Wild About Writing

Before the ink has dried on the Harper government’s bill to allow victims of terrorism to sue their attackers and the governments that have supported them, our own Federal Court has ruled that the Canadian government has created its own victim of terrorism.

In a stunning ruling, Judge Russell Zinn has found that Ottawa deprived Abousfian Abdelrazik, a Canadian citizen enjoying sanctuary in the Canadian Embassy in the Sudan, of his rights under the Charter of Rights and Freedom.

It did this by refusing to issue him a passport to return home, supposedly on national security grounds. Yet both CSIS and the RCMP say they have nothing on him.

Said Judge Zinn:

He (Mr. Abdelkrazik)  is as much a victim of international terrorism as the innocent persons whose lives have been taken by recent barbaric acts of terrorists.

There’s delicious irony in the fact that this ruling comes only days after introduction of the bill to allow lawsuits against terrorists. I’m convinced the bill is a meaningless ploy. There’s no practical rationale for it.

Under amendments to the State Immunity Act announced by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, victims would be able to sue individuals and organizations that commit acts of terrorism, as well as governments that support them.

It is retroactive to 1985, presumably to cover the Air India bombing as well as the 9/11 attacks of 2001.

But is there any real prospect of Osama bin Laden’s henchmen ever being hauled before a Canadian court? If they were, would they show up? If they did, would they pay up?

The bill will allow lawsuits against foreign governments that are on an official Ottawa list as supporting terrorism. The list doesn’t yet exist. This provision has been put in to prevent suits against friendly governments, such as the United States.

So what governments is Ottawa likely to put on it’s “go ahead and sue” list?

Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism (Columbia University Press) deals at length with the topic of rogue states that support terrorism.

The Taliban? They’re not a real government. Pakistan? A friendly ally. China? Not a chance. North Korea? Their terrorism is directed mainly at their own people. Hamas and the Gaza Strip? A sure way to help derail the Midweast peace process. Iran? Perhaps the one country that’s supporting anti-Jewish, anti-Western terrorism. But how would putting Iran on a new “axis of evil” list contribute to Barack Obama’s goal of meaningful dialogue with that country?

No, it’s just political hogwash — a meaningless gesture by the Harperites to curry favor from afflicted voters, knowing full well that nothing will ever come of it.

 Meanwhile, Ottawa has 30 days to bring Mr. Abdelrazik home.

The chatter over Natural Resources Minister Lisa Raitt’s forgotten “secret” papers — left by an aide in an Ottawa TV studio — obscures a much bigger problem in her department.

The Opposition has been doing its best to fry Ms. Rait, the attractive Tory newcomer from Halton, Ontario, over the forgotten documents. They’re demanding her resignation. Prime Minister Harper won’t have any of it. An aide made the mistake, not her, and she’s been let go.

It’s a good political tactic to insist that a minister be responsible for everything that happens on her watch. But this is a minor gaffe, and the demand that she quit is nothing more than political theatre.

Worse, it takes the spotlight off the real failure in her department over the breakdown of the nuclear reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada. The world depends on AECL’s Chalk River facility for 30 per cent of the isotopes needed in nuclear medicine.

Right now, patients are starting to lose out on vital life-giving diagnosis and treatment of cancers.

The problem’s been around for years. The Harper government has been singularly ineffective in dealing with it.

Mr. Harper fired the head of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Linda Keen, because she wanted to shut down the reactor for safety repairs. He called her a biased Liberal hack.

Now that the reactor has had to cease operations because of a heavy water leak, she’s been vindicated

First word was that it would be running again in a month. But now AECL officials say the shut-down could last much longer.

Experts say the problem goes back to the cancellation a year ago of a project to build a new reactor, called the Maples. The core of the proposed reactor was found to have fatal design flaws

A solution has been advanced by the U.S. National Research Council. Its advice: use a different kind of core that doesn’t rely on highly enriched uranium.

Minister Raitt’s missing papers, their contents since revealed by CTV, show that $351 million has been spent at Chalk River this year alone. Since 2006, the Conservatives have spent $1.7 billion in total on the troubled plant, incuding other functions besides the isotope reactor.

For all this money, we still don’t have a solution in a field of medical science where Canada has been a world leader. That’s the real scandal.

Watching General Motors president Fritz Henderson announce the company has gone into bankruptcy protection left me with the feeling that we are truly at the end of an era.

The Canadian, Ontario and U.S. governments now own 72 per cent of the company after committing to bail-out packages totaling $59.5 billion.

I’m reminded that when the Big 3 presidents went to Washington last fall to ask for the bail-out, they flew there on private jets and didn’t have a clue as to what they would do with government assistance. Just give us the money, they pleaded.

Since then, President Obama has bounced the head of GM and it and Chrysler have come up with restructuring plans. The humiliation of the auto giants is complete with this week’s GM bankruptcy.

The rationale for bailing out the auto industry has been that whatever its cost, rescue would be less than the cost to the economy of letting these companies go down the drain.

This might be true, but it’s something that has to be taken on faith. There’s no way of proving the theory right or wrong without testing an alternative to bail-out. The politicians aren’t going to do that.

Now we’re being told that despite all the mistakes of the past — sticking with gas guzzlers, building too many units — GM has come up with a new vision for its future.

That vision rests largely on the Chevy Volt, the new all-electric car into which GM is pouring a billion dollars.

An important fact, hastily glossed over in GM’s publicity hand-outs, is that the Volt represents at best on emerging technology that may or may not prove practical.

• The Volt, due out in the fall of 2010, will cost $40,000 in the U.S. and about $50,000 in Canada — twice the cost of the hybrid Toyota Prius. Even with government rebates (another plus to the bail-out cost) it’ll still be far pricier than its proven hybrid competitors.
• The Volt’s reliance on giant lithium-ion battery technology remains to be proven in real operating conditions. It may run into problems in extremely hot or cold temperatures.
• The Volt’s battery will need recharging after 64k. This will be done via a back-up 1.4 litre cylinder engine, followed by an overnight plug-in to a household electrical outlet. Savings on gas will be offset by higher electrical costs.

Even if GM can overcome these technical and economic issues, it’s up in the air as to whether it will be able to make money manufacturing Volts.

There’s no doubt a market for the 11,000 Volts that GM plans to produce next year. They hope to roll that up to 60,000 annually within five years. Even so, its contribution to GM profits will be little or nothing.

The Volt will give GM an up to date, enviro-friendly image. It may even burnish the company’s reputation for having killed an earlier all-electric car, the EV1.

General Motors made eight hundred of those two-seaters for leasing to customers in California and Arizona. They cost $80,000 to make. When the company finally realzed there was no way the EV1 could ever become a viable production car, GM knocked it in the head. It’s been suffering PR bruises ever since.

The EV1 itself was primarily a ploy to gain approval of the California authorities, who were demanding that 10 per cent of new cars meet zero-emission standards. So much for that rule.

It was the same thing with SUVs. The Big 3 made them as a way to get around tougher gas consumption rules. Congress exempted vehicles built on truck bodies, which would be used for essential work, not pleasure. So the industry came up with SUVs, passenger cars riding on truck frames. Another rule subverted.

With the new era of government control, one can hope for more faithful adherence to the rules in the future, I think we can be forgiven a little skepticism.

Recently, The New Yorker devoted an exceptionally long article to GM’s past and future. The conclusion: It’s chances are  not good. Even the company’s own Larry  Burns admitted that companies facing the kind of transformation GM is looking at “usually don’t come out of it the winner.” There’s an abstract of the article here.

Anticipating the GM bankrupcty announcement, the Globe and Mail ran a long piece Saturday, Can the Volt Recharge GM? It’s here. 

The question I have is why is GM focusing on a doubtful all-electric car instead of proven hybrid technology?

The Chevy Volt will likely turn out to be just another false hope unless GM comes up with a way to extend its driving distance. As the engineers used to say, “Batteries are for toys.”

Trying to prove differently puts GM on a high-risk path. There’s no evidence yet that the Volt will save GM.

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My new book, Scott Joplin and the Age of Ragtime, explores the life of Joplin and other musicians, writers and artists whose works brought such profound changes to modern culture in the Ragtime Era, the period between the 1890s and the First World War. Check it out here.