One of the most memorable afternoons I spent in Ottawa last year was on the steps of Parliament Hill, attending a commemoration of the Ukrainian famine, the Holodomor. It was an emotional experience.

Ukraine’s president Yushchenko (he of the attempted poisoning) was on a state visit to coincide with Canada’s recognition of the great crime perpetrated by Stalin against the Ukrainian people. A large crowd heard prayers by an Orthodox priest, a stirring traditional choir and moving speaches by the president, and then Minister of Multiculturalism, Jason Kenney.

Many participants were moved to tears, not just those whose families and former countrymen had suffered under Communist tyranny. All present recognized the importance of the moment, despite rumours that Canadian officials had cautioned government representatives to use muted language. Concern was apparently expressed about references to Stalin, lest latter day foreign dignitaries be offended. Whatever.

I couldn’t help recalling this event when revelations of anti-Ukrainian comments by Michael Ignatieff came to light. Of course, the leader of the opposition insisted these were taken out of context. Ultimately, only he knows what he really thinks in his heart of hearts about Ukraine and its long-suffering people.

I will only add one observation. I had an weird sinking feeling some years ago when I heard almost identical remarks from two prominent Russians about their country’s position in the world and relationship to its neighbours. One commentator was Prince Michael Romanov, head of the old royal family in exile in an interview with William F. Buckley. The Prince had been (I believe) born and raised outside of Russia and lived most of his life in Switzerland. The other was Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of an ultra-nationalist movement in Russia.

Both gentlemen insisted, among other things, that Russia’s “natural frontier” was the Baltic; and Prince Michael addedthat  the small Baltic states were really unable to govern themselves and needed “Russian guidance” in their affairs. Small comfort to the Letts, Lithuanians and Estonians I’m sure.

What struck me was the similarity between the geopolitical views of two men on, ostensibly, quite different parts of the political spectrum. What did this say, I wondered, about the Russian self-image for them to share these opinions?

Neither were asked, nor did they volunteer any opinions about Ukraine, but one can imagine what they might be.

My experience of reality of eastern Europe is that such views are literally imparted with mother’s milk. One must therefore suspect that, whatever Mr. Ignatieff’s actual views, it is no coincidence that they bubbled up at an inconvenient moment.

Ukrainians, and Ukrainian-Canadians might be well served to ask some probing questions of the Liberal leader, given that his views on international politics are generally well formed. One may hope that they do so before the next general election.

   

Thanks to Bourque.com for showcasing articles one might never otherwise read, articles that provide insight into the pretzel logic of the Left. So it was that last week Linda McQuaig offered the hypothesis that Canadian bank executives were manipulating our political system.

While this intellectual gambit is not a reach, given her previous writings, its smooth segue from fact to fiction is a little frightening. First, let’s give her credit for investigating a throw-away line in the Raitt tape, about an encounter between Michael Ignatieff and the Liberal party’s major creditors. She grilled John McCallum, who attended the meeting, about apparent threats the bank executives directed at the Liberal leader.

The gist of the “conspiracy” was that bank CEO’s stood up at the aforementioned meeting and told Mr. Ignatieff that they wouldn’t extend further loans to the Liberal party if he plunged the country into another election.

OK. Rather than invoke shadows of the Trilateral Commission, isn’t it just a little plausible that bankers could be reluctant to lend the Libs money? Wouldn’t you be? What would be the prospects of re-payment if the already-indebted party rolls the dice and loses the prospective election (which it may as easily do)?

Further, Ms McQuaig quotes Mr. McCallum as saying that some CEOs “opposed the Liberal-NDP coalition”. Whoops! How easily the misinformation flows. Wasn’t there a third spunky guy up there on the dais? Oh right, we’re trying to forget about him. Can’t imagine why the alleged CEOs would want to agree with 70% of Canadian on the ill-fated coalition.

Blurred LaRouchian visions of conspiracies notwithstanding, the tenor of Ms McQuaig’s article jives with a general anti-Ignatieff malaise spreading through the Star. This seems to reflect an increasing realization that Mr. Ignatieff is not the Great Left Hope. This piece by Thomas Walkom expresses the same sentiment. 

One wonders whether the usually compliant folks at the Star don’t realize that the Liberal Party is pragmatic, that it bends to the electoral winds? That said, it must still come as a shock to see as nice a fellow as Mr. Ignatieff appear to be ideologically unreliable - at least from the Torstar perspective. Oh well, there’s always the other two members of the coalition.

   

Readers will have heard about the lady hand-cuffed, detained and fined by police in Laval, Quebec for not holding an escalator handrail in the subway. Bela Kosoian’s rough treatment at the hands of an officer was, according to police, exacerbated by her yelling at them to “do (their) job elsewhere”. This was not to be tolerated according to Laval police spokesman Lieutenant Daniel Guerin.

Quite a turn of events for Montreal, a city generally known for a “live and let live” attitude, where jaywalking seems mandatory. Superficially, it appears to be yet another example of police picking on otherwise law-abiding citizens rather than as Ms Kosoian suggested in the quote above – going to “find real crooks”. We’ve written before in these pages about the related phenomenon of speed traps staffed by groups of strapping young officers while grow-ups and other forms of criminality go apparently unpunished.

This raises the question, are police really becoming glorified by-law officers while ignoring more serious crimes? If so, are they doing so because they want to or because they feel frustrated with a legal system where they can’t expect due process to produce real justice?

Evidence is mixed. One must have sympathy for law enforcement officers and the daily hazards they face. However, this sympathy is tempered by the common petty “finery” and worse behavior. For instance, when my wife had her mirror clipped by an Ottawa transit bus last year she was quickly chased down by a squad car with lights flashing - “Don’t you know you have to stop after colliding with another vehicle?” the officer screamed. It was only when she showed her Alberta driver’s license that he relented. Takes a big man to scream at a woman alone in her car. Unfortunately, much worse behaviour is reported all the time, most recently with a 72-year-old woman tasered by a hulking patrolman in Texas. The woman was belligerent, but you have to wonder, what was the officer thinking? Readers can judge for themselves.

In an odd non sequitur, the Globe article seems to justify the public’s death by a thousand tickets. It remarks that police often use by-laws and regulations to target criminals - anti-loitering provisions to hinder prostitution and drug dealing, motor vehicle infractions against motorcycle gangs. Rather than justifying by-law exuberance (more often than not generated by an apparent revenue-generating imperative), this argument suggests that it’s often too difficult to nail felons through due process (think Al Capone and tax-evasion) so they must resort to unconventional methods.

There may be something to this, because there is other evidence of this problem. Proponents of mandatory minimum sentences essentially argue that judges (or more broadly speaking, “the system”) cannot be trusted to impose penalties fitting the crimes. Similarly, proponents of victims rights maintain that criminals are perpetually getting the benefit of the doubt, to the exclusion of those they wronged.

That said, ineffective policing - or the perception of same - has resurfaced at the centre a couple of recent cases of vigilante justice. In Toronto, a Chinatown merchant detained a shoplifter, while in Oklahoma a pharmacist gunned down a would-be thief. In yet more evidence of the nature of the “system”, both men face charges, the latter first-degree murder. The shooting, reminiscent of a similar incident in Calgary some years ago, sparked some pithy commentary by Dennis Miller on Fox News.

While no system is perfect, ample evidence of misdirected policing and at best erratic sentencing must contribute to the public’s frustration and even to some wanting to take the law into their own hands. Ticketing the public may be justified, but misses the obvious requirement of prioritization and accountability. What does the public (who merely pay the police) want, more speed traps or crack downs on gangs and other violent criminals? I was thinking of that again today as I saw a fleet of tow trucks dragging cars away to the impound lot ahead of a street cleaning crew. But maybe they were impounding criminals’ cars under the guise of by-law enforcement. Yeah, that must be it.

   

Conservatives commonly lament about the taxes they pay for programs and other government nonsense they disagree with.  But taxation is of course not a voluntary exercise and much spleen is vented about the way these involuntary contributions to the “common good” are used.

By contrast, the Left parties are the parties of redistribution, at least in theory gleefully paying taxes in order to benefit others and society in general. They would likely deny any particular glee they seem to derive from spending other people’s money. But they do anyway.

How ironic then to read of a private members’ bill recently proposed by the NDP’s Bill Siksay. I should mention here that, in my experience, Mr. Siksay is one of his party’s most reasonable MPs, someone who is civil, whom one can deal with.

That said, Mr. Siksay’s legislation proposes that Canadians who oppose military spending should be able to have that portion of their tax dollars placed in a special fund that would not be used for that purpose. Or, as one local newsreader described it, those who don’t want to support “the military machine” could have their money go elsewhere. I guess it’s a kind of high-minded conscientious objection that starts with your wallet.

Mr. Siksay appears to be proposing this, as MrK would say, “without irony”. The NDP regularly implies every bit of government spending is justified, (literally) from soup to nuts, and when the question of spending comes up they form a chorus of “more, more, more”. To them, program should be layered on program, “structures” built to correct all the social ills they diagnose. Quoting their politically deceased Liberal confrere, Stephane Dion, the government must have as much “fiscal room” as possible – tax-payers’ dollars to spend.

All that spending is justified, and more. All except for military spending. There we’ll take the moral high ground and withhold our taxes. Forget about the millions of taxpayers who simple have their wealth taken, with little influence on exactly how it’s spent.

Fine. You want to withhold money from the military? We’ll withhold it from all the other government spending we don’t like. In fact, why don’t we have a separate sheet in our tax return where we can tick off boxes for the areas where we want to spend our money? If you’re like a friend of mine, who says he’d “happily pay more taxes”, you can tick all the boxes. You can even write a number in the that box marked “gift to the federal government”. Last time I looked it was still there.

Perhaps Mr. Siksay should give his proposal more thought. He might end up with less (tax dollars) than he was counting on.

   

Fox News has taken some pleasure lately in “outing” famous newsmen, now retired, with respect to their notably leftish sympathies. This is based on public statements they’ve made since their retirement from their unfailingly objective journalism. The list includes notables Walter Cronkite, Sam Donaldson and Ted Koppel.

This is hardly necessary in Canada, where one pretty much knows the lay of the land, the conventional wisdom, because it’s everywhere. That said, even beyond the clutch of non-liberal journalists there are a number of thoughtful writers.

Paul Wells, whom I allude to in the headline, is one. He is clever, informed and a good, entertaining writer (Mr. K. doesn’t share my assessment). I respect his writing and hesitated over my headline. At times, though, it’s evident he’s a product of his milieu.

So it was that in an interesting article on innovation in Canada Mr. Wells points out that, despite Canada’s leading support for business R&D, two recent government-commissioned reports show us lagging in technical innovation. This could be the topic of an entire entry by itself, but suffice it to say I agree with Mr. Wells when he says Canadian governments have kept our business “fat and lazy” – which I’m assuming means they’ve subsidized too liberally. Certainly, our business leaders have shown an unhealthy yen to cut sweetheart deals with government for their companies – but no more than have unions or other groups.

But Wells’ own views on the economy and wealth creation appear to be clouded by similar thinking. Remarking that Canada’s economic growth has trailed the United States “more or less forever”, he goes on to say that this means we have “less money to keep in our pockets or use for social programs”.

Fair enough for the first one, but is social spending really the first – indeed, the only – thing government dollars should go to? How about infrastructure, or the military?

This is where I would say Wells falls into conventional Canadian thinking – wherein the economy’s “surplus” wealth creation is used primarily to fund a plethora of government programs. This may be the very attitude that hampers private sector  innovation in Canada.

More broadly, is government really the purpose of wealth creation? It appears that in many Canadian minds, wealth creation isn’t an end in itself, it’s merely a means to fund government programs. The economy – and everyone in it, presumably – is a mere servant of the state. Truly, many Canadians prefer the reverse of Ronald Reagan’s famous line about being “a people with a government”.

Any political culture where people look first to government to solve their ills cannot help but stifle the innovative impulse, which is often motivated simply by the personal drive to excel and build the better mousetrap. Layer onto that politically correct imperatives (legislated and subsidized by government) that favour sameness of outcome over excellence and look askance at competition itself.

You are left with the economic truism that you get whatever you subsidize. So maybe government is subsidizing R&D fairly generously, but subsidizing even more behaviour that saps the independent thinking and striving behaviour of entrepreneurs.

Canada will flounder as long as the belief persists that the country is simply a patchwork of social programs and legislation.

   

Things are bad when you don’t take your own advice. So it was  last Saturday when I delved deep into the Globe and Mail.

It reminded me of a running conversation I used to have with my dad, when he lived in Ontario. “Did you read what they wrote in the Star”? he’d say, palpable anger in his voice. “I don’t read  the Star”. “Well, it makes me angry to read what they wrote  about the party/the Conservative government/Stephen Harper” (take your pick). “Then stop reading it” I’d say again. “But it makes me so angry”. You get the idea.

I was having flashbacks to these conversations as I found myself knee-deep in the latest “Focus & Books” section, like a thirsty dog going back to a mud hole. But then I had a flash of insight. I realized that the Globe couldn’t be merely what it  seemed, a compendium of establishment boilerplate. No, beneath  that weathered patina was a cleverly concealed core of hard- nosed, fair-minded journalism.

 At the bottom of F&B’s page one, under the rubric “International – Diplomatic Deficiencies” was the headline “How Harper’s European  spring turned sour”, an article by Doug Saunders. What seemed at first to be just rehashed snippets from European dailies and trash talk from diplomatic buffet tables had a lot more to it. Firstly, Mr. Saunders used the term “Prime Minister Stephen Harper”,  something so rarely done that it clearly was a wink to closet  Conservatives everywhere. He also mentioned that Canadian  officials “across Europe” say it has “become difficult (for Canada) to get any significant hearing from European leaders”;  and quotes a former Canadian diplomat as saying Canada “has become invisible in Europe”. But surely this simply reflects a clandestine government directive giving our officials carte blanche for more catered receptions across the continent and more frequent bi-lateral and multi-lateral discussions. Get to it guys!

 The story headline suggested that “rigid”, “bullying”  tactics of our government has “alienated our allies”. Ah, just  another sly nod to the wise. Residingt in Europe, Mr. Saunders must be alluding to the inhabitants’ sophisticated preference for rigidity and dominance amongst friends.

Skipping over Tabatha Southey’s light-hearted tribute to Dick  Cheney I got to the prize of the section – an expose of Liberal  MP Ruby Dhalla. Despite the slightly misleading headline*, it didn’t disappoint.

After the troubles with Ms Dhalla’s former employees last week, obviously a clear-headed, if not hard-nosed look at the MP’s background  was in order. Jane Taber’s questions must have set the Ontario MP back on her heels, the interviewer throwing sphere upon  sphere of soft rawhide right into Ms Dhalla’s political strike zone.  Ironically, perhaps the MP was helped by what Ms Taber describes  as the “Ottawa Old Boys’ Club” who have made her the target of “whispers and derision”. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

 So it was that she was forced to describe “her own journey” and  explain “why she is perceived to be a real diva”. The latter she  blames on the fact that “people just look at an image and pass judgment”. (Sadly, there just seem to be more and more images  appearing all the time, many in full colour) Similarly, she  observes that “when you’re young, you’re female, you’re from an ethnic community and you’re single, you know these are all  traits and qualities … (that ) are not inviting for the type of political environment we have”. Then the light bulb went on. That’s why my wife was never recruited to run for the Liberal Party before we got married!

In short, Taber was just as hard-hitting as one would expect. She wasn’t going to simply let Ms Dhalla make lemonade out of  life’s lemons.

It just goes to show that, you can be cynical about media coverage, but sometimes the bias is in the eye of the beholder. In a clever paper like the Globe appearances can be deceiving. If they really thought all the stuff they wrote, do you think they’d be so obvious about it?  Get real.

   

Don’t expect to get fed at an embassy reception in Ottawa unless you come early. The professional grazer corps has perfect timing and they assault the buffets tables elbows-up, like feisty grannies at the bargain bin.

It was at an embassy reception last year, after the food had run out, that I encountered a German parliamentarian; quite an engaging gentleman. I asked what had brought him to Ottawa, and he said he was chairman of the Germany-Canada friendship group in the Bundestag.

This piqued my interest. What would such a “friendship group” do, or hope to accomplish? Would they haunt the beer tents at Kitchener’s Oktoberfest; visit Lunenburg? No, the gentleman told me he had a great interest in the Canadian wilderness and had taken the ambassadors’ tour of the North some years ago. (For those of you who don’t know, the tour is a trip run by DND and Foreign Affairs every year for foreign diplomats to see Canada’s Arctic).

Then he volunteered that Canada-related issues had actually come up for debate in the German Bundestag. Intrigued, I asked what those might be. “Well”, he said, “for example, we had a whole day’s debate and related hearings on the Canadian seal hunt”. “We brought in all sides, Inuit hunters, sealers, environmental activists…”

At this point I could imagine the gratification of the German taxpayer, knowing that their hard-earned (OK, I exaggerate) pay was being used to fly Inuit and Newfoundland sealers across the globe and put them up in posh Berlin hotels. Clearly, German parliamentarians have already solved, or on their way to solving, all their thorny domestic issues. Unemployment for instance is only 12%, largely due to the over-regulated labour market, but this rarely affects politicians.

Somehow it strikes me that, having the Bundestag debating sealing is something like having our parliament debate the “sustainability” of German beet farming; and then flying farmers and anti-beet activists to Ottawa.

The lesson that one can draw from all this is that the EU position on sealing has less to do with serious public policy than domestic political imperatives. If you’ve worked in government you’ll know that it’s often difficult to get things done. Inter-party horse-trading and negotiation can be exhausting, and often for little result.

So compared to grappling with thorny domestic issues, passing high-minded resolutions on problems abroad is like hitting the political “easy button”. It’s a great way to get a feel-good political win without all that pain and effort.

This is what unwitting Canadian sealers were up against. To add insult to injury, despite where the facts sit on the issue, many Canadian commentators are saying good riddance. We may be technically right, they say, but wouldn’t it be nice to put this ancient argument to bed? Thanks for nothing guys.

It’s commendable that the federal government is defending sealers even if the same commentators say it’s window dressing and too little too late. However, as we’ve seen on other issues, trying to use facts against an emotional argument is a very tough row to hoe. On the other hand, maybe we could launch a parliamentary investigation into German beet growing? 

P.S. For enlightening insights into Brigitte Bardot’s other opinions, check this out.

   

What better way to celebrate your fiftieth birthday than to be told you have nowhere to go but down. Hardly a surprise to anyone actually turning fifty. Thanks to Don Martin channeling his namesake Lawrence, that was what greeted Prime Minister Harper last week.

What filled the empty pages of the print media around the same time was also less than uplifting. In MacLean’s Paul Wells decided to devote several thousand words to a blow-by-blow account of all things intra-Conservative, particularly those dealing with former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. Odd that a usually diligent scribe like Wells would have written about the apparent disagreements surrounding Mr. Mulroney, but missed the very significant historical backdrop to these current events - or at least chose not to mention it.

Readers of a certain age will recall that, back before the Mulroney majorities, it was the Tories rather than the Liberals who were better known for fighting each other than their political opponents. This dated mostly back to the messy departure of John Diefenbaker as leader and the less-than-charming way Dalton Camp went about accelerating that departure.

So long was the shadow of Diefenbaker that he played a key role in torpedoing Brian Mulroney’s first run at the party leadership in 1976. As Mulroney recalls in his memoirs, the Chief’s convention speech administered a keen blow to the 37-year-old’s political solar plexus. “The leadership of the party … should never be entrusted to someone who has never sat in the House of Commons”. Hearing that, Mulroney turned to his wife and said “Honey, we’re dead in the water”.

No one can say how events would have unfolded had Dief not cast a pall on Mulroney. As it was, the constellations instead aligned behind Joe Clark, and we know the result of that.

There are a few former Conservative leaders around, from one who’s in cabinet (Stockwell Day) to one who rejected the 2003 merger and subsequently supported Paul Martin over Stephen Harper. By the standards of the post-Diefenbaker era and the Chretien/Martin feud, the current situation is - fortunately - a minor thing. Again, it’s surprising that Wells would have missed this. Guess he was spending all his time calling “sources” for the feud story.

Meanwhile, Terence Corcoran revived the lament of the Libertarians in the National Post.  You may recall the Prime Minister made a speech at the Manning Centre some weeks ago where he defended his record (essentially against Libertarian criticism of the Coyne variety).  As quoted in the same edition, Mr. Harper said “Individual freedom, political and economic, is one of our fundamental values. It is absolutely critical. But it must be tempered.” Not altogether an unreasonable statement. He continued by saying that Liberarianism is “a simple perspective I have a lot of sympathy for”. Perhaps Mr. Corcoran would take exception to the word “simple”. The PM continued “The problem with this notion”… (individuals exercising full freedom) “is, as conservatives (we) know from experience, that people who act irresponsibly in the name of freedom are almost never willing to take responsibility for their actions.” If you think about it, also not an unreasonable thing to say.

Then came the PM’s great blunder, according to Mr. Corcoran. He gave as an example the free-enterprisers of Wall Street, who sought freedom from regulation, only then to seek government assistance in their time of need. Perhaps this was too “simple” an example, but it was fairly accurate in describing the traits of human nature Mr. Harper was seeking to explain.  I don’t know if the Prime Minister was truly trying to tar Libertarians with the Wall Street brush - I doubt it - but he was trying to give an example of how people actually act, and the types of challenges this causes in the implementation of a political or economic philosophy. Of one thing I am certain; he wasn’t trying to “purge” anyone.

In fact, one might find it refreshing that a Prime Minister has actually thought through, and clearly cares about, the way political principles can be applied in the real world. I can’t think of the last time that happened. It’s also noteworthy that he can state a quite classic conservative viewpoint, while contrasting it with similar, sometimes conflicting viewpoints.

It’s worthwhile comparing that to the aforementioned Prime Minister, Brian Mulroney. Mr. Mulroney famously remarked that, under his tenure, there would be no ideological litmus tests in the Progressive Conservative party. This was seen as an enlightened position in the Canada of the early 1980’s (as you recall, the time of Reagan and Mrs. Thatcher). In practice, and I am speaking here from personal experience, philosophical conservatives were treated in that party as rather eccentric oddities. They were at best to be tolerated, as long as they kept quiet and didn’t break the china. Social conservatives were called “dinosaurs”, neo-conservatives met with bewilderment. In the end “no litmus test” meant no guiding philosophy or, more often, hostility to anyone desiring one. While there were no official “purges”, some of us ended up purging ourselves.

Fortunately, the modern party has a solid membership and a leadership that spans a broad cross-section of viewpoints. There are no litmus tests, but there is a policy book created by the membership. Nothing is perfect. Any human institution will be plagued by human failings, and occasionally these are reported as “feuds”. When it comes to these, it will be up to Conservatives to prove that we’ve learned something in the last 20 years.

   

I usually hesitate to write anything too personal in these pages because, well, who would care? But I find I have to make an exception this week. A while ago I was asked to send my CV to Ottawa to be considered for a part-time board appointment with the Canada Innovation Foundation. I was appointed last week.

Monday must have been a slow news day, because the Toronto Star decided to report the opposition’s reaction to the appointment, as MrK would say, “without irony”. The article, by Richard Brennan, can be seen here. The only reason I mention it is to correct the factual errors and omission in the article – all of which add a negative torque to the piece, and impugn my reputation, such as it is.

First, I didn’t resign my position on the judicial advisory committee “under opposition pressure” as claimed. Instead I willingly submitted my resignation immediately upon accepting the job in the minister’s office. One can’t of course work simultaneously in a minister’s office and serve on such a committee.

Second, the chief of staff job was (by definition) a political position. As a seasoned Hill reporter, Mr. Brennan would know that suggesting the position is somehow (or should be) non-political is incorrect and misleading. The minister had every legal and ethical right to employ whomever she chose. Even saying this was an “appointment” is stretching the truth. It misleads people into thinking hiring political staff is like making a GIC appointment, which it isn’t.

Call me naïve, but I also think it would have been appropriate to inquire after my qualifications for the appointment, which he didn’t. Of course the opposition will portray my taking a board position, essentially for expenses, to be “patronage”. But for a journalist to report it that way crosses the line. The way it was reported implies there’s no difference between my appointment and the scores of Liberals that have boarded the patronage gravy train over the years. This is ridiculous.

Of course one shouldn’t expect to be appointed to anything merely by virtue of acquaintance with a government politician. However, I don’t think knowing a politician should in and of itself disqualify someone from accepting a public appointment.

Lastly, the way this story was covered again underscores the, let’s say, predilections of the media. MacLean’s website linked to the story under the headline “PM again accused of patronage”. This is news? The opposition is always accusing the government of patronage. You might as well have a headline “study shows coffee breaks still longer in Ottawa”. What would be refreshing is a discussion of whether these tired old charges are really valid. But that would require work and objectivity.

Just as a bonus, the story also airs former astronaut Marc Garneau’s fears that I am likely a “climate change sceptic or outright denier”. Wow, this came as a shock to me. I’d be the last one to deny climate change – who believes in a static climate? As Mr. Garneau seems to be monitoring my opinions, I hope this is a consolation to him.

Despite my anger at the slant of the story, and the misinformation in it, I decided not to pursue this with the Star for fear of creating an even bigger story. This was a tough decision, and I had to set aside MrK’s wise advice in the process. Believe me, if you ever want to learn the consequences of the media’s actions, have them write something about you.