Thirty days hath November .... but why are there only 28 days in February?

Vive les écoles libres!

ADQ wants to scrap school boards

ADQ Leader Mario Dumont said if elected premier he'd abolish school boards and reinvest the savings to streamline and improve Quebec's education system. The province could pump up to $150 million into schools if it eliminated administrative boards, Dumont said on Monday during a campaign stop in Saint-Nazaire, in the Saguenay. Dumont said school boards are bloated and suck up education dollars that could be used in the classroom. "The administrative costs are going up at a much bigger pace than the investment in the children, in the classes," said the ADQ leader.

Boisclair burning

Maybe it's just a rogue poll, but... criminy:

One week into the Quebec provincial election campaign, a new poll suggests the Liberals have maintained its lead over the Parti Quebecois.

The Leger Marketing poll shows Premier Jean Charest and the Liberals have the support of 34 per cent of respondents.

The PQ had 26 per cent support, while the Action democratique du Quebec had 22 per cent.

A CROP poll published last week showed the Liberals at 36 per cent support, the PQ at 32 per cent and the ADQ at 18 per cent.

The ADQ is within four points of the PQ? The PQ are within four points of third place? That's big news, if it holds.

L'UPDATE: Get the full story in Le Devoir.

The Agenda

I was on Steve Paikin's fine new show The Agenda Thursday night, talking about how to reconcile economic growth with the environment, or whether that's even possible. Fellow panelists: John Duffy, Elizabeth May, Robert Costanza (a professor of ecological economics) and David Robertson from the CAW.

Here's a link to the web page for that episode. You can watch the video here, or listen to the audio here.

I was also on The Agenda the previous week, this time talking about how to reconcile Alberta and Quebec. See the page, video and audio.

Don't know what's going on with the comments. The TheirSay server appears to be down.

On the plus side, if you can read this it means Blogger is working again.

Sigh.

UPDATE: On again. UPPERDATE: And off. Double sigh.

I knew it would come to this

Child-Safety Experts Call For Restrictions On Childhood Imagination

The Department of Health and Human Services issued a series of guidelines Monday designed to help parents curtail their children's boundless imaginations, which child-safety advocates say have the potential to rival motor vehicle accidents and congenital diseases as a leading cause of disability and death among youths ages 3 to 14.

"Defuse the ticking time-bomb known as your child's imagination before it explodes and destroys her completely," said child-safety expert Kenneth McMillan, who advised the HHS in composing the guidelines. "New data shows a disturbing correlation between serious accidents and the ability of children to envision a world full of exciting possibility."

Expose the Copernican deception!!!

If you can fake insincerity, you've got it made

Yesterday's devastating CanWest poll puts Harper well out in front as the public's choice of leader - and Dion in third.

Conducted for CanWest News Service and Global National and released Tuesday, the Ipsos-Reid poll said respondents see Harper as more trustworthy than Dion and as someone with values closer to their own.

The online survey — conducted among a random group of 1,000 people from Feb. 15 to Feb. 19 — reported 46 per cent said Harper would make the best prime minister.

NDP Leader Jack Layton was their second choice at 29 per cent while Dion was third at 25 per cent.

But wait. It gets worse.

The findings also had bad news for Dion on the one big issue the former federal environment minister has sought to own.

Harper and Dion were virtually tied when those surveyed were asked which leader is "sincerely committed to dealing with climate warming."

Harper scored 30 per cent and Dion scored 29 per cent.

Yes, but what people want is someone who's insincerely committed to dealing with climate warming, as I explain in today's column.

Here we go: Boy dies after being hit in head by hockey puck

A 10-year-old boy from Guelph, Ont. is dead after being hit in the head with a hockey puck on the weekend.

Nicholas Lambden was playing hockey with his friends at an outdoor rink on Sunday when he was struck by a stray puck from another group of players.

Tragedy? Freak accident? Reminder of the cruel randomness of the universe? No, political opportunity.

Guelph City councillor Bob Bell represents the ward where Lambden was killed and he says the incident reinforces the need for children to wear helmets while playing on ice.

"I think kids should wear helmets when they're playing hockey," he said. "Kids and parents need to associate helmets with skates as they associate helmets with bikes.''

Splitsville

Apparently there's some sort of "blogburst" going on (is that what the kids call it nowadays? Is that like a "rave"?) on the subject of income-splitting. Here's my take, from a piece I wrote a couple of months ago.

JOKEDATE: Of course, in a way the tax system already allows for income-splitting. You split your income, and the government takes half. Ba-dum-dum! Thanks! I'm here all week! Try the veal!

If you're reading this on Internet Explorer, can I suggest that you stop? I don't know what it is about IE: the site looks fine in any Mac browser, and in Firefox for Windows. On IE (IE6 at least) it goes to hell: columns splayed every which way, strange indentations from nowhere, etc. I have no idea why, and I'm tired of trying to figure it out. Get a real browser! On the other hand, boss tunes, no?

Maybe you watched the Super Bowl. Maybe you enjoyed it, or maybe you're a Bears fan. But did it occur to you that what you were really watching was a festival of hatred, brutality and insensitivity? No, not the game: the ads.

Television advertising standards came under fire again this week after several groups called someSuper Bowl commercials offensive and demanded they never be aired again...

[General Motors] became the subject of sharp criticism when The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention complained about the insensitivity of a commercial by the automaker that showed a factory robot leaping from a bridge after it was fired for a making a mistake.

The group said in a statement the commercial 'is offensive to the tens of millions of survivors of suicide loss nationwide. In its carelessness, it portrays suicide as a viable option when someone fails or loses their job.'...

This year's advertisement by Masterfoods, a unit of privately-held Mars, showed two auto mechanics locked in an accidental kiss while eating a Snickers candy bar, then ripping out chest hair to prove they are 'manly.'

'The makers of Snickers and its parent company at Mars should know better,' the Human Rights Campaign said in a statement. 'If they have any questions about why the ad isn't funny, we can help put them in touch with any number of Americans who have suffered hate crimes.'...

Even before the Super Bowl aired on February 4 on CBS, drawing the third largest U.S. television audience ever, the National Restaurant Association called an ad featuring Kevin Federline as a fast-food worker demeaning to the industry.

Quite right. It's this kind of thing that can lead to a 40% increase in wife-beating in a single day.

Climate change

Harper announces $1.5 billion clean air fund:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper announced today a $1.5-billion trust fund that will be distributed to the provinces and territories to reduce pollution and greenhouse gases.

Harper said in Sherbrooke that Quebec's share of the new Canada Eco-Trust and Clean Air Fund will be about $350 million.

The prime minister said the money will be contained in the upcoming budget and that it will be "part of the actions taken on the fiscal imbalance." ...

Quebec has long been asking Ottawa for $328 million to implement environmental programs, but the demand wasn't met under Paul Martin's former Liberal government.

Harper's Tories, until now, also rebuffed Charest's call for the money.

Gosh. Why the sudden change of heart, I wonder...

Plus ca change

Sigh:

The Conservative government has loaded the committees that determine who can become a judge, selecting a series of Tories including former politicians, aides to ministers, riding association officials and defeated candidates.

The influential but little-known judicial advisory committees were created in 1988 to take partisan politics out of the appointment of judges. But half -- at least 16 out of 33 -- of the people chosen by the federal justice minister as his nominees are conservative partisans, a review by The Globe and Mail has found...

Partisan appointments include defeated Tory candidates such as Mark Bettens, a firefighter from Glace Bay, N.S., whose résumé lists one year at Cape Breton University and two runs for the provincial Tories. There are three Quebeckers who worked as Tory political staffers during Brian Mulroney's government and the Conservative Party's long-time Alberta lawyer, Gerald Chipeur.

The lists initially included Mr. Harper's best friend, Calgary geologist John Weissenberger, but federal officials said Mr. Weissenberger resigned after he took a government job as Immigration Minister Diane Finley's chief of staff.

Okay, Internet Explorer people, does the page look any different now? UPDATE: By George, I think we've got it! Thanks to Jamie H. for the tip. Blogger is another matter, but we'll soon settle their hash...

Quelle surprise

Premiers can't reach agreement on equalization

Calling all techies: while in Whistler, I tried calling up the page on an old Windows machine, using the dreaded Internet Explorer (version, I don't know, 2?). The whole right side of the page was missing. Questions: 1. Can people see a couple of columns full of stuff to the right of this one? 2. Does anyone have any idea how to fix this glitch? UPDATE: Okay, following Luke's instructions, I've added a "position:relative" to each of the "float:" boxes. Does that change anything? UPPERDATE: Apparently not. Christ. And meanwhile, "New" Blogger has all but ceased to function. Help!

Jobs Calls for End to Music Copy Protection:

Mr. Jobs’s appeal, posted on the company’s Web site Tuesday, came in the form of an essay titled “Thoughts on Music,” but in essence it was a letter to the “Big 4” music companies: Universal, Sony BMG, Warner and EMI. While he said that “customers are being well served” by the current approach to digital rights management — with online music retailers using incompatible antipiracy systems but nonetheless offering “a wide variety of choices” — the subtext clearly pointed to the prospect of change. He dismissed one possible alternative, in which Apple would license its own system, FairPlay, allowing competing digital players to play iTunes songs and letting other stores sell copy-protected music for the iPod. Mr. Jobs said that approach would only complicate enforcement of digital rights management, as myriad companies would have to coordinate software and hardware updates. Instead, he proposed that labels could shed digital rights management altogether. Mr. Jobs pointed out that only 10 percent of all music sold last year was through an online store and that music is already easily loaded onto digital players from CDs, with no antipiracy features. Attaching digital rights management to music bought online has only limited the number of online music stores, he wrote. “This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat,” he wrote.

Woo-hoo!