Ottawa job interview tip: wear a red tie

Some journalists – well, just one, actually, and I’m not sure I’d even call him a journalist – are upset that hiring is not happening at quicker pace up in Ottawa. The rest of Canada, meanwhile, couldn’t give a hoot.

From today’s Hill Times:

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) and his new Liberal government, however, have been busy with a long slate of work: from the UN climate talks in Paris starting Nov. 30, to reinstating the long form census, to ironing out plans to bring in 25,000 Syrian refugees, to multiple international meetings, including the G20 and APEC summit, and more. Finance Minister Bill Morneau (Toronto Centre, On.) published an economic and fiscal projections update last week, and there’s also the Speech from the Throne on Dec. 4.

Warren Kinsella, president of Daisy Consulting and a former Liberal staffer during the Jean Chrétien era, said it can take “two to three months” for a new government to get fully staffed up, and while all ministers will be eager to have exempt staff in place to help handle the government’s busy agenda, the process of vetting new staff takes time. It’s also been almost a decade since the Liberals were last in federal government.

“Not only do they usually have to be approved by the PMO, but they have to go through a security background check [by the RMCP], and, in some cases, those can be quite involved … some of those assessments can take weeks or months to conclude and you’re not permitted as a minister to extend an employment offer until it’s done,” said Mr. Kinsella.

“You can bring somebody in on a part-time basis, or on contract, but they’re not allowed to look at any Cabinet documents because they don’t have their security clearance, so there’s kind of no point,” he said, adding that staff don’t just go through security checks but also other party vetting, including checking staffers’ personal history for potential future embarrassments


In next week’s Hill Times: Adam Radwanski is still the worst journalist in the world

A sampling of next week’s column:

Good God! It’s a veritable constitutional crisis. Just ask Adam Radwanski: the scandalous understaffing issue has “cast a surreal haze” over Ottawa, he wrote in the Globe. Governance is accordingly moving “at a glacial pace” – and, accordingly, “Ottawa crawls.” Says he: “Settling into any sort of rhythm has been made impossible by Justin Trudeau, his chief-of-staff and others spending much of the time since his swearing-in halfway around the world at international summits.”

Ah, yes, those silly international summits, dealing with piddling issues like climate change, refugees, the international economy and what happened in Paris on Friday the 13th. I mean, who cares, really? Can’t you just see Prime Minister Trudeau, being jarred awake by his frantic spouse during the wee hours at the Commonwealth Conference in Malta?

“Justin, Justin!” says the panicked Sophie Trudeau. “This shocking neglect has gone on long enough! You must finally decide who will be the speechwriter to our nation’s Minister of Sport!”


Ontario’s gift to Big Tobacco?

At the outset, let me say that I am a card-carrying Ontario Liberal, and I have worked for the party, off and on, for two decades.

But I am also a citizen who has fought Big Tobacco for just as long. I literally despise them, and I have fought them, because – inter alia – they killed my father.  They’ve killed lots of fathers and mothers and others, in fact.

So what are we to make of this story, which is being reported in many, many places? Is it true?

“For years now it’s been illegal for people to light up in many public places across the province. But that’s about to change, as long as the person smoking has a doctor’s note.

This means medical marijuana users can light up in restaurants, at work or on playgrounds.

As long as they have a doctor’s prescription they’re exempt from the laws that prohibit cigarette smoking and e-cigarette vaping in most public places in Ontario. Dipika Damerla, the Associate Health Minister says these new regulations are about letting people who are very sick or in a lot of pain take their prescribed medication when they need to.”

I have contacted several senior people in the government to find out if this story is true. I’ve contacted long-time opponents of Big Tobacco, like Michael Perley, too. It’s early, and I haven’t heard back.

Is it a case of a junior Minister being ambushed in a scrum? There’s no press release about it on the relevant ministry web site. Is it a case of several reporters getting the facts wrong? That’s possible, but I doubt it.

Whatever the circumstances, rest assured: you’re going to see folks clutching a print out of these news stories, and lighting up in playgrounds, restaurants and showings of The Peanuts Movie near you, starting soon. And you won’t be able to do a damn thing about it.

The problem, here, isn’t about decriminalizing marijuana (because it should be) or medicinal marijuana (because a small minority of people should be permitted to use it). The problem is that Big Tobacco has been waiting for this opening for decades. For them, it is a gift. It rolls back decades of hard work.

Don’t believe me? Here’s researchers Rachel Ann Barry, Heikki Hiilamo and Stanton Glantz, writing in a June 2014 paper in the Milbank Quarterly, which focuses on population health and health policy:

“Since at least the 1970s, tobacco companies have been interested in marijuana and marijuana legalization as both a potential and a rival product. As public opinion shifted and governments began relaxing laws pertaining to marijuana criminalization, the tobacco companies modified their corporate planning strategies to prepare for future consumer demand.

In many ways, the marijuana market of 2014 resembles the tobacco market before 1880, before cigarettes were mass produced using mechanization and marketed using national brands and modern mass media…Legalizing marijuana opens the market to major corporations, including tobacco companies, which have the financial resources, product design technology to optimize puff-by-puff delivery of a psychoactive drug (nicotine), marketing muscle, and political clout to transform the marijuana market.”

And, from pro-weed media:

“Representatives from both British American Tobacco and R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. said they currently have no plans for expansion into the cannabis market. But the Milbank report – citing recently unearthed documents – found that major cigarette brands began researching cannabis opportunities in the late 1960s and early 1970s despite denying it at the time.

An executive with Philip Morris even asked the Justice Department for samples of marijuana so that it could perform research on the plant. The executive asked the government to keep the request silent. A Justice Department representative reportedly agreed, saying the company could also sidestep the FDA’s review of its plans.

One internal memo from the American Tobacco Co. at the time reports that executives learned Philip Morris was granted a “special permit” to grow and manufacture cannabis extracts. The head science adviser with British American Tobacco even drafted a research plan for cannabis-loaded cigarettes.”

This decision – if it is for real – is a sure-fire formula for confrontation, litigation and lots and lots of class actions. It is a huge, huge mistake.

By all means, let people who are legitimately entitled to use a medicinal product to do so. But not in public places, where smoking as been banned for years – and for good reason, too.

Who’s with me?


An outcome is a proof is a value

The usual suspects on the, er, cringe Right are apparently apoplectic about the way Justin Trudeau expresses himself. As such, they have been circulating the quote below on social media today, because they are in high dudgeon, etc. etc.

Personally, I think it’s brilliant, because it strongly resembles this proven classic. I therefore offer it up to you here, to clip and save. Put it on the fridge, so your kids can see it and use it on their next exam.