DonOntario's Open Salon Blog

US def. Canada 5-3: Not a Miracle, but a fair win

Mon, 22 Feb 2010 13:02:24 -0500

The U.S. hockey win last night was not a "miracle" or even an "upset". The Canadian team was considered the favourite, but not a shoo-in and not even a heavy favourite. The U.S. and Russia were also considered strong contenders for the gold medal, and it wouldn't be shocking if the Fins or Czechs won it, either.

Overall, I was happy with how Team Canada played for 75% of the game and if Brodeur hadn't been handling the puck like an idiot for the first five minutes of the game, and if Canada had taken one or two fewer stupid penalties at the beginning of the third period then the outcome might have been different: the Canadian squad outshot the Americans by about a 2-to-1 margin.

I don't want this post to come across the wrong way, for although this was no "miracle" or shocking upset, the US team absolutely beat the Canadian one fair and square.

Wartime Deception at Backus

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 00:11:23 -0500

A recent article on OS about the Battle of York during the War of 1812 got me thinking about another War-of-1812 story that happened in the area where I was raised, involving a nifty deception. This is the story as it was relayed to me by my father, so I can't vouch for all the historical details. Another thing I learned from my father is "never let the facts get in the way of a good story", so I'll just tell the story as I know it.

Background: The Backhouse Mill was built in 1798, located in what is now called Backus Heritage Conservation Area. It is just a mile or so north of the unincorporated village of Port Rowan on the north shore of Lake Erie, in Norfolk County, Ontario. It is one of a very few surviving mills in southwestern Ontario that are so old, for reasons that will be explained later. It was built by John Backhouse, who was originally from England and came to the area in 1791 after a brief time in the United States. He served as a major in the 1st Norfolk Militia during the War of 1812.

The War: During the first years of the war (1812-13), a major front was in Ontario as American forces attempted to conquer Upper Canada (present-day Ontario). In particular, in southwestern Ontario, they invaded from the west end of Lake Erie (crossing from the area of present-day Detroit) and the east end of Lake Erie (crossing the Niagara River). During the same years, the Americans also attempted to conquer Lower Canada, now Quebec.

Thomas Jefferson had predicted that conquering Canada would be a mere "matter of marching" - a 19th Century version of the Bush administration's prediction of being greated with flowers as liberators in Iraq, maybe? Jefferson's prediction made a certain amount of sense at a superficial level, though, because Lower Canada was full of French Canadians who had been conquered 50 years earlier by the British, and they were probably not fond of the English elite who now ran things there. And Upper Canada, where our story takes place, had a population where the majority of families had arrived from the United States during the preceding few decades, and so many in the US assumed they'd be happy to become Americans again.

However, the French prefered an English elite who allowed them to keep their own French civil law system and French language and protected the position of the Catholic Church to an English elite who would not protect those things and who would impose anti-Catholic policies, which is how they tended to view the United States. And many of the transplated Americans in Upper Canada were United Empire Loyalists - political refugees who had left the US because they were persecuted by their neighbours after the Revolution, had their houses looted and burned, and were not protected or compensated by the new US government in spite of its treaty obiligation to do so. (True, these Loyalists were not the majority of the recent settlers in Upper Canada from the US, but they often had respected positions in their communities.)

The Story: As part of the American campaigns of 1812-13 along the north shore of Lake Erie, US forces had a policy of destroying mills. Mills were pretty much the extent of what passed for "heavy industry" in the early 1800s, at least in the "frontier" that was western Upper Canada and Michigan, northwestern Pennsylvania, upstate New York, etc. So it was an attempt to devastate the industry and economy in order to passify the inhabitants. It was known to the locals that there were two groups of American forces in the area, burning mills. So they built a huge bonfire next to Backus Mill. Both groups of Americans saw the large plume of smoke and assumed that it was coming from the mill and so the other group must have burned it. Both groups then bypassed Backus Mill, assuming that the other had burned it, and that's why Backus Mill is one of the few mills predating 1812 in southwestern Ontario.

I like this story and while I lived in the US I wanted to share it with some of my American friends and co-workers, because it is a clever story, has a local connection for me, and doesn't involve Americans (or anyone else) getting killed, which may not have gone over as well. A relevant situation in which to tell this story never came up, though.

Wonders of "socialized medicine": Lungs alive outside body

Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:04:13 -0400

MIT's Technology Review has an article entitled "Fixing Lungs Outside the Body".

This video is amazing:

From the article:

A new out-of-body lung-repair technique developed at the Toronto General Hospital may dramatically increase the number of lungs that can be used in transplants and improve surgical outcome.

In an operating room at the hospital, the technology can keep a pair of human lungs slowly breathing inside a glass dome attached to a ventilator, pump, and filters. The lungs are maintained at normal body temperature of 37 °C and perfused with a bloodless solution that contains nutrients, proteins, and oxygen. The organs are kept alive in the machine, developed with Vitrolife, for up to 12 hours while surgeons assess function and repair them.

I think that this belies the claims that in a "socialized medicine" system, such as Canada is alleged to have (however inaccurately), such innovations do not occur. Or the claims I've heard that health care is more expensive in the United States because the research and innovation is done there, and other countries just mooch off that to provide American medical and drug innovations to their citizens on the cheap.

"Buy American" stimulus provision is bad news for US, Canada

Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:01:35 -0500

I've just read a story about the US stimulus bill from a Canadian point of view. The facts are:

The stimulus bill, as passed by the US House of Representatives, includes a provision that any projects funded by the stimulus money need to buy only US-produced steel and iron
The version of the bill pending in the US Senate includes a provision that is much broader - any projects funded by the stimulus money need to buy American for all their materials and equipment.
Other countries are not at all happy about this - the story I read mentions responses in Canada and the European Union.

I'll get my more controversial comment out of the way now: Although protectionism is more popular with the liberal crowd in the US (relative to the conservative crowd there), the sentiment underlying this action is the same American exceptionalism and arrogance that explains Bush's adventurism in Iraq and its widespread popular support among Americans until a few years ago. [I'm not claiming that the "buy American" provision is in the same ballpark of immorality and stupidity as the invasion of Iraq, just that they both have American exceptionalism underlying them.] There seems to be a complete failure to even consider how the impact of this measure on other countries will affect the global economy and come back to hurt the US economy.

I've heard lots of proposals from the left in the US for "fair trade" measures - for example, targetted tarrifs against certain goods from certain countries that have lax labour or environmental protections, to bring the costs of those goods up to what they would be if reasonable labour and environment standards were in place. I'm not an economist, but those sound like they might be good ideas to me. The measure in the stimulus bill, however, is blanket and blatant protectionism.

“I know that countries around the world are expressing grave concern about some of these measures that go against, not just the obligations of the United States but, frankly, the spirit of our G20 discussions,” [Canadian Prime Minister] Harper said.
This sort of measure could likely lead to retaliatory measures: Canada, the EU, and other jurisdictions could enact similar measures, reducing the foreign demand for US steel and other goods. I think that this is the biggest practical argument against the measures. It is also the main justification for my claim that the measures are a manifestation of American exceptionalism: that fact that other countries would be pissed off and that they could very well enact retaliatory measures just hasn't been a big consideration, apparently.

Already, there are some American companies expressing concerns about it, about potential retaliation if this were to go further.

“It's bad for Canada, it's bad for the U.S., it's bad for the global economy," [Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce] said. "When you see people engaging in protectionism at the time of a recession, the fear is that other countries will retaliate as well."

It would leave U.S. taxpayers paying higher prices for public works and could spark "tit for tat" in trade policies, he said.

"The temptation will always be there for someone to say, 'Look, somebody has put up a barrier against us; we will put up a barrier against them,' and everybody loses as a result," he said.
This measure is almost certainly illegal. The US has treaty obligations, under NAFTA and WTO to name two important ones, and my understanding is that under the US constitution treaties are a higher law than anything else except the federal constitution itself.

[Canadian] Industry Minister Tony Clement also did not hide his unease.

"We're always concerned when there are protectionist pressures in the United States," he told CBC News.

"The U.S. Congress is a place where you get manifestations of protectionist pressures, there's no doubt about that," he added.

"At the same time, the United States has treaty obligations that they have signed on to — NAFTA is one, the World Trade Organization is another — and we expect the United States to live up to its treaty obligations of open and fair trade."

In Brussels, the European Union warned Thursday that it would protest the provision, the Associated Press reported. Europe will not "stand idly by and ignore" a provision that "prohibits the sale or purchase of European goods on American territory," EU spokesman Peter Power said.

Canada does not have a "nationalized" health care system

Tue, 9 Sep 2008 23:09:41 -0400

In US political discussions, health care in Canada, when it is mentioned, is usually referred to as a "nationalized system" or "national system". This is wrong on two main counts.

There is not really one Canadian national health care system: there are at least ten or thirteen. Like the republic to its south, Canada is a federation. Each province runs has its own health care system. The federal government does mandate certain minimum standards and that each province provide health care to visitors from the other provinces, in order for the provinces to receive extra money from the federal government earmarked for health care.
Even within a province, the entire health care system is not "nationalized" or "socialized" - only one important element of the system is. In all the provinces, the main component of the health care system that is "nationalized" (i.e. state-owned and run, or technically crown-owned and run) is health insurance.
I think the hospitals and clinics are run similarly to how they were in the US until about 20 or so years ago: some are owned by municipal governments, some are part of universities, and most are privately-owned not-for-profit corporations. The doctors are employed by the hospitals or clinics, or working in for-profit family practices or self-employed - usually not employeed by the provincial or federal government. The provincially-run health insurance agencies won't tell you which family doctor you have to see, or which hospitals you must visit.
Many people have private health insurance, which they purchase themselves or get through an employer, to cover things like dental work, eye glasses, or prescription drugs. (Contrary to a very common misconception in the U.S., most Canadians do not get free, or even subsidized, prescription drugs. The reason drugs are so much cheaper in Canada is usually just that the limited government drug plans (for seniors, etc) actually negotiate for lower prices, and the governments don't give the drug companies unduly favourable treatment allowing them to arbitrarily jack-up prices.) Private medical insurance is not allowed to pay for any of the same medical services that the provincial plans cover. The provincial plans cover everything from emergency room treatments to routine checkups, tonsillectomies to chemotherapy, necessary weight-reduction surgery to physiotherapy.

The biggest common problem in the health care systems in Canada is wait times. For serious, painful and debilitating problems, like needing a bad hip replaced or having cateracts removed, patients may need to wait several months. There can also be very long waits for tests like MRI. This is a big problem. However, immediately life-threatening problems are dealt with in a reasonable time -- generally, you will get heart surgery immediately if you need it. I'm certainly not trying to argue here that this situation is OK or does not need serious improvement.

Membership in the provincial plans is limited to resident citizens and permanent resident immigrants.

* Disclaimer: I wrote this piece a while ago, based on my own experiences and understanding, and posted it in a Salon comment. I have updated and edited it here.

DonOntario's Open Salon Blog

US def. Canada 5-3: Not a Miracle, but a fair win

Wartime Deception at Backus

Wonders of "socialized medicine": Lungs alive outside body

"Buy American" stimulus provision is bad news for US, Canada

“I know that countries around the world are expressing grave concern about some of these measures that go against, not just the obligations of the United States but, frankly, the spirit of our G20 discussions,” [Canadian Prime Minister] Harper said.

Already, there are some American companies expressing concerns about it, about potential retaliation if this were to go further.

“It's bad for Canada, it's bad for the U.S., it's bad for the global economy," [Perrin Beatty, president of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce] said. "When you see people engaging in protectionism at the time of a recession, the fear is that other countries will retaliate as well."

It would leave U.S. taxpayers paying higher prices for public works and could spark "tit for tat" in trade policies, he said.

"The temptation will always be there for someone to say, 'Look, somebody has put up a barrier against us; we will put up a barrier against them,' and everybody loses as a result," he said.

[Canadian] Industry Minister Tony Clement also did not hide his unease.

"We're always concerned when there are protectionist pressures in the United States," he told CBC News.

"The U.S. Congress is a place where you get manifestations of protectionist pressures, there's no doubt about that," he added.

"At the same time, the United States has treaty obligations that they have signed on to — NAFTA is one, the World Trade Organization is another — and we expect the United States to live up to its treaty obligations of open and fair trade."

In Brussels, the European Union warned Thursday that it would protest the provision, the Associated Press reported. Europe will not "stand idly by and ignore" a provision that "prohibits the sale or purchase of European goods on American territory," EU spokesman Peter Power said.

Canada does not have a "nationalized" health care system