Being A Non Voter

15 January 2005 – 12:01 am

This list by Jim Moore is a beautiful thing.

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Flag Will Return In Newfoundland

6 January 2005 – 9:45 pm

I just read that the Hon. Danny Williams has announced that his government will reraise the Canadian flag in the near future, whether or not he’s able to achieve the deal that he’s been seeking with the Government of Canada. Williams said that the flags would be put back up because they’d made their statement and people were now talking about the issue.

… [O]ur problem is not with the people of the country. It’s with the prime minister, it’s with the leader of the country.

The message is being heard loud and clear. People are talking about it. They are reacting and it’s the subject of debate in the country. That’s exactly what we want to accomplish.

I suspect that the Premier also making a local political calculation. Newfoundlanders have a strong independent streak, but despite the narrowness of the Confederation vote back in 1949 I don’t think many would choose to break the union now. It’s in the best interests of the Premier to pick a fight with the Feds, but not to appear as a seperatist. Letting the flag issue drag out too long risked weakening support his real issue (offshore royalties) among the more patriotic citizens of Newfoundland and Labrador, and among other Canadians.

I just hope that the Premier is right. It’s possible that not everyone sees it this way, but I’ve often thought that one goal of equalization was to be uneccessary. Allowing the provincial governments to control all their offshore royalties strikes me as the best available way to achieve that. I could be wrong about this (economics is not my strongest area) but that’s they way I see it right now.

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Lament for the Fallen

5 January 2005 – 11:50 pm

Like the good Canadian that I sometimes manage to be, I watched a few games of the 2005 World Junior hockey tournament, including the gold medal match. I didn’t actually go to Grand Forks to see any games; I like hockey but I don’t have nearly enough hockey fan in me to brave the large, loud crowds at The Ralph. But, that’s not what I really wanted to post about.

I was wandering between my computer and television, watching the Canadians win against Team Russia in a rather dramatic fashion. Team Canada this year was clearly one of the most skilled and well matched squads ever (a credit to both the players and the bench staff), but I also got the feeling that many of their opponents were not playing at anything close to the same level. And, that thought led me to wonder how many good hockey players were not and never will play for Team Russia because they are conscripts dying in Chechnya, without the politcal or economic means to avoid the draft.

There might not actually be that many, but I suspect no one will ever really know. I must say though that it felt strange to read (courtesy of John “Global Guerrillas” Robb) the day after that several more Russian soldiers just died. I’m not sure why exactly this occured to me during a hockey game, but it did.

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Humour In The News

5 January 2005 – 1:40 am

I was reading an article about some American meat packers advocating a more open border between Canada and the US. The story isn’t earth shattering, I think it is well known the beef import ban was hurting many US packers. I’m posting about it here because of this one quote that made me smile.

Mark Dopp of the American Meat Association says all Canadian cattle should be allowed into the U.S., given that the two countries now have almost identical rules in place when it comes to testing for and dealing with cases of mad cow disease.

“Calling Canadian beef unsafe is like calling your twin sister ugly,” he said Monday.

It doesn’t get much more straightforward than that.

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