Robocalls and Elections Canada...

Am I on a different planet? Today, I decided to go down to Parliament Hill to hear for myself the Elections Canada testimony on the so-called Robocall scandal. Marc Mayrand, head of Elections Canada, actually didn't say much, but the spin on the web has been amazing.

What I thought was interesting was the low level of complaints received by Elections Canada before and just after the election. A total of 70 complaints were received. That's it, just 70 complaints.

Of course, when the story hit the papers and the opposition parties started asking for people to come forward, over 40,000 communications were received by Elections Canada. Of those, 800 are now being investigated - the rest are just bogus. These 800 complaints are scattered in 200 ridings. While the average is just 4 per riding (not a lot), I bet that most riding are just 1 or 2 and the bulk in Guelph.

He was also quite clear that he was annoyed at the press coverage and gave a few examples where Elections Canada received a lot of complaints about a particular issue, but where full investigation revealed no substance to the complaints.

He will report in a year.

If you look on the web for the news coverage, you'll find an almost ridiculous emphasis on the 200 ridings - like that indicates that this is a widespread scandal. It isn't. There were 6,400+ calls from Guelph that went to voters with incorrect polling locations - some of those calls went to people outside the riding telling them where to vote in Guelph. This surely indicates incorrect data - and Mr. Mayrand said that typically the Elections Canada database has 14% incorrect data.

The opposition MPs present tried to find something to ask. But, Mayrand refused to answer questions on his investigation and that left people like NDP MP David Christopherson frustrated. He actually asked Mayrand about the procedures to null and void the last election.

One last thing - Mayrand was clear. He stands by his certification of the last election.

Mulcair as Che...

My favorite button from the NDP Convention. The person who gave this to me thought that Che is a great role model for everybody...not just dippers.

Vivian Krause speak in Ottawa on Monday, March 19th

Environmental detective Vivian Krause will be presenting on the funding of environmental groups in Canada.

March 19, 2012, 7 PM
Library & Archives Canada
395 Wellington
Ottawa, Ontario
Admission: $15 (students $10)

Tickets for our evening with Vivian Krause are now on sale at four locations in Ottawa: Compact Music (785 Bank, 190 Bank), Collected Works (1242 Wellington) and Ottawa Festivals (47 William). Tickets are $15 ($10 for students).

From Vivian's blog: Rethinking Campaigns

"According to my preliminary calculations, since 2000 USA foundations have poured at least $300 million into the environmental movement in Canada. Its time to ask why. The David Suzuki Foundation alone has been paid at least $10 million by American foundations over the past decade. Why are American foundations spending so much money in Canada instead of in their own country or in other countries around the world that are far more needy than Canada?"

You can go to her blog here:

http://fairquestions.typepad.com/

You can also catch Vivian regularly on Ezra's show on Sun News.

Here is Vivian's bio (in her own words)

I have a B.Sc. and an M.Sc. in Nutrition from McGill University and l'Université de Montréal, respectively. My major was Nutrition.

During the 1990s, I worked for the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) on programs for maternal and infant nutrition in Guatemala (1990-1995) and Indonesia (1996-2001). I also did some food aid planning for the the U.N. High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR). Before that, I worked with Algonquin people to prevent diabetes in their communities in the north part of Quebec.

During 2002 and 2003, I was Corporate Development Manager for North America for NUTRECO, one of the world's largest producers of farmed salmon and fish feed. In 2006, I prepared a submission to the Special Committee on Sustainable Aquaculture of the B.C. Government. While preparing that submission, I unexpectedly came across a grant for an "antifarming camapign" with "science messages" and "earned media." When I raised questions about this grant from the Gordon & Betty Moore Foundation, four grants were quietly re-written. This and other information led me to begin writing a blog called Fish Farm Fuss. While going through U.S. tax returns as part of the research for that blog, I happened to notice many grants for a "Tar Sands Campaign" (see here also). That's when I started to write about the campaign against Alberta oil.

If you would like to read about how I ended up going from UNICEF to salmon farming, and started writing this blog, please click here.

As I tried to take a look at the salmon farming controversy from a marketing perspective - a point of view that I missed when I worked in the industry - I wrote two papers about the so-called 'science' about PCBs in farmed salmon, and sea lice - and the money behind it.

I was born in Vancouver but lived most of my childhood in Kitimat and Kamloops. At the time, my parents were teachers. I now reside in North Vancouver.

Don't miss this event with Terry Glavin in Vancouver...

To all my friends on the West Coast, don't miss this Fraser Institute event...

What next for Afghanistan?

Canadian sacrifices and Beijing's looming shadow

Thursday, March 8, 2012 - Fraser Institute Boardroom, Vancouver

Agenda:
Registration/Lunch: 11:30am
Presentation: 12:15pm
Q&A: 12:45pm
Adjourn: 1:30pm

Cost:
Individual Ticket: $35.00
+ HST

Canadian troops have played a critical role in Afghanistan, whether driving the Taliban out of Kandahar or providing training to Afghan security forces and helping rebuild needed infrastructure. But despite Canada’s ongoing commitment to helping the Afghan people, policy vacillation in Washington is creating an opening the Chinese government is all too willing to exploit, says journalist Terry Glavin, author of Come from the Shadows: The Long and Lonely Struggle for Peace in Afghanistan, and co-founder of the Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee.

After having failed to support the United Nations action in Afghanistan, Beijing is now rushing in and acquiring vast copper and other mineral leases as well as forming ties with Pakistan’s ISI. Meanwhile, the United States is prepared to abandon the Afghan people to recurring threats of Islamic violence and oppression, and neither Canada nor other Western nations are standing up to Washington.

Join Glavin, a recipient of the 2009 B.C. Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, columnist with the Ottawa Citizen, and a frequent contributor to the National Post, for a discussion on his recent travels “outside the wire” in Afghanistan, Canada’s efforts in Afghanistan, and the looming threat China poses for the Afghan people.