Happy Canada Day!

Royal Rejoicing

John Ivison has an appropriate and funny column in the National Post today. He is covering the "Royal" visit of two young people from London (in the picture) and his comments will make anyone smile.
The news media will be all over the Royal honeymooners and Gay Pride week here in the centre of the Canadian universe during our National holiday weekend.
I can't think of how to relate these two events. Yes, there are queens involved, not royal. There will be Royal parades and Pride parades, pomp and pageantry at both and ass-less chaps and mounted horsemen (I'm not going to touch that one).
The Royals aren't coming to Toronto, too bad. Maybe it had to do with Pride Week, competition you know. But missing Toronto is a bit like trying to get the flavour of France without going to Paris. Why choose the Calgary Stampede over Pride week? Why piss off the animal lovers AND the LGBT community?
The big media story here this entire week, has been the failure of the newly installed Mayor of Toronto (Rob Ford) to acknowledge the Pride events in his city. Maybe we should be pissed off at the Royals too?     

Krugman in Canada

Want to see how the "pen is mightier than the sword?"
Paul Krugman is in town today, speaking to the Economic Club of Canada, and he wasn't very optimistic about the future, but not for the reasons you might think. Krugman thinks that governments are not doing enough to stimulate their economies. Really? Yup, “We’re living in a time in which, for the time being, virtue is vice, prudence is folly.”  What does he mean? Spend more dammit! Sigh.....
As I was saying about the pen and sword, read Peter Foster today in the Financial Post, he splays Krugman open and the insides aren't pretty. 

Without economic freedom, there is no freedom.

Click your mouse on that map. Only New Zealand and Switzerland are shaded bluish indicating they have greatest degree of economic freedom according to the Fraser Institute in 2008.
The map is part of a List of Freedom Indices that someone created for Wikipedia, and it is a wonderful resource for anyone on the planet to compare their country on issues of political, civil and economic freedoms.
The Freedom Indices are mentioned in a great column in today's Financial Post written by Karen Selick the litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation. Ms. Selick's column "Pursuit of one's trade," argues that without economic freedom all other freedoms are jeopardized.
Of course the reality is, liberty cannot be rationed into press freedoms, civil liberties, and economic liberties. True freedom requires all of them, not two out of three. Just as life requires air, water, and food, the rationing of any one impinges on life, period.

Bonus addition: