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Sometimes things take a while to make it to Canada. The nutrition facts label on pre-packaged food was introduced in the U.S. in 1994. Canadians had to wait until 2005 for a similar labeling scheme. When it comes to the scourge of unwanted telemarketing phone calls it's no different. The U.S. National Do Not Call Registry came into effect in 2003. Five years later, Canada is finally getting a do-not-call list . It should be operational this fall ( September 30th, so they say ). The bad news (as I see it) is that there are some exemptions. Even if we sign up, we'll still get calls—whether we want them or not—from charities, political parties, polling companies and companies with whom we have existing business relationships. I can see the argument for allowing charities to make fundraising calls, but I still disagree. When I give to a charity, I want as much of my donation as possible to go to the cause, not to pay for fundraising. I suspect that a lot of money is wasted on ...

As I pointed out in my recent post , democracy is not so easy to measure. The sine qua non of democracy is generally felt to be "free and fair elections". But that begs quite a few questions: Can you have "free and fair" elections without freedom of the press? How was the list of candidates assembled? Is wealth a precondition for running? Have there been any implicit or explicit threats conditional on the outcome? But there's a lot more to democracy that elections ("free and fair" or otherwise). Elected representatives should be responsive to their constituents' concerns. When those concerns are consistently ignored, there is clearly a problem. This has been just the case with Canadian public opinion on the war in Afghanistan. According to public opinion polling conducted by The Strategic Counsel for The Globe and Mail and CTV News, since the summer of 2006, a majority of Canadians have opposed sending troops to Afghanistan. In the poll of Janu...

It came as no great surprise: the Liberals today proposed a very gentle amendment to the Conservatives' motion to extend Canada's military stay in Afghanistan. The key difference is that the amendment calls for withdrawal of troops starting in February 2011, whereas the original motion simply referred to extending the stay until 2011 (and then?). Seems like a cosmetic change to me, but I guess it keeps everyone happy (except, of course, the Canadian public, who have consistently been of the opinion that the Canadian military presence needs to wind down). Stephen Harper must have been delighted. But it's not yet a fait accompli , so he prudently kept his response low-key, referring to the amendment as a " positive development ". The Liberals, who got Canada involved in Afghanistan in the first place, have some internal divisions about this. But it lets hawks like Michael Ignatieff pretend to be doves. Here he is, yesterday in the House of Commons: When the govern...

When I talk with people about Canada's military involvement in Afghanistan, their reaction is pretty consistent. Yup, it's a mess. Yup, maybe we shouldn't have gotten involved in the first place. But the Taliban were pretty nasty when they were in power [Agreed!] particularly in terms of how they treated women [Agreed again!]. Should we withdraw? Probably ... except ... Except we have a reponsibility to the people of Afghanistan. Except if we did, the Taliban would take power again. Except if we did, women's rights would disappear. Except our NATO "partners" would be upset. Except how can reconstruction take place unless order is established? It's no wonder that with obstacles like these, many Canadians feel quite ambivalent about the idea of withdrawal from Afghanistan. But the real obstacles are in our minds: we are imprisoned by our own assumptions. To list a few: the assumption that we know best; the assumption that the Taliban are the source of all tr...

Last week the Independent Panel on Canada's Future Role in Afghanistan released its report . The full report is available here . The basic message? Stay the course: Canadian soldiers should stay in Afghanistan well into the future. The argument is propped up by the usual noble words—and a few ignoble graphs, two of which I've shown here. The graph below shows Afghan's opinions about the direction in which their country is moving: Comments both graphical and political would be most welcome!

I kid you not. (That's Bell Canada , by the way.) If I were writing a novel and I made that line up, my editor would say, "Come on, Nick, that's just not plausible." As to why you have to press 1 7 for English, my best guess is as follows. Obviously for service in French, you must have to press 1 (after all, French is Canada's other official language). I'm guessing Inuktitut is 2 , and if so, I applaud Bell Canada: it's about time Canada's First-Nations peoples got their proper respect. (You can probably see where I'm going with this: Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Arabic, Urdu, ... all the way up to 17 .) Enough cheap wisecracks ... But at this point I think I'll skip the silly jokes and instead use the mention of proper respect for Canada's First-Nations peoples as an excuse to comment on what I think is perhaps Canada's greatest shame: the way native people here have been treated ever since the first contact by Europeans . On any nu...

The Ottawa International Airport has a large banner in the arrivals area proclaiming that "We Support Our Troops". I think it's worth considering what this means , so let's take it word by word ... We Who exactly is "We"? Perhaps the Ottawa Macdonald-Cartier International Airport Authority , since they're the ones who presumably authorized the banner. But isn't the airport a public place? Nobody asked my opinion. Support Perhaps the key word. As a taxpayer, I suppose it's a given that I support the troops financially . But let's cut to the chase: we're talking about the Afghanistan mission here, and I don't believe Canadian troops should be in Afghanistan . My disagreement is not with the troops themselves, it's with the foreign policy of the Canadian government. Our Troops The trouble is, the wording of the slogan seems to suggest that if you disagree with the presence of Canadian troops in Afghanistan, then somehow you're ...