Louis Riel Day is coming up on Monday, Feb. 15. For many Manitobans, it will be an extra opportunity to sleep in and an extra day on which to go to a show, play with the kids, or just hang out with friends or family.

I expect that in the days leading up to it, we’ll read yet another missive in at least one of the city’s two newspapers about how bad the February long weekend is for our economy, complete with someone’s calculation of how many millions of dollars it’s costing the Manitoba economy.

On the surface, that number seems easy enough to come up with. Go to the OECD’s web site and you’ll (eventually) find their labour market statistics. In 2008, Canada’s 17.4 million employees worked an average of 1,727 hours each. Divide Canada’s GDP — the size of our economy — by the total number of hours worked, and each hour was worth $43.20 U.S. or $53.14 Cdn.

So, for someone who would otherwise be working seven hours on Monday (9-5, with an hour for lunch), that’s $371.98 in lost productivity down the drain, more or less, right?

Right?

Not necessarily.

To see the absurdity of such a calculation, consider the opposite scenario. A future Manitoba government announces that in order to boost productivity, it will be amending the Employment Standards Code to increase the standard work week to 50 hours and to tighten up meal breaks. Announcing the new legislation, the Labour Minister says that Manitoba’s productivity is expected to increase 5 to 10 percent because of this move.

Anyone who knows that the basic measurement of productivity is total economic output divided by total hours worked would dismiss the minister as merely some poorly informed politician talking out of his/her backside. Anyone who has ever worked in an organization with a long-hours culture would know that the idea that a longer work week will lead to greater productivity is hogwash — that such cultures discourage innovation because there’s no reward to be gained from finding faster, more efficient ways to do things.

Those same OECD stats mentioned above back up that conclusion. The chart you see below shows the relationship between how many hours the average worker puts in during a year and how much value is added to the economy by each of those hours.

As the hours go up, the benefit gained from every additional hour goes down.

As the second chart shows, the evidence also suggests that countries with shorter working hours tend to get more value out of the average employee, though the relationship isn’t quite as strong.

Why do countries with shorter working hours tend to do better? Part of the reason is because they have moved away from forms of work that require a lot of work in exchange for relatively little reward, such as subsistence farming or low-tech manufacturing.

Others get a productivity boost out of natural resource wealth (e.g., Norway and its oil) or their status as financial hubs (e.g., Luxembourg).

However, there are some high-tech countries, like Japan and South Korea, that also continue to have shockingly poor productivity levels.  (Japanese workers produce less economic value out of each hour spent on the job than Spanish workers, while South Korean workers make less use out of each hour than the Greeks or the Portuguese, and are only just barely more productive than the Czechs or Hungarians.)

Their problem lies in the fact that, like some other Asian countries, that there’s a culture that values putting in “face time” at the office, even if it means spending 12 hours doing what could reasonably be accomplished in eight hours. The strongly hierarchical cultures found in both Japan and South Korea discourage people from questioning this status quo, even though it’s doing neither their economies nor their quality of life much good.

Both countries would benefit from encouraging people to take full weekends and to head for home at 5 p.m. Not only would this provide an incentive for people to make better use of their time, it might encourage them to use some of their new-found leisure time to go out, spend some money and stimulate the economy.

So, too, might our own productivity benefit from taking this coming Monday off, and heading back to work on Tuesday well-rested and prepared to make the best use of the remaining four days of the work week.

Enjoy your Louis Riel Day.

Even though I’m still in my thirties, I’m old enough to remember the mid- to late ’80s when there were only five radio stations on the FM dial in Winnipeg: 92 CITI FM, Q-94, Kiss 97, CBC 98.3 and CKWG on 103.1.

Sometimes a fuzzy signal could be picked up from CFQX 92.9 in Selkirk until it bought a more powerful 100,000-watt transmitter and moved to 104.1 in the late ’80s, and most radios could pick up the audio portion of CBC Manitoba’s channel 6 television signal on 87.75. This only brought the total number of FM stations available up to seven.

Since the FM band wasn’t very cluttered and all of the stations except for CFQX had full-power transmitters, reception wasn’t much of a problem.

Since then, far more stations have jumped on the FM bandwagon. Some were started from scratch. Others were transplanted versions of existing or former AM stations such as CBC Radio One’s 89.3 FM signal (relaying their 990 AM signal), 102.3 Clear FM (the successor to 58 CKY) and 99.9 Bob FM (the successor to the venerable 630 CKRC).

Some stations might now have regrets about being on the FM dial.

Winnipeg’s FM dial is now clogged with more than 20 different signals, depending on how good a radio you use. Amid the cacophony, the high-powered stations still come in fairly well, but other stations are getting lost in the crowd.

The local stations that are suffering the most include Red River College’s 92.9 Kick FM, the University of Winnipeg’s 95.9 CKUW, possibly the University of Manitoba’s 101.5 CJUM, and volunteer-run nostalgia station 107.9 CJNU. Although licenced to serve Winnipeg, these stations were each untuneable on at least one of the three radios I tried to pick them up with from my home in south central Winnipeg.

It’s also possible that QX 104 might have a problem on its hands, as I can’t seem to get a tunable signal from them anymore on my alarm clock radio, even though they should theoretically come in loud and clear — and they do indeed come in well on two other radios (see below).

The inability for these stations to come in clearly on all types of radio is a serious impediment to their being able to reach both the early-morning-wakeup and the on-all-day-at-the-office crowds.

The chart below compares reception on my relatively cheap Nexxtech CD/Alarm Clock radio, an older Sony CFD-V17 radio/CD/cassette player, and a higher quality Sony ICF-SW7600GR radio.

Receivability of Winnipeg FM radio stations

The findings of this little experiment suggest that lower-powered stations like 92.9 Kick FM (250 watts) and CJUM (1,200 watts) lack the firepower to consistently be received clearly on the city’s FM radios, regardless of make or model. If they wish to cease to be lost in the cacophony of the Winnipeg FM dial, they need to find some way of putting out a better signal.

One way might be to gain access to a 100,000 watt transmitter and a taller broadcasting tower, which would provide these stations with the same firepower as Winnipeg’s better-known FM stations.

Running such a transmitter, however, might be more than just beyond their financial capacity:  it might also lead to interference with other stations. For example, 92.9 Kick FM is required to operate at reduced power to avoid interference with 92.9 KKXL in Grand Forks.

The alternative is to consider a move to the AM dial. There are currently six unused AM frequencies in Winnipeg. An AM transmitter operating at as little as 1,000 watts would still be strong enough to cover Winnipeg with a passable signal — and some stations are so hard to receive on the FM dial that it would be nearly impossible for them to lose listeners by moving to AM anyway.

The unused AM frequencies are:

580 — Former home to 58 CKY. At the far left hand side of the dial, but can be used with a transmitter of up to 50,000 watts. Should have fairly good reach even at much lower power.

630 — Former home to CKRC. Abandoned since the mid-’90s. Maximum power 10,000 watts.  On the low end of the dial, but probably doesn’t need a high-powered transmitter to get a signal out that covers the Winnipeg area.

750 — Assigned to Winnipeg, but never used or even applied for to my knowledge. Limited to a maximum power of 5,000 watts during the day and 2,500 watts at night, likely to avoid interference with 730 CKDM in Dauphin and 740 KVOX in Fargo. Well positioned to pick up listeners switching back and forth between CJOB on 680 and CBC Radio One on 990.

1120 — Assigned to Winnipeg but never used. Maximum power of 10,000 watts during the day, down to 4,000 watts at night. Still enough to cover the city with a fairly good signal. On the wrong side of the more heavily traveled 680-990 corridor, though.

1350 — Assigned to Winnipeg, but not used except perhaps in the distant past. Can be used to put out a high-powered signal if necessary — maximum of 50,000 watts by day, 10,000 watts by night. Faces limitations to prevent interference to a Grafton, N.D. station on 1340, and located at a place on the dial rarely visited by Winnipeg listeners.

1530 — Assigned to Winnipeg, but never used. Maximum power of 10,000 watts by day, 1,000 watts at night. Way up at the nosebleed end of the AM dial where few Winnipeggers ever go, unless they’re looking for CKMW 1570 from Morden-Winkler.

(Note: My ability to receive these stations might be influenced by both where I’m located in the city and the fact that I live above the ground clutter. If your reception of any of these stations is different, make a note of it in the comments section.)

There are a few things that I’m interested in doing some further research on for future blog posts. If you can help answer any of the questions below, please leave a comment or send an e-mail to theviewfromseven@gmail.com. (Or, if you know someone who might be able to share their insights, please share this blog post with them.)

Three Winnipeg TV outlets celebrate their Golden Anniversaries this year. CBWFT, Winnipeg’s local French-language TV station, will celebrate its 50th anniversary on April 24. CTV affiliate CKY-TV will also celebrate its 50th anniversary of its Nov. 12, 1960 debut as CJAY-TV. This year will also be both a Golden and Coral/Jade anniversary for Global affiliate CKND-TV — the 50th anniversary of its sign-on as border station KCND in Pembina, N.D. on Nov. 7, 1960 and the 35th anniversary of KCND’s becoming the first and only TV station to move across an international border to become CKND in Winnipeg on Aug. 31, 1975.

• What were your favourite shows on these stations?

• Were you among the young people in Winnipeg who used to check out the racy late night movies on the French station in the ’80s?

• Are you still a fan of Bob Swartz’s Archie and His Friends and Funtown, Chiller Thriller Theater or Gordon McLendon’s strange on-air editorials after all these years?  Do you still groan at the thought of CKND’s Jackpot (a quirky ’80s game show where someone would pop up and yell “Jackpot!”) or CKY’s Debate (a weekly debating contest between teams from different local high schools, the only entertaining part being that these teenagers were generally nervous wrecks)? Dare I even go off-topic and mention 13 MTN’s early disasters? Share your memories!

• How were these stations as places to work in the ’60s and ’70s? What was the atmosphere like? How would you describe the working conditions?

• Had Canwest not bought out KCND, would the station have survived? What might have its post-1975 history been like?

Fly the Golden Jets! Transair — Winnipeg’s Hometown Airline. It’s been about 30 years since Transair’s gold-coloured fleet of Boeing 737s and Fokker F28s disappeared from the ramp at Winnipeg Airport. Founded in 1947 as Central Northern Airways and renamed Transair in 1956, the Winnipeg-based airline was a vital lifeline to many northern communities and carried many Winnipeggers to destinations in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Ontario until its merger with Calgary-based Pacific Western Airlines was completed in late 1979. It also had a Boeing 707 that it used for charters to Europe and Hawaii — which, according to one source, Transair managers conveniently managed to get out of town at times to keep it out of the hands of creditors.

Transair was also known as the first significant airline in Canada to hire a female pilot, and as the employer of a very young Peter Mansbridge, who worked at Transair’s Churchill station before going on to bigger and better things.

• How was Transair for service — was it a good airline or a poor one? What memories do you have as a passenger?

• How was the working atmosphere at Transair, particularly in light of the company’s struggle to survive in the ’70s?

• How could Transair have survived or done better, if it could have done these things at all? What were its strengths and weaknesses?

• How did the Transair-PWA merger go from an employee’s point of view?

Nude swimming at a City of Winnipeg pool in the ’80s? I heard by word of mouth that a City of Winnipeg public swimming pool was caught with its trunks down by a local newspaper in the ’80s when an intrepid reporter learned about a staff member’s by-invitation-only after-hours nude swimming club. I couldn’t find any written record of this story, but if it’s true, it would be worthy of an encore performance. Does anyone know any additional details?

Still the Troubled Y? In April 2008, Winnipeg’s Downtown YM-YWCA at 301 Vaughan St. was the subject of an unflattering article in the Winnipeg Free Press, which discussed the recreational facility’s problems with pepper spray attacks, drug deals, gang activity, vandalism and customer complaints about an indifferent management. Other member complaints that didn’t make the Free Press would also concern a lack of cleanliness, patrons asking others for sexual favours, and inattentive lifeguards. Having lost members to other Y branches, to a new fitness centre at the U of W and to the new Cindy Klassen Rec Centre, and about to face new competition from two new fitness centres in downtown Winnipeg — a GoodLife fitness centre scheduled to open at Portage and Main in April and the Sport for Life Centre preparing to open  in the East Exchange — can the Downtown Y survive?

Protests are scheduled to take place in Winnipeg and throughout the country today over Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s decision to prorogue Parliament until Mar. 3.

The decision to prorogue Parliament has been a controversial one, as it leaves the impression that a government elected on a promise of greater accountability to voters was pulling a fast one to avoid being grilled in Parliament over the torture of prisoners who had been handed over to local Afghan authorities by Canadian forces.

A year and a half before the prorogation debacle, University of Moncton political scientist Donald Savoie had warned that Canada’s government had become akin to a royal court in that power was largely concentrated in the hands of the prime minister and his inner circle, with Parliament and Cabinet counting for less and less every year.

In spite of our flawed democracy here in Canada, we still live in one of the world’s more relatively honestly governed countries.

While this weekend’s protests are taking place, events in a small country few Canadians have ever heard of will show what can happen when governments get really manipulative.

The 40,000 residents of the tiny Caribbean country of St. Kitts and Nevis — 90 kilometres west of the popular resort island of Antigua — are expecting sunshine and a high of 29 degrees Celsius today. Granted its independence from the U.K. in 1983, the western hemisphere’s smallest independent country will at least have good weather for the final weekend of its election campaign before Kittitians and Nevisians go to the polls on Monday.

Despite the good weather, there will be a cloud hanging over the final weekend of the campaign. The opposition Peoples’ Action Movement (PAM) has accused the incumbent Labour government of using ZIZ television and radio, the government-owned and taxpayer-supported broadcaster, as a propaganda machine.

A visit to the ZIZ web site suggests that there might be something to the opposition’s complaints.

There is one reasonably favourable news item about the opposition party, about a PAM youth rally that drew a “huge crowd”. Much of the content on the government-owned broadcasters web site, however, is either laudatory of the incumbent administration (“The investment in education over the past 14 years [i.e., since the current government was elected] has significantly transformed the professional landscape in St. Kitts and Nevis producing doctors, engineers, business persons, accountants and technicians”) or damning of the opposition (“Former PAM officials accepted bribes from investors to keep wages low and hold down job opportunities”).

For example, take  a look at this piece about housing in St. Kitts and Nevis.

Copyright © ZIZ, 2010

Maybe an employee at ZIZ was trying to tip off the public that the government-owned broadcaster was reprinting the ruling party’s press releases verbatim by not even bothering to make the headline a little less overtly partisan?

Copyright © ZIZ, 2010

The suburban dream arrives in St. Kitts and Nevis? Just to make sure everyone knows who was responsible for these newer-looking homes, ZIZ helpfully provided a neon-green link just off to the right of the photograph. Hold your mouse over it, and up comes a picture of the prime minister.

Copyright © ZIZ, 2010

This property, however, doesn’t look quite as nice. In fact, it appears to be derelict and overgrown. It’s a house built back when the opposition PAM party was in office, as the ZIZ news team points out. A “crasher rat” wouldn’t be out of place here, but was probably unavailable at the time.

The St. Kitts and Nevis example is a picture of how manipulative politicians can become if they’re not held properly accountable.

For all its problems, at least this tiny Caribbean country many Canadians have never heard of can at least boast of a year-round summer, and an eclectic little radio station called The Voice of Nevis (VON) that streams its content on the Internet.

Maclean’s magazine caused quite a stir on Jan. 12 by publishing an article called Manitoba can’t get any respect, describing Manitoba as the odd man out among the four western provinces, the runt of the litter.

I could take a few shots at Maclean’s itself, starting with how “Canada’s only national weekly current affairs magazine” is closer in spirit to People Magazine than to The Economist. I would rather be practical, however, and come up with some suggestions on how Manitoba can go from being a “have-not” province to Canada’s most-improved province by the end of the decade.

I started this weekend by looking for the differences between the “haves” and “have nots”.

Unfortunately, Canada has only 10 provinces, which didn’t give me a very robust sample to work with. The United States, however, has 50 states plus the District of Columbia, with wide variations in quality of life and living standards between states.

That, plus ample amounts of data available for free from the U.S. Census web site, gave me something I could work with.

With the data available, I set out to figure out what a state has to do to boost its median household income — the level of income reached by at least one-half of all households. I also paid attention to what divides “the have-mores” and “the have-leasts” — the 10 states with the highest and lowest median household incomes respectively — from the middle 31 states. (I’m referring to D.C. as a “state” for the purposes of this blog post just to keep things simple.)

The “have-mores”, in alphabetical order, include Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey and Virginia. The “have-leasts”, also in alphabetical order, are Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia.

(I freely acknowledge that some states have huge disparities in wealth, such as those between New Jersey’s affluent New York City suburbs and poverty-stricken Camden, rated on WorstCity.com as one of the world’s worst cities; or that a Hawaiian household’s dollar doesn’t go as far as it would on the mainland due to the high cost of shipping almost everything islanders need half-way across the Pacific. Still, the “have-mores” and “have-leasts” are a pretty good reflection of what many Americans would consider the most and least desirable states to move to.)

Here’s what I learned:

1. Education is a government’s single most important portfolio. Unless 87 percent or more of the population aged 25 years and over has a high school education, and at least 29 percent have a university degree, the odds of getting into the “have-mores” club aren’t all that great. Manitoba, where only about 80 percent of 25-64 year olds have finished high school and only 19 percent have a university degree, falls well short of these minimum requirements. To its credit, the provincial government has made reducing Manitoba’s abysmal high school dropout rate a priority over the past 10 years, and has been kept on course by the backing of the business community and the advocacy of radio host Richard Cloutier.

How important is education to everyone’s well-being? In the U.S., just increasing the percentage of adults with a high school diploma by merely one percentage point:

Increases the percentage of adults aged 25+ with a university degree by 0.66 percent. (That doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that the same increase in Manitoba would mean an additional 3,900 Manitobans aged 25-64 with university degrees.)

Reduces the percentage of households in the “less than $25,000″ income bracket by 0.84 percent. (Again, that doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that it would be the rough equivalent of lifting 3,800 Manitoba households out of the lowest income bracket.)

Increases the median household income by an average of $1,054 U.S.

Reduces the percentage of individuals living below the poverty line by 0.68 percent. (This would be roughly the equivalent of lifting 7,800 Manitobans above the poverty line.)

Reduces the unemployment rate, on average, by 0.14 percent. (The equivalent of putting an extra 850 Manitobans to work.)

Reduces the violent crime rate, on average, by 23.4 offences per 100,000 residents. (In Manitoba, this would mean 269 fewer violent crimes per year.)

2. Giving mothers and seniors the option to keep on working is good for the economy. The “have-more” states tended to have a larger percentage of the population active in the workforce. What does this mean for governments and employers? It means that they should make it easier for women to be full participants in the workforce, particularly by making it easier to juggle the competing demands of the workplace and parenthood; and that they should not penalize those who want to keep on working after age 65.

Since a higher percentage of the entire population being in the workforce is good for the economy, it might also be wise for governments not to encourage any new “baby booms” to replace retiring Baby Boomers, as this would mean a smaller percentage of the population being in the workforce. Instead, governments should encourage high school students to pursue post-secondary studies, high school dropouts to return to school, and skilled immigrants to choose Manitoba.

3. Business and unions can be allies for prosperity. Manitoba has a long history of tense business/union relations dating back to the 1919 General Strike. Yet U.S. data tends to suggest that the “have more” states have higher levels of union coverage (generally starting from 15 percent of the workforce and up), and the “have least” states have the lowest levels of union coverage (generally 10 percent or lower). With every one-point increase in the union coverage rate being associated with a $776 increase in the median household income, there’s no point knocking something that seems to put more money in consumers’ pockets.

4. Research and Development can become to Manitoba what natural resources are to Alberta and Saskatchewan. Research and development — the creation of new goods and technologies — is an incredibly effective wealth booster. In the U.S., every dollar spent on R & D in a state’s universities produces, on average, $59 of economic growth. To take advantage of this opportunity, Manitoba youngsters should be exposed to science and technology from an early age, and the government should continue to work with the universities to establish them as first-rate research facilities.

5. Don’t pay peanuts unless you want monkeys. The better off a state was in my analysis, the higher its state and local government employees were paid. Some might see this as reflecting the fact that a wealthier state can afford to pay its employees better wages than a poor state can. Others might see this as a case of getting what you pay for, with wealthier states having first-rate managers in their governments, and poorer states being under inferior management because the smart people all moved away. I suspect that it’s a bit of both — opportunity attracts talent, and talent leads to opportunities.

6. Don’t be afraid to go into debt for the right reasons. Governments of wealthier states have lower debt loads than poorer ones, right? Wrong! The “have more” states tended to spend more money per resident on debt interest, starting from $179 per citizen and up. The “have least” states tended to spend the least on debt interest, mostly below $100 per citizen.

To put it another way, which states would you be more likely to consider living in if you were to move to the U.S.? Higher debt states, such as Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts and New Hampshire? Or lower debt states, such as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Nebraska, Tennessee, Texas and Wyoming?

You get what you pay for — and debt-averse jurisdictions don’t get much.

There was never much doubt where Pat Robertson stood in the U.S. “culture wars” that raged from the ’60s to the present: way over on the right.

The senior statesman of the Christian Conservative movement has long been known for his wild comments on what he thought was wrong with the world.

“The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians,”  he memorably wrote in 1992.

“I’d like to say to the good citizens of Dover: If there is a disaster in your area, don’t turn to God, you just rejected him from your city… don’t ask for his help because he might not be there,” he told residents of Dover, Pa. in 2005, after they voted out a school board that had tried to have “intelligent design” — a rebranded version of creationism — taught in local science classes.

So much for a merciful and compassionate God.

Now Robertson was at it  again this week, following the devastating earthquake in Haiti. First he said this:

“Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, Napoleon III or whatever, and they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you get us free from the French. True story. So the devil said okay it’s a deal, so the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since then they have been cursed by one thing after another.”

The evidence for this “true story” seems rather scant to say the least. Haitians gained their independence from France in 1804, but the future Napoleon III wasn’t born until 1808, so it wasn’t his heel the Haitians were under. Frankly, there doesn’t seem to be much evidence for the existence of this “Devil” guy either, aside from others’ say-so.

“Desperately poor, the island of Hispanola is one side, on the one side is Haiti, on the other side is the Dominican Republic. The Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts et cetera, Haiti is in desperate poverty.”

It’s quite a stretch to call the Dominican Republic “prosperous” and “healthy”. The country has a per capita GDP barely one-fifth of Canada’s, and that’s probably being boosted to some degree by money being sent home by Dominican expatriates in the U.S. The unemployment rate in 2008 was a miserable 14 percent, 42 percent of the population lived below the poverty line in 2004, and infectious diseases such as dengue fever and  typhoid fever remain serious risks.

“They need to have—and we need to pray for them—a great turning to God.”

I can see some merit in the suggestion that viewers pray for the Haitian people. Prayer is a peaceful activity that can put the mind at ease and help people cope with the stresses of everyday life.

But I question his assumption that catastrophe after catastrophe has befallen Haiti because it turned away from God or that its people made a pact with the Devil.

If turning away from God led to catastrophe and chaos, shouldn’t the Norwegians, Swedes and Finns be plagued with incessant disasters?

After all, in each of those three countries, fewer than one-in-ten citizens attend religious services on a weekly basis. When asked by pollsters a few years ago to rate the importance of God in their lives on a 1-to-10 scale, Norwegians gave God an average rating of 4.2 out of 10, and Swedes rated God a 3.9 out of 10.

Strangely enough, God doesn’t seem to have much of a problem with the Scandinavians. They too have the occasional problem, such as when the floor started to collapse during a Weight Watchers meeting in the Swedish town of Vaxjo on Wednesday evening. But even then, no injuries were reported.

Otherwise, Norway, Sweden and Finland are largely known as polite, orderly, well-governed places where, if it weren’t for the rest of the world, almost every day would be a slow news day.

I’d like to think that if there is a God, he or she is pointing to Scandinavia and saying, “Hey guys, over here — this is my vision for Earth. Human rights, tolerance, clean and democratic government, and a healthy and well-educated population. These guys got the message. Watch and learn.”

Whether or not there are any other forms of intelligent life in the Universe other than what we know of here on Earth still remains a mystery to us. If there is a divine creator, it’s content to let us guess at what it wants us to do instead of making a personal appearance to straighten everything out for once and for all.

Haiti’s problems have multiple roots: a long history of corruption, the inability to educate its young and the lack of time and resources for the pursuit of knowledge, and too little stability to even begin to fix these problems.

As we learned this week, it also had the bad luck to have its population crowded along a dangerous fault line.

For those like Pat Robertson, who don’t want to spend too much time thinking about why some countries are better off than others, it’s easier to just shift the blame over to God or the Devil.

“Think, think, think!” a British cabinet minister named Barbara Castle once said. “It will hurt like hell at first, but you’ll get used to it.”

Pat Robertson just went for the lazier, pain-free option again this week. Too bad.

Every day, I log in and take a look at the stats concerning this blog to get a sense of what people are looking at and where they’re coming from. Most of the traffic is local, and many new posts get a bit of activity for a few days followed by nothing more than the occasional visit by someone doing a Google search.

There is the odd post, however, that will get a flurry of hits from out of town, which usually means that it’s touched a nerve with someone.

One of those posts was the one I wrote last July about downtown Winnipeg’s big problem not being a lack of parking, but the huge amount of dead space.  In that post, I made some comments about the huge parking lots that dot downtown Des Moines, Iowa.

I noticed a surge in traffic from Des Moines recently, and though to myself: “Uh oh… I peed someone off.”

It wasn’t as bad as I feared. Obviously, some Des Moines residents on Absolute DSM were unimpressed by my comments. “Ahh, glorious ‘Winterpeg’”, one commentator wrote. ”Living there is rather like living in Novosibirsk, I would imagine.”

The next time the wind chill dips below minus 30 here in The ‘Peg, I’ll probably find myself agreeing with that.

In any case, the good people of Des Moines weren’t as hard on me as I initially feared. The Upper Midwest is, after all, the heart of America in more ways than one. Their discussion among themselves about the past and future of Des Moines’ inner city proved to be both civil and enlightening.

Shortly after the traffic surge from Iowa, another one came in from across the Atlantic. The Kate Middleton Report — named after the girlfriend and probable future wife of Britain’s Prince William — picked up on what this blog wrote on New Years’ Eve about the possibility of a little constitutional crisis if Prince William were to have a daughter first and a son later.

British law forbids princesses from inheriting the throne unless they have no brothers. Thus, if Prince William and Kate Middleton (or whoever his wife turns out to be) were to have a daughter first and a son later, the daughter would be stripped of her position as heir to the throne at the moment of her younger brother’s birth.

This hasn’t been an issue in recent history, as no British monarch or heir to the throne has had his or her children in the “wrong” order since Queen Victoria.

Every British monarch and heir to the throne since then has had sons first, assuring that the throne would be passed without controversy from one generation to the next. The only exceptions were Edward VIII, who quit the throne in 1936 to marry American divorcee Wallis Simpson without having ever had children of his own; and Queen Elizabeth’s father, George VI, who had no sons, leaving the path clear for his elder daughter to inherit the throne when he died in 1952.

Thus, no young princess has been bumped out of her position as heir to the throne since the one-year-old Princess Victoria (not to be confused with her mother, Queen Victoria) was forced in 1841 to yield to her little brother, who later became Edward VII.

Fast-forward from 1841 to 2018. The 92-year-old Queen Elizabeth II is still on the throne, but her age and declining health have forced her to reduce her workload. Prince Charles, aged 70, is first in line to the throne, but much of the spotlight is on Prince William, 36, William’s wife Kate, and their three-year-old daughter, Princess Olivia, third in line to the throne.

Just before Christmas, William and Kate have a second child — a son, Prince James.

All of a sudden, because of an ancient law, James is the heir to the throne and Olivia is out.

Sorry, Olivia. Too bad, so sad, sucks to be you.

Suddenly, British women are protesting an archaic law that effectively says that a royal offspring’s right to inherit the throne depends on what they’ve got between their legs. Challenges to the old laws are filed in British and European courts, arguing that the laws on which the succession to the throne are based are discriminatory and should be overturned. In the British parliament, MPs from all parties call for the law to be changed, and anti-monarchist sentiment is being stirred up in other Commonwealth countries.

Why wait for a controversy to happen if you can head it off first?

The laws that govern who will inherit the British throne — and thus become Canada’s official head of state — are indeed discriminatory.

The requirement that male heirs be given preference over females runs afoul of Section 15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (“Every individual is equal before and under the law and has the right to the equal protection and equal benefit of the law without discrimination… based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, sex, age or mental or physical disability.”)

The British law forbidding Catholics from inheriting the throne and disqualifying any member of the Royal Family who marries a Catholic from inheriting the throne is also contrary to the spirit of the Charter.

Since it would be difficult for Canada to get rid of the monarchy — a change that would require a major re-write of the Constitution and the unanimous approval of Parliament and all 10 provincial legislatures — then why shouldn’t we agitate for positive change by uniting with other governments in which the Queen is head of state, like Australia and New Zealand and even British sympathizers, to push for reforms that would reflect our shared egalitarian values?

Failing that, then why not have our own made-in-Canada succession law? It might mean that Canada and Britain might eventually have different monarchs from the same family — a cumbersome arrangement, perhaps, but one that would leave the door open to a future King or Queen of Canada who, for the first time in history, actually lives in Canada.

Canadians widely disapprove of discrimination based on a person’s gender or religion, and rightfully so. If the monarchy is the “Canadian institution” that some claim it to be, then we have every right to push for changes to that institution so that it reflects our values.

The Economist has always been a great weekly magazine for those who are interested in keeping up with what’s happening in the world. Now they’ve taken their coverage of the issues one step further by creating a section on their web site and a YouTube channel where you can watch a slideshow and listen to people from all walks of life sharing their thoughts and experiences.

They’ve uploaded a couple of good talks recently about urban life. The first is about Detroit residents who are doing some innovative things to breathe some life back into that city’s troubled urban core and restore a sense of neighbourhood in places everyone else seems to have given up on.

The second features a talk by former journalist Thomas Hoepker about his years spent as a westerner living in communist East Berlin, where residents found ways to survive in a city where nothing was spontaneous, spies from the East German state police — the notorious Stasi — were everywhere, and people carried “Perhaps Bags” that would allow them to scoop up anything exotic they might run across.

More talks on everything from the 1979 Iranian revolution to life as a punk rocker in Castro’s Cuba are available on The Economist’s web site or their YouTube channel.

Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one… Happy New Year!

Tonight at 11:59 p.m. and 50 seconds, millions of people will join together to count down the final seconds of 2009 and herald the arrival of 2010. Together, we will begin not just a new year, but a new decade, too.

It’s hard to believe an entire decade has passed since that morning ten years ago, Dec. 31, 1999, when I woke up to hear that the lights were still on and all was well in faraway New Zealand. The Kiwis, 18 hours ahead of us, were the canaries in the coalmine as the first computer-dependent society to ring in the year 2000 and thus show us whether the “Y2K bug” would really bring chaos or merely a few easily corrected glitches. (Just glitches, thankfully.)

On that last day of the ’90s, I had little more than two words to say about the end of that decade: good riddance. As far as I was concerned at the time, the ’90s had been the Seinfeld decade — a decade about nothing, a decade of cultural mediocrity, a dreadfully boring decade.

Ten years later, many people will be just as eager to say “good riddance” to the 2000s. In defence of the 2000s, however, at least it was a decade about something.

In the 2000s, Barack Obama, Sarah Palin, George W. Bush and Hillary Clinton showed us two very different sides of our southern neighbours. Social barriers were broken: Nicolas Sarkozy, the mercurial son of a Hungarian immigrant father and a French-born Jewish mother, was elected President of France; an Australian office worker named Mary Donaldson became Crown Princess Mary of Denmark, wife of the future King; and a frumpy, unemployed Scottish woman named Susan Boyle became an overnight singing sensation. Terrorism forced us to revisit not just the issue of airport security, but also the role of God and faith in society and Canada’s role in the world.

Amid all the turbulence, popular music — one of the best barometers of the public mood — arguably had its best decade since the ’70s.

That roller-coaster decade is now in its final hours. As we end an old decade and start a new one, it leaves us to wonder what lies ahead of us.

It looks as though the 2010s will be an interesting decade. Here is The View from Seven’s look ahead at what should be in store for us in the new decade:

Canadian Society and Politics

Harper will likely remain PM for a while yet, but a majority will remain elusive. There’s an old truism in politics that oppositions don’t win elections, incumbents lose them. Stephen Harper has proven to be a canny enough politician to avoid prodding the public into a “throw the bums out” kind of mood. As long as the public stays in that sort of mood, Harper’s position as prime minister will remain relatively secure.

The PM remains something of a cold fish, however, lacking the everyman likeability of a Gary Doer, the eloquence and style of a Barack Obama or the unthreatening, matronly demeanor of popular German chancellor Angela Merkel. That, plus the survival of Liberal, NDP and Bloc regional strongholds scattered around the country, will make it difficult for Harper to muster a majority.

Governments also don’t age gracefully, so expect a change sometime between 2012 and 2018 as the Conservative government gets old.

Popular German chancellor Angela Merkel having a beer at Oktoberfest: Stephen Harper could learn a thing or two from her. (Copyright © daylife.com)

The ex-Reform faction within the Tories will continue to fade away. The Conservative leadership might be in the hands of former Reform Party MP Stephen Harper, but demographics are poised to give more moderate Conservatives the upper hand as older MPs are replaced by younger ones.

An examination of self-identified Conservative voters in the 2006 World Values Survey shows that younger Tories born since 1970 have more conciliatory views than their older counterparts about immigrants and labour unions, are less likely than older Conservatives to be religious, and tend not to consider tradition to be as important.

The NDP as the new party of individualism. Looking at the same data as above, I also noticed something interesting that divided younger New Democrats from older ones: younger NDPers were considerably more likely to say that they seek to be themselves than to follow others. I was ready to dismiss this as just some young vs. old thing, until I realized that there was no generation gap on this question among self-styled Liberals or Conservatives, suggesting that this individualistic streak is something unique to future left-wing leaders. That leads us nicely into the next trend to watch for.

The real “Me Generation”. If the Baby Boomers were the original “Me Generation”, their children and grandchildren are now the “Me Generation on Steroids”. As Jean M. Twenge, Ph.D. pointed out in her research, today’s younger generation are more likely to reject the idea that there is any single right way to live; are more egalitarian and less deferential to authority; are more ambitious; but are also more likely to feel alone and isolated.

Don’t declare Quebec nationalism dead just yet. If history can teach us one thing, it’s that nationalist sentiment is an unpredictable beast. In 1905, Norway went from being merely a region of Sweden that wanted more autonomy to being a fully independent country in a mere 10 months. In 1991, the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia disintegrated into a multitude of new countries with astonishing speed. In the former Czechoslovakia, the idea of breaking the country up into two new countries was only seriously put forward for the first time in July 1992, and still have just minority support as late as September 1992. By New Years Day 1993, Czechoslovakia was dead and two new countries, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, were founded to take its place. That Quebec could become an independent country within this decade should not be entirely ruled out, especially if Quebec nationalists find inspiration in the possible breakups of Belgium and Spain (see below).

Goodbye Queen Elizabeth; Hello King Charles? Canadians generally don’t give much thought to the monarchy; partly because Queen Elizabeth II doesn’t actually live or spend much time in Canada, and partly because the Queen had held the job for so long. The then-Princess Elizabeth was only 25 years old when her father, King George VI, died in February 1952. She inherited George’s throne and has occupied it ever since. Queen Elizabeth is now in her eighties, and will turn 90 in April 2016. There is a possibility that the Queen might not survive the decade, or might need to abdicate for health reasons, handing the throne over to eldest son Prince Charles.

Also, watch for the possibility (25% probability or so) of a debate about reforming the succession laws. It appears as though Prince William will likely marry girlfriend Kate Middleton. If they were to have a daughter first and a son later, the son would take precedence and the daughter would be automatically stripped of her title as heir to the throne. The law is the law, but it’s hardly a defensible one in this egalitarian day and age. If this were to happen, the public outcry over the shabby treatment of the daughter could spark a constitutional crisis.

Finding a way out of Afghanistan. After eight years of occupation, Afghanistan remains as violent and corrupt as ever. The odds of it ever becoming anything resembling a stable democracy that respects human rights are about as poor as they come, and the country’s long-term outlook is grim. The trick for the Canadian government over the next ten years will be to find some way out of Afghanistan without appearing to abandon the country to its fate.

A new government in Manitoba in 2011 or 2015. Since the creation of a reasonably fair electoral system in Manitoba in 1958 (unlike the gerrymandered pre-1958 system, where Winnipeg and its suburbs were woefully underrepresented in the Legislature), no provincial government has been re-elected after its 10th anniversary in power if it were lucky enough to survive so long. Newly installed premier Greg Selinger is hoping to break that record in 2011. It will be tough, but now-former Saskatchewan premier Lorne Calvert proved it wasn’t impossible when he was able to get a 12-year-old NDP government re-elected there in 2003. Even if Selinger’s NDP is re-elected to a fourth term in 2011, the odds of winning a fifth term in 2015 will be minuscule.

World Events to Watch For

Belgium — Risk of break-up. Belgium’s borders were drawn in the 19th century on the basis of religion, not language. The intention was to separate Catholic Belgium from the Protestant Netherlands, and never mind the fact that the Flemish-speaking (i.e., Dutch) northern Belgians and the French-speaking southern Belgians didn’t get along very well. The relationship has deteriorated in recent years — the country went without a prime minister for nine months because of the mistrust between the Flemish and the French. The dissolution of Belgium and its replacement with two new countries called Flanders and Wallonia is a very real possibility.

China — A bubble that’s about to burst? It’s kind of worrisome that China, as a major engine of global economic growth, is making so little progress to clean up the perception that it is a highly corrupt country. It also has two other makings of a potentially unstable country: a huge population, and a hierarchical social structure where those at the bottom of the heap count for little.  Watch out for trouble ahead.

The Czech Republic, Estonia and Uruguay — The little countries that could. Good things have been happening in these three countries over the past decade: democracy and human rights have established strong roots, their economies have done well and their governments are getting noticed for being among the cleanest in their respective regions of the world, and steadily improving. The new decade has the potential to bring rising living standards to these countries. If you follow world affairs, expect to hear more about the “Czech/Estonian/Uruguayan Miracle”.

Uruguay's forecast for the new decade: Sunny! (Copyright © The Daily Mail / Associated Newspapers Ltd.)

Egypt — Risk of revolution. What do you get when you combine poverty, sectarian tensions,  an 81-year-old autocrat who has been in power for 28 years, and a population that’s huge (83 million), partially literate (a lacklustre 71%), young (median age: 25) and growing fast (1.3 million more people on the way this coming year)? Nothing good. President Mubarak’s age will make it progressively more difficult for him to maintain the iron grip that kept Egypt from boiling over; the risk of revolution being greatest when an old dictator loosens that grip.

Iran — Risk of revolution. Iran has several of the danger signs of a country sliding into revolution: it’s governed by an insular elite that considers itself answerable to God (who isn’t in the habit of confirming that those who claim to speak on his/her behalf are actually doing so correctly, or at all); it has a huge population; the people at the bottom of the social hierarchy count for little; and it’s becoming increasingly corrupt. It’s also increasingly urban (the cities being traditionally more liberal than the rural areas, where theocracy gets the most support) and it has a large young population (median age: 27 years) who often want a western lifestyle and to whom the 1979 revolution means little. Get ready for more trouble.

Iraq — Bush and Blair blew it. I recently saw former British prime minister Tony Blair on television, justifying the 2003 invasion of Iraq by asking if it would have been better if Saddam Hussein stayed in power. As awful as Saddam Hussein was, the depressing answer may well be “yes”: Iraq not only remains a violent and corrupt land full of ethnic and sectarian hatreds, it has also come to be seen as being more and more corrupt as the war has gone on, despite western occupation.  Half the population is under the age of 20 and full of energy to burn (and few elders to call for cooler heads to prevail), a quarter of the population is illiterate, the official unemployment rate is 18 percent, and the fertility rate is way too high for a country that struggles to feed and provide jobs for the population it already has. Either it will break up due to Sunni vs. Shiite vs. Kurd ethno-sectarian violence, revert to a cruel and repressive dictatorship, or spin out of control and become much like Somalia, recently named “Worst Country in the World” by The Economist. What a mess.

Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago — Trouble in Paradise. There’s the Jamaica that they promote to tourists: a country of beaches and sunshine. Then there’s the real Jamaica — the violent, corrupt and intolerant country where approximately 1,500 of the country’s 2.7 million residents are murdered every year. Imagine if Winnipeg had 350+ murders every year instead of the usual 25-35, and you’ll get an idea of just how abysmal things are in Jamaica. Trinidad and Tobago (approximately 500 murders per year out of a population of 1.3 million) is also in bad shape, and suffers from racial tensions to boot. Things have been getting worse, and little hope of improvement is on the horizon. Expect the U.S. and Canada (through the Commonwealth) to be called upon to do something about these countries.

Russia — A potentially naughty bear. The ’90s were an absolute disaster for Russia, but the 2000s weren’t a heck of a lot better as democracy had trouble taking root and corruption remained a serious problem. Russia’s government was perceived as being more and more corrupt as the decade went on, which is not a good sign for either Russia’s own well-being or that of its neighbours. Hopefully Russia won’t use wars and other forms of mischief-making to distract the population from its homegrown problems. (Some of its neighbours, like Belarus and Uzbekistan, have been on the wrong track, too.)

South Korea — Good prospects ahead, as long as the neighbours don’t get too rowdy. South Korea gets overshadowed a bit by its larger neighbours China and Japan and by the bizarre regime in North Korea. South Korea has been making good progress, however, in reducing corruption and improving how the country is run. If it stays on its current path and its neighbours don’t get too unruly, it could be a good decade for them.

Spain — Risk of breakup. Spain isn’t thought of as being a multicultural, multilingual nation, but it is. Spanish is, of course, the dominant language, but there are also Galician-speaking minorities in the northwest, Basque and Aranese in the north and Catalan along the Mediterranean coast — an area called Catalonia. Catalonia is affluent and defiant, and is seriously looking at declaring its independence from Spain. A 2008 poll found that more Catalans would vote for independence from Spain than against it (36% Yes, 22% No, all others undecided), so it should be treated as a credible possibility in the decade ahead.

The Middle East — No relief from the turmoil. With few exceptions, the Middle East remains on the wrong path. Syria and Israel are both troubled by increasingly perceptions of corruption, which will only make them feel even more insecure in their troubled area of the world. Things could even get worse if Egypt boils over into revolution and Iraq totally falls apart. If you don’t live in this part of the world, stay well away from it. If you do live in this part of the world and have the means to do so, emigrate.

Yemen — The new front on the war on terror. It’s been a terrorist training ground before, and was implicated more recently in the attempted bombing of a U.S. airliner en route from Amsterdam to Detroit. It’s also been under increasingly bad management as of late, so expect to hear more about efforts to neutralize Yemen as a terrorist den.

It should be an interesting decade ahead, promising us lots of drama. All the best to all of you in the year and decade ahead — and take a moment to be thankful that you live in a peaceful and affluent country.

Two-thousand and nine has been an unkind year for the airline industry. On Christmas Eve, the industry could look back on 2009 as the year that forced carriers to slash fares to ridiculously low Boxing Day-style prices to stimulate demand, helping to drive some 30 more carriers into bankruptcy and others closer to it. Air Canada narrowly avoided another bankruptcy filing and fired its CEO as its share price dropped below $1; WestJet struggled with a new reservation system that caused headaches for customers and employees alike.

That was Christmas Eve. As WestJet and Air Canada executives sat down to dinner that night, they could at least console themselves that an improving economy would bring better times in 2010.

Then, the worst news of all came on Christmas Day.

An Airbus A330 operated by Northwest Airlines — now little more than a subsidiary of Delta Airlines — was about to land in Detroit when a Nigerian passenger, Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, tried to ignite explosives fastened to his leg. Other passengers courageously tackled the would-be bomber, and the aircraft landed safely.

This attempted bombing wasn’t supposed to happen. After 9/11, the attempted “shoe bomb” attack, and the foiling of a plot to bomb trans-Atlantic flights leaving from the U.K., airlines and airport escalated security to ensure no one got on a commercial jetliner with the means by which to carry out a terrorist attack.

In October 2008, I flew the same airline and type of aircraft as the bomber — it might have been the same Airbus A330 for all I know — out of the same airport, Amsterdam Schiphol. Entering the gate, I was questioned by a grim-looking woman who examined my passport and tickets, wanting to know more about my travel plans, what I did for a living and where I had been in the preceding days.

After passing through another security check — shoes off, belt off, no liquids or gels — I joined the 200-something other passengers in a ridiculously crowded “sterile” boarding lounge that had all the charm and the popluation density of a refugee camp.

The would-be Detroit bomber presumably went through the same screening process on Christmas Day. Being a male traveling alone, he might even have been subjected to a little more scrutiny than usual. He still managed to get aboard the aircraft with dangerous goods in his possession.

So much for the extra security.

In the hours after the attempted bombing, passengers began to hear of new security measures coming into effect:

• All laptops and other electronic devices to be turned off not just for take-off and landing, but for the final hour of the flight as well
• All passengers to remain seated for the final hour of the flight
• All passengers departing Canada for the U.S. to be body-searched
• One carry-on item per passenger
• No access to your carry-on items and nothing to cover your lap during the final hour of the flight

This raises a few questions:

• How long will it be before the “final hour before arrival” rule is extended to cover the entire flight? If anything, a  flight is least vulnerable during the last hour in the air: an onboard explosion is less likely to be disastrous at lower altitudes and airspeeds, there are more airports nearby to divert to for an emergency landing, and the crew doesn’t have to concern itself with the added risks of trying to land the aircraft above its maximum landing weight in an emergency. A mid-flight incident, perhaps as much as three hours’ flying time from the nearest suitable airport, would be much more dangerous.

 

• Will this convince the airlines to scrap their checked-baggage fees? This policy seemed to be based on their naive hope that: a.) their customers wouldn’t notice that a $100 rollaboard suitcase could pay for itself after just four round-trips; b.) that their customers wouldn’t cram the bins to the max with every possession they could possibly bring aboard, adding to the time it takes to turn around an aircraft between flights; and, c.) that their demoralized employees wouldn’t notice that the path of least resistance is to stop enforcing size and weight restrictions. The one-carry-on rule will only make matters worse.

 

• Will this destroy the airlines’ buy-on-board programs? It’s not as if many passengers are shelling out much money for the junk food the airlines are selling now. If the lineups for that one last trip to the restroom are going to entend half-way through the cabin starting from two hours before arrival, and there won’t be any access whatsoever during that final hour, it would be smart to eat and drink as little as possible before and during the flight. (You won’t be allowed to cover your lap either, gentlemen, so forget about bringing a blanket and an empty bottle on board in case you urgently need to go.)

 

• Could this be the start of a renaissance decade for train travel, and of a boom in regional travel, as the hassles of air travel get to be too much?

 

• Will airport security become more like Customs, with even domestic travelers being questioned about their travel intentions and sniffer dogs checking passengers and their carry-ons for explosives? (Would it be too facetious to suggest that there might even be male and female screening areas, with everyone being told to forget their inhibitions and strip to their underwear?)

There’s an old joke that goes like this: “When you have to tighten your belt, you’re in a recession. When you no longer have a belt to tighten, you’re in a depression. When you lose your pants entirely, you’re in the airline industry.” In the new decade, that last sentence might turn out to be bitterly ironic.