ACC Canada LinkedIn Group as at June 6, 2012

and just what is George trying to get at this time ...

There's a kind of hush,
all over the ...
...theatre ...
tonight.

The peeps are all settled; those for the bride upon her side, and those for the bride upon her side.

I guess they chose a theatre because they could not decide between a synagogue and Stonehenge.

And thankfully there are no Republicans or Harper Tories present.

"My Mother's Lesbian Jewish Wiccan Wedding".

A musical of great fun!  (on now at the Tom Hendry Warehouse Theatre)

Naked on the Stand?

Corporate Counsel has reported on the testimony of a retired Imperial Tobacco General Counsel in the class actions relating to addiction and lung disease being heard in Montreal court. The Corporate Counsel article can be read here or can be read below.  At issue is his part in decisions taken in the early 1990s to destroy company documents on the risks of smoking.  Susan Hackett (former General Counsel for the Association of Corporate Counsel) and I were interviewed on corporate governance principles surrounding records management and the legal ethics relating to document destruction while litigation is in course or reasonably expected.  I certainly agree that back in the 1990s records management as an area of corporate governance was not as mature as it is today but the ethical principles remain unchanged.

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Corporate Counsel

Ex-Imperial Tobacco GC Questioned Over Destroying Health Documents

By Sue Reisinger

April 6, 2012

Over the course of three long days, Roger Ackman, Imperial Tobacco's general counsel from 1972 to 1999, sat in the hot seat where no GC ever wants to be—as a trial witness being grilled by a plaintiffs lawyer over destroying company documents.

Ackman was dragged into a suit against the tobacco industry in Superior Court in Montreal—against his protests and despite failed legal attempts to avoid it. But because the GC actually took part in decisions in the early 1990s to destroy company research reports on the risks of smoking, the Canadian court ruled he had to testify.

Ackman has insisted that neither he nor his former company did anything wrong in destroying the files or in selling tobacco, which is a legal product. If anyone is to blame, the company said, it would be the Canadian government for not regulating the sale of the product (and in fact the government has been added as a third party in the case).

As for the shredded documents, Ackman’s company has said they were only copies, and the original reports remain available at the parent company’s offices.

Plaintiffs lawyers nevertheless tried to paint the document destruction as a nefarious act, and on day three they directly questioned Ackman’s ethics. In response, Ackman testified that he wasn’t aware of any ethical rule prohibiting lawyers from helping to destroy company documents.

But in general, there is. George Bass, general counsel at Wawanesa Mutual Insurance Company in Winnipeg, Canada, said his country has guidelines saying if one is in the process of litigation, or expects to be, it is unethical to destroy documents that would be relevant.

“There’s been a lot done in corporate governance in recent years around records management,” Bass explained. “Certainly it is acceptable for corporations to dispose of documents when done in a systematic way” under a document retention policy.

When exactly Imperial instituted its document retention policy has been at issue in the trial. 

Susan Hackett, CEO of the consulting firm Legal Executive Leadership, agreed with Bass. “A red flag goes up if you have a litigation hold, and if the destruction is outside the norm of the company’s retention policy,” Hackett said.

But Hackett noted that Ackman’s conduct took place some 20 years ago. “And it’s not fair to hold him to today’s standards,” primarily instituted after the Enron Corp. scandal of 2001, she said.

Still, Ackman’s combative testimony has made him the center of north-of-the-border media attention during the $27 billion class action trial against the cigarette industry. It is the largest class action in Canada’s history.

The trial involves two separate class actions, both filed 13 years ago; one concerns addiction, and the other lung disease. The defendants are the Canadian operations of the world’s largest tobacco companies: Rothmans, Benson & Hedges Inc. (wholly owned by Philip Morris International); Imperial Tobacco Canada (wholly owned by British American Tobacco plc); and JTI-Macdonald Corp (wholly owned by Japan Tobacco Inc.).

A tobacco litigation blog called Eye on the Trials has closely followed the 13 days of the trial so far, and Ackman’s testimony in particular.

All three days of his testimony focused on the issue of document destruction. There was no testimony on Thursday while the court dealt with procedural matters.

Plaintiffs lawyer Gordon Kugler, a senior partner at Kugler Kandestin in Montreal, first called Ackman to testify on Monday. The blog colorfully painted the scene: “Finally, Mr. Ackman, 73, took the stand, his hair neatly combed, his suit reminiscent of Dustin Hoffman's in Death of a Salesman.”

When a defense attorney objected to a Kugler question, Justice Brian Riordan dismissed the objection, calling Ackman part of the “spirit and brain” of the company. At one point the judge also reminded Ackman that “witnesses were there to answer questions, not to ask them,” the blog states.

On Tuesday, Ackman again played lawyer and objected to the judge about certain questions he was being asked about the studies, saying he wasn’t a scientist. The defense team quickly echoed his concerns.

As part of his testimony, Ackman said he hired Montreal lawyer Simon Potter “to help him” with his handling of the research documents. Potter, of the law firm McCarthy Tétrault, is slated to testify in the trial, even though he is also the defense attorney for Rothmans, Benson & Hedges in the case.

Ackman testified that the parent company pressured Imperial to destroy the research documents, though he couldn’t recall why, according to the blog. He also couldn’t recall why lawyers instead of researchers decided which documents to destroy.

The documents have been subpoenaed in this case, and some have been posted to the plaintiffs’ website.

Economist article “A guardian and a guide – Chief legal officers have more power than even before”

Dr. Richard Leblanc started a discussion in the LinkedIn group “Boards & Advisors” about an article in the Economist by Schumpeter entitled “A guardian and a guide – Chief legal officers have more power than even before”.  The full Economist article can be read here.  The LinkedIn discussion to date is set out below.  I’ve also now started a discussion on this in the ACC Canada LinkedIn group.

I think Richard’s concluding comment is right on!  One of the elements is for the Chief Legal Officer (“CLO”) to be able to merge our legal advice with business considerations.  This does not mean advising of illegal courses of action because the business side wants to do something.  It means weighing various legal options that are available and advising as to what will support what the business is trying to accomplish.  The method of business execution is then chosen to comply.  It comes down to what amount of risk is acceptable to the corporation; the balancing act that is referred to in the article.  I like how the author refers to the balance of law and business, and also the balance between precedent (that we as lawyers are so steeped in!) and being visionary.  If external counsel says to me that his or her job is to protect the corporation against every eventuality (which they might do to explain why it is taking them so long to do something or why they are preparing a 40 page agreement when 8 pages will suffice), then I fire them on the spot.  The job for them, as for in-house counsel, is to advise as to the legal options and couch this within the risk appetite of the business. 

And by the way, I love the quote in the article from Norman Veasey and Christine Di Guglielmo’s new book, “Indispensable Counsel”, that a CLO must be a “courageous Renaissance person”.  Now that’s something to aspire to!

Paul Krugman's Article re American Legislative Exchange Council

Why haven’t we heard before of this extremism, and why hasn’t something been done about it?  The USA based American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) promotes a hard right agenda which is described by  Paul Krugman as “union-busting; undermining environmental protection; tax breaks for corporations and the wealthy; turning the provision of public services, from schools to prisons, over to for-profit corporations; privatizing government, in which corporations get their profits from taxpayer dollars; encouraging vigilante (in)justice; promoting bills that make it hard for the poor and ethnic minorities to vote; and promoting draconian immigration law“.  This sort of organization is so damaging to the roots of our society!  It is truly disconcerting to see the extent that ALEC is supported by large multinational corporations. You can read Paul Krugman's full editorial here.

Comment on Tim Banks’ “Board Minutes: Keep the Purposes Front and Centre”

In the third of his series on Board minutes, Tim Banks invites us to “Keep the Purposes Front and Centre”.  He identifies one of the purposes being the litigation perspective of ensuring that the minutes provide evidence of how directors fulfilled their duties.  I would add that one may have also to consider the perspective of satisfying regulators, depending on your industry.  He further postulates that the minutes need to be a record of the board’s decision-making process and provide compelling documentary evidence to support the application of the business judgment rule.  Mr. Banks then goes on to consider how the purposes affect the content.  He sets out a range of items which in his opinion should be recorded.  I think this should be tempered by not repeating what is contained in briefing materials the board has received, although the minutes should contain reference to those briefing materials so that they are in effect incorporated by reference into the minutes.  I agree that the minutes should not be a verbatim transcript.  He advises that they should be a “high-level summary of the matters discussed”.  My guide is that the minutes be a record of the material aspects of the  Board’s deliberations on material issues.  This article is definitely worth reading.

Comment on Tim Banks’ “Board Minutes: The “Front Page of the Newspaper” Test”

"Board Minutes: The "Front Page of the Newspaper" Test" at http://bit.ly/tyY7WL (and the full text is also set out below) is a continuation of Tim Banks’ series on writing Board minutes.  This is his second post, the first being a summary of what he intends to cover in his five substantive posts.

It is not a bad guideline to consider how the board minutes would look on the front page of a newspaper.  Mr. Banks is correct that there is a need to provide some level of detail, not only to provide evidence relevant to directors’ statutory duties, but also with respect to benchmarking their activity in consideration of the business judgment rule.  For those of us with financial institutions, and some other industries, we also have to consider what is required by our regulators.  When considering litigation it is very relevant to consider how the language of the minutes might be “twisted out of context”.  In addition, as Mr. Banks points out, regrettably in some circumstances where minutes are produced in litigation it is not just the portion thereof relevant to the suit that are disclosed, but it may also have to be the entire minutes of that meeting.

Full text of Tim Banks' post:

Board Minutes: The “Front Page of the Newspaper” Test
 Posted on Dec 7th, 2011 By Tim Banks

In an earlier post, I summarized five suggestions for writing board minutes for peace of mind. In this post, I will discuss one of those suggestions in greater detail: Using the “Front Page of the Newspaper Test”. But first, let’s set the legal scene.
The Legal Scene
The Canada Business Corporations Act (“CBCA”) and, with one exception, all other business corporation statutes in Canada, prescribe that corporations maintain board minutes as part of the corporation’s records.
Maintaining minutes of board meetings would be prudent even if they were not statutorily required. Failing to accurately record the board’s deliberations in appropriate detail may lead to adverse inferences regarding whether directors have fulfilled their duties. Nevertheless, there is a natural tension between providing sufficient detail to avoid any adverse inference being drawn against the directors and a lingering apprehension that an innocuous record might, with hindsight, be twisted out of context in litigation.
The “Front Page of the Newspaper” Test
It goes without saying that board minutes must be accurate. However, in considering the level of detail, the format of the minutes and the words chosen to describe the business of the meeting, the corporate secretary should consider how the board minutes would look on the front-page of the newspaper.
The primary audience of board minutes is normally the directors, subsequent directors appointed to the board, and third parties conducting minute book reviews in connection with major transactions.
In the ordinary course, shareholders and creditors do not have an automatic right to inspect board minutes. Neither the CBCA nor any other Canadian business corporation statute requires a company to provide access to board minutes to shareholders, creditors or non-officer or non-director stakeholders. British Columbia is perhaps unique in that the British Columbia Business Corporations Act provides that the articles of the corporation might allow shareholders or other persons a right of access to board minutes.
However, from a litigation perspective, the primary audience will be the adversary in the litigation and, most importantly, the trier of fact in any judicial or arbitral proceeding. If litigation is commenced, board minutes are difficult to protect from disclosure if the minutes contain information that is relevant to the dispute. Canadian courts, particularly in Ontario, may be reluctant to accede to claims of confidentiality. It is well-entrenched in Ontario, for example, that corporate minutes do not enjoy any special protection in litigation from production and discovery. Moreover, and perhaps most problematic, some judges have ruled that redaction (deletion) of portions of documents, including minutes, for relevance is not permitted. This may mean that the whole of the board minute must be produced even if only a portion of it is relevant to the dispute.
Even outside of the litigation context, there are situations where board minutes may become producible. For example, board minutes might become producible under a personal information access request under privacy legislation to the extent that the board minute contains information about the requester.
In future posts, I will discuss how, in very limited cases, it may be possible to protect privileged or highly confidential commercial information and strategies to limit what is produced.
However, in many cases it may be very difficult to protect the minutes from public disclosure. If entered into the court record, they will be there for every competitor or interested person to read and to copy. Therefore, the “front page of the newspaper” test is the most prudent starting point when drafting and editing board minutes.

Amazing Grace - a great movie!

Last evening I watched a great movie, Amazing Grace (2007) – available in DVD from Movie Village.  It is based on the true story of William Wilberforce, the British Member of Parliament, who led the battle to enact a statute to end the British slave trade, circa 1800.  The saga is one of perseverance set against a backdrop of a challenging personal health situation, and extreme political opposition. It took many years to get the job done but his tenacity is very inspiring.  Wonderful to see the triumph of human rights over economic interests!  I highly recommend watching this.  An intriguing side note is that part of Wilberforce’s inspiration came from his preacher, John Newton, a reformed slave ship captain, who wrote the hymn, Amazing Grace.  Interesting to consider too how this fits into the timeline of history of such events as the American Revolution, French Revolution and American Civil War.

Anton Chekhov's "Three Sisters"

Congrats to Theatre Projects Manitoba on presenting zone41 theatre’s “Three Sisters” by Anton Chekhov.  Bruce McManus’ adaption is true to Chekhov’s brilliant, probing and insightful drama.  Zone41’s performance is powerful and well-played.  Definitely a must see! For details from Theatre Projects Manitoba’s website click here.

The Local-Global Flip (Edge.org Conversations with Jaron Lanier)

The following is copied from EDGE.ORG - August 30, 2011  I found it interesting to say the least but admit that I struggle to wrap my mind around the concepts.  I commend it to your neurological digestion!!!

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THE THIRD CULTURE

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"If you aspire to use computer network power to become a global force through shaping the world instead of acting as a local player in an unfathomably large environment, when you make that global flip, you can no longer play the game of advantaging the design of the world to yourself and expect it to be sustainable. The great difficulty of becoming powerful and getting close to a computer network is: Can people learn to forego the temptations, the heroin-like rewards of being able to reform the world to your own advantage in order to instead make something sustainable?"



THE LOCAL-GLOBAL FLIP, OR, "THE LANIER EFFECT"

A Conversations with Jaron Lanier

Introduction by John Brockman

Permalink: http://edge.org/conversation/the-local-global-flip



[John Brockman:] We used to think that information is power and that the personal computer enabled lives. But, according to Jaron Lanier, things changed about ten years ago. He cites Apple, Google, and Walmart as some of the reasons. ... In a freewheeling hour-long conversation, Lanier touches on, and goes beyond the themes he launched in his influential 2006 Edge essay "Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism." What he terms "The Local-Global Flip" might be better expressed as "The Lanier Effect". Here's a sampling:



... "The Apple idea is that instead of the personal computer model where people own their own information, and everybody can be a creator as well as a consumer, we're moving towards this iPad, iPhone model where it's not as adequate for media creation as the real media creation tools, and even though you can become a seller over the network, you have to pass through Apple's gate to accept what you do, and your chances of doing well are very small, and it's not a person to person thing, it's a business through a hub, through Apple to others, and it doesn't create a middle class, it creates a new kind of upper class. ... Google has done something that might even be more destructive of the middle class, which is they've said, "Well, since Moore's law makes computation really cheap, let's just give away the computation, but keep the data." And that's a disaster.



... "If we enter into the kind of world that Google likes, the world that Google wants, it's a world where information is copied so much on the Internet that nobody knows where it came from anymore, so there can't be any rights of authorship. However, you need a big search engine to even figure out what it is or find it. They want a lot of chaos that they can have an ability to undo. ... when you have copying on a network, you throw out information because you lose the provenance, and then you need a search engine to figure it out again. That's part of why Google can exist. Ah, the perversity of it all just gets to me.



... "What Wal-Mart recognized is that information is power, and by using network information, you could consolidate extraordinary power, and so have information about what could be made where, when, what could be moved where, when, who would buy what, when for how much? By coalescing all of that, and reducing the unknowns, they were able to globalize their point of view so they were no longer a local player, but they essentially became their own market, and that's what information can do. The use of networks can turn you from a local player in a larger system into your own global system.



... "The reason this breaks is that there's a local-global flip that happens. When you start to use an information network to concentrate information and therefore power, you benefit from a first arrival effect, and from some other common network effects that make it very hard for other people to come and grab your position. And this gets a little detailed, but it was very hard for somebody else to copy Wal-Mart once Wal-Mart had gathered all the information, because once they have the whole world aligned by the information in their server, they created essentially an expense or a risk for anybody to jump out of that system. That was very hard. ... In a similar way, once you are a customer of Google's ad network, the moment that you stop bidding for your keyword, you're guaranteeing that your closest competitor will get it. It's no longer just, "Well, I don't know if I want this slot in the abstract, and who knows if a competitor or some entirely unrelated party will get it."

Instead, you have to hold on to your ground because suddenly every decision becomes strategic for you, and immediately. It creates a new kind of glue, or a new kind of stickiness.



... "It can become such a bizarre system. What you have now is a system in which the Internet user becomes the product that is being sold to others, and what the product is, is the ability to be manipulated. It's an anti-liberty system, and I know that the rhetoric around it is very contrary to that. ... What we have to do to create liberty in the future is to monetize more and more instead of monetize less and less, and in particular we have to monetize more and more of what ordinary people do, unless we want to make them into wards of the state. That's the stark choice we have in the long-term." ... MORE


JARON LANIER is a computer scientist, composer, and visual artist. He is the author of YOU ARE NOT A GADGET: A MANIFESTO.

Bare Advice

On June 20, 2011 the President of our cottage association sent the following email about a few bears roaming in our neighbourhood.  Her email contains some useful advice about how to avoid attracting bears, and how to protect yourself.  In addition to her suggestions when we go walking in the area we also carry an old bicycle horn (the type you honk - it makes a nice loud noise) and also carry a can of bear repellent (which I purchased at a store that sells camping gear - after I proved to them I was not a gang member!). 

Here's her email:

Hi Everyone,


We have several different bear and bear families seen about in our community

• An extremely large male bear that must be over well over 300 lbs

• A large female with 3 little cubs that are a little larger than a cockapoo dog

• a young female bear that is about 1 -2 years old

• A large female with 2 midsize cubs

The above bears have been seen around the community, (on decks, in yards, etc) but have not caused any problems other than concern of them being around. Conservation will not set up traps unless the bears get to be destructive or endanger someone's life. They do not want to trap the mother with the 3 cubs as they little ones would not survive without the mother bear.



The bears are hungry, as there are no berries ready yet. Please ensure that you follow the tips below so to minimize their attraction to the community.



• Bird feeders have played a very serious role in attracting bears into townsites. Take your feeder down in the summer. If you must have a feeder, wait until late November before filling it with seed, and don't forget to take it down before the bears come out in spring, usually by early March. Also, be sure to store your bird seed inside.

• Do not store garbage outside or in your vehicle. Pickup truck toppers are not bear proof, and we must remember that it is the smells that draw the bears to a specific location.

• Keep your compost free of meat and meat by-products. It is important to limit what we place in our compost heaps. Avoid placing fish, meat, bones, egg shells, dairy products or fruit into your compost. Adding some lime to your compost can also speed up the decomposition and reduce the smell.

• Keep your barbeque clean. The smell of a juicy steak can permeate the air and attract more than envious glances from non-barbequing neighbours. These same smells can attract bears to your deck once you head to bed. When you're finished your feast, burn the food off of the grill, or at least clean the barbeque carefully. Also, if you store your barbeque outside, use a cover as this will reduce the smell emanating from it. Keeping your patio door closed when cooking indoors also helps to reduce the smell of food in the air.

Enjoy the bears from a distance and be safe on your walkabouts. Take a walking stick, wear bells or anything else that makes noise to keep them at a distance.

Stephen Harper as Vacuum Cleaner Salesman?

I have no problem with differences of political opinion and philosophy, but I have a huge problem with rulers like the Harper Tories which lack values such as integrity, full disclosure, etc. I have no problem with Canadians going to the polls more often than every five years, and no problem with coalition governments. There could be ways to improve the system. I’ve wondered why we don’t do away with the election period. We could just have an immediate election (allowing time for Elections Canada to get set up) but with no campaigning. Then the parties would have to always be doing their best between elections, and we would judge them on that – not on the promises that they make during campaigns, and are not likely going to keep anyway. Another danger of campaigns is that people will forget the “wrongs” that parties have done since the last election. There is a site (click shitharperdid.ca to see it) which lists some of these things not to forget. Don’t be put off by the summaries on each page. Click on the related links and you will get legitimate news coverage to back up the topic.

I’ve tried to remember some of the wrong-doings of the Harper Conservatives. As I made this list it just made me sick. The Harper Conservatives are way over the top in terms of their secrecy, lack of accountability, pattern of misinformation, limited truthfulness, obstructionism and overly controlling nature. That’s not the sort of transparent and accountable government that Canada should have. Harper Conservatives do not deserve to be elected. Here’s the list that I’ve come up with (for those of you who are really interested in the Harper as a Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, which is based on a piece by Margaret Atwood published in The Globe and Mail, it comes after the list):

-the Harper Conservatives prorogued Parliament in 2010 rather than face legitimate questions about Afghan detainees. The issue is whether Canadian officials knowingly handed over prisoners for torture by Afghan authorities, a potential violation of the Geneva Conventions. The Harper Conservatives have steadfastly refused to provide documents on the matter, even though they were ordered to do so a year ago by House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken. To date the documents have not been released. Here’s some further material that The Globe and Mail published on this on April 8, 2011:

The detainees story offers an extraordinary portrait of the governing morality. It led to former defence minister Gordon O’Connor’s demotion after he had to apologize for misleading the House. It led to Mr. Harper and ministers, as well as Chief of Defence Staff Walter Natynczyk, having to issue embarrassing corrections of previous claims. It led to the Prime Minister’s dumping of Peter Tinsley, the head of the Military Police Complaints Commission, who was hot on the trail of the file. And it led to other outrages, such as the government denial of documents to the commission on the basis of national security - even though commission members had national security clearance. There was more. The detainees imbroglio saw the government attempt to discredit a respected diplomat, Richard Colvin, for having the courage to come forward and challenge its story. It prompted Mr. Harper to try and deny Parliament its historic right of access to documents. It was a catalyst in the Prime Minister’s decision to prorogue Parliament 15 months ago, which touched off a national protest. It led to the Speaker’s historic ruling condemning Mr. Harper’s government.

The Speaker ruled condemning the Harper Conservatives! How can they be elected?

-the Harper Conservatives around March 23, 2011 failing to provide all of the information requested by MPs around the cost of the Conservative’s crime legislation and the purchase of 65 fighter-bombers. Recall that around March 11, 2011 the Parliamentary Budget Office stated that the F-35 stealth fighter jets could cost Canada $29.3 billion, nearly double the Harper Conservatives’ initial estimate of $16 billion. The Harper Conservatives have again misled us about the real cost of their agenda.
-the Harper Conservatives are so big on law and order, and integrity, that the Prime Minister himself hypocritically hires someone like Bruce Carson as one of his senior advisers, working on sensitive issues including Afghanistan, the federal budget and climate change. Mr. Carson has had five criminal convictions, been bankrupt, and had years of debt problems. It was Mr. Carson’s relationship with another sex worker that first landed him under the glare of the RCMP. Mr. Carson is alleged to have performed lobbying on behalf of a company with ties to Michelle McPherson, a former prostitute who also owns a house with Mr. Carson.
-the charge by Elections Canada around February 26, 2011 of some prominent Harper Conservatives of violating federal law in connection with their in-and-out financing scheme involving more than $1 million in expenses during the 2006 election, which skirted an 18.3 million spending cap. For a party which says that it is very pro law and order, this doesn’t sound very respectful of the law!
-and let’s not forget the Harper Conservatives’ cuts to social programs such as literacy. Right, let’s keep illiterate people unemployable; that will lead them into poverty, which can lead to crime; which will be a way for the Harper Conservatives to fill the jails they want to build and won’t tell us what they will cost!
-the ruling around March 10, 2011 by the House of Commons Speaker that on its face the Harper Conservatives withheld information from a Parliamentary Committee and that International Co-Operation Minister Bev Oda may have misled the House of Commons (re her testimony about an altered memo that she signed cutting funds to an aid agency), which ruling could have been the basis of contempt of Parliament charges if the election had not come.
-the unfounded allegations by the Harper Conservatives about former cabinet minister Helena Guergis.
-the secretive axing of the mandatory long-form census. So let’s not have information about our population. That way no one can argue when the Harper Conservatives say there is no need for social, education, health etc programs to the extent that they are needed and where they are needed.
-the sundry hirings and firings of executives in government-funded agencies.
-RCMP investigations into interference in access-to-information protocols and allegations of illegal lobbying.
-the development of the black eye for Canada on the world stage to the point that we were not able to be voted a seat on the Security Council of the United Nations.
-the big splash by the Harper Conservatives that they were going to do so much for mothers and children in Africa, and then we find out that they secretly were also going to impose the Harper Conservatives’ own family planning views along with the program. How deceitful!
-further evidence of the control-freak nature of the Harper Conservatives is the actions during the early part of this campaign when they cordoned off reporters and had the RCMP evict people attending events based on information that they were not Conservative supporters. These are public events. Are we to expect a society from the Harper Conservatives in which only their chosen ones will participate – i.e. we will not have freedom of association and freedom of speech.

So here’s the piece about the vacuum cleaner salesman. Margaret Atwood outdid herself in this piece I've copied below, which was published in The Globe and Mail.

Would you buy a vacuum from this man?

Isn’t this your signature? the salesman asks. Yes, but the document’s been changed to mean the opposite of what you signed

MARGARET ATWOOD
Wednesday, Apr. 20 2011

I am a fiction writer. So here's a fiction.
A vacuum cleaner salesman comes to your door. "You must buy this vacuum cleaner," he says. "Why?" you say. "Because I know what's good for you," he says. "I know things you don't know." "What are they?" you say. "I can't tell you," he says, "because they're secret. You are required to trust me. The vacuum cleaner will create jobs."
"Where is the vacuum cleaner made?" you say. "In another country," he says. "So the jobs will be created in another country? Not here?" you say. You believe it's your right to query: It's your money and, come to think of it, you pay this guy's salary.
"Stop bickering," he says. "I am competent. That's my story and I'm sticking it to you." "I'm not bickering," you say. "I'm asking relevant questions. How much will the vacuum cleaner cost me?" "I can't tell you that," he says. "Why not? Because it's more than you claimed at first?" you say. "Or because you don't really know the cost?" "I can't tell you that, either," he says. "But you have to pay."
"Just a minute!" you say. "You want me to commit to an unknown, very large sum? That's not fair! And it's not competent, either." "More bickering!" he says. "We need stability!" "But I might have to go on paying huge sums for decades!" you say. "We're already up to our necks in debt! I'll have to give up other things - I won't be able to pay for the doctor, or support for special needs, or drinking water, or care for the elderly, or the kids' education, or ... and what happens if there's a pandemic, or a natural catastrophe such as an earthquake, and you've already spent the money that could have helped in a disaster?"
"You are a very negative person," he says. "You are not welcome here." "Where is here?" you say. "In my country," he says. "These are my mountains, this is my hockey, this is my flag. Mine! All mine! And I'm stamping my image on all of it!" "I like those icons, too," you say, "but I think they should be shared with everyone, don't you?" "What is this 'shared' of which you speak?" he says. "I believe in the individual and nothing but. Talk to the hand! Weak to the wall!"
"I don't want to pay for the vacuum cleaner," you say. "You have to pay for it," he says. "See, it says here on this document. Isn't this your signature?" "Yes," you say, "but the document's been changed to mean the exact opposite of what I signed. If I altered a document like that, I'd end up in jail." "You are double-plus not welcome," he says. "I make the rules around here."
"But -" you say. "Don't interrupt," he says. "In addition to the vacuum cleaner, you will have to pay for several very expensive jails, the cost of which is unknown."
"But the crime rate is falling!" you say. "Not for long," he says. "I'm planning to have it rise again. Once people have their money vacuumed away, with none left for doctors, or the kids' education, or making sure you don't eat poisoned food - all those frills - they'll get scared and depressed and desperate, the middle class will be toast, and the crime rate will rise. Anyway, I will criminalize lots more things. Because we need to fill up those jails!"
"I get the feeling you don't like me," you say. "Is it because I'm a girl? Or because I don't want you to run up huge debts without telling me what the money is for? What happened to accountability? It used to sound so great!"
"You are beneath my notice," he says, giving me the Death Glare. "Once I really get the whip hand, I will never have to answer another question from anyone. Not one question. Not ever again."
"That's a very dark fiction," says the reader. "Surely people won't sign away their right to know how their money is being spent! That would result in tyranny! It can't happen here!"
"Anything can happen anywhere," I say.

Margaret Atwood's latest non-fiction book is Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth.

Yoga Practice is a Method

The following was written by Jonathan Austman and published in the April 2011 Newsletter of Winnipeg Yoga Shala. (The archive for the newsletters of Winnipeg Yoga Shala can be found  here.)   I liked Jonathan's article so much I wanted to pass it on to you (and to have an easily accessible copy in the digiverse for my own reference):

The days are getting longer, the sun is warming the earth and smiles are appearing everywhere! During morning Mysore practice the brilliance of the sun warms our bodies and hearts as we take our practice. It is a truly beautiful and inspiring experience! Along with the new and fresh growth that spring is ushering in there are many new students coming to practice each day. Old and new students are expressing their gratitude for finding a space where they are supported as they explore the depths of mind, body and breath and the resulting development of skillfulness at being more present and grounded in all aspects of their lives.




I am grateful for all of the students and teachers at the Shala who support the growth of yoga in our community by taking up the work of yoga. Too often yoga is presented as a way to forget about our stresses and problems. Taken this way yoga easily becomes a method of avoidance, a way of covering up or skipping past the deep-seated roots of our neuroses and anxieties. Yoga practice is a method, a process, of digging deeper and deeper into our bodies, minds and character. It is a method for learning to be fully engaged in the unfolding of our lives, to be as present and mindful in our struggles as we are in our ease. It is hard work and takes a long time. It takes regular application of the methods we learn and practice. It is meant to challenge our likes and dislikes, to bring us face to face with our fear and weakness. It challenges us to accept ourselves as we are and to move forward from that place. By taking yoga this way we uncover and access our strengths. It is through this difficult work, going slowly, being patient and attentive to our actions on the mat that we mine to the depths of our character and find true release from our struggle and suffering when we are off the mat. We learn to practice with acceptance and faith, to respect our teachers and the methods they present, to not rush or question the process. By doing this we may experience the true freedom that comes from surrendering to what is. I am inspired by all of you who are willing to undertake the difficult task of becoming better human beings. By doing this for ourselves we are making the world a more balanced and peaceful place.



Om Shanti,



Jonathan

from Paul Gold's Blog: Dilemma – Fewer Practice Days or Less Practice Everyday?

Posted April 9, 2011 on Paul Gold's Blog at  http://paulmitchellgold.wordpress.com/2011/04/09/dilemma-fewer-practice-days-or-less-practice-everyday/   :

While we were in Mysore, a yoga student of ours stopped coming to the shala because she didn’t have enough time between attending school and working in a restaurant.




I should qualify that she didn’t have enough time to do the practice that she had been accustomed to doing before she was juggling school and work. My understanding is that it may have been possible to either come to the shala fewer days per week and do what she had been doing (i.e. – the same number of asanas) OR she could come to practice daily and do a shortened practice (i.e. – fewer asanas). In the end, she didn’t choose either option and, I imagine, isn’t currently doing any yoga.



Practicing is never a static experience. Life is constantly changing and so practice is constantly changing. It’s important that we don’t cast our practice in stone or we will not be able to adapt. It’s also equally important to understand what “practice” is.



First, let’s answer the question. Is it better to practice fewer days or practice less everyday? The answer is we should do as much practice as we are able as often as possible, if not everyday. I am implicitly talking about ashtanga yoga; so, everyday is Sunday through Friday with moon days off and three days off for ladies’ holiday. It’s important to practice everyday. It’s always been important and that’s why it’s stated explicitly in the Yoga Sutras. Sutra I:14 is crystal clear about this. I don’t see how “done for a long time without interruption” can be interpreted differently. That said, when things are crazy, some days practice isn’t possible. Let’s say as close to everyday as possible.



Back to life, then. As life is constantly changing, we have to be able to adapt our yoga practice. Too often, we associate our practice with a particular number of asanas that we’ve been taught. When life is a particular way and we are able to do all of those asanas, awesome. When life’s a different way, we have to assess how much time we have and to do the number of asanas that we can in that time. Students have come to class and asked what they should do as they have to leave early on a particualr morning. I tell them to start practice and do as many asanas as they can before they need to finish up and rest. I don’t send them home because they can’t do full primary series!



If we look at Sutra I:13, we can see a more useful and proper definition of “practice.” Patanjali says that any effort put towards restraining the tendencies of chitta is called Practice. Since doing ashtanga yoga purifies the senses and mind which allows us to restrain the chitta, we can infer that any amount of time spent on the mat is beneficial. We shouldn’t see practice as an all or nothing endeavour.



Too often, when things get tough in our lives, we abandon practice with the excuse that we don’t have time. We know full well that practice would be helpful and we love to acknowledge it rhetorically. We know that practice would help us focus while we’re studying for exams, that it would release stress when we were visiting a friend or family member in hospital, that it would ground us after when our babies weren’t sleeping through the night. The list is endless, right? But what if we did 10 minutes of surya namaskars and lay down to rest for five minutes? What if we did half-primary or only standing asanas until our schedules changed (remember that things are always changing)? What if we did what we can everyday?



If practice is a relative amount of time that we have to spend on our yoga mats and consists of doing as much as we can in that day’s amount of time, we won’t ever be in a position where we feel there’s a dilemma. The commitment and dedication required to practice ashtanga yoga is not dependent on the number of asanas we do, but rather on the arrival on one’s mat.

ElisabethBass Blog: Confessions of a Glam Girl - The Social Media Darliings I Love

I should declare my bias up front - this is a post by one of my daughters.  But she has totally impressed me with her interesting insight and well written expressions of taste.  She makes a very valid observation about the effect of the digiverse.  Well worth a read, and a blog worth following.

ElisabethBass Blog: Confessions of a Glam Girl - The Social Media Darlings I Love: "A few years ago I realized I was obsessed with fashion. It may have started when my luggage was lost, never to return that I realized how m..."

Being Present

Discovered a new way this past week to be present:  enter the water - swimming pool is fine but salt water is better; turn over on your back; top of head facing into the waves, if applicable; legs and feet together, toes pointed; elongate the spine, gentle curve upward in the back; open your heart; arms at your side gently moving back and forth slowly in short strokes as required to keep your head above water; gaze gently upward; if outside, feel the gentle sun upon your soft visage; engage in your breathing exercises; let any thoughts drift away; become present.

It was the warm waters of the Mayan Riviera that helped this discovery!

Bullying

A very good story that is making it's way around Facebook:

The girl you just called fat? She has been starving herself & has lost over 30lbs.

The boy you just called stupid? He has a learning disability & studies over 4 hrs a night.

The girl you just called ugly? She spends hours putting makeup on hoping people will like her.

The boy you just tripped? He is abused enough at home.

There's a lot more to people than you think. Put this as your status if you're against bullying.

thnx Tasha for posting this.

Same-sex Marriage

A Facebook friend of mine posted this, and I think she has a point.

Let me get this straight...Charlie Sheen can make a "porn family", Kelsey Grammer can end a 15 year marriage over the phone, Larry King can be on divorce #9, Britney Spears had a 55 hour marriage, Jesse James and Tiger Woods, while married, were having sex with EVERYONE. Yet, the idea of same-sex marriage is going to destroy the institution of marriage? Really? Re-post if you are proud to support equal right.

Another post about Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years aboriginal art exhibition

I had written of my impressions of the opening at the main exhibition venue of Close Encounters – The Next 500 Years. You can check out those comments here. Robert Enright’s review is contained in today’s Globe & Mail. You can check it out here or see the copy I’ve placed below these two pictures which accompanied the article in the Globe & Mail.


The first picture is of one of my favourites at the exhibition, and of which I wrote in my first post on this exhibition of aboriginal art. I had also included a video there of people riding the horses. The donkey was too small to ride! This picture’s G&M caption reads:

Installations include The Four Horses of the Apocalypse and the Donkey of Eternal Salvation by B.C.’s Mary Anne Barkhouse. ROBERT TINKER

Here’s the second picture. It’s G&M caption reads:

Detail from Lawrence Paul
Yuxweluptun’s contribution to the
Close Encounters exhibition, Killer
Whale Has a Vision and Comes to
Talk to Me about Proximological
Encroachments of Civilizations in
the Oceans, 2010. ROBERT TINKER

Globe and Mail article:

New aboriginal art show tells stories of adaptation and transformation

ROBERT ENRIGHT

WINNIPEG — From Monday's Globe and Mail

Rebecca Belmore’s 4½-minute video called The Blanket shows a dark-haired woman wrapping and unwrapping herself in a red and black Hudson’s Bay point blanket while she moves about a snow-covered Manitoba landscape. The video is not without a sense of anger (the blanket has a poisonous history in relations between white and native Canadians), but The Blanket is also lyric, elegant and sensuous, qualities it shares with the best work in Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, an international exhibition of contemporary indigenous art organized by Winnipeg’s Plug In ICA that opened in January in five main venues and several satellite sites across the city.

Larger than either Indigena at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Gatineau, Que., and Land, Spirit, Power at the National Gallery in Ottawa, both mounted in 1992, Close Encounters is the culmination of Winnipeg’s year as the 2010 Cultural Capital of Canada. It includes 33 aboriginal artists from six countries (Canada, the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Finland and Brazil), chosen by four of this country’s best aboriginal curators: Lee-Ann Martin, Candice Hopkins, Steve Loft and Jenny Western.

Close Encounters is an historic exhibition. We have come to accept history as the story the victors tell about the vanquished. In Winnipeg, stretching across three days of openings, panels and artist’s talks, there seemed only to be winners.

The most consistent work was shown at the new Plug In building, where Lawrence Paul Yuxweluptun and Wally Dion from Canada shared a gallery with Lisa Reihana and Brett Graham, two Maori artists from New Zealand. Graham’s Te Hokioi, which means magnificent bird, is a one-third scale wooden Stealth bomber, the entire surface of which is carved in Maori patterns. Dion’s Thunderbird is a mesmerizing constructed painting made from computer circuit boards. Both birds are symbolic emblems of nature’s ability to overcome technology. The future of Yuxweluptun’s animal kingdom is less certain; in his magnificent painting an oil-coated killer whale leaps above the surface of a chemical-slick ocean. It is appropriate that the first two works you see in this gallery are a splendid drawing called Bush Capsule Study and Little Habitat II, a compact sculpture by Brian Jungen, the West Coast artist whose ability to fabricate a world of visual delight out of the excesses of consumer culture is unparalleled in contemporary Canadian art.

There are, as well, excellent works in the main exhibition venue, a converted Costume Museum of Canada. Michael Belmore’s Smoulder, a seductive fire whose imaginary heat comes from a floor sculpture made of carved stones and copper leaf, and a tower of small, cast-bronze blankets by Marie Watt from Portland, Ore., are both brilliant. This venue is also filled with large installation pieces, which invite a sense of speculation and prophecy. In Skawennati’s Time Traveller, the trickster’s “What if” question gets projected into the future, where a second-life powwow spectacle, emceed by an avatared-and-feathered Billy Merasty look-alike, takes place in the Winnipeg Olympic Stadium in 2121. In Mother, Teacher, Destroyer, a sound and video installation by Postcommodity, a native artists’ collective from Oklahoma, women are the keepers of the culture’s songs. On a four-sided, suspended structure, a quartet of aboriginal women play a traditional peyote song on instruments that combine noise band and taxidermied aesthetics. It is a richly layered fantasy romp that seems archaic and futuristic at the same time.

The stories being told in this landmark exhibition are less narratives of resistance and imposed accommodation than stories of adaptation and self-directed transformation. The aboriginal artists in Close Encounters are fully aware of the need to renegotiate the terms of engagement as they head full-bodied into the next 500 years.

Postcommodity has a clear sense of where that process begins. The collective has installed a large, multicoloured balloon high above the atrium entrance of the new Manitoba Hydro Place. It represents the eye of a predatory bird. The collective sees the eye as a surrogate for aboriginal people in general; it is commanding, buoyant and unblinking. As one of the members said at the opening, “We’re just keeping an eye on what’s going on. We’re here and this is our place. We’re happy to share it with you, but remember, this is our place.” The message was less a threat than a genial affirmation of continued presence. It underlined that in Winnipeg, at least for the next four months, the woven history of our close encounters will become an even closer knit of our evolving identity.

Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years will be on exhibition at various venues in Winnipeg until May 11.

Special to The Globe and Mail

Priceless Editorial Cartoon from Globe & Mail - Toronto coping with snow