Segacs’s World I Know

I give this a week. Ten days, tops.

Rival Palestinian groups said they reached an agreement Wednesday on reuniting their governments in the West Bank and Gaza after years of bitter infighting that weakened them politically and caused the deaths of hundreds in violent clashes and crackdowns since. Even as the tentative agreement revived hopes among Palestinians that they might be able to form a unified front, unity between the rival groups Fatah and Hamas appeared unlikely to jump start negotiations with Israel for an independent Palestinian state.

There’s no way that Hamas and Fatah will be able to avoid going at one another.

Update: Why this deal is bad news for Israel.

Happy 10th blogiversary, Meryl!

If you don’t have enough reasons to vote against Harper and the Conservatives in the upcoming election, here’s some scary food for thought:

4 out of 9 of Canada’s Supreme Court Justices have mandatory retirement dates within the next five years. Guess who appoints Supreme Court Justices? That’s right, the Governor-General in “consultation with” (read: direction by) the Prime Minister.

And who do you think Harper will stack the courts with, given the opportunity? Given his government’s record, I only shudder to imagine.

The Supreme Court wields an enormous amount of power. And to show what can happen with years of stacked appointments, we need only to glance at our illustrious neighbours to the south, the United States:

Think it couldn’t happen here? Think again:

Pro-life supporters successfully influenced an as-yet unannounced government decision to deny funding to Planned Parenthood, says a Conservative seeking re-election.

Brad Trost, incumbent for Saskatoon-Humboldt, addressed the Saskatchewan Pro-Life Association’s annual convention Saturday and thanked its members for their help in killing federal funding for the group.

In a recording of the speech, obtained by the Liberals and provided to the Toronto Star and Le Devoir, Trost claims a number of parliamentary victories for the pro-life movement, including a decision to deny funding for the International Planned Parenthood Federation.

This is all part of a decision that was rendered by the Conservative government to exclude abortion funding from its maternal health plan for developing nations. Having denied access to abortion to women in other countries, now the government is setting its sights on our rights as Canadians.

And, lest you think that it’s only women’s reproductive rights that are under attack, rest assured that Stephen Harper doesn’t discriminate like that; he’s determined to attack all women’s rights.

But don’t worry, Stevie. You may hate women, but women hate you too:

Now here’s hoping that more Canadian women get jolted out of apathy and turn out and vote.

(Hat tips: Kirsten, Andrea, and the good people over at ShitHarperDid.com.)

What does your party believe? I’d venture a guess that only a small number of Canadians who vote actually bother to read their party’s platforms… or the platforms of the other parties.  Even if we concede that politicians break campaign promises all the time, shouldn’t you know what your party is promising before casting your ballot?

Read the platforms here:

• Liberal Party of Canada
• Conservative Party of Canada
• New Democrat Party of Canada
• Bloc Quebecois (in French)
• Green Party of Canada

Then, when you’re done, check out the candidates in your writing. Read up on their voting records, if they are already MPs. Read their blogs, find their  Facebook pages, check out anything they’ve written or published. Make sure you know who you’re voting to send to Parliament on May 2nd.

An uninformed electorate gets the government that it deserves. So get informed.

A new BMO report suggests that on average, Canadians pay about 20% more for the same goods and services as our American neighbours do — even though the loonie is above par:

BMO’s survey compared 11 items, including golf balls, Blu-ray movies, running shoes and cars.

There is no denying Canada is smaller and that means less competition, which in turn means higher prices.

But Michael Mulvey, marketing professor at the University of Ottawa’s Telfer School of Management, also noted some of the biggest difference in prices between the U.S. and Canada are in the areas where there isn’t free trade, such as telecomunications.

I’ve ranted about the higher telecommunications prices before. Those are due to price-fixing by the corrupt CRTC — something not mentioned in this study.

But for consumer goods where actual competition exists, how do we explain the price gap?

Taxes, for one thing. The study is comparing pre-tax prices, so you might think that’s not a factor. But there are taxes all the way down the chain of distribution, not just at the end-consumer point. That 15% you pay in combined GST and QST is merely the tip of the iceberg. The higher taxes down the line help pay for our essential social programs, like medicare, but they do make things more expensive.

Another factor that is mentioned by the study is the size of the country, and the fact that distribution and shipping is more expensive when you have a sparser population in a less concentrated area. This helps explain why prices would be more in, say, Yellowknife. It doesn’t explain why something retails in downtown Toronto for 20% more than it does across the border in Buffalo, NY.

The rapid rise of the dollar is another factor. When the Canadian dollar was worth 60 cents US, we understood the price gap. Now that it’s above par, it’s frustrating to see this gap. But the price adjustment period takes longer to catch up than the loonie takes to rise in the first place. The gap is closing somewhat — just more slowly than we might like.

But the main reason is merely supply and demand. In a market economy, prices are less about what something costs to produce and more about what the market will bear. We pay more because we pay more because we pay more. It’s circular. If people stopped buying things that were too expensive, the prices on them would drop. They would have to.

Lots of people would like to complain, protest or mobilize to correct this. What they don’t understand is that these prices aren’t being fixed by the government, and the economy cannot – and should not – be centrally managed in order to make people happy.

We do have choices. We can drive down to Burlington or Plattsburgh, shop in lower US dollars, and come back across the border — and pay duty (or not, as every good Canadian knows the tricks of how to avoid that at some point. Not that I’m endorsing that, mind you.) We can order online and pay the extra shipping charges, though the vast majority of US online retailers won’t ship to Canada, frustratingly enough.

Finally, a little perspective: Prices are higher in Canada than they are in the USA, but they’re lower here than they are in a lot of other places in the world, including South America, most of Europe, some places in Asia, or Australia. We constantly compare to the Americans because we’re so close; it’s hard not to get jealous and feel like the outsider with our face pressed to the glass when we get American ads on TV, radio or digital media splashing prices around that are inaccessible to us. But if you saw what people were paying elsewhere for the same items, you might appreciate our prices a bit more.

I hear it all the time. Heck, I’ve even said it myself. In our first-past-the-post system, only a handful of the 308 ridings nationwide are really, truly up for grabs in the election. For the rest of us, it can be easy to say things like “my vote won’t count” or “it doesn’t matter” or, my favourite, “why bother?”

If, like most Canadians, you don’t happen to live in a swing riding, here are the top 10 reasons why you should go out and vote anyway:

10. The polls can be wrong. Even if you think your riding is a “safe” seat – either for your candidate, or for an opposition one – the polling data could be wrong. Your vote may well count more than you think.

9. Parties get funded based on the number of votes they get – roughly $1.75 per vote. By voting for your favourite party or candidate, you’re funding the party and strengthening it for future elections.

8. Voter turnout keeps falling, and was at a historical low of only 58.8% in the 2008 federal election. That means that the Tories were voted in by only 22% of eligible voters. To elect a government that truly represents the population, the population has to turn out and vote.

7. Get your issues heard. Voting for a certain candidate sends a message to other candidates and parties that your issues are important. This might affect how they vote on key issues in Parliament.

6. If everyone assumes that their vote won’t count, then maybe they’ll all stay home and your vote will actually count more than you think. Candidates have lost supposedly “safe” ridings before because of this. It could happen again.

5. Second place doesn’t matter? Sure it does. A strong second-place showing could mean momentum for a candidate or party next time around. It could lead the party to target the riding for more funding or election spending, believing that it is “in play”. It could buoy more people to vote for that second-place candidate next time, in the belief that there’s a chance of beating the incumbent.

4. Egypt. Tunisia. Bahrain. Saudi Arabia. Iran. Libya. All the people in the world out risking their lives to demonstrate for the right to vote, which we so casually take for granted.

3. Voting is a right, a privilege, and a responsibility of living in a democracy. Take it seriously.

2. If you don’t vote, you forfeit your right to complain.

1. If you don’t vote, you don’t get any chocolate cake.

As the campaign progresses, I’d like to share a few links to some interesting interactive election-related tools and sites:

• Vote Compass: An online quiz on issues that is supposed to help you see which of the major parties holds views most similar to yours. Surprisingly accurate for such a short quiz.

• How’d They Vote? Contains a running database of all federal MPs and their voting history in Parliament. A good way of knowing where your local MP stands on issues.
• Cyberpresse 2008 Interactive Map: Google Maps interactive overlay for every riding in the country, showing the 2008 vote breakdowns by polling district. Fun to play with, and shows just how close some of the ridings were.
• Election Prediction Project: The folks at EPP are at it again, making riding-by-riding predictions based on commentary and past results, rather than trying to extrapolate popular support percentages like the pollsters. They have a decent enough record that their site is worth a look.

If you know of any other useful sites or tools, let me know.

High-ho, high-ho, it’s election time again in Canada. And it sure does feel an awful lot like 2008:

• 4 out of 5 of the party leaders are unchanged. Only Iggy is new this time around, though his post-election political days are probably as numbered as Stephane Dion’s were.
• The party positions and platforms are largely unchanged since 2008 as well, at least on the big issues.
• Elizabeth May is once again angry about being excluded from the debates – and, like last time, I predict she’ll probably get her way.
• Jack Layton is still sporting his used car salesman ‘stache.
• The Tories are once again sitting in comfortable minority-government territory, at once unlikely to lose and unlikely to form a majority.

So remind me again why we’re going to all this expense and trouble?

I would love to see the Tories get the boot. Between the long-form census debacle, the convenient-for-Harper prorogation of Parliament, corruption scandals, arts funding cuts, attacking women’s right to choose,  social engineering in the guise of economic policy that punishes anything other than the “traditional” family values, and Harper’s megalomania, the reasons abound. I simply cannot believe I live in a country where we keep electing this party.

Unfortunately, the only hope for replacing the Tories, the Liberal Party of Canada, is still in shambles. Ignatieff’s personal popularity is fairly low (no doubt made worse by those horrible Tory attack ads), the vote-splitting on the left bolsters the NDP and Greens at the Liberals’ expense, and the Bloc is standing at nearly 50% popularity here in La Belle Province.

My vote, which I have no problem saying will be for the Liberals, is a wasted vote, since I live in Gilles Duceppe’s riding and unless he gets morphed into an alien and starts singing Vegas showtunes in the shower, he’s going to run away with it here. But I will still trudge out and cast my ballot – on my birthday, no less – even though I know it won’t do any good at all.

No, I’m not a huge fan of Michael Ignatieff. I liked Stephane Dion a lot better, even though he failed to rally widespread support. But I’d much rather have a party in power that I agree with ideologically on most points, as opposed to one that I believe is steadily taking the country in the wrong direction.

The CBC has launched a short but fairly accurate online tool to help you gauge your political positions vis-a-vis the major parties. Check it out. And make sure you vote, because if we’re paying for this pointless election anyway, you might as well get your voice heard.

(Even if I do sometimes wish I could vote for the onion ring.)

A French couple has been charged in the death of their 11-month old baby, after allegedly feeding her an insufficient vegan diet and refusing to treat her illnesses, instead using “natural” (aka useless) remedies:

The couple, Sergine and Joel Le Moaligou, are strict vegans who chose to feed their daughter, Louise, no solid food, giving her only breast milk.

After Louise died in March 2008, a post-mortem exam showed the child weighed just 5.7 kg (12.5 pounds) when she should have weighed about 8 kg (17.5 lbs).

The cause of death was listed as a pneumonia-related illness. But the autopsy also revealed the child suffered from a severe deficiency of vitamins A and B12, which may have left her susceptible to infection.

The vitamin B12 deficiency could be linked to the mother’s eating habits, since the only source of the vitamin is meat, dairy or vitamin supplements.

The couple reportedly did not follow their doctor’s advice to take their daughter to hospital when they went for her nine-month checkup and found she was suffering from bronchitis and was losing weight.

The court has heard that the parents chose instead to treat her with cabbage poultices, mustard, camphor and clay.

Good. They should pay for what they did to their innocent child. If this case sets a precedent and sparks a debate on the issue, even better.

If adults want to be stupid, fine. It pisses me off but it’s their decision. But don’t take your stupidity out on your kids – you’ve already saddled them with your genes; no need to make it worse.