Stephen Harper’s decision to shut down parliament has been met with criticism from all sides of the political spectrum. Is it a hugely political move? Yes. Is it to cover up the Afghan prisoner issue (that shouldn’t be an issue)? Yes. Has it hurt him? By all accounts, dramatically. The below poll by The Strategic Counsel explains how badly (source).

So where does that put us now. To understand that we have to start by understanding Harper’s strategy over that past 12 months. Since that ugly Liberal episode that will hereby be referred to as the ‘Dion Debacle’ the Liberals have struggled to maintain their image as the official opposition in Canada. This is largely due to the bill scheduling enforced by the Cons. Every time that the Liberals promise that they are going to bring down Horrible Harper and his America Loving Conservatives, they are faced with a confidence vote in the house that they can’t find the gall to vote against.

A prime example of this was the Home Renovation Tax Credit (I’ve written about this before). Its part of the economic recovery plan and returns up to $1,300 to homeowners who renovate their homes (homepage). They had been advertising the Tax Credit for quite a long time and it had been one of Harper’s promises in his 2008 election (if I remember correctly). The catch is that it was never actually approved by the House of Commons. After a couple of weeks of Iggy running his mouth about how they would ‘take the next opportunity’ to bring down the government, the Conservatives put the HRTC on the floor and made it a confidence motion. The Libs were now faced with a difficult decision: be yellow bellied politicians who can’t be taken seriously or fight an election with the public wondering who took away all that money they were promised. Tough choice, but time and time again in this situation, and others the Liberals have chosen to step down after talking themselves up. They are self defeating their desired image of being a strong opposition party.

You can turn around and say that this is another example of Harper using dirty political tactics to score political points and I would agree with you. He’s hardly the only one to do so however, and I’d argue that the Libs have historically been worse. I was alive to watch Chretien and the AdScam fun. Oh and Trudeau nationalizing a provinces industry to score political points in Ontario and Quebec, that’s not underhanded at all.

The real risk here for Canadians of all stripes is that Prorogation becomes an accepted convention in Canadian politics. If Iggy chooses yet again that he isn’t ready for an election and allows the Conservatives to steamroll him and his spineless party, he opens the door for future political parties to use prorogation as a political tool, something that is good for no Canadians.

Iggy came to campus last week and to much rave review. I couldn’t go but I heard that he talked about a lot of interesting stuff. There was some rabble there too. I didn’t hear from anyone who went however if he committed to actually being an opposition party and bringing down the government. No surprise there, all politicians are pragmatic like he is. You know he is thinking it though; the stakes are so much higher this time. He has damaged the Conservatives more in January than at any time in the last 12 months. He is at as good a position as he is ever going to be. He needs to force an election after the prorogation is over to show 1) that he has grown a pair of cahones 2) that prorogation is not an acceptable convention in Canadian politics and 3) that the Liberal party is confident enough in itself to actually act as the opposition Canadians want (even me).

Iggy has seen the flop, turn, and river. Its time for him to show his cards to see whether or not he has the full house he keeps talking about.

Where we stand

Now, I give you fair warning, either you or your head must be off, and that in about half no time! Take your choice! - The Queen from Lewis Carrol’s Alice in Wonderland

I believe that there is little doubt that last nights meeting sent a clear message to the President and Vice President External. So far, their strategy has been one of changing the rhetoric of the debate. I, like all councilors, have received numerous e-mails from lots of students. The voices from students has taken one of two tones. They are essentially as follows:

“How can council be in support of tuition increases? You should support Tim and Blake in their efforts to reduce tuition.”

“Blake and Tim have embarrassed me and all students by abusing their power to pursue their own political goals. I am not a fan of increasing tuition but I am also not a fan of allowing crazies to represent me”

A little artistic interpretation there but that’s what I take as being the gist. I doubt anyone would disagree with me on this point.

Both of these issues were brought up at council last night. Both are legitimate concerns. Lets start with tuition.

As I’ve already stated, there is a tuition issue; students have made that very clear. The response should be to allow students to voice their concerns to committee over several weeks. As Tahara put it very well at council meeting on Wednesday: “What about the students who couldn’t make it out tonight?”

This whole issue is about students and ensuring that they have their voices heard in AMS decisions. Pushing a huge policy issue to council and saying ‘Decide now!’ without proper consultation is an irresponsible way to be making policy. I would challenge anyone to argue differently. If you don’t trust me, trust the Duchess from AiWL

Take care of the sense, and the sounds will take care of themselves. - The Duchess

If we can set up a council that doesn’t allow anyone to push their own agenda and that students can easily voice their opinions (as they have this week) policies will take care of themselves and will become self evident. In the end, this should make our councilors jobs easier.

The other type of e-mails I’ve been getting speak to the other side of the same coin as in the previous debate: involving students in decisions.

More contributions from the Duchess, this time in not so good a way:

If everybody minded their own business, the world would go around a great deal faster than it does.

It most certainly would dear Duchess. But would it be a better world? No. This issue isn’t about speed, its about responsibility. The reckless actions of the President and Vice President were done without consultation with anyone (publicly at least). This isn’t the first time it has happened either. It is my opinion, and certainly the opinion of many students who have e-mailed me, that we can’t open ourselves up to more risk from the two of them. They have already done massive amounts of damage to us as a society.

What does this mean to students? It means that large scale projects (most notably the new SUB) are put at risk because of recklessness. It isn’t out of anger or retribution that there has been a move to recall Blake and Tim, it is about bringing the AMS into damage control mode, and not letting anything else happen to the society until the new executives are elected in January.

If you think the President and Executives should be able to run the AMS like their little fiefdom, without hearing the voices of students then you should support Tim and Blake. If you think that there should be checks and balances to our system and no one person (or small group of people) should be able to control the whole system, you should support their removal.

It was clear to me that the majority of students who came to council on Wednesday night chose the latter.

What happens from here?

In a strange twist, the future is probably actually clearer than the present. In my opinion this is what will take place:

1. Blake and Tim will be impeached on Monday night unless they can suddenly justify their actions better than he has been to date.

2. They will proceed to go to try and take the AMS to court.

3. They will finance their legal fees through the Student Legal Fund Society (it just so happens that Blake’s girlfriend sits on the board).

What happens after that is beyond the looking glass. It is Blake and Tim’s absolute right to take the AMS to court for what has happened. I would offer them some friendly advice if they are planning to go this route (as I’m sure you have discussed).

I’ll begin with some advice from the King:

Begin at the beginning and go on till you come to the end: then stop. - The King

You have gone through the motions and have reached the end of the road. Stop. Your passion about tuition is appreciated and you have successfully managed to make tuition a talking point for students. This is a good thing even if how you did it broke any standard of ethics I can think of. Over the next months we will be having a discussion with students around tuition and looking at the issue critically. I wasn’t around the AMS when our previous policy was passed and I look forward to learning more about the issue. What more do you get by not resigning? It would be the best thing for yourself and your sanity and the best thing for the AMS and council, who are keen to see you out the door.

You are verging on being viewed of as a zealot. Before everyone gets in a tiff about my use of that word I would like to define it. My definition of a zealot: ‘someone who, having lost sight of their objective, redoubles their effort’. Your back is against the wall and the issues are clearly over. What is more fighting going to gain you?

I wish could just close my eyes and count to 20 and this would all disappear. I’m sure you feel the same.

Let me see: four times five is twelve, and four times six is thirteen, and four times seven is — oh dear! I shall never get to twenty at that rate! - Alice

Things have gone beyond sideways. As I read the press releases and subsequent articles that came out I felt as though I was slipping into another dimension. How could this be? I think is the question on most people’s minds; and rightly so. How is it that a democratically elected President whose personal crusade is to ‘the eradication of oppression’  (from his facebook) so whimsically cast aside democracy, process, trust, and, lets be honest, common sense? As a council member, I feel oppressed. So do many students judging by the expected attendance at tonight’s council meeting. In truth, it would appear that Blake and Tim (Blim) have actually increased the net oppression on our campus during their time in office. Their actions have eroded the AMS’s ability to engage in any form of discussion with the university administration, VANOC, the BC Government and the federal government making student voices weaker than they were before.

How do I know that this has happened? Because as a senator and student leader I interact with people in these areas on nearly a daily basis. If I was polite I would say that the reason for these burnt bridges was because of a lack of cohesive stance on some issues. If I was truthful I would say that, in the eyes of bodies higher and more important than us, we look like whiny, spoiled little brats, throwing a tantrum in the aisle of the grocery store until Mom gets us the candy that we want. Is that how student leaders are supposed to act?

So how exactly did we get here? The answer is longwinded so I’m going to try and summarize it as best I can. Note that this is only how I see things. I think that many people will agree with me.

What is happening now is the climax of a war that has been raging for quite some time in the backrooms of the AMS. There are two sides in this conflict: idealists and realists. Steve Janke wrote a fantastic article about idealists and realists and he explains it much better than me but I’ll try and sum it up (here: just the first couple paragraphs). It encapsulates our situation very well. Idealists are individuals who have a view of an ideal world and work tireless to achieve it. In their minds, the ends always justify the means. As long as the real world moves incrementally closer to their perceived ideal world then it is worth it. In their minds, trampling on democracy, civil disobedience, and just being batshit crazy can all be justified by the world that they are trying to build (which to them is the world we all want, some of us just don’t know it yet). This is exactly the defense that Blake and Tim have used to justify their claim to the UN: we are lobbying for lower tuition for UBC students. The UN complaint may bring us a planck length closer to lower tuition, so to them, it shall be done by any means necessary.

On the other side of this war are the realists. They don’t have a teleological view of the world. To them, the way the world works is a summation of causes and effects that have lead us to this point. An ideal world doesn’t exist, in fact many of them would probably say that there are moralities such as right and wrong and not universal and are subject to vantage point. There are costs and benefits to every decision. If the benefits to the group outweigh the costs then action should be taken. They don’t oppose tuition reduction in our case, they just don’t want to drop a nuclear bomb on valuable relationships to do it. The costs outweigh the benefits. From reading the comments on posts and blogs this week, I would say that most of the students at our university are realists.

It is important to note that realists or idealists are found all across the political spectrum. There are idealist conservatives as well as idealist liberals.

Over the past couple years and AMS executives the idealists have been winning the war. We can tell this because of how our system now. Is it any coincidence that Tristan Markle, notorious Knolly, former AMS executive is the partner complaintant on the UN claim (even though he isn’t a student and didn’t contribute a dime to the legal fees)? Is it any coincidence that Stefanie Ratjen, another Knolly and former AMS executive as well as an outspoken and radical critic of the 2010 Olympics, was recently given almost $20,000 by the Student Legal Fund Society to educate students about their rights around protesting at the Olympics?

The idealists hands are so far in the pockets of the AMS that it is basically second base (high five?). There strategy has been cunning and it has worked. Several groups and subsidiaries of the AMS, most notably the resource groups, have been hijacked by these idealists and are being used to actively pursue their own selfish political aims. Certainly the groups do provide important services to students through the Womyn’s Centre, the LGBT support, etc. But in the past years, there sinister side has begun to outweigh their benefits. Did you know that all students pay a small amount of money every year to pay for the Knoll. This rag is how the Knollies got their name and it is filled with hateful rhetoric, attacking all perspectives but their own. I’m sure you’ve all seen it at some point and I don’t need to go into the level of shit that is spewed out of that magazine. Besides, I didn’t bring my waders (fishing joke).

If students at large new about this, they would want it changed. I want it changed. But attempts to do so are criticized by the idealists as being driven by straight, white, christian, men who want to continue the oppression and colonization of indigenous groups through the disenfranchisement of minority…blah blah blah. I will have you know that being a white heterosexual male, traits over which I had no control often serve me badly in council as apparently my voice doesn’t count or accurately reflect students at this university. For more information on this see the minutes of the disability seat debate. It strikes me as humorously hypocritical that these idealists claim that my skin colour should disenfranchise my voice while trying to promote the voice of other disenfranchised groups. Actually that is really funny.

So what will be done to remedy the situation? In about 3 hours council will have an emergency meeting to call for the resignation of Blake Frederick and Tim Chu. They have become the puppets of this idealist movement, the strings being pulled by shadowy figures out of the view of students and councilors. How else can Blake turn around on his facebook page yesterday and claim that the he has received an outpouring of support from students regarding the issue (he has since taken this down, but a photo of it can be found here)? It is the same small group of radical idealists who give him the ideas to run with, pave the way for them to happen, have him do them, then congratulate him on them afterward.

I’m actually surprised that Tim or Blake won’t be at the meeting tonight (the BC NDP convention took priority I believe). They seem to enjoy being martyred for their agenda, like two Jesus Christs of social justice. If we brought a crucifix to the meeting they would probably be the ones driving in the nails.

No doubt we are angry at them, no doubt they have committed a crime against democracy and students at UBC, no doubt that something must be done to remedy the situation. My concern is that it won’t stop with the two traitors this week. The idealists pulling the strings are everywhere in the AMS and they will keep pulling the strings whether Tim and Blake resign or not. They will find more weak willed cowards to put forward as candidates in the next election and the war will begin anew.

As a result, the realists need to think very hard about how to proceed this week. If impeachment is brought forward a week from now I will vote for it, that’s what students seem to want. I hope though, that it doesn’t come forward. The costs of losing an impeachment vote are much greater than the benefits of winning it. If a discussion occurs in which Blake threatens legal action against the AMS or even specific councilors some of us will undoubtedly back down. If an impeachment vote is lost then we will have been viewed to endorse Blake and Tim, re-solidifying their delusions of support.

There are other ways of punishing Blake. Remove every possible power that he has. I firmly believe that Blake and Tim are ideologues. They truly believe in their perverted minds that they have the support of council and students. If we stop their ability to do anything then we separate ourselves from the executives. Telling the university and all the other damaged relationships that Blake or Tim have no ability to represent students or council will be enough to start on a path to recovery. We must maim them so badly that they become lame ducks until the next election in January.

The best way to win this war against the radical idealists isn’t to remove Blake and Tim. That will feel good and appeal to our desire for vengeance but it won’t fix the problem. I ask you then whether it is worth risking it. It may just add fuel to their fire. What really needs to happen is several years where real students run for positions. Students need to vote in the election. That is the real point of all this.

Hopefully this will be a catalyst to get an truly engaged and representative student society. That is the real lesson in all of this.

Let the circus begin.

Dec 1 – Updated tags, removed note at beginning, expanded SEO Pack

THE THIRD REGULAR MEETING OF THE VANCOUVER SENATE FOR THE 2009/2010 ACADEMIC YEAR – WEDNESDAY NOV. 18 7:00pm ROOM 182 IRVING K. BARBER

1. Minutes from the Meeting of October 14, 2009
2. Business Arising from Minutes
3. Remarks from the Chair and Related Questions

This is a monthly report from the President on the business of the University. What he says here is a mystery until the night of.

4. Candidates for Degrees and Diplomas

Graduating students and conferring degrees is the Senate’s most important job. A list of students eligible for graduation in November will be presented for approval. Its a big deal but won’t be much debate and it’ll be over in 5 minutes or less.

5. Financial Statements 2008/2009 and Budget Model

This is a really big deal for faculties and departments. The financial statements from last night will be meh but the new budget model will be very interesting. In light of the $20-$30 million structural deficit the university is working on a new way approach its budget. Key parts of it will include how faculties are allocated resources. There have been several versions of this being passed around and it has been changing on basically a daily basis. This isn’t for approval or endorsement, it is simply a presentation on where they are at and to solicit feedback from the senate. It will be interesting to see how reward based the structure is and how teaching issues (classroom sizes and such) are included. Bijan and Mike might know more about this process than me.

6. Report from the Provost and Vice President, Academic on UBC Equity and Diversity Strategic Plan

This is a presentation for information to Senate regarding the development of the Equity and Diversity Strategic Plan (EDSP). The EDSP is a small (but important) part of the overall Place and Promise strategic plan. If you look at the Place and Promise homepage you won’t find Equity and Diversity as a specific line. The relation between these smaller, more specific strategic plans (aboriginal SP or sustainability SP for example) and the overall plan is quite hazy. However, if you look between the lines of the Place and Promise plan you can find the points of the EDSP within it. I think that this is because of overlap between the smaller plans will lead to repetition in the larger plan if they were included as they are. You could imagine for example that there is significant overlap between the EDSP and the Aboriginal SP.

Check out the EDSP homepage for more specific info. What I can say that it has been an absolute pleasure to work with individuals from Access and Diversity and UBC should be proud to have such a dedicated group of staff.

7. Place and Promise: The New UBC Strategic Plan

This is a big one.
Place and Promise is the new guiding document at UBC. It will replace Trek 2010 as the most cited document on campus. Writing this document is very much akin to standing in front of the mirror analyzing what issues are a priority for you now. Are they different than they were 10 years ago? Will they be different 10 years from now? Answering these questions has been the task of the 18 month consultation process.
Although consultation is over, I can guarantee you that students involved worked very hard to have a strong student voice included. You can never have enough student consultation in a document like this. I do think however that this is the most student consulted plan in the history of the institution. Reading through the goals and priorities of Place and Promise you really can get an image of UBC standing in front of the mirror. I believe that the plan reflects where students are at right now. I hope you agree.
I would encourage every student (especially student politicos) to read over Place and Promise on their homepage. It is now the job of students to keep the University on task to complete their goals in the document.
The unfortunate thing about documents like this is that they are uncomfortably general. Place and Promise is no exception. The reason is that in order to lay out a plan for 10 years you need to allow a little room for changes. Use this to your advantage!! Citing Place and Promise will be the way to push student issues in the next decade. Take notice, become familiar, prosper!

8. Academic Policy Committee

This motion is a proposal to support the creation of academic regulations that will support Joint Doctoral Programs, allowing a PhD student to do a doctoral degree jointly at UBC and another institution. Apparently this is something that is already happening but needs wording to support. I don’t know much more about it than that.

9. Admissions Committee

There are several motions in this agenda item. There are some mundane ones and some more significant ones. The mundane ones include changes in admission requirements to the Master of Occupational Therapy program, changes in admission requirements for the Doctor of Dental Medicine, and changes to LPI requirements for applications into the Arts One Program (they do their own test).

The first of the more exciting one is changes to the Arts and Commerce admissions. The intent is to accept grade 11 marks in replace of grade 12 ones where necessary to make a timely offer of acceptance. The substitution would be made if the student meets the following requirements:

a) the applicant is a secondary school applicant from outside BC (a process already exists to collect info fast enough for these students)
b) the applicant has all of the required courses completed or in progress
c) one or more of the approved grade 12 courses doesn’t yet have a grade
d) a grade in a comparable grade 11 course is available to substitute into the calculation of admission averages.

A pilot project was run over the last year to gauge the success of such a admissions change. The report predicted a ‘false admit’ rate of only 3% and only a third of them (4 students) took the offer of acceptance.

I’ve scanned the entire report onto my own site, its only 4 pages long and you can view it here.

The next admissions issue is regarding Applicants Following the Alberta Secondary School Curriculum. After much review and study a motion has been made to adjust Alberta applicants grades upward by 2%. UBC has a lot of data on students from Alberta is worried that we are not offering positions to some of their best students. Roughly the same amount of students receive an A in BC and Alberta (27.1% and 27.6% respectively). However, Alberta regards an A as 80%+ and BC regards it as 86%+ implying that we accept fewer Alberta students within the same percentile.

Alberta students have also been tracked throughout their first sessional grades at UBC and it has been shown that they do as well (if not better) than BC students at every entrance grade.

The full report can be found here.

The next item is a change in Minimum Standards in English for Secondary School Applicants. There is now a hard limit on how poorly applicants can do in high school English. You can no longer be admitted to UBC if your final English 12 (or 11 where applicable) grade is below 70%. There isn’t a lot of contention around this and it will affect relatively few students since very few people would be admitted based on their average with <70% in Grade 12 English.

10. Joint Report from Curriculum and Admissions Committees

One motion here that creates some new additions to the Doctor of Philosophy/Master of Science in Craniofacial Science/Diploma in Orthodontics/Diploma in Pediatric Dentistry. What a mouthful (haha I’m so witty).

11. Curriculum Committee

There are several changes to courses and programs but none of them are earth shattering. All of the changes are in the Faculty of Graduate Studies and apply to Applied Science, Arts, College for Interdisciplinary Studies, and Medicine. Let me know if you want some more details.

12. Nominating Committee on Culture of Service

Student Senator Joel Mertens has put a lot of effort into getting student feedback on how to reward and encourage students and faculty more involved. There are some really cool things that might come out of this. The best thing to do is to is read the brief report that will come to senate here.
There has been some concern that, although students were consulted quite adequately, their views weren’t represented with more than a footnote on the first page. The Working Group focused on encouraging Faculty service, which is fine, but it is important to include the comments of all members consulted so that they can be used in the future. I have discussed my concerns with Agenda Committee and the report might be changed to include this when it is presented in two weeks.
Either way there is a lots to be gained from this report and I hope that the discussion continues around Culture of Service and some more tangible recommendations come forward. As good as the ones in here are, I fear they will be lost in translation down the power chain.

13. Student Awards

Yay!! More money for students is always good. It is especially good to see donors showing their faith in UBC through donations, especially in these economic times. It is a testament to our Alumni community. $27,500 has been added to the awards chest. Don’t get to excited though $27,000 is going to Law student bursaries and $500 is going to Commerce (specifically the student with the highest grade in COMM 394). Tune in next month to see if the Award Lottery shines on your faculty.

14. Proposed Agenda Items
15. Other Business
16. Tributes Committee – In Camera

This is always fun. Here we pass the recommended nominees to receive Honorary Degrees from UBC. There are the old people who you graduate with in May. Unfortunately you are not allowed to know who they are until they actually accept the nomination. They are always exciting though and this year should be no different.

Can you imagine that we are going to get all that done in 2 1/2 hours (AMS hacks take note)? I would love to have your feedback on this so either post a comment below, message me, or e-mail me.

Hopefully see some of you there in two weeks, you won’t be disappointed I promise!

Geoff

Today, the Conference Board of Canada released a report ranking the health-care outcomes of 16 developed countries. Of course, the US received a D came last (but we expected that, it was written by a Canadian group after all). Canada received a B and came 10th out of the 16 while the US received a D and 16th. Those damn Europeans always seem to beat us out. Gasp! Say it ain’t so!

Our egos were stroked enough by beating the US so handily that we failed to see what the report was truly trying to tell us. Go back and read what the rankings were looking at again. They were looking at health-care outcomes not systems. Obama and Congress are trying to find the ‘best’ system, not the ‘best American system’. The terms of the US debate on health-care centre around how much the Feds should be involved in the health-care system (a public/private debate) instead of focusing on the real issue: How can we make more Americans healthier? If the debate was refocused, some tangible results would likely result.

Rising rates of diabetes are a great place to start. Canada and the US came 14th and 15th respectively on mortality due to diabetes. Japan came out on top. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that the differences in diabetes mortality rates between the three countries isn’t a result of different health-care systems (Canada and the US have dramatically different systems and come in right next to each other). It is more likely a result of the differences in overall lifestyle. Over several decades Japan has encouraged a culture of activity in its society. We’ve all seen videos of crazy Japanese companies leading afternoon exercises with all of their employees.

This culture seemed to have worked. A 2003 OECD report shows that 24.9% of Japanese are overweight (BMI>25kg/m) and only 3.2% are obese (BMI>30kg/m). Compare that to the US where 65.7% are overweight and 30.6% are obese and the problem is clear. Americans are fat and Japanese aren’t. It isn’t a genetic thing either, Japan gave us sumo wrestling remember.

Whats wrong with being fat? It leads to Type 2 diabetes for one. 95% of people suffering from diabetes are Type 2 ‘adult onset’ diabetics. Increases in these diabetics can be attributed to “aging population, rising obesity rates, increasingly sedentary lifestyles, and higher risk for diabetes for Aboriginal people” (source). It no wonder then that as we (Canadians and Americas) are getting fatter, we get less healthy.

Second, diabetics are expensive.

• People with diabetes incur medical costs that are two to three times higher than those without diabetes. A person with diabetes can face direct costs for medication and supplies ranging from $1,000 to $15,000 a year.
• By 2010, it’s estimated that diabetes will cost the Canadian health-care system $15.6 billion a year and that number will rise to $19.2 billion by 2020.

Its no wonder that the Canadian system is running short on cash or American insurers charge exorbitant premiums. Fat people make health care expensive for all of us.

Despite this, all of the talk in the US around health-care reform has centered around a ‘public option’. Why not drop the ideological part of the battle (which is the causing the deadlock) and find easy ways to make American’s healthier. Building more community centres where people can work out, aiding youth athletics programs, and helping at risk kids get into sports for life. It can’t stop there though, staying active throughout your whole life will make you healthier, is free (or nearly free), and will make your government/insurer happy.

It isn’t hard to start either:

In a large study, people at risk of type 2 diabetes were able to reduce that risk by 58% by exercising moderately for 30 minutes a day and by losing 5 to 7% of their body weight. In people over age 60, the risk was cut by almost 71%. Other large studies have shown similar results in reducing risk. (Source)

Besides which, I’d much prefer to see Obama pump money into programs that directly affect change in the US than fill the pockets of an inevitably inefficient bureaucracy.

With all the money he’ll save we can afford some extra twinkies apples. One of them a day could keep a public health-care battle at bay.

A proposal went though recently to put a hospice on campus. This seems like a great way for UBC to make some extra coin on some of the campuses unused land. Problem though – one of the proposed sites for the hospice is behind St. John’s College – right next to first year residence Place Vanier (check out the proposed site here and the rest of them here). Obviously, PPPAC (the group with the responsibility to vet many of the incoming proposals) don’t have their heads screwed on straight.

Putting an end of life facility next to a residence could be UBC’s greatest artistic experiment in juxtaposition, but it won’t due students any favours. This is the moral equivalent of making a nuclear testing ground a national park. New lines in the residence contract (already one of the most misunderstood and worst written documents on campus) would have to state the following:

Residents shall not make any noise about 0.5 decibels after the designated ‘Lights Out’ time at St. John Hospice – 6:00pm. Residents are also prohibited from playing any rap music including: anything that has some black chap who is a high school dropout with his pants around his knees causing a ruckus.

The rest of the contract would be outlined from this site.

This is maybe the most absurd thing to happen to the campus in my 5 year memory. But there are things we can do to stop it. The UBC Board of Governors is voting on the proposal on September 17th. After that the Residence for the Soon-to-be-Dead will become a reality. There is still time to e-mail you BOG rep and voice your opposition. Student reps are Bijan Ahmadian and Michael Duncan. You can reach them at bijan(at)bijan(dot)ca and michael(dot)ubc(at)gmail(dot)com. There is also a Facebook group that you can join to spread the word about what is happening.

Stay tuned to Terry, my site, and UBC Insiders for all the up to date information.

Also, be sure to check out Alex Lougheed’s excellent recap of the progression so far.

Whether you love him or hate him, Stephen Harper is one of the best political tacticians this country has ever seen. One day after Ignatieff’s decision to cease support for the minority government, Harper has put the Liberal leader in a tough spot. According to Bob Rae the Liberals will put forward a non confidence motion as early as possible. This wouldn’t be until October 1st.

However, the Conservatives have a plan (they always do). You may have seen ads on TV for the Home Renovation Tax Credit. This part of the stimulus plan for the country after the recession. It allows home owners to receive up to $1600 back when they spend up to $10000 on their home renos (details here). Here’s the catch: the money to provide for the reimbursements hasn’t been passed yet. Furthermore, because it is a budgetary motion, it will be a confidence vote in the house.

The Liberals had previously announced their support for the popular program and to back out of it now would be very politically damaging to them. They are caught in a trap of their own words then. They’ve promised to support the HRTC and also promised to vote against the government as soon as possible. Either way they are going to have to eat their words.

The Conservative machine has already got down to business.

You’ve failed to protect the most vulnerable. You’ve failed to create jobs. Failed to defend our healthcare. Failed to restore our finances.

If, as Bob Rae predicts, the Liberals put forward a non confidence motion at the earliest possible date (October 1st) the country could be in for an election before Christmas. If Iggy is successful, we could see two old men in red sneaking into your house the Christmas.

So where do we stand with this potential election? What are going to be the issues at stake? What will be the winning strategies?

Conservatives – Out with the new, in with the old

The Cons have proved themselves successful enough in the past two elections to rid Canada of the feeling that the Libs are ‘Canada’s natural party’. In 2006, when Harper defeated Martin to bring the Cons to power after 13 years of Liberano rule, leadership was the main issue at hand. This has stuck with Con strategists as their go-to tactic. It worked on Dion because the bumbling professor wasn’t able to stand up for himself. However, this strategy has run its course. The Cons will struggle to maintain their image of being the new, anti status-quo party that they appeared as in 2006 and 2008. Nonetheless, Conservative hitman have been launching the assaults at Iggy on his many years spent outside of the country, and his ‘I love America’ comments (as well as some other oddities that I’ve written about previously). The Conservative attack dog tactic is looking worse and worse for them.

There have however been some bright spots for the Cons. They have been doing a good job attacking the newly proposed (but not thought through) Liberal EI policy. The plan was to reduce the EI qualification period to 360 hours before being able to claim employment benefits for 50 weeks. Conservatives have correctly dubbed the policy as the creation of a 9-week work year. It appears to be a sore spot for Liberals who haven’t been making an effort in the past months to redefine their stance or defend the proposal.

The prospect of an election based around EI policy gives political pundits wet dreams. It would be the first time in memory that an election would be fought over a true policy instead of the leadership/sovereignty battles that we’ve seen in the past. It is a chance for the Conservatives to shine as being something other than just the party people vote for if they don’t like the Liberals.

So what strategies will work for the Cons? A continued rhetoric of ‘its a recession, what did you expect?’ in regards to the budget will probably score them points. Another positive direction will be criticizing Iggy and his contradicting statements about tax increases. Claiming responsibility for having the best banking system in the world and a fast recovery from recession won’t hurt them either.

Obama and The Canadian Election

It will be interesting to see how the election of B-Rock in the US will affect perceptions of Harper. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that he will actually benefit from them. My logic is as follows. Something that really dogged Harper in the last election (and indeed his entire time as PM) has been comparisons to George W. With Bush out of the Whitehouse, it is much harder for Liberals to make that comparison (more of juxtaposition), strengthening Harper’s image.

Many have worshiped thought Obama’s election as a signal of a global shift to the left. I don’t believe this will be the case in Canada, just as it hasn’t been the case in the UK. Obama’s election in fact signals an end to parties that handled events such as Iraq and Afghanistan badly, as well as the end of closely held American ideals, most notably American exceptionalism and the Washington Consensus (to a lesser extent).

Because of Harper’s handling of issue surrounding the Bush administration he will gain some immunity from the trend. Sure the war in Afstan isn’t popular, but statistically is isn’t unpopular either.

This will work to Harper’s favour when he faces the inevitable criticism from the left of being an American sympathizer (not so bad to be one of those anymore).

Liberals – Looking for the forest, getting lost in the trees

Iggy has a lot going for him. He is well spoken, good looking and not a robot. Three traits that Harper is jealous of. What Iggy doesn’t have is a platform that attacks Harper on issues that he can win on. To be fair, if an election is called it will be followed swiftly by a document from the Liberals similar to the Green Shift. In it, the Liberals may outline an exciting plan that will truly capture the imagination of the country. Will this happen? I doubt it, but who knows.

Miggy’s past isn’t going to help him out much either. It would appear that the Liberals are a fan of the bumbling professor politician. The wanna be PM has help highly regarded positions at Oxbridge followed by Harvard. The result? He hasn’t been living in the country and paying taxes since 1978. As I said before, I think that Conservative attacks on Iggy will have limited effect in this election, but his ‘unCanadian’ past certainly won’t help the leader of the Liberals.

So if I was the Lib leader, what would I do to win? They have to succeed where Dion failed. Finding a magically policy that separates them from other parties as being truly progressive while remaining fiscally responsible (not raising taxes). Where Dion went wrong was not pursuing and defending the Green Shift enough. He put it out there and left it to drown. The Liberals need to find something inspiring and then go Billy Mays on the shit! (too soon?). Sell! Sell! Sell!

One thing Liberals can’t do is get over confident. They claim to be feeling great about recent polls that put them even with the Cons in popularity. Libs need to look back at some polls from 2005 (when Iggy wasn’t even in the country). On Dec 13, 2005 (about a month and a half before the election) they were 9 points up on the Conservatives in polls (this included a 19 point lead on the Cons in Ontario). The election results gave the Cons 6% over the Liberals, proof that when the Harper machine starts on the warpath, there is little you can do to stop it.

If the Liberals don’t come out swinging with an innovative and fiscally responsible platform with a few great talking points, they are doomed to mediocracy against a efficient and well oiled Conservative campaign machine.

Overall – Harper’s Election to Lose

Since Harper’s election in 2006, Canadians have become more accustomed to the Conservative party. The sky didn’t fall, we didn’t cede to the US, and our health care is still free. This would come as a shock to voters who listen to Liberal rhetoric leading up to the election during Christmas of 2005. The Liberals are still coming to grips with not being Canada’s only party. Lets face the music, Dion was a dismal failure for his party and have forced them to restart yet again. The plus side for the Liberals is that most of the Trudeau era Liberanos are gone. They created the party culture within the Liberals that lead to numerous scandals and the eventual decline of the party. Now they have a fresh look and (another) new leader, things that are good for our country and for their party. Unfortunately for them I don’t think they have the experience to walk toe to toe with Harper and his ruthless campaign tactics.

Harper plays chess. Iggy’s still mastering checkers.

Birthers might actually be battling Westboro Baptists for the ‘Crazy Fringe Group of the Year Award’. The Birthers are led by a cast that would score higher ratings on Saturday Night Live than they do political points.

Orly Taitz - Taitz is a Russian born, peroxide blond, SoCal dentist who only just missed the cut to play Drago in Rocky IV. She is also a lawyer believe it or not; she graduated from the prestigious William Howard Taft Online University.

Watch the below video to see how crazy the ‘Queen of Birthers’ is:

I still think she is being portrayed by SNL’s Chris Kattan and this is all a big joke. Notice the reference to ‘brownshirts’. If you don’t know what that means click here and erase it from your vocab. Even the winner of American Idol -neo con edition, Ann Coulter thinks that Taitz is a crackpot.

Phillip Berg – Berg is a conspiracy addict. He was a leader in the indefatigable ’9/11 truth’ movement, claiming that the US Government had prior knowledge of 9/11 and didn’t work to stop it. Other ‘truthers’ believe that the government encouraged or even planned the 9/11 attacks. During this time he launched a long shot lawsuit against President Bush and VP Cheney that they were complicit in 9/11He then jumped ship from them to join PUMA (People United Means Action or Party Unity My Ass [seriously]) a brief organization that formed after the Democratic nomination. PUMA denied the Obama had won the nomination and were convinced that it had actually gone to Hillary Clinton.

So now Berg is in with the birthing flock and he hasn’t gotten any less insane:

Other people to add to the crazy list:

Carl Swensson- A man who believes that if you put a few people in a room and they come to an agreement you can all them a Grand Jury. Power from the Magna Carta gives the Juries the power to “distrain and oppress the government in every way in their power, namely, by taking the homes, lands, possessions, and any way else they can until amends shall have been made according to the sole judgment of the grand jury.” Don’t worry though, “the grand jury may not imprison or execute any government personnel or their children.”

Andy Martin – The racist who gets credit for starting the whole Obama is a secret Muslim thing. Brilliant comedy, fail politics.

Lou Dobbs – The bumbling bear of a man on CNN who always has something negative to say about undocumented individuals in the US. He brought Taitz on his show and is demanding that Obama produce a birth certificate. Something he did before he ran for president and can be seen online here.

The really scary thing is that it isn’t just a few people who are into this bollocks anymore. A poll of Virginians found that only 53% of the population is convinced that Obama is a natural born citizen. Another poll of North Carolina found a similar trend; only 54% think that he was born in the US. But who knows what people believe: only 88% of North Carolina’s Republican voters are sure that Hawaii is a state. 7% say it isn’t and 4% aren’t sure. Source.

Maybe everyone is a crackpot in that great neighbour to the south. Its great having front row seats to the most absurd democracy on the planet.

Republicans For Ignatieff

So my first response to this site is absolute shock. Confused profanities were slurred as I delved deeper into the site. Who put this up? What’s their angle? Are there really Bush supporters in the US who want want to throw their hats (and souls) in with Iggy’s camp.

I started back to the homepage and had a closer look the second time around. Things sure seem fishy. As Canadians, we are probably all used to seeing Liberal and NDP ads that put Harper next to Bush all buddy buddy like. Here we see the polar opposite: the leader of a relatively anti-American, Iraq war hating party juxtaposed against the second most hated politician in the world (Ahmadinejad probably tops him). Either the site’s owner is a few fries short of a happy meal or they have a different agenda.

Next funny thing. This is a site the purports to support Iggy on his quest through the political playoffs and to the Stanley Cup of Canadian politics, being PM. If you wanted to do that you would probably use a picture of him that looks pretty good (photoshop helps too). Instead they put up a picture of what appears to be a 50 year old man just realizing that his dependency on Viagra is complete. Not very flattering, not very flattering at all.

Everything about this site reeks of suspicion, even the catch phrase, “Ignatieff is not a ‘useful idiot’,” looks like “Ignatieff is a useful idiot at first glance”. On the second page there is a special link to Iggy’s now famous line about how much he loves America, a line that has been playing like a broken 16″ around the Conservative campaign hubs.

So who really is behind this site? A bit of digging around with IPs and url ownership doesn’t turn up anything except that the site’s owner has blocked their information and that the server is in Florida somewhere. This is just a feature that a client can purchase from their host to hide their personal information.

I found another blogger who was a couple steps ahead of me. David Akin’s blog has an e-mail from ‘The Colonel’, the apparent owner and mod of the site. Its quite amusing and worth a read, as is Akin’s analysis of it.

So is ‘The Colonel’ being honest, or is the site really being put on by the Conservative party? Maybe its just a conservative fanatic acting on their own? The thing about the internets is that we will never know. Its so easy to put up and take down sites that the truth will likely never come out. The same stuff is happening all over the world as anonymous users post things only to be attacked by more anonymous users.

Look at what happened yesterday to Facebook and Twitter. They both got shut down due to an attack on a specific user. A user who happened to be a strong pro-western Georgian. He claims that the attacks originated from within Russia as an attempt to shut him up. Any truth to this claim? Its tough to tell. Source.

So as society moves more and more into the digital plane and politicians begin actually become computer literate. The attacks will probably get more subtle and more aggressive. Its going to be up to us to separate the bull from the crap.

Now if ‘The Colonel’ doesn’t mind, I’m going to go grab some KFC!