Coalition would do well with right leadership - poll

The latest Angus Reid poll suggests that an NDP-Liberal coalition could gain substantial support from the public, depending on who led it:

In one respect, the results of an Angus Reid poll to be released on Monday are not surprising — the Conservatives are at 35 per cent, the Liberals at 27 and the NDP are at 19 per cent; in Quebec, the Bloc leads with 37 per cent.

However, the poll also asked Canadians how they would vote if the Liberals and NDP went to the polls offering Canadians a coalition government, and here things get interesting.

According to the results published in Monday’s edition of La Presse, the Conservatives led by Stephen Harper would defeat a coalition led by Michael Ignatieff 40-34 per cent.

With Bob Rae as Liberal leader, the coalition and Conservatives would be tied.

However, if the coalition were to propose Jack Layton as prime minister, according to the Reid poll, it could defeat the Conservatives by 43-37 per cent.

From the Globe. I don't expect this to happen, but it's an interesting result. If nothing else, it sends a message to the Liberals about their leadership...

"Top kill" fails to stop gusher

The situation isn't getting any better:

With BP declaring failure in its latest attempt to stop the uncontrolled gusher feeding the worst oil spill in U.S. history, the company is turning to yet another mix of risky undersea robot maneuvers and longshot odds to plug the blown-out well.

Six weeks after the catastrophe began, oil giant BP PLC is still casting about for at least a temporary fix to the spewing well underneath the Gulf of Mexico that's fouling beaches, wildlife and marshland.

A relief well that's currently being drilled — which is supposed to be a better long-term solution — won't be done for at least two months. That would be in the middle of the Atlantic hurricane season, which begins Tuesday.

President Barack Obama said it is “as enraging as it is heartbreaking” that the most ambitious bid yet for a temporary solution failed.

BP said Saturday that the procedure known as the “top kill” failed after engineers tried for three days to overwhelm the crippled well with heavy drilling mud and junk 5,000 feet underwater.

From the Globe. Of course, it will stop eventually, but what will be left of the Gulf's rich biota by that time?

House seized over $363 water bill

In the US it's common for municipalities to sell the rights to collect on utility bills, much as they do with property taxes. Sometimes the results are horrible:



Via LargoWinch in this iTulip thread. Possibly the most perverse aspect of this is that the house this unfortunate woman was evicted from was still vacant months after the fact. Lovely, eh?

Municipality bans recording of council meetings

I guess this is what passes for democracy in Lac du Bonnet:

Lac du Bonnet RM council has decided to forbid its public meetings from being recorded.

At its May 25 meeting, council passed an official resolution stating that any recording of public meetings is no longer authorized.

The move will affect one ratepayer in particular — Lac du Bonnet's Dave Fournier, who for two years has regularly used his hand-held digital voice recorder to record council meetings.

Fournier, a cattle farmer, said he's shocked the RM would bar him from taping their meetings.

"It's just not fair," he said. "I don't understand why they're so scared."

He said he has an interest in municipal politics and records the meetings simply for his own reference. He also has some reading difficulties and can't write very well, so taping the meetings ensures he can always go back and listen to them, rather than trying to read transcripts or take notes.

Reeve Rick Lussier said council is not comfortable with being recorded.

From the Lac du Bonnet Leader.

Jason Kenney on political staff testifying

The federal government has, as you may know, seen fit to prohibit their political staff from testifying before parliamentary committees. The good folks at Stageleft have found something rather interesting, though. Jason Kenney just went on TV in defense of this policy, but back in his opposition days he was singing a different tune. Check him out, now and then:



It's worth noting that some Liberals might be a bit reluctant to promote this, given that it might remind people of just what Kenney wanted to question political staff about back in 2004. I guess it falls to us lefties to circulate the story...

Stem rust update

Remember this post last year about stem rust? Well, the problem has not gone away, and may in fact be getting worse:

Four new mutations of Ug99, a strain of a deadly wheat pathogen known as stem rust, have overcome existing sources of genetic resistance developed to safeguard the world's wheat crop. Leading wheat experts from Australia, Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas, who are in St. Petersburg, Russia for a global wheat event organized by the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative, said the evolving pathogen may pose an even greater threat to global wheat production than the original Ug99.

The new "races" have acquired the ability to defeat two of the most important stem rust-resistant genes, which are widely used in most of the world's wheat breeding programs.

"With the new mutations we are seeing, countries cannot afford to wait until rust 'bites' them," said Dr. Ravi Singh, distinguished senior scientist in plant genetics and pathology with the Mexico-based International Maize and Wheat Improvement Center (CIMMYT). "The variant of Ug99 identified in Kenya, for example, went from first detection in trace amounts in one year to epidemic proportions the next year."

From here (h/t Zarkov in this Kitco thread).

Senate may be about to justify its existence

The Senate is, not unreasonably, the target of a lot of criticism, but every so often it does something worthwhile. It may be about to do something of this sort with the rather perverse budget bill that the Conservatives have put forward:

Rebellious Liberal senators are threatening to carve large swaths out of an omnibus Conservative budget bill, excising everything from plans to sell off Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd. to breaking Canada Post’s monopoly on overseas mail.

“The Senate has very strong views because that’s where sober second thought comes in,” Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff said Wednesday. “I can tell you, Liberal senators are steaming for very good reason. This is a terrible way to do legislation and we said so last year, we said so this year.”

Bill C-9 is a confidence matter that could bring down the government if it is defeated. For that reason, the Conservative government has stacked it with measures that the opposition is unlikely to support – none of the political parties wants to go to the polls at this juncture.

The decision to lump all of these policies is an “abuse of power” on the part of the government, Mr. Ignatieff said. “But the issue is whether you trigger an election,” he said.

The Senate, however, could hive off the items that are not budget matters without risking an election. While the decision to do that has not been taken, there is strong sentiment running in that direction.

“We’ve done it before in my time with animal cruelty legislation,” said Joseph Day of New Brunswick when asked if the Senate could split up the 900-page bill. “The Senate will do what we are constitutionally required to do.”

From the Globe. Of course, in an ideal world the elected House of Commons would be the venue for this, but this is not an ideal world.

This does raise the question of what should be done with the Senate. The idea of an unelected body with legislative powers makes many Canadians uneasy, and with good reason, but there's another way to look at it. The House of Commons represents a snapshot of the will of the people at the time of the general election; the Senate could be seen as representing the cumulative will of the people over the course of several decades. Of course, if the House were elected by proportional representation the need for an upper house would be greatly diminished. In any case, this is academic, since it's highly unlikely that any government is going to open up the Constitution in this country any time soon.