "coalition" falling apart is not precisely correct--what is really falling apart is the Liberal Party itself. Sound familiar?

Like it or not, the NDP and the Bloc Quebecois aren't likely to withdraw from their arrangements with respect to the coalition on their own volition. For the NDP, this is not just a chance to remove the Conservatives and Stephen Harper from power, but a chance to actually do some governing as part of the coalition. After being demonized as separatists (and falsely called part of the coalition) by the Conservatives, the Bloc has no interest in anything that could be construed as helping the Conservatives.

The only party that might pull out of the coalition is the Liberals, and that's what Liberal Member of Parliament Jim Karygiannis really meant when he said yesterday that he "cannot see it holding together" until the end of the year. The antecedent of "it" in his sentence was clearly supposed to be the coalition, but the coalition isn't changing unless the Liberals initiate it.

The problem, just as it was in the last election campaign, is that the Liberal party seems utterly incapable of rallying behind present leader Stéphane Dion. While I have long had difficulty understanding the internal rejection, it is clear that the Dion response to Harper's statement on Wednesday night--which some have dubbed the "Blair Witch Project" speech for its poor production values--didn't help Dion's standing. While the Prime Minister wasn't exactly impressive that night, Dion looked less polished than most high school student body presidents.

Furthermore, if the October election had a clear conclusion, it was that Dion had been rejected by Canadian voters. The Liberals were the only party to lose seats and their percentage of the vote was the lowest in the party's history. If anyone lacks a mandate to govern, it is Stéphane Dion, and that is the main substance of the argument that the coalition would be illegitimate which I happen to agree with. Change the leader of the coalition, especially to Michael Ignatieff, and suddenly a lot of people are much more comfortable about the idea.

When people like Jim Karygiannis say that the coalition will not last through the prorogation, what they are really saying is that Dion will not last as the coalition leader or as Liberal Party leader through the prorogation. It seems extremely likely that Dion will be replaced, and while that might open the door for the coalition to break up, that is not a foregone conclusion.

A Liberal leadership race is already underway, one that was supposed to finish in May. Instead, the Liberals will probably find a way to choose between Ignatieff, Bob Rae, and Dominic LeBlanc as soon as possible. One assumes that LeBlanc, as the least known of the three, is unlikely to come out the winner. Between Rae and Ignatieff, there is a clear calculus. If Rae wins, there is the distinct possibility that more centrist MP's in the Liberal Party may cross the aisle and join the Conservative Party, giving the Conservatives a majority (this may happen anyway, but that's a topic for another day, and it is certainly more likely if Rae, a former NDP member, were to become leader). If Ignatieff were to become the leader, Rae supporters would have nowhere to go. For this reason, I expect Ignatieff to become Liberal Party leader, and thus the leader of the Coalition.

Ignatieff has seemed lukewarm about the coalition, particularly in light of negative poll numbers towards it, so it is possible that he might pull the plug on it, assuming the Conservatives are smart and present a reasonable budget in January (which I used to think was a given, but in light of the past few weeks, I wouldn't put anything past Harper). If the coalition does still exist and votes down the government, there is no way the Governor General will not call an election, considering that Prime Minister Harper will request it and one of the parties has a new leader. If the coalition folds and the Conservative government survives, then the next time the Conservatives overreach like they did in the Fiscal Update, the government will fall then and an election will be called.

The bottom line? I expect Michael Ignatieff will become the leader of the Liberal Party as soon as the party can figure out how to do it. Then, one way or another, there will be another election, and how that one turns out will have mostly to do with how the Conservatives and Stephen Harper behave between now and then.

Economics: Mackenzie On Why Canada Was Hit

TORONTO, ONTARIO - As fate would have it, the Education Committee of the local Parkdale-High Park New Democratic Party happened to schedule weeks in advance a session about the economy on a night when Prime Minister Stephen Harper and opposition leader Stéphane Dion both appeared on television to make their cases to the Canadian people. Neither of leaders gave a memorable speech or said anything new. The NDP event, on the other hand, featured economist Hugh Mackenzie's views on the current situation, some of which were very informative.

One thing I had never understood about the financial crisis was why, if Canada had a sound banking system unlike the US, there had been (and to some extent, continues to be) a liquidity problem for businesses. Mackenzie pointed that businesses in Canada, like their US counterparts, had long ago stopped relying on lines of credit from their banks for their day-to-day cash needs, and were also participating in the short-term paper market, in which they effectively traded short-term bonds as required overnight to maintain liquidity.

A compelling (at least at the time) reason to use the short-term paper market was that those loaning money could invest in structured investments--which contained other paper assets, which had come to include the bundled bad mortgages from the United States that have played such a central role in the crisis--in order to earn another 1%. When the crisis hit, nobody would buy the structured investments, not knowing what they might hold, and that meant money was no longer being exchanged; the liquidity had run right out of the market.

While the smoke has cleared somewhat, Mackenzie pointed out that the difference between the interbank rate--what banks charge each other for overnight loans--and the corporate loan rate has gone from 20 basis points before the crisis to 1600 points today. That's right, it used to be a 0.2% difference and now it's 16%! It's not hard to imagine how that makes things tough on businesses.

Probably the most amusing story of the night was Mackenzie's recounting of his encounter with the Quebec travel agent who gave away trips to the Caribbean if it snowed on a given day. It had snowed, so he had to provide the trips, but Mackenzie found out that the travel agent didn't care, since he had purchased insurance. What kind? A weather derivative. Mackenzie felt that pretty much proved the case that derivatives are not different than gambling.

People at the meeting were mostly looking for answers of what should be done now, and while Mackenzie did have some suggestions, his real bottom line was not reassuring. Fundamentally, the Canadian economy is too integrated with China's resource needs and the industrial needs of the US to recover on its own. The best that can be done in Canada is to try to be ready to capitalize on the next uptick in the economy when it eventually occurs. He pointed out that the 1981 recession, while deep, was recovered from in about four years because plants were largely kept intact and people laid off. The 1991 recession was not nearly as deep, but recovery took longer. Mackenzie believes that is in large part because plants were shutdown and dismantled. The 2008 recession may be deeper than the 1981 recession, and again plants are being permanently shut down.

In Hugh Mackenzie's opinion, it might be a very long path to recovery.

Politics: The Only Way Out is a Resignation

TORONTO, ONTARIO - In a matter of hours, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper will address the nation about the ongoing political crisis in the country. While I don't expect for a minute that he will do so, probably the only way out of the crisis is for Harper to announce his resignation in favor of a new, Conservative Prime Minister.

Let's review for a moment the past few months in Canadian politics. Prime Minister Harper, for whatever reason, decided to call an election in September. Six weeks later, a new government was elected that looked quite similar to the old one--a Conservative minority. Sure, the Conservatives, NDP, and Bloc Quebecois gained a few seats and the Liberals lost some, but in essence the Canadian people (if they can be said to have collectively done anything at all) elected a minority government. Implicit in a minority government in the parliamentary system is that the parties work together to govern the country.

For whatever reason, the Conservative government chose not to work with the other parties and instead included items in the Financial Update (notably, not the Throne Speech) that threatened the basic principles and the very existence of all the opposition parties. In response, the opposition parties have now signed an agreement to defeat the government (which they collectively have the votes to do) and install a Liberal-NDP coalition government headed by outgoing Liberal leader Stéphane Dion until May, when the new Liberal leader would take over. The Bloc Quebecois, while not a part of the coalition, has agreed not to defeat it for eighteen months, so that would be the expected lifetime of the government.

Now, the Conservative government is fighting for its existence, and is expected to ask the Governor General to prorogue the parliament until the budget is tabled in January. Prorogation is the ending of a parliamentary session without dissolving parliament, in effect creating a recess and allowing everything to start over when it returns, but it is normally invoked at the end of a session, not the very beginning.

So, there are three alternatives immediately available, all of which involve the Governor General. She may grant the request to prorogue, and the crisis goes on, but might be resolved before parliament returns. If the world financial crisis, demanding government oversight if not action, were not going on, this would clearly be a good alternative.

If there is no prorogation, then next Monday it is likely that the opposition parties will vote down the government, and then the Governor General will have to decide whether an election is called or the opposition is asked to form a government, which they are clearly prepared to do.

Neither one of those alternatives is appealing in the current environment. Having another election just four months after the previous one will not only cost $300 million, but could well lead to the same result again--a minority Conservative government. There is hope for a different result as turnout will likely be higher, but in a time of financial pitfalls, the process of going through elections cannot be good for the stability of the country regardless of its outcome.

Installing the coalition doesn't resolve the problem, either. While certainly a legal government by any standard, the fact that the Liberals and the NDP combined have fewer seats than the Conservatives and that the leader of the coalition would be the one politician who was clearly rejected in the last election means that much of the country will view the coalition as illegitimate. The argument that support of the Bloc Quebecois makes it illegitimate is absurd, especially coming from people that might start their own separatist movement in the west, but that doesn't render the other arguments absurd. The fact the coalition could well last for eighteen months or more, lending stability in that sense, and that it represents cooperation amongst parties, which is what should be happening in a minority parliament, doesn't matter. All of these issues don't matter--all that matters is that the coalition will be viewed as illegitimate, and for that reason, I suspect cannot be accepted by the Governor General.

So, if a new coalition government doesn't solve the problem and an election quite likely would not, that leaves prorogation. I suspect that the Governor General, whose role is ultimately to ensure the function of parliament, may well grant the Prime Minister's request as the best course in a bad situation. But, once prorogation occurs, something else has to happen to end the crisis, or things go right back to where they are now come January.

It seems to me that the only thing that actually resolves the crisis is for Harper to resign and allow a new leader to form a Conservative government. The Canadian people voted for a Conservative-led government, but they voted for a Conservative-led government that would work with the other parties in a minority parliament. Stephen Harper, after the Financial Update, has lost the confidence of the opposition parties and they will not trust him--they have made that abundantly clear. However, if the Conservative party had a new leader, and that leader demonstrated a willingness to work with the opposition parties instead of threatening them, then the crisis can be resolved. The Canadian people would get a functioning government, and it would be the one for which they voted, even if it had a different leader.

Unfortunately, based on past experience, there is little reason to believe that Stephen Harper will resign. One can only hope that prorogation will be granted and that internal pressure on Harper can be escalated as quickly as possible.