An encounter with a federal cabinet minister

After my mom, dad and I had finished dropping my sister off at the Kelowna International Airport so that she could catch her flight back to Calgary, AB, where she is studying business at the University of Calgary’s Haskayne School of Business, we went to Costco to buy a few household staples and food stuffs. While waiting near the big box wholesale store’s entrance for Dad to return with the shopping cart, Mom and I walked up and down one of the aisles in the consumer electronics section, looking at flat-panel high-definition plasma, LCD, and DLP television sets. In the midst of comparing notes amongst the two of us on one brand of TV versus another, Mom quietly pointed out to me someone of some national prominence in the next row. I looked over and immediately recognized this person as Stockwell Day, a senior Conservative federal cabinet minister within the 28th Canadian Ministry headed up Prime Minister Stephen Harper. (Day is Minister of Public Safety, the minister with political responsibility for the federal Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada, Canada Border Services Agency, CSIS, the RCMP, and several other ancillary committees and agencies within the department’s mandate.)

Although I don’t like Day’s politics, I couldn’t help but being a bit “star struck” (even though he is also the member of Parliament for the federal electoral district in which I reside) at the moment I noticed him shopping in Costco, with someone who appeared to be a family relative. It’s not every day you run into a federal cabinet minister, even if they are also your area’s MP. It’s especially remarkable since we were shopping at the Costco store on Highway 33 in Kelowna, part of the Kelowna-Lake Country electoral district whereas both Day and I reside across the bridge in the Okanagan-Coquihalla electoral district - and in two separate cities (Penticton and Westbank, respectively) to boot!

It was an interesting experience and one of personal satisfaction for me, even if I do think he’s too inexperienced and poorly suited to the position in cabinet that he holds. A more junior position like National Revenue or Western Economic Diversification would be better suited to Day’s educational background (or lack thereof) and experience.

Have you had an encounter with a federal cabinet minister or someone famous in general? Share your experience(s) below by leaving a comment. Or, write to me at dmehus [at] gmail [dot] com (replace [at] and [dot] with the appropriate symbols in the text entry field of your favourite e-mail client).

Amazon Sinks A9

Amazon Sinks A9: “In a surprising retreat, Amazon.com is dismantling many of the features that helped make its A9.com search engine stand out from the crowd. Things like the A9 toolbar, intricate street-level mapping, and the Instant Reward program that gave active A9 users a 1.57% discount on Amazon.com purchases are all history.”

This news item, in the piece by online stock market research and business news publication The Motley Fool, should serve as a poignant, watershed moment in our history to mark the beginning of the end of the second dot-com bubble. With a proliferation of so-called “Web 2.0″ products touted by newly flush-with-cash venture-backed start-up companies in recent years, A9’s effective demise is so symbolic because when it launched three years ago, and was (along with Idealab subsidiary Snap.com) given the VIP (that’s “very important page”) treatment on such prominent blogs as Searchblog and major news wires like The Associated Press, it could do no wrong. If it were a person, its poop could not stink. Revolutionary features that allowed users: to save a bookmark to every page they’ve ever searched for and visited to an online personal archive; a personal web cache of search results for every keyword ever entered; view pictures of virtually every street corner in the United States; and, to download a customizable web toolbar that tied all of it all together were all hyped. They were going to turn the web search industry on its head, creating the new term “social search,” for web search services that allowed users to save their search results and bookmark the ensuing linked websites.

And, it did. Forced to compete and offer similar services, A9 (and to a lesser extent, Snap.com) forced search giants Google, MSN, Yahoo!, and Ask Jeeves to reinvent themselves (and in the case of Yahoo!, make free some services for which it had previously begun to charge to broaden its sources of revenue following the drying up of ad dollars post dot-com crash in 2000), add new sharing and cataloguing features across all of its services, and vastly upgrade their own bare bones browser toolbars with nothing more than a basic web search ability and bare bones pop-up blocker to something with vastly greater offerings and helpful features. The only problem is, it was so successful at helping to force the web giants to adapt and boost their own service offerings, it had lost focus on its own direction and what it needed for success. Additionally, because those same giants were now offering mostly everything it had been offering that was “cool” (with the notable exception of the aforementioned BlockViewtrade; photo map service), coupled with its lack of brand awareness, users had no need to visit A9.

So, it seems only fitting that three years later, after helping to spawn many new web search services, and many free “Web 2.0″ productivity and collaboration software packages, it is the one that leads them to either, an IPO or acquisition by larger entity for the lucky ones, or their bankruptcy and/or dissolution.

Sadly, I also believe that with all of this excess capital (and we’re talking billions of dollars here) being invested in new web-based, unprofitable start-ups with scant business plans and back-of-the-napkin financial statements every day, a lot of venture capitalists and other investors are about to get burned (again!) by the hype. Overall, billions of dollars are market value will be lost. Ultimately, within a few years, we’ll be in to another belt-tightening and service closure period by those same giants, Google & company, that Yahoo! and Ask.com have already survived once in 2000-2002. To be sure, there are differences than last time. Voice-over-Internet-Protocol telephone systems, much cheaper bandwidth, and global outsourcing have all reduced costs considerably and made ad-supported products viable, but only to a point. As new start-ups are grown and products launched, ad dollars will be stretched so thin that ultimately, it will pull back and devote most of its dollars to the aforementioned giants and many small ones will be forced to close down or sell their technology and domain name on eBay.

For those keeping track, A9 joins the to-be-shuttered on Nov. 1st Audioblogger service of podcasting start-up Odeo Inc. (whose founder and CEO is, coincidentally, Evan Williams, who sold Blogger to Google three years ago for an amount undisclosed but believed to be between $5 and $15 million), which has decided to focus on its core businesses (Odeo and Twittr). Also, ajax-based social word processing services Rallypoint and JotSpot Live, the latter of which was shuttered as parent company JotSpot Inc. decided to focus on its core group wiki hosting service., have ceased operations.

Footnote: Although the A9.com remains operational, it is a vastly different reincarnation of its once-mighty self, serving only as metacrawling web search utility that searches the licensed search indexes of several different algorithmic search engines. It is, essentially, no different than say, InfoSpace’s Dogpile or MetaCrawler, which license search results from Google, Yahoo!, MSN, Ask.com, and others. It really should consider just shutting down A9 completely, rather than let Internet users everywhere bear witness to its own humility.

Too many churches in Stafford, Texas?

ABC News: Worship, But At What Cost?: “Hindus aren’t the only ones drawn to Stafford. In a town with just one movie theater, two grocery stores, and 14 gas stations, there are 51 houses of worship, representing the united nations of religions.”

An interesting report, linked above, concerning the number of churches and other religious shrines in the city of Stafford, Texas explains that there are 51 such institutions in this town of approximately 15,000. A rough, back-of-the-napkin calculation indicates that if 100% of the town’s population went to church, which would be highly unlikely and probably the first such jurisdiction in the world to post 100% support for anything (other than the supposed support that the former Iraqi head of state Saddam Hussein used to boast in various “elections” over the years), that would mean each church would have a congregation of approximately 300. For small- and modest-sized churches, that’s a fair amount of churchgoers. For the larger ones, its woefully small and, perhaps, a sign that, just maybe, Stafford can’t support so many institutions.

However, it’s not simply about congregation sizes. Stafford city council is considering putting a cap on churches so no new ones could build - at least until new people move in and commercial activity is on the rise. The evangelical right is fuming. How dare the local government try to regulate their freedom of religion; it’s simply unconstitutional, they cry.

Alas, it’s a bogus argument. In a town with no property taxes, preferring to opt for development cost charges, franchise and sales taxes to raise revenue, the city can only afford to have so much land tied up by tax-exempt churches. Eventually, they do have a right to say to the “right”, enough is enough. The town needs additional commercial development if it intends to maintain (and grow) both its revenue base and balance its budget, not to mention its bragging rights for having no property taxes.

I do hope the evangelists take the issue to court, if and when the city council passes its “church capping” bylaw. That way, city of Stafford can defend its own legal rights to provide much needed local infrastructure and government services to its citizens.

Ultimately though, my personal belief is to begin forcing churches to pay property taxes, perhaps at a reduced rate for non-profit societies and organizations. They’re flush with cash, and while they do great work in the towns in which they operate, the very fact that many of the largest churches have healthy surpluses of cash in their bank accounts and on their annual budgets, is a strong indication they can afford to pay their way. At one time, the Roman Catholic Church was a significant shareholder in Safeway, the famous North American grocery store owner/operator. While I do understand that investing in healthy blue-chip, dividend-paying corporations is a good way to raise revenue for the much-needed services they provide, there comes a point that when the large, worldwide churches begin acting like multinational venture capitalists, property taxes must be paid.

So, bottom line: everybody should pay property taxes; however, city councils should put in place (and most already have) a mechanism to apply for an annual exemption from paying property taxes so that those most helped by the extra cash in their bank accounts actually get it - and those that can afford it (like the Catholic and Anglican churches) pay their share. Afterall, they still don’t have to pay income taxes.

Eleven people, including CEO of offshore gambling website, face charges

Eleven people, including CEO of offshore gambling website, face charges: “FORT WORTH, Tex. (AP) - Federal officials have charged 11 people, including the CEO of a big gambling website, with conspiracy, racketeering and fraud for taking sports bets from U.S. residents.”

It’s about time the U.S. Department of Justice started cracking down on the explosion of online gambling Web sites, including sports wagering, but also virtual casino and poker table sites. I’ve been a big proponent of a clampdown for a long, long time.

Too much money is lost to gambling, in general, and unregulated, unlicensed, illegal offshore gambling, in particularly. Families are destroyed and people are left to rebuild shattered lives.

I can only hope Justice continues to lay the “smackdown”, to use a popular wrestling term for a sporting event I do not watch, and vigorously pursues other founders of popular gambling sites such as Bodog.com and its Canadian founder, Calvin Ayre.

Ontario Provincial Police nab vodka-sipping, barely-dressed "big rig" driver

Vodka-sipping, barely-dressed driver among those rounded up in Ontario blitz (Canadian Press): “Elsewhere, officers who pulled over a tractor-trailer, loaded with steel, for erratic driving were treated to an eyeful when the driver descended from the rig.

‘Driver got out, just staggered out of the cab wearing only underpants, and he was drinking a bottle of vodka,’ Woolley said.”

It’s amazing to read or hear about some of the really stupid things people do, or don’t realize they’re doing, while intoxicated.

Experian acquires PriceGrabber.com

Experian Acquires PriceGrabber.com

Experian has acquired comparison-shopping site PriceGrabber.com for approximately $485 million - making it on par with Scripps’ buyout of Shopzilla and slightly less than eBay’s purchase of Shopping.com, I believe. (Experian earlier bought LowerMyBills.com.)

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe this leaves NexTag as the last major comparison-shopping Web site that has yet to be acquired - and it seems unlikely they will be, given that everyone who wants one now has one. Mind you, NexTag also offers a service that competes with LowerMyBills.com (LMB) and even uses the same Flash-based rich media ads as LMB where all fifty states are depicted on a map inviting people to compare mortgage rates. The obvious potential buyer for NexTag then is either credit bureaus TransUnion or Equifax, or even more broadly, data collectors and warehousers ChoicePoint or Acxiom.

On the Conservatives’ so-called Choice in Child Care Allowance plan

Earlier today at a rally for Ottawa-South Conservative star candidate Allan Cutler (former mid-level bureaucrat-turned-whistleblower employed within the Sponsorship Program bowels of the federal Public Works and Government Services Canada), Conservative leader Stephen Harper announced his party’s new national child care plan. It is two-fold. One is the “Choice in Child Care Allowance” and the other is the “Community Childcare Investment Program”. The first would give all parents $1,200 per year in cash (before taxes, which Liberal candidate and Minister of Social Development Ken Dryden estimates would amount to a paltry sum of $1,000 per year after taxes) to use for child care purposes. For instance, a family whose parents both work could use it to put towards a space for their child at a daycare or share it with a grandparent who agrees to look after their kid while they work. Or, a stay-at-home mom could use it for food, clothing, and toys for the child that they look after twenty four hours per day, seven days per week.

My take: the only option where this after-tax amount of $84 per month would be beneficial for working parents is if they have a willing grandparent or other close family relative that is able to look after the child daily. Otherwise, with professional child care estimated to cost $25 per day ($175 per week, $700 per month, and $8,400 per year), $3 per day under the Conservative plan clearly will not be helpful - even when combined with the current National Child Tax Benefit and childcare expense income tax deductibility.

Further, it’s bad on three more fronts. Because the Choice in Child Care Allowance is not tied in any way to income, it amounts to a huge tax refund for high income families earning more than $70,000 per year. This takes away precious revenues away from government social programs that benefit lower-income families. Secondly, because the $1,200 is based on a per child basis, it could potentially encourage an explosion in pro-creation, causing families to pop babies out at a rate one per year until they have six or seven kids. And finally, it adds more government bureaucracy because of the need to hire more staff to administer yet-another-benefit program. Rather than simply increase the existing Canada Child Tax Benefit, this plan appears to be ideologically motivated as the CCTB was the brainchild of Finance Minister Paul Martin the mid-90s and the Conservatives want their own “give-money-back-to-the-people” program they can tag for themselves. It’s a publicity stunt at its worst.

The second plank of the Conservative child care strategy is its $250-million per year initiative (the “CCIP”) to create workplace child care programs partnering with not-for-profit child care providers by providing companies with a $10,000 tax credit per space. That will amount to 25,000 spaces per year, they claim.

My take: I don’t have statistics back this up or anything, but I know there are more than 25,000 children in need of child care in Canada presently so this program appears to be woefully underfunded before it even gets off the ground. Further to this, Trinity-Spadina NDP candidate Olivia Chow said it doesn’t create any net new child care spaces. Moreover, while workplace child care programs are good, I’m not sure giving a company a huge tax credit of $10,000 per space created is the best, most efficient use of tax revenue. Consider Minister Dryden’s earlier estimate on CBC Newsworld’s “Politics” broadcast that it costs about $8,000 per year to create and fully fund a child care space. It would be better if the federal Department of Social Development partnered directly with for-profit and not-for-profit child care providers and gave them this money directly. Do the quick and easy math and you’ll see this amounts to immediate savings of $50,000,000 annually under my child care idea versus the Conservative strategy.

Coming up soon: I’ll take my readers on a cross-country journey to what I expect to be intriguing ridings to watch on election night, what ones could be nail-bitingly close races, which ones have star candidates competing in them, and what ones could will get downright nasty. I’ll profile one riding per day until election day - broken up only in the event of a major breaking story on the campaign trail. Stay tuned.

Thoughts on BC Teachers’ job action

For those Canadian readers of this blog, I’m sure by now you are well aware of the job action by the BC Teachers Federation, the union of which all public-school teachers in the province of B.C. are required to belong. For those unaware, forgive my lack of a preamble or backgrounder, if you will. I just wanted to share a few of my thoughts on the matter, spin and hype from both the government and the union excluded.

Say what you will about the BCTF, I do find them to be about as militant and confrontational as labour unions go in this country, and often, I believe their demands are too much. I believe that, perhaps, a 15% salary increase over three years when other unionized government employees had to endure 0% increases during the BC Liberals’ wrong-headed, abysmal first term in office is perhaps too much to ask. However, to require the teachers to essentially continue for another two years (retroactively to June 2004 and continuing until summer of 2006) for less money by paying nothing extra (not even to cover the average cost of living increase of between 2 and 3 percent per annum) is a terrible proposition and one with which I would be personally offended.

In addition, I believe the current system of collective bargaining in the public sector is broken. When your employer is the government, and by extension, the legislators that make up the government caucus, and your employer has the power to move the goal posts in negotiations and make up (or change an existing) “rule book”, the potential for abuse is real (as we’ve seen this year). By imposing a contract, and having the ability to impose contracts, is too much power. It offers no incentive to give the government’s bargaining agent, the B.C. Public School Employers Association, real power to negotiate over things like wages, class sizes, and class composition.

It’s true the B.C. PSEA and BCTF don’t like to negotiate and would rather bat around hot-aired rhetoric. It’s also no secret they dislike each other. However, I believe that the industrial inquiry commission the government struck (arguably the only decent thing they’ve done on this front) to look into a new collective bargaining regime should look into the possibility of forcing the government to pass a law prohibiting the legislating of labour contracts and requiring them to use binding arbitration when they’re at a stalemate.

As well, some say the B.C. PSEA should be eliminated. I think they are a good organization in place that simply has no mandate, no mission. Instead, they should be strengthened and given the ability to negotiate whatever options they choose and bring them on (or take them off) the table.

Finally, I read in The Daily Courier today that one teacher thought the government should get out of the education business. I’m not sure what she meant by this. Surely she doesn’t advocate turning it over to the private sector and having publicly-traded companies contracted to run certain schools, such as they do in parts of the U.S. I don’t believe she advocates this at all - she was referring to the fact that school curriculum and Education Ministry policies change at the drop of a hat, or the appointment of a new Minister of Education. She’s right - it’s got to stop and it must change. So, why not have the government ceasing designing the curriculum? Essentially, they should be responsible for forking over the funds for the education system and printing the educational materials (but not creating them). A provincial committee, made up of rotating representation of the various school districts, should be struck and would be responsible for designing the K-12 student curriculum.

Hello world!

I’ve installed the free, open-source WordPress blogging and Web publishing platform with which I’ll use to post on a variety of topics, which will be of a nature mentioned in the Categories to the side. Widespread roll-out and use of WP is contingent upon rigorous testing; however, it may replace my Blogger Blog*Spot blog, at dmehus.blogspot.com.

Thank you, readers!

Doug M.

Sullivan defeats Clark, for NPA mayoral nomination in Vancouver

‘A fighter, a survivor,’ Sullivan wins key battle: “Father really does know best. Sam Sullivan’s father, Lloyd, was calm in the nerve-wracking hours leading up to the announcement of Sullivan’s win over Christy Clark in the Non-Partisan Association mayoralty nomination yesterday.”

In a headline rivalling the New York Post’s famed “Dewey Defeats Truman” of the 1948 U.S. presidential election campaign climax, long-time and wheelchair-bound Vancouver city councillor Sam Sullivan pulled off the unfathomable and defeated former Minister of Education and Deputy Premier for the Province of B.C. Christy Clark to secure the mayoral nomination of the Non-Partisan Association. Only this time, the headline is true and Sullivan will go head-to-head in the November civic election against upstart electoral organization Vision Vancouver and its mayoral candidate, the left-leaning but popular Jim Green, who has been an advocate of affordable social housing and the renovation of the old Woodward’s commercial building into one such avenue of housing for the impoverished in the city of Vancouver. (Vision Vancouver’s slate includes current councillors Tim Stevenson and Raymond Louie, as well as several candidates to be named later and it does not intend to run school or parks board candidates. It is an offshoot electoral organization of the equally left-leaning Coalition of Progressive Electors (”COPE”), which is also running five council candidates, and formed from the Friends of Larry Campbell Society in recognition of popular one-term mayor and now The Honourable Senator Larry Campbell.)

It’s a shame Christy Clark did not secure the nomination, and although I would prefer to see Coun. Jim Green ultimately win the mayoral race November 19th, she would’ve put up one hell of a fight and made the race truly interesting. Sullivan’s views are too conservative and not so mainstream that he makes a very unappealing and unelectable candidate for mayor. I would certainly like to see Mrs. Clark run as an independent mayoral candidate to split the centre and right vote, allowing Mr. Green to coast to an easy victory. However, this is unlikely given she has pledged to work with Mr. Sullivan to get him elected. Nonetheless, Coun. Green will likely have to change his business cards to Mayor Jim Green come Nov. 20th - or whenever the City Clerk’s Office certifies and validates the election.

Footnote: Is it not very ironic that the civic electoral group, the Non-Partisan Association, uses the catchy “non-partisan” term as part of its very name yet the group’s very membership consists of federal Liberals and Conservatives, as well as old remaining B.C. Social Credit stalwarts, as a means of coming together under one banner to sling very pointed (and very partisan) attacks at both Vision Vancouver and COPE?