| Full Column Miller misplaced his priorities en route to China By SUE-ANN LEVY, TORONTO SUN
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writes to Harper demanding loopholes in laws be closed...
Fifty-four settlements resolved after public servants given target last year
Re:Miller presses Ottawa to ban handguns
March 28
David Miller's soapbox rants about handguns is nothing more than a "vote getter" and completely ignores reality. Several years ago, Britain and Australia imposed an almost complete ban on all types of firearms. Politicians at that time, like Miller now does, touted this move as a positive step to reducing violence. The result was just the opposite. Crimes of all types, including those involving firearms, have increased dramatically in both countries. (Don't expect politicians to agree with that statistic because they spin facts to suit their own ends).
Does Miller really believe that crime rates will drop once a handgun ban is in place? I think not! Criminals do not obey any laws. A more positive result would be obtained by increasing border checks to reduce illegal weapons entering Canada and forming more police anti-gang teams to get the illegal guns off our streets. I think voters everywhere can see through David Miller's nonsense.
Robert Trowell, Ingersoll, Ont.
Updated Fri. Mar. 28 2008 11:02 PM ET
The Canadian Press
TORONTO -- Toronto police say a 17-year-old girl is in hospital after she was shot in the leg while riding on the city's subway.
Sgt. Bill Richards says the shooting occurred on a northbound subway car after the girl and a male got into an argument.
The girl, who hasn't been identified, is currently being treated in hospital for wounds police say aren't life threatening.
The shooting occurred just before 9 p.m. near Spadina station, near the city's core.
Richards says police are still investigating the shooting, and that no suspects have been arrested.
Earlier news reports had said the girl was caught in the middle of a gun fight between two groups
Updated Fri. Mar. 28 2008 5:09 PM ET
ctvtoronto.ca
Toronto police have charged 15 people after officers seized about $600,000 worth of marijuana from a store in the city's northwest.
Drug squad officers executed a search warrant at D.J. Record and Clothing Store, located at 2508 Eglinton Ave. W, near Keele Street, at about 6:40 p.m. Thursday.
Police said an investigation allegedly revealed marijuana was being sold at the store.
Officers found about 65 pounds of marijuana, a loaded 9-mm handgun and cash.
Fifteen suspects, aged between 20 and 59, were arrested and charged with various drug trafficking and weapons offences.
The accused were to appear at the Old City Hall courts on Friday.
The Reality Of Sunday Morning
Will you be participating in Earth Hour on Saturday? |
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| Yes |  | 3158 votes | (44 %) |
| No | | 2552 votes | (36 %) |
| What's Earth Hour? | | 1448 votes | (20 %) |
Total Votes: 7158 T.O. hopes 1 million will take part in Earth Hour Wishful Thinking.......as of 5:31 PM Friday, March 28th 2008 the Earth Hour organizer's Web Site Showed: | |||
A Canadian imprisoned in Mexico isn't refuting the contents of a leaked document that says she's had regular contact with Canadian officials, but says the government has violated her privacy. more...
Wed Mar 26, 9:39 PM ET
The head of the top U.S. phone company AT&T Inc (T.N) said on Wednesday it was having trouble finding enough skilled workers to fill all the 5,000 customer service jobs it promised to return to the United States from India.
"We're having trouble finding the numbers that we need with the skills that are required to do these jobs," AT&T Chief Executive Randall Stephenson told a business group in San Antonio, where the company's headquarters is located.
So far, only around 1,400 jobs have been returned to the United States of 5,000, a target it set in 2006, the company said, adding that it maintains the target.
Stephenson said he is especially distressed that in some U.S. communities and among certain groups, the high school dropout rate is as high as 50 percent.
"If I had a business that half the product we turned out was defective or you couldn't put into the marketplace, I would shut that business down," he said.
Gone are the days when AT&T and other U.S. companies had to hire locally, he said.
"We're able to do new product engineering in Bangalore as easily as we're able to do it in Austin, Texas," he said, referring to the Indian city where many international companies have "outsourced" technical and customer support workers.
"I know you don't like hearing that, but that's the way it is," he said.
Stephenson said neither he nor most Americans liked the situation, and the solution was a stronger U.S. focus on education and keeping jobs. Business needed to help, such as AT&T's repatriation of service positions and education grants, he added.
(Reporting by Jim Forsyth; Editing by Gary Hill)
Seeking a kinder word for failure"To soothe the bruised egos of educators and children in lackluster schools, Massachusetts officials are now pushing for kinder, gentler euphemisms for failure.
Instead of calling these schools "underperforming," the Board of Education is considering labeling them as "Commonwealth priority," to avoid poisoning teacher and student morale.
Schools in the direst straits, now known as "chronically underperforming," would get the more urgent but still vague label of "priority one."
Source
NEW GLASGOW — The federal Green party issued a clarification Thursday after it distributed a terse media release that criticized the prime minister for planning to attend a $200-a-plate dinner in Nova Scotia.
The Prime Minister's Office quickly shot down the Green missive, saying Stephen Harper had no plans to attend the fundraising dinner Saturday in Stellarton for Defence Minister Peter MacKay.
An earlier release from the Green party quoted Leader Elizabeth May, saying the dinner was beyond the means of many in MacKay's riding of Central Nova.
May plans to contest the riding in the next federal election.
The Tory dinner is described as a tribute to MacKay, who will be celebrating his 10th anniversary as MP for the riding in northern Nova Scotia.
The Green party's clarification noted that invitations to the dinner at the Museum of Industry state that it is ``anticipated'' Harper will be the guest speaker.
``In the event the prime minister does come to Central Nova, we reiterate the point that a $200 a plate dinner is inaccessible to most voters,'' the statement said.
Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for the prime minister, noted that May was scheduled to attend a $100-a-plate Green party fundraising dinner in Montreal this Saturday.
Emily McMillan, one of May's aides in Nova Scotia, confirmed that the party leader was initially slated to attend the dinner in Westmount but she later cancelled due to illness.
Concerning this year's $8.2 billion city budget, we've been told: This is Toronto's "first balanced budget since amalgamation," a milestone achieved on introduction of the budget in January, not after painful cuts and tortuous deliberation....
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| So much for global warming |
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| Dion faces ouster |
 Quebec Grits say they'll yank his membership if he doesn't resign. Federal Liberals from Quebec will move to show Stephane Dion the door if he doesn't give up leadership of the party on his own, Sun Media has learned. MORE... |
| Men just don't like Dion: poll |
 Liberal leader seen as wimp to Harper's warrior. He's beating down a mutiny inside his party's fed-up Quebec wing and shielding his back from lurking leader-wannabes, but unpopular Liberal leader Stephane Dion faces a much tougher.. MORE...
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Homeless shelter providers in Toronto reported being jammed to capacity Monday night, but city officials say nearly 150 beds went unfilled that evening.
So what gives?
Advocates for the homeless, and some shelter staff, say there's a shortage of shelter beds in the city.
But councillor Joe Mihevc, who chairs the committee at city hall responsible for homelessness and shelters, argues the real problem is a breakdown in communication on the part of shelter providers. He says beds are available – people just have to know how to find them.
As the Star reported yesterday, some shelters complained about overflows this past holiday weekend. Staff at Street Haven at the Crossroads, Fred Victor Centre for Women and Covenant House said all their beds were filled.
According to the city's shelter standards, shelters that are full must provide a referral to another facility. The shelter must also confirm a bed is available there.
The rules apply to all city-funded shelters, including those run by community agencies.
The city has 3,800 shelter beds for single adults, youths and couples. An assessment and referral centre operates 24 hours a day on Adelaide St. E., which is meant to help connect shelters and individuals with available beds.
Between 2 and 4 a.m. Tuesday, there were 143 beds available across the city after all referrals had taken place, said Phil Brown, general manager of the Shelter, Support and Housing Administration.
"Obviously someone isn't communicating to someone,'' Mihevc said in an interview yesterday.
He said the city needs to "clearly communicate'' to shelters that they should call if beds are needed. The referral number is 416-338-4766.
Mark Pusey, a spokesperson at the Fred Victor Centre, said it's a complex situation that goes beyond calling a referral centre: "For some of the homeless, there's an issue around comfort level in some of the shelters."
The Ontario Coalition Against Poverty staged a demonstration at city hall recently blaming a "shortage" of beds for the Feb. 28 death of Robert Maurice, who died in a downtown stairwell on a bitterly cold night. The group claimed Maurice was homeless, but he was actually living in a rooming house.
Congratulations To Those Who Voted For Change!
Sweden's sex law tough on johnsGOTEBORG, Sweden
If the Swedes didn't exactly invent sex, they certainly act as if they perfected it.
This land of the blond and the bland is largely credited with launching the sexual revolution of the '60s with their liberal attitudes toward loving and lusting. Groundbreaking blue cinema, erotic literature and live sex shows in Stockholm stoked a "Swedish Sin" culture of permissiveness teetering – to the morally outraged – on promiscuous.
But nearly a half-century on, there are precious few prostitutes left in the country. That's what the police claim, anyway, though reliable statistics are hard to come by.
Somewhere along the line, Swedes apparently got to feeling a bit abashed about their society's carnal excess. This is still, after all, a country that has long appointed itself as "moral guardian" to the world, superior about its political neutrality and inventor of cradle-to-grave state welfare.
It is also vigorously gender-neutral, with alliances in government – and ideology – between the family-values right and feminist-grim left. Thus was born the view, accepted now by all parties, that prostitutes are always victims of a societal order that makes women subordinate to men.
This sounds nearly like Andrea Dworkin cant – a radical concept, heavy on the lesbian tilt, whereby intercourse is always and innately invasive to the female, intrinsically unequal.
Sweden hasn't gone quite that far, as the sexual pendulum swings back. They remain, as far as a visitor can tell, hardy and unrestrained in their attitudes toward delights of the human body, while progressive and non-judgmental about most personal choices, 50 per cent of children born outside marriage, gays allowed to adopt.
But you can't buy a sex-trade worker anymore, as even a Supreme Court judge found out a couple of years ago, when he was charged with purchasing the services of a male prostitute.
Toronto city councillors spend so much time muddying each other with gutter politics that they miss the leaching away of precious revenue.
Reporter Paul Moloney reveals in today's Star that huge amounts have been lost at city hall because finance officials sat on development fees – $42 million last year – instead of placing them in an interest-bearing account.
The interest revenue would have topped $1.5 million last year, enough to keep skating rinks, recreation centres and libraries open, even in tight financial times.
"With that kind of money you could ice a lot of rinks – even in the summer," said Councillor Brian Ashton.
The revelation about money management is studiously hidden in an impenetrable report approved at city council this week. So obtuse is the finance document, most councillors probably still don't know what it is they approved.
It took steady rookie Adrian Heaps, struggling to remain unencumbered by the partisan alliances that mark city council, to discover the lost opportunity and get it fixed.
But while Mayor David Miller and his backers were busy yesterday lambasting one council adversary for an obvious faux pas, they might have spent the time looking for more millions presumably buried in the $8.2 billion budget.
Miller lit into Councillor Rob Ford yesterday – smashing the gadfly with a rhetorical bazooka because Ford made ham-fisted comments about "workaholic Orientals," comments some found offensive.
During council debate Wednesday about store openings on statutory holidays, Ford bolstered his pro-shopping views by pointing to what he said was the legendary working habits of Asians.
Meaning it as a compliment, no doubt, Ford said: "Go to the Orient ... go to Hong Kong, okay... you want to see workaholics? Those Oriental people work like dogs. They work their hearts out ... that's why they're successful in life ... I'm telling you, Oriental people, they're slowly taking over ... They're hard, hard, workers."
Now, it's politically incorrect and archaic to say Oriental instead of Asian; and to say "they're slowly taking over" is a no-no to most clear-thinking individuals, much less a city councillor in diverse Toronto.
But was Ford being malicious or racist? Unlikely.
When Ford intends to harm, he's usually excruciatingly impolitic and direct – a trait that inexplicably endears him to some constituents, but earns him disrepute elsewhere.
Remember his "waste of skin" put-down of one colleague? Or the slur against an Italian councillor? His drunkenness and profanity at a Maple Leaf hockey game required a public apology. In other words, you don't have to go looking for reasons to slam the guy.
However yesterday, some councillors, including the mayor, couldn't resist. After all, Ford can't resist pointing out their wasteful spending habits.
"Outrageous and absolutely unacceptable," was how Miller described Ford's comments, a day later. "It's wrong. An elected official should know better. He has to start by profusely apologizing. It's unacceptable in this city."
It is understandable that the majority of councillors hate Ford and salivate at the prospect of finding something to discredit the man. But piling on needlessly when the maverick meant no harm is misplaced anger.
Of course, the boorish Ford and his supporters only added fuel to the fire yesterday when humility would have been the appropriate response. He can't help himself. Wish that council could help us by looking after our (millions of) loonies.
Royson James usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
McSquinty Liberals?
Does anyone else find it somewhat amusing that the same provincial government that decided it should no longer cover the cost of regular eye examinations has now, through Access Ontario, launched an extensive, and I suspect expensive, ad campaign in the subway and other print media, urging restaurants to move to larger print on their menus? You had to know Dalton McGuinty and George Smitherman would not leave the optically challenged among us without a solution.
DENNIS JONES
Cone Of Silence
Witnesses must speak up
Re "Dad pleads for son's killer to turn himself in" (March 18): It is tragic to hear about another Toronto homicide; especially when the cold-blooded killer is still wandering the streets. Since the senseless murder was caught on tape, we can possibly bring the killer to justice. Although the tape was not very clear, a few people in the community might be able to identify the gunman. They should come forward and help give the victim's family and the entire community a sense of closure. Some people refuse to come forward as witnesses because they want to avoid being labelled a "snitch." There is absolutely no need for silence. As long as witnesses remain silent, the entire community will suffer because there is a murderer among us. The killer will not turn himself in because he is too much of a coward. Toronto needs to get these cowards off the streets.
SOPHIA ABDI
Equalization Payments
Let's not forget the reduction of equalization payments to Ontario started during the time that Martin was Finance Minister and he was trying to get us out of the debacle created by PET's just society cradle to grave phenomenon.
Equalization is breaking us
Re "Flaherty strikes again" (Editorial, March 19): The real reason Ontario is becoming a "have-not" province is because several decades of equalization have taken hundreds of billions of dollars out of our economy to support the perpetual welfare cases of Canada. So extreme and unfair is equalization to Ontario that per capita our service levels are lower than the provinces we support financially. How about doing something positive for your own province, Flaherty -- maybe make amends for the damage you left behind after your term as finance minister? It's about time Ontario started flexing its muscle.
JOHN DIMITROPOULOS
Brenda Martin languished in a Mexican prison while the member of Parliament then handling her file mingled with Canadian expatriates at a private reception nearby, The Canadian Press has learned. more...
Verboten for an oppressed minority
By Pierre Lemieux 
The sentencing hearing of Bruce and Donna Montague, the firearm-control resisters, was held on Monday and Tuesday in Kenora, Ontario, following their criminal trial of late last year. Mr. Montague (see picture) was condemned to 18 months in jail, the forfeiture of his firearms, one-year probation, and a lifetime firearms prohibition. His wife Donna received six months of probation. Although the verdict will be appealed, Bruce was immediately imprisoned. The Ontario government also wants to seize the family home under the Remedies for Organized Crime and Other Unlawful Activities Act of 2001.
On Easter weekend of all weekends. It used to be that a college edumacation actually included the study of religion, so that even if you didn’t neessarily float that way, you had some grasp of what it means for those who do.
Evidently, comparative religion is no longer a required course in the alma maters of the staff at The Globe and Mail.
That triumphal barnburner of an Easter hymn, Jesus Christ Has Risen Today - Hallelujah, this morning will rock the walls of Toronto’s West Hill United Church as it will in most Christian churches across the country.
But at West Hill on the faith’s holiest day, it will be done with a huge difference. The words “Jesus Christ” will be excised from what the congregation sings and replaced with “Glorious hope.”
Re:Ruling on sale of Canadarm delayed
thestar.com, March 20
What a conversion that Liberal Scott Brison should now counsel the Harper Conservatives against selling off Canada's Radarsat-2 technology to a U.S. arms firm.
Let us not forget it was the then-Liberal government that in 2005 penned the Remote Sensing Space Systems Act allowing $445 million of Canadian taxpayers' money to be invested in building Radarsat-2 – but leaving ownership of the technology squarely in MDA's hands. Now witness the result – sensitive, world-leading technology built largely with public funds is at risk of being sold to support American military interests.
Accountability for this crisis belongs with Liberals for signing a bad deal over Radarsat-2, and with the current Conservative government for dithering when they should halt the deal.
Darren Brunk, Ottawa
Made-in-Ontario problemOn the eve of a budget did Dalton notice the good times are over in this province? |
In one of the most bizarre communications exercises in recent memory, Premier Dalton McGuinty showed up at a GO station to show off 12 new double-decker buses -- that were made in Scotland.
At the same time, he announced a massive $1 billion infrastructure spending program.
What made this so off-the-wall was the timing.
While McGuinty was busy showing off the McBuses, back in the Legislature, MPPs were voting on Timmins-James Bay New Democrat Gilles Bisson's private member's bill that would require 50% made-in-Ontario content for new transit vehicles.
The Liberals voted against it.
| Full Column |
Shots ripped through the Country Style's glass early Saturday, sending four men to hospital in another shocking instance of public violence.
Sirens screamed to the Dundas and Broadview area at about 8pm Thursday for reports of a double stabbing. One man was knifed in the stomach while another suffered wounds to his side.
Police say two men who'd been drinking heavily were jumped while walking on Boulton Ave. One man didn't even know he was wounded until it was pointed out by police. Both men were treated at St. Michael's Hospital and are expected to recover.
It's not clear exactly what happened. Cops say both men aren't cooperating with their probe.
Protesters across Canada took to the streets Saturday to oppose China's reaction to anti-government demonstrations in Tibet, which Beijing the same day promised to "resolutely crush."
Attended by hundreds, rallies staged across the country were part of growing global protests against violence in Tibet that has left 22 people dead, Chinese state media said Saturday.
System unfair to black fathers
Leonard Pitts Jr.'s recent column "Children bear the burden when fathers walk out" excoriates "selfish" African American fathers who "abandon their children [and] harden themselves against their cries of need." Pitts cites Larry Patterson, Jr., a 19-year-old black father who, after police tried to pull him over, allegedly sped away, smashed his car, and escaped, leaving his infant daughter in the backseat. Patterson is "unique only in degree," Pitts writes-for black men today, it's "Every man for himself."
Pitts' generalization is unfair. He is correct that some African-American fathers have behaved irresponsibly. However, he fails to see that many black fathers have been driven away by shortsighted, angry mothers and a family law system which does little to protect fathers' loving bonds with their children. When citing the reasons for father absence, Pitts mentions "divorce" only in passing. Yet divorce and the breakups of unmarried couples are major causes of African-American fatherlessness.
Despite the stereotype of the feckless and irresponsible male, research shows that the vast majority of divorces are initiated by women, not by men. Even for unmarried couples, it's doubtful that many dads wake up in the morning and say to themselves, "My child loves me and needs me, my girlfriend loves me and needs me-I'm outta here." Yes, some mothers have good reasons for these breakups. Yet, as Jonetta Rose Barras, the African-American author of Whatever Happened to Daddy's Little Girl, explains, many black fathers are simply being "kicked to the curb."
Source
Here’s the comment that, in the end, will have proved to have done more damage to Barack Obama’s presidential aspirations than anything Rev. Jeremiah Wright ever said. From his famed Monday speech in Philadelphia:
I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.
As Christopher Hitchens put it yesterday when interviewed by Hugh Hewitt: the old joke about politicians is that they would sell their own grandmothers to get what they want - and that’s exactly what Obama did - I’ve never seen that actually done before!
As usual, Ann Coulter hits it right on the head (well worth a full read):
Wright is not a relative of Obama’s at all. Yet Obama cravenly compared Wright’s racist invective to his actual grandmother, who “once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.”
Rev. Wright accuses white people of inventing AIDS to kill black men, but Obama’s grandmother — who raised him, cooked his food, tucked him in at night, and paid for his clothes and books and private school — has expressed the same feelings about passing black men on the street that Jesse Jackson has.
Perhaps Obama can get away with dismissing Wright as a “crazy uncle”, and falsely claiming critics are making him “guilty by association”. But he will not, in the eyes of the average American voter, get away with placing his own grandmother on the same moral plain as Rev. Jeremiah Wright. (And here’s betting Obama’s grandmother has the class to never, ever condemn her grandson in public).
Mike Duffy reported today that senior Liberals are actively working on a plan to ease (or force) Stephane Dion out as leader of the Liberal Party.
But who? I think I know the answer.
Read more...Apparently, there is Liberal "private" and then there is Garth Turner "private".
Which is to say that what Liberals are saying privately are published on Garth Turner's blog.
Read more...
Which begs the question will the people you appoint as advisers come from the same circle?
One of my biggest beefs with the OMB is the amount it costs the city in legal fees and staff hours. Were Toronto’s limited number of planners not spending so much time preparing for hearings with the provincially appointed board, perhaps they’d be able to, you know, actually spend some quality time planning for the growth of the city.
In 2007, the city was involved in at least 141 OMB cases (as of September), which involved 416 hearing days. A recent report (PDF) received by the Planning and Growth Management Committee pointed out that the OMB sucks resources from other departments as well — from 2005 to 2007, Parks, Recreation and Forestry committed approximately 250 work days to OMB hearings, while Transportation Services spent somewhere between 250 to 400 working days on OMB cases. In 2006, the city’s legal department, whose bills may be more expensive than most, spent a total of 1044 staff days (the equivalent of 4.35 full time positions) preparing for and attending OMB hearings.
Obsessing over all these numbers, I tend to forget about another unfortunate downside to having the OMB as an appeal board for development applications in the city: lack of citizen involvement. The high cost of participating in OMB hearings means the average neighbourhood resident is often shut out of the process. In some cases, however, citizens can even be punished for participating.
A couple of weeks ago, Guelph Mercury columnist Tony Leighton, wrote of a resident group in Barrie that backed down from participating in an OMB hearing. The reason: they heard that the developer whose plans they were opposing had asked the OMB to order another citizen’s group who had opposed their plans elsewhere to compensate them for the “$3.6 million in legal fees and consulting costs incurred during an OMB hearing that lasted almost four months.” To many people’s surprise, the OMB agreed to consider the developer’s request. The risk that, if successful, the developer might do the same to them, wasn’t one the Barrie group wanted to take.
Writes Leighton:
The idea of being financially ruined because of your democratic objections is indecent.
A lawsuit against citizens attempting to defend what they consider the common good is sometimes called a "strategic lawsuit against public participation" or SLAPP. Its intended effect is to “chill” the defendant. (Oprah Winfrey, unchillable, won a SLAPP filed against her by the cattle industry.) At least 25 U.S. states have also enacted some form of statutory protection against SLAPPs.
In Ontario, there is no SLAPP protection. Toronto lawyer Clayton Ruby told [the Toronto Star] that the provincial government has an obligation to ensure the OMB operates democratically. Says Ruby: "You don't expect crushing costs awards that frighten everyone so they never take part in the process… this then becomes a developers playpen, where only the rich kids get a chance to play."
SAN DIEGO (AP) -- A Superior Court judge on Thursday ordered Starbucks to pay its California baristas more than $100 million in back tips and interest that the coffee chain paid to shift supervisors.
San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett also issued an injunction that prevents Starbucks' shift supervisors from sharing in future tips, saying state law prohibits managers and supervisors from sharing in employee gratuities.
Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil said the company planned an immediate appeal of the ruling, calling it "fundamentally unfair and beyond all common sense and reason."
The lawsuit was filed in October 2004 by Jou Chou, a former Starbucks barista in La Jolla, who complained shift supervisors were sharing in employee tips.
The lawsuit gained ground in 2006 when it was granted class-action status, allowing the suit to go forward for as many as 100,000 former and current baristas in the coffee chain's California stores.
It was not immediately clear how many current and former employees are affected by the ruling.
"I feel vindicated," Chou said in a written statement released by attorneys. "Tips really help those receiving the lowest wages. I think Starbucks should pay shift supervisors higher wages instead of taking money from the tip pool."
Last night's Rick Mercer Report had an audience of 1,062,000 viewers; his Friday re-run of the same show usually picks up another 700,000 viewers. That's 1.8 million sets of eyeballs -- or about ten percent of adults in English Canada. That's comparable to the raw number of people who watch CNN or Fox News Channel across the entire U.S. -- proportionately, of course, it's ten times as many.
More people saw his "rant" about human rights commissions and free speech than, say, read the editorial about the subject in the Globe and Mail, as important as that landmark was. And the emotional impact of a 2-minute video clip, delivered with Mercer's combination of humour, indignation and earnestness, exceeds most anything that the medium of print can deliver.
Mercer's audience is demographically different than Globe or Post readers, or blog readers. His viewers are interested in public affairs, but they're not politically obsessed. Though the blogosphere has been discussing the human rights commissions' war against free speech for months, last night was likely the first time many of Mercer's viewers encountered the subject. As with the monologues on the various U.S. late night shows, Mercer is likely the primary source of political opinion for many "severely normal" Canadians. And he probably has more influence with them -- he is better trusted -- than any purely political pundit.
The more I think about it, the more I believe that Mercer's soliloquy was an important political landmark. When human rights commissions are mocked on the CBC's leading prime time show, you know the political environment has changed.
We're winning.
P.S. Here's a transcript of his "rant" -- replete with a terrifying photo of me.
Holy David Suzuki, Batman! What ever happened to fighting the greatest threat known to mankind in yesterday's Ontario budget? Incredibly, Finance Minister Dwight Duncan didn't mention "global warming" at all in his 14-page budget.. 
Conservatives hope for muted byelection success. Byelections have replaced stoning in many modern democracies --a form of community justice that allows voters to attack the government with the impunity that comes from knowing it will.. 