The story of Europe's pampered cows is a familiar one but always worth retelling. Each head of cattle in Europe gets a subsidy from the taxpayer worth $2.20 a day at a time when half the world's population - 3 billion people in all - scrapes by on an income of less that that.
Canada is not much better.
I wonder what will come from negotiations between Quebec and Ottawa about Quebec's international aspirations?
Stronach on the need for better debate on post-secondary education policy:
I would like to see that we engage Canadians and that we elevate the level of debate around the issue of education to the same level that health care has had," Ms. Stronach said. "It's so important to future competitiveness and for securing investment in this country.
The second part of her statement is fine, but the first part is silly. It's the willingness to fund PSE that needs to be increased, not the level of debate. For that matter, the level of debate on health care was and continues to be poor, with some exceptions.
I think Martin's speech today in New York was a good idea. Stressing the cost to American homebuilders is good strategy. Of course, like most dumping and subsidy issues, the losers on the American side are widely distributed and the winners on the American side are concentrated and organized. Softwood lumber can be solved in basically two ways: through government action in Canada (changing how we set stumpage fees) or through government action in the US. I'm not convinced that a speech in New York is reaching the key people on the US side, but I don't know the legislative geography on this issue very well. It won't make things worse.
A split of the Internet into two or more networks could be bad news.
Did you know that there might be 25,000 mercenaries (employees of private security companies) working for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq? It's an interesting phenomenon.
Looks a turf war between Natural Resources and Environment over the Kyoto implementation plan has resulted in collateral damage (resignations of key people from NRCan). I wonder if this Kyoto plan will work. Probably not.
We're on a first-name basis. I fly all the time. So it just makes you wonder who the chimpanzees are who designed this list.
City of Toronto bureaucrats refused to let Natalie Glebova, this year's Miss Universe, open a festival. She could open the festival, if she didn't wear her sash and tiara and was not referred to as Miss Universe or a beauty queen. Instead, she could be referred to as "a person of note contributing to our community." Even worse, it seems that the Barenaked Ladies were prohibited from playing at a different event because of their name.
Morons.
Meant to link to Declan McCullagh's important article on Internet governance a few days ago. It talks about a fragmented Internet, part governed by the UN and part governed by ICANN. The UN working group McCullagh refers to is interesting. You can read about its forthcoming report.
Big Red Machine: How the Liberal Party Dominates Canadian Politics by Stephen Clarkson
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