SHOULD THE U.S. GOVERNMENT BE RUNNING A CAR COMPANY?

In his annaancement about the future of the car companies, President Obama  said his administration had no intrerest in running General Motors. But wait a minute.  If  you fire  the CEO,  shake up the board of directors,  b ack the warranties,  and send in your people to lead the reconstruction, you are running the company [...]

DID OUR HEALTH CARE SYSTEM FAIL NATASHA?

Lizotte

WOULD YOU WATCH AN OBITUARY CHANNEL?

A Quebec entrepeneur is planning to develop a TV channel – to be called “Je me souviens’ – to bring obituaries to the small screen.   The channel will charge a fee to broadcast obituaries, prayers, hospitalization notices and messages of thanks.  Gerald Dominique has already obtained a license from the CRTC and plans to be [...]

SHOULD WE TURN OFF OUR LIGHTS TONIGHT?

What, pray, is the point of Earth Hour, dousing our lights for 60 minutes tonight?
In an editorial comment this morning the Montreal Gazette calls this exericse “a fatuous publicity stunt in which we’re asked to sit in the cold dark for an hour tonight to remind ourselves that we use cleaner electricity than most of [...]

SHOULD THE SEAL HUNT BE STOPPED?

Canada’s seal hunt — the largest in the world – began this week.  The allowable catch is 280,000 harp seals from a herd of  5.5 million.
Some  observers say the days of the hunt are numbered because internati0nal opposition to the killing of seals is growing.  The European Union has branded the hunting of seals as [...]

SHOULD THE CBC BE CUT?

This morning the moderator of  our film class at McGill opened by saying angrily, “The CBC is finished.”
He was referring, of course, to the cuts announced yesterday by the CBC:  800 jobs gone (most of them drawing down $75,000 );  asset sales to raise $125 million; ‘ program of voluntary retirements.
This slaughter was provoked when [...]

IS OBAMA A CHAMELEON?

According to a front page story in today’s New York Times, what we saw last night in his second press conference was a Barack Obama who had reverted to his lecturing, professorial mode — no jokes, no smiles and speaking in long paragraphs.  Over at Fox news last night Bill O’Reilly and the gang were [...]

SHOULD THE CANADIAN MILITARY BE A TABOO SUBJECT FOR COMEDIANS?

At three o’clock in the morning, in a dimly lit Fox News studio, host Greg Gutfeld was yacking around with his fellow-panelists and would-be comedians.
By some happenstance Gutfeld had come across testimony that a  Canadian Afghan General had given to the Canadian Senate to the effect that by 2011 his Canadian troops would need a [...]

SHOULD THOSE BONUSES BE RETURNED?

The president of  AIG has asked his employees to return at least half their bonuses no later than last evening. Not to be outdone the House of Representatives slapped a 90 per cent confiscatory tax on the bonuses.  It is unlikely that tax will pass muster in the courts because it amounts to a “bill [...]

DID PRESIDENT OBAMA INSULT THE SPECIAL OLYMPICS?

After I left the Jesuit Order at the beginning of 1970, I spent the next three years as an executive with the Special Olympics which were just beginning in Canada.  (They were established in 1968 in the United States by the Kennedy family.)
Our main objective then was to get the National Hockey League to support [...]