There was an 'interesting' piece on the CBC about immigration. The point of the story was that we should allow all immigrants, basically no screening process. It was based mostly on prominent Canadians who came here from another country, but who would have failed Canada's current immigration "test".

They mentioned Alexander MacKenzie was mentioned. Yup, it's pretty hard to beat the restrictive immigration rules of a country that doesn't exist. Would Canada have come up with another 2nd Prime Minister without Alex? Or would the country have been more likely to simply fold. Years after defeating the Americans in the War of 1812, I'm kinda doubting your average Canadian, nor leadership, would feel very terrified by anybody.

Also mentioned was one gentleman by the name of Wayne Gretzky. No, The Great One did not immigrate here from some other country. Nor did his father. His grandfather however, was an immigrant to Canada. The main point made by the reporter was that Wayne Gretzky's grandfather misspelled his own last name, originally spelled Gretsky.

The point being, that by todays standards of requiring a person being able to spell their own name properly to live and work here, we would have lost the greatest hockey player to ever live. Considering literacy rates 100 years ago, a guy writing an 'S' backwards on an official immigration form becomes understandable if not admirable, when taking background into regard. Is a hypothetical situation 100 years ago really the kind of data the average Canadian should base their opinions on? I kinda doubt it.

The best part of the mini-doc was when the reporter made reference to the fact that he would have failed the current immigration checks. And he took it after living here for over 40 years. And yet, he ends up working for the CBC trashing the Canadian government on public television. Funny, huh?

Labels: CBC

The last time I'd tried Google's 411 service, it was only functioning in the US of A. I'm not sure when it started working in Canada, but it worked for me today!

It's a completely FREE service, which is a hell of a lot better than what the phone companies will offer you. And it seems to work a hell of a lot better than the 411 that Manitoba Telecom Services offers. And like I said, it doesn't cost anything, which is much nicer than paying a f*#%ing dollar just to get a phone number.

It's very simple. Dial 1-800-GOOG-411 and follow the voice prompts. You'll be connected to your desired connection within seconds. Give it a shot, it's brilliant. And did I mention it's free?

Labels: etc

My question to Conservative party supporters across the country is: why in the hell would anybody defend this ignorant clown?

Many point to the fact that the video was taken seventeen years ago. His attitude could have changed over such a long period of time, they claim. Then again, maybe they haven't. What we do know, is that once upon a time this guy had a seriously despicable attitude towards homosexuals.

In addition to having a bad attitude, Lukiwski demonstrated extremely poor judgment in allowing a statement like this to be video taped, even if it was meant as a joke. It really makes a guy wonder what other videos Lukiwski has starred in.

Tom Lukiwski's career in politics is probably finished for good. At this point, he's no longer an asset in the House of Commons, but a liability. For this reason, he should go, now. It would also send a strong message that the Conservative Party of Canada will not stand for homophobia amongst its members. I do believe his apology is heart-felt and honest, but his current demotion from parliamentary secretary is merely a slap on the wrist.

Lukiwski is entitled to his opinions, and entitled to video tape all kinds of crass, confusing, and offensive jokes. But I don't think any Canadian would want someone with a sense of humor as exhibited to be their representative.

Labels: politics, Tom Lukiwski, YouTube

Via Susan Delacourt:

It happened when Liberal leader Stephane Dion got up to ask a second round of questions, abandoning the Cadman controversy and turning to the Canada-Obama affair, which the NDP has been hammering away at all week.

Harper said: "I would point out to the Leader of the Opposition that when he was throwing around wild accusations of scandal, the leader of the NDP was already on top of this issue." [...]

Dion, to his credit, however, had a pretty decent comeback. "We do not know how to choose among all the scandals he has," the Liberal leader said.

Which brings us back to the last Liberal leadership race:
It would appear that Stephane Dion is still having a tough time "making priorities"

Labels: politics, Stephane Dion, Stephen Harper, YouTube

Canada's greatest newish rock n' roll band - The Waking Eyes (2006 Juno nominees) - have a new album coming out in June. It's the bands second album, and it's called Holding On To Whatever It Is.

AND, you can download the whole thing here in a ZIP file!

Listen to it, enjoy it, and then buy several copies for yourself, friends, and family when it actually hits the streets in June!

Labels: music, Waking Eyes

Duh:

Later pub hours fail to alleviate Britain's drinking problem.

Stop what you're doing, Global Warming has ended. I'm even gonna be lazy and just quote the whole damn thing:

Over the past year, anecdotal evidence for a cooling planet has exploded. China has its coldest winter in 100 years. Baghdad sees its first snow in all recorded history. North America has the most snowcover in 50 years, with places like Wisconsin the highest since record-keeping began. Record levels of Antarctic sea ice, record cold in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile -- the list goes on and on.

No more than anecdotal evidence, to be sure. But now, that evidence has been supplanted by hard scientific fact. All four major global temperature tracking outlets (Hadley, NASA's, GISS, UAH, RSS) have released updated data. All show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously.

A compiled list of all the sources can be seen here. The total amount of cooling ranges from 0.65C up to 0.75C -- a value large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years. All in one year's time. For all four sources, it's the single fastest temperature change ever recorded, either up or down.

Scientists quoted in a past DailyTech article link the cooling to reduced solar activity which they claim is a much larger driver of climate change than man-made greenhouse gases. The dramatic cooling seen in just 12 months time seems to bear that out. While the data doesn't itself disprove that carbon dioxide is acting to warm the planet, it does demonstrate clearly that more powerful factors are now cooling it.

Let's hope those factors stop fast. Cold is more damaging than heat. The mean temperature of the planet is about 54 degrees. Humans -- and most of the crops and animals we depend on -- prefer a temperature closer to 70.

Historically, the warm periods such as the Medieval Climate Optimum were beneficial for civilization. Corresponding cooling events such as the Little Ice Age, though, were uniformly bad news.

While this news is interesting, I highly doubt it's going to make the Al Gore's and David Suzuki's go away. Nor will it stop people from looking at me like I'm a homicidal maniac for letting my car run (extensively) when it feels like -40 outside. What it may do, however, is make John and Jane Public rethink how they feel about socialist, wealth redistributing entities like the Kyoto Accord.

Labels: Environment, Y2Kyoto

Jebus the Penguins are going to be a scary scary team now. By adding Hossa to the lineup, they have got three of the top playmakers/scorers. Crosby, Malkin, Hossa are three names that I would love to have on my roster.

How many goalies are the Duck's gonna put in net who go by the name "J.S." From Guigere to Aubin, neither has ever rocked their real name. Strange.

It's a lot of fun though, to watch the TSN douche-bags on TV talking on their cell-phones. And watching John Furguson defend his aweful performance as Leafs GM is also entertaining.

As always, I predict the Canucks will win The Cup. But only because they're amazing.

Labels: NHL

Kosovo has declared it's independence from Serbia today. All free nations should celebrate the occasion but sadly, that is not the case.

Prime Minister Hashim Thaci described the new nation as democratic (hurrah!) and "multi-ethnic". A "multi-ethnic" society seems to me to be a much better option than a "multi-cultural" society. It's a term that is equally welcoming of immigrants, but doesn't suggest that people can necessarily import the values of their homeland. Which is a very important distinction.

My money's on multi-ethnic in the long run. It seems a much stabler idea, not so prone to waves of cultural import.

Labels: democracy, multiculturalism

I have a brief history of taking money from old people by kicking their asses around golf courses, it paid for a years worth of tuition for me. It's not my fault if people make stupid bets!

Stephen Taylor has a post up about an upcoming Liberal fund raiser, where they're auctioning off the right to play in a foursome with Paul Martin.

How much fun would it be to beat the ever living crap out of that old man on 18 holes of golf? And not to mention having approximately 4 hours to unload on him. Then again, they did call him Mr. Dithers while he was in power, so it could very well be a 9 hour round of golf. I can just imagine him deciding weather he wants to shank a 9-iron into the bush or rope-hook the 8-iron into his caddie's throat.

Tennis with Bob Rae may be a bit of a challenge, I don't think he's the kinda guy who would get into something like that if he sucked. But I'm saving my money for when they offer up a five-round mixed martial arts fight with Stephane Dion. How do you say roundhouse in French?

Labels: Liberal Party, Stephane Dion

Has Warren Kinsella violated his own closely held beliefs on violating human rights?

Warren Kinsella has been a happy crusader against Free Speech in the Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant cases. He says the cases against them are without merit, but he believes that the process is important... even though it is a totally one-sided process that has convicted every single person to become entwined in it. Even though it puts extreme limits on free speech. Even though Free Speech is an actual freedom, whereas the right not-to-be-offended is not a right. But the process is important, Kinsella tells us.

Why is the process so important? To quote Kinsella:

So: close your eyes, and imagine for a moment that you are a Jew, and you open the front door to take your children to school one morning, and someone has scrawled a swastika on your doorstep. Or imagine, instead, that you are a person of colour, and you jolt awake one night to see some teenagers running away, leaving a cross burning on your lawn. Or, imagine that you are a gay kid - living in the closet and living in fear - and you step up to your school locker, and someone has scrawled "GOD HATES FAGS" on the front of it.

It's just words, some say; it's just a couple of symbols. Big deal. No one has hit you, no one has beaten you up.

Okay, fair point. So close your eyes and imagine for a moment that you are Ezra Levant, who is a Jew, and you hear that this prominent Liberal writer named Warren Kinsella has been writing an awful lot of criticism about you. So you go to his website and search for "Levant", and you click on the link titled It's Easy to Get Depressed Some Days. Staring back at you is an image of two swastikas centered with the words "White Power".

Since Ezra is a Jew and is personally named in the same post, this could easily be interpreted as a personal and racist attack against him. And not just Ezra either. Any Jew who wandered across Warren's website and saw this glaringly racist image staring back at them could have just as easily been horrified.

So why shouldn't Kinsella be forced to defend himself in front of the Canadian HRC? For exactly the same reasons why Ezra shouldn't be there. Because when taken in context, neither instance would be considered offensive by most reasonable people. Kinsella posted an offensive image to prove that there are still racist assholes in Canada, not with the intent to offend Jews, even though an uninformed observer could easily be offended by it.

Ezra's publication of the Mohammed Cartoons could, and in has case was found to be offensive to some Muslims. But again, when taken in context, Ezra was just publishing the cartoons to inform the public. At the time, millions of Muslims world-wide were rioting in response to the offensive cartoons. Every single media outlet on the planet reported on the riots, but there were a VERY select few that had the stones to republish the cartoons. Obviously the images were offensive to many Muslims, but the rest the rest of the world has a right to know exactly what it was that caused such unrest. Sadly Ezra was the only publisher in Canada with the stones to actually give the public the complete and unvarnished context of the riots. If a few cartoons are responsible for mass rioting, death, and fatwas, the public deserves to see what the cartoons look like, if not for the sole purpose of gaining an understanding of what Muslims find offensive.

If there were any justice in this country, Warren Kinsella should be held to the same level of accountability as Ezra Levant. But Kinsella's a friend of Richard Warman and Ezra is his avowed enemy. So it begs the question, why can Warren Kinsella post swastika's on his website, but Ezra Levant gets hauled before the thought police for publishing material offensive to Muslims? There is a double-standard there, is there not?

Labels: Ezra Levant, Human Rights, Warren Kinsella