Harper’s ‘crystal clear’ explanations changing by the day: Chris Hall

The prime minister doesn't need to give voice to his exasperation with the Senate expense scandal as he heads to Calgary for a two-day policy convention.

Stephen Harper pantomimes his frustration almost every time he rises in the Commons to answer another barbed question.

He raises his palms heavenward, shakes his head balefully and repeats how "crystal clear" he's been since May in telling Senator Mike Duffy that he had to repay $90,000 in improperly claimed living expenses, in saying his former chief of staff resigned for deciding, on his own, to pay that money back out of his own pocket, and in reiterating that — had he known — he would have directed Nigel Wright not to do it in the first place.

Written down like that, it does all seem crystal clear. Except the prime minister has said more than that. Much, much more. And what he's said about Wright, in particular, keeps changing. From month to month, week to week, day to day.

Here's what Harper said May 19 in accepting Wright's resignation for his role in the Duffy affair:

"I accept that Nigel believed he was acting in the public interest, but I understand the decision he has taken to resign. I want to thank Nigel for his tremendous contribution to our government over the past two and a half years."

Compare that with what the prime minister said in a radio interview on Monday:

"As you know, I had a chief of staff who made an inappropriate payment to Mr. Duffy. He was dismissed."

Or to what Harper told the Commons on Tuesday.

"Once again, Mr. Speaker, on our side, there is one person responsible for this deception, and that person is Mr. Wright. Mr Wright by his own admission. For that reason, Mr. Wright no longer works for us."

Changing message

Fired or resigned. Acted in the public interest, or out of deception. These are just two examples of Harper's changing answers. And that makes the prime minister a key player in keeping the Senate scandal alive heading into a policy convention that was supposed to lift the party away from the Senate morass and into the orbit of priorities they can campaign on in 2015.

Still, turning on your former chief of staff seems out of sync for a leader who demands absolute loyalty from his people, and a strict adherence to message control.

When Wright first resigned, a number of his former colleagues praised his integrity, work ethic and honesty. They called his decision to personally repay Duffy's expenses a regrettable error.

Those same people are silent now as Harper dismantles Wright's reputation.

Oxford defines to deceive as to "deliberately cause (someone) to believe that something is not true, especially for personal gain."

There's been no suggestion Wright was motivated by personal gain. In fact, just the opposite is true. He dashed off a payment in an attempt make a political problem go away for the prime minister.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper speaks with Senator Claude Carignan, the Leader of the Government in the Senate, following a party caucus on Parliament Hill on Oct. 30. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

Harper's new lines suggest he's trying to put more distance between himself and the actions of his former chief of staff. He is doing so using the bully pulpit of his office and the privilege attached to anything said in the Commons.

In the meantime, the facts in the Duffy-Wright affair are not yet fully known. The RCMP continue to investigate.

In reality, Harper and the Conservatives want to deflect attention from him, and to keep it on the Senate where the debate over whether to suspend Duffy, Pamela Wallin and Patrick Brazeau without pay drags on and on.

Their punishment was to have been meted out before this weekend's convention. It was supposed to allow Harper to tell party faithful that these three senators had been held accountable for misusing taxpayers' money.

Instead, Harper spent the week fending off questions about his own role, and his changing answers.

At the crossroads

The Senate isn't on the official agenda in Calgary, but Conservatives acknowledge the expenses controversy and Wright-Duffy affair will play out in the hallways among party supporters who were promised Senate reform by Harper, not scandal.

It's also the focus of a daylong panel discussion leading into the convention, sponsored by former Reform Party leader Preston Manning's foundation, which says the movement to change the Senate is at a crossroads.

"It's time to assess where we've been, where we are and where we are headed," the foundation says in promoting the event.

How the prime minister deals with the Senate question is another matter.

Harper will address the convention Friday night. Certainly some of his advisers are suggesting he steer clear of the subject altogether. Senior cabinet ministers are already signalling the focus of the speech will be on the Conservatives most familiar calling card.

"I think Canadians expect us to focus on the issues that matter to them and their lives," Treasury Board President Tony Clement said Wednesday after the Conservatives' weekly caucus meeting. "And we are doing so. The biggest trade agreement in the history of our country. Focusing on jobs. That's what people care about."

Only the media, he suggested, cares about the Wright-Duffy affair, or whether the prime minister's former right-hand man betrayed him.

Pressed for an answer, Clement stuck to what is now the approved message.

"The prime minister has been clear on that."

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When did Halloween become so gory?

One of the inherent thrills of Halloween, besides amassing an armful of sugary treats, is indulging your inner ghoul.

But experts say that costumes, neighbourhood displays and Halloween marketing in general have evolved from the love of a good-natured scare to a fascination with gore, from buckets of blood to depictions of dismemberment and even cannibalism.

"When you go to the costume stores, there is a level of graphicness that wasn't there before," says Mike Mulvey, a marketing professor at the Telfer School of Management at the University of Ottawa.

'When you go to the costume stores, there is a level of graphicness that wasn't there before.'- Mike Mulvey, marketing professor, University of Ottawa

A number of viral stories in the lead-up to Oct. 31 demonstrate this affinity for Halloween horror. A family in Mustang, Okla., made news for a driveway display that suggested the aftermath of an execution-style killing. The two blood-spattered human bodies looked so real they prompted neighbours to call police.

Back in September, many social media users raised concern over the fact that Walmart, Sears and Amazon.com were selling a latex replica of a skinned, demonic-looking dog. The product description referred to the item as "bloody road kill."

While Halloween is rooted in the macabre, the emphasis on gore is a relatively recent phenomenon, says Lesley Pratt Bannatyne, author of Halloween Nation: Behind the Scenes of America's Fright Night.

There is some debate about its exact origins, but Halloween is thought to have originated in pagan festivals from Scotland and Ireland. Bannatyne says it took off in North America in the 1820s; after the carnage of the American Civil War, people found some comfort in tales of the supernatural.

Halloween soon became an annual civic occasion, and the way it is now celebrated reflects broader social trends.

"It's changed with the general culture, because you can't take Halloween out of the culture — it expresses it," says Bannatyne.

Fifty years ago, she says, Halloween was almost exclusively geared towards children, and was seen as an opportunity to wear aspirational outfits — hence the propensity for ghosts and mummies, but also astronauts, gunslingers, superheroes and the like.

"It was spooky, maybe eerie, but most of all, it was a time to dress up as who you wanted to be or disguise yourself in some way," says Bannatyne.

Hollywood's influence

She says the tenor of Halloween changed with a seemingly unrelated event in the movie industry in 1968 – namely, the cancelling of Hollywood's production code, a studio protocol that had inhibited the use of obscene imagery in film since 1930.

The lifting of the code resulted in the rise of more graphic films, most notably horror movies. The tipping point, however, was the release in 1978 of John Carpenter's film Halloween, about a masked murderer who stalks the denizens of a small U.S. town.

It was the first time that Halloween had been directly equated with horror cinema, says Bannatyne, and the association has stuck ever since.

"After that, the floodgates opened, and there were serial killers and bloody masks and a whole new costuming and haunted attraction industry that followed the horror movies a little bit more closely," she says.

Sheila Woody, a psychology professor at the University of British Columbia, says that Halloween will always be about eliciting scares.

"A lot of people really like the arousal and edge of fear and that's why we have amusement parks and scary movies and they're successful. When there's not objective danger, but yet your senses are telling you there is danger, if your brain is telling you it's safe, it's kind of fun," she says.

Furthermore, she says, Halloween thrill seekers always look for novel and more extreme ways to get their kicks.

Real-world violence plays a part

Mike Mulvey says the attraction to gore has been sustained in recent years by the popularity of zombie films and TV shows, including the AMC series The Walking Dead, as well as other explicitly violent entertainment, such as the HBO fantasy series Game of Thrones.

The success of the AMC series The Walking Dead has sustained the popular interest in zombies, say marketing experts. (AMC/AP/Canadian Press)

While horror entertainment seems to drive the fascination with bloody imagery, Bannatyne says the trend also reflects a general desensitization to violence in light of post-9/11 conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, footage of which can be readily viewed on the internet.

"After [allegations of torture] and a number of really ugly wars, I think the Halloween industry recognizes that the modern monster is human, and what we do to each other is visually stimulating… in Halloween marketing," she says.

The fascination with gore is unlikely to subside, but there seem to be some limits to what society at large will accept. Bannatyne says that in the years immediately after 9/11, the Halloween industry on the whole backed away from bloody props and costumes. Although by 2008, she says, gore paraphernalia was back in a big way.

More recently, public outcry and criticism from animal-rights activists over the bloody demon dog eventually prompted Walmart, Sears and Amazon.com to pull the item from their shelves.

"There's always going to be limits where the majority have consensus, but there's always going to be people who push the boundaries and move the boundaries of good taste," says Mulvey.

Halloween has evolved like all other big celebrations, says Mulvey, who likens the increasingly graphic nature of Halloween to the "hyper-commercialized" character of the holiday season.

You've got "inflatable Grinches going down chimneys and stuff, which isn't exactly part of the Christmas mythology, once upon a time," Mulvey says.

"And there's all the lights. I don't remember [Jesus'] manger being all lit up and decked out with LED lights that go in sequence and different tones and colours — although I'm sure Joseph would have been impressed."

4 historical facts about blood

• In the 4th century B.C., Aristotle theorized that the body used heat to turn nourishment into blood. He suggested that men had enough heat to take this a step further and transform blood into semen.
• In 200 A.D., Claudius Galen believed that problems such as fevers and headaches were caused by too much blood, and if someone was sick, you should drain some blood.
• George Washington died in 1799 from respiratory problems. It was likely not the illness, but the treatments -- including bloodletting amounting to more than 2.3 litres of blood -- that killed him. 
• Leeches were commonly used for bloodletting until 1850. The creatures can suck several times their own body weight in blood.

Read more about the history and symbolism of blood in Lawrence Hill's Blood: The Stuff of Life, which is the basis of the 2013 CBC Massey Lectures.

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Rob Ford's friend search warrant documents released

Updated

Documents include photos of Toronto mayor meeting with Alexander 'Sandro' Lisi

CBC News Posted: Oct 31, 2013 7:07 AM ET Last Updated: Oct 31, 2013 10:45 AM ET

About 300 pages of information used by police to obtain a search warrant for Alexander Lisi have been released, and they include photos of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford meeting with his friend and occasional driver.

The document runs 474 pages long, with long redactions.

The release comes a day after an Ontario Superior Court judge ordered the release of select portions of the information used to obtain the search warrant leading up to the arrest of Lisi.

The documents include police notes with surveillance of  Lisi's contact with Ford.

The photos show Ford and Lisi meeting on several occasions and exchanging more than one package.

The documents begin with information from media stories on U.S. website Gawker and the Toronto Star about a tape that alleges to show Ford smoking crack cocaine. It also includes a now-famous photo of Ford standing in the driveway of a north Toronto home standing with three young men.

Lisi is listed as Alexander in court documents, but around city hall, people also referred to him as Alessandro or Sandro.

Download the report (29 MB .pdf)

With files from CBC's John Lancaster

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Submission Policy

Note: The CBC does not necessarily endorse any of the views posted. By submitting your comments, you acknowledge that CBC has the right to reproduce, broadcast and publicize those comments or any part thereof in any manner whatsoever. Please note that comments are moderated and published according to our submission guidelines.

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Private ATMs vulnerable to money-laundering

A CBC/Radio-Canada investigation has uncovered methods organized crime may be using to launder money through privately owned automated tellers, or ATMs.

There are almost 38,000 of the ATMs, also known as "white label" cash machines because they are not bank-owned, scattered across the country — nearly double the number of bank-owned ATMs.

It is a growing, lucrative industry. Placed in hotel lobbies, bars and food courts, they provide quick access to cash, albeit with an annoying surcharge.

Anti-money-laundering expert Garry Clement, a former RCMP officer, says it's easy to thwart rules aimed at making it harder for criminals to acquire and operate ATMs. (CBC)

But experts believe some machines may have a more nefarious role.

"Investigations have shown over the years that these white-label ATM machines are in every strip club, every bar throughout Canada," said Garry Clement, an international authority on money laundering and retired RCMP officer who has been warning about the vulnerability of ATMs. "And a lot of them (ATMs) are affiliated with organized crime groups, in particular the Hells Angels or other motorcycle gang groups which are known as organized crime."

Clement told CBC News organized crime can circumvent industry safeguards by "comingling" legitimate business money and illicit money through the machines so that it gets "cleaned up."

For example, the Hells Angels could arrange to have an ATM placed in a strip club. The owner of the club — a front person chosen for their lack of criminal record — would apply for the necessary security clearance and, after receiving it, could stock the machine with a mix of bar proceeds and, say, drug proceeds. As long as the machine stayed under a safe limit, say $5,000 a day, it would be unlikely to draw attention, according to Clement.

That kind of scenario is classic money laundering, he said. "It's a great way to take it from a cash-based system and gets it into a business-based system, because it is now in the financial system."

At least $​315M a year possibly laundered: report

There are no hard statistics for how often this might be happening, but one RCMP report estimates Hells Angels bikers control at least five per cent of the private ATM business in Canada. The same report says at least $315 million a year could be laundered through white-label ATMs.

Tips

If you have any tips to share on this or any other investigative story, please email investigations@cbc.ca.

Very few charges have been laid or convictions obtained because authorities who uncover money laundering are more interested in the illegal activity that generated the crime proceeds. A verdict is expected early next year in a case in Quebec, where police charged three people in 2008 with using ATMs to money launder the proceeds from cigarette smuggling.

The government had been cautioned about these problems before. In 2007, FINTRAC, the federal agency that collects and analyzes records of financial transactions, delivered a report warning that white-label ATMs were at risk. The report said, "One feature that makes white-label ATMs particularly vulnerable to money laundering is the fact that operators can remain virtually anonymous while conducting their activities. This is mainly due to the number of tiers in the ATM ownership hierarchy. As white-label ATMs are sold and re-sold to different parties, the change in ownership is not always reported to the upper tiers of the hierarchy."

Despite the report, there is no direct or official government oversight of the ATM industry.

In 2009, new rules aimed at making it harder for criminals to acquire ATMs were brought in by INTERAC, the association responsible for the network that connects bank machines in the country. The new rules spell out basic guidelines requiring potential buyers to be clearly identified, to not have a criminal record (although criminal background checks are not done for every case), and to spell out the source of funds they plan to use to stock the machine.

Clement said the rules can be easily thwarted, however. "Unless you are sitting there showing exactly where that money came from, there is no way that anybody can say it was not mixed with both licit and illicit income."

Hidden camera

To test the regulations, CBC News and Radio-Canada's investigative program Enquête went undercover, each hiring someone to pose as a man interested in purchasing a white-label ATM.

The undercover buyer CBC hired hinted he had a criminal record for fraud and wanted to use the machines for illegal purposes. He spoke with seven ATM vendors.

Several ATM vendors who CBC secretly filmed said rules meant to protect against money-laundering could be circumvented. (CBC)

Time and time again he was informed the rules could be circumvented.

"They're not doing any background checks," he was told by one seller. Several others expressed the same idea.

Twice he was assured that, if he incorporated as a business, he could avoid background checks.

"It is not illegal to own a company and have a criminal record. I mean it is nothing," he was told.

Another time he was told, "There is a stupid form you need to fill in called anti-money-laundering. But that's nothing."

CBC News took the findings to Mark Sullivan, the director of fraud programs at INTERAC. After watching some of the undercover video, Sullivan said, "Obviously this sort of behaviour is abhorrent to us. It's totally unacceptable."

After watching some of CBC's undercover video, Mark Sullivan of INTERAC said, 'Obviously this sort of behaviour is abhorrent to us. It's totally unacceptable.' (CBC)

Sullivan argued that despite what the salesmen said, he believed the rules would prevent any criminal from accessing the ATM banking network.

"The reality between saying you're able to do something and physically being able to connect to the system are somewhat different."

INTERAC works closely with law enforcement domestically and internationally and is constantly on the lookout for potential criminal activity, Sullivan added.

Former RCMP officer Clement said it is not enough to let the industry police itself. He said he would like to see more government involvement, such as the recent steps by the province of Quebec to take more control of the industry. Otherwise, Clement warned, "wherever there's a gap, [criminals] are going to use it."

If you have any tips to share on this or any other investigative story, please email investigations@cbc.ca.

2007 FINTRAC report into risks of white-label ATMs:

2007 FINTRAC report on white-label ATMs (PDF)
2007 FINTRAC report on white-label ATMs (Text)

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Digitally reconstructed dinosaur takes historic walk

One of the largest dinosaurs ever known to man has been digitally reconstructed by experts from the University of Manchester in England, work that has allowed it to take its first steps in 94 million years.

The team scanned a 40-metre-long reconstructed skeleton of the 80-tonne Argentinosaurus to determine how the dinosaur was able to walk, given its immense size.

 "As far as we know, this is the most anatomically detailed full walking simulation so far," wrote Dr. Bill Sellers, lead researcher of the project, in an email statement. "If you want to work out how dinosaurs walked, the best approach is computer simulation."

After scanning the skeleton, they used an advanced computer modelling technique involving the equivalent of 30, 000 desktop computers to transform the skeleton into a digital dinosaur robot to recreate the dinosaur's walking and running movements, testing its locomotion ability for first time.

The simulation showed the dinosaur would have been able to reach speeds of just over 8 km/h, disproving previous suggestions it wouldn't have been able to walk.

Sellers said the research was important for understanding musculoskeletal systems and developing robots.

The study has been published in science journal PLOS ONE.

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CBC celebrates 100 days to Sochi Olympics

Live

CBC Sports unveils broadcast plans

CBC Sports Posted: Oct 29, 2013 10:51 AM ET Last Updated: Oct 30, 2013 10:44 AM ET

On Wednesday, CBC Sports marks 100 days until the start of the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.

Watch the festivities live from the Canadian Broadcast Centre in Toronto starting at noon ET as we unveil our coverage plans for the Sochi Games and introduce the broadcast team that will bring the Olympics home to you.

Comments on this story are pre-moderated. Before they appear, comments are reviewed by moderators to ensure they meet our submission guidelines. Comments are open and welcome for three days after the story is published. We reserve the right to close comments before then.

Submission Policy

Note: The CBC does not necessarily endorse any of the views posted. By submitting your comments, you acknowledge that CBC has the right to reproduce, broadcast and publicize those comments or any part thereof in any manner whatsoever. Please note that comments are moderated and published according to our submission guidelines.

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Police target single predator in UBC sex assaults manhunt

A total of six sexual assaults that have taken place on the University of British Columbia campus over the past several months appear to be connected, police say.

Lower Mainland District RCMP spokesman Sgt. Peter Thiessen announced the number of assaults under investigation, which is twice the number reported in the past few weeks.

"[They] appear to be related and are likely to have been committed by the same suspect," Thiessen said at a Tuesday press conference alongside UBC officials.

The most recent incident, reported on Sunday, Oct. 27, involved a young woman walking home from Gage Hall on Student Union Boulevard shortly before 1:30 a.m. PT. She noticed a shadow behind her and was grabbed from behind. When she flailed her arms, the suspect ran off, Thiessen said.

The other five reported incidents of females being sexually assaulted this year occurred on April 19, May 19, Sept. 28, Oct. 13 and Oct. 19.

"We want to assure the public that the RCMP, along with UBC security and management, are working diligently to identify and apprehend the suspect who is targeting lone females around the UBC Vancouver campus. We are using every means and avenue available, including additional resources to patrol the UBC grounds," said Thiessen.

Police dogs, criminal and geographic profilers, and operational psychologists have all been engaged, he added.

'This is a stressful time for many people on our campus and in this area of the city. This latest news will add to the anxiety. That fear is understandable, but it's also critical to act and act decisively.'— Louise Cowin, VP of students, UBC

Louise Cowin, UBC's vice-president of students, said the university is moving quickly to respond to mounting safety concerns at the remote campus on Vancouver's west side.

"This is a stressful time for many people on our campus and in this area of the city. This latest news will add to the anxiety. That fear is understandable, but it's also critical to act and act decisively," said Cowin. 

"I'm actively working with campus leaders — staff, students and faculty — to ramp up campus security, increase campus support for our campus community, and encourage people to come together and look out for one another. Safety for the Vancouver campus is now our No. 1 priority and we are mobilizing all necessary resources."

Among the measures Cowin introduced Tuesday:

• Additional security for student residences, with security guards on all sites after dark.
• Res Walk, a volunteer-based service to escort students within residential compounds, between commons blocks and individual residence buildings, and between the residential hub and the campus shuttle service.
• Increasing student access to UBC counselling services, ensuring priority access for affected students, providing outreach to student residences and making a trained UBC counsellor available to the Alma Mater Society's sexual assault support centre.

"While we are taking immediate action on practical safety fixes," said Cowin, "we will also be taking a comprehensive look at campus safety, including the possible use of closed-circuit security cameras. Campus community consultation will be essential before any decision is made on this front."

Thiessen asked that anybody with information about the suspect, or anything related to the recent spate of sexual assaults, to call the B.C. RCMP major crimes tip line at 778-250-5291 or 1-877-543-4822.

So far there have been 30 to 40 tips received from the public, while the RCMP continue to work with victims and witnesses on a composite sketch of the suspect.

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Harper lashes back over Senate scandal questions

Growing visibly more angry with every allegation coming from a senator that he appointed, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said during question period on Tuesday that Mike Duffy has shown no remorse for claiming ineligible expenses and should be removed from the Senate.

Harper's remarks came a day after the former Conservative dropped a second bombshell, saying there was not one but two cheques cut to him by Harper's former chief of staff.

Duffy told the Senate on Monday that Nigel Wright, Harper's former chief of staff, arranged to have his legal fees paid by the Conservative Party — in addition to the $90,000 cheque Wright gave Duffy to repay his ineligible expenses.

"The reality is," Harper said on Tuesday, "that Mr. Duffy still has not paid a cent back to the taxpayers of Canada. He should be paying that money back."

'On our side, there is one person responsible for this deception. That person is Mr. Wright.'— Prime Minister Stephen Harper

"The fact that he hasn't, the fact that he shows absolutely no regret for his actions, and the fact that he has told untruths about his actions means that he should be removed from the public payroll," Harper said.

The prime minister has maintained all along that he knew nothing about the $90,000 cheque that his right-hand man gave to Duffy.

On Tuesday, the prime minister took direct aim at his former chief of staff, telling the Commons, "On our side, there is one person responsible for this deception. That person is Mr. Wright."

"It is Mr. Wright by his own admission. For that reason, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Wright no longer works for us. Mr. Duffy shouldn't either," Harper said.

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair once again peppered the prime minister with sharp questions over the Duffy-Wright affair, during question period on Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2013. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)

The prime minister did not, however, deny on Tuesday that the party cut Duffy a second cheque to cover his legal fees.

"That is a regular practice. The party regularly reimburses members of its caucus for valid legal expenses — as do other parties," Harper said.

Duffy's claim that he had paid back his ineligible expenses using his own funds was "the story of Mr. Duffy and Mr. Wright," Harper said. 

"Mr. Duffy should be removed from the Senate."

NDP Leader Tom Mulcair continued to pepper the prime minister with sharp questions on Tuesday.

If Duffy's expenses were "inappropriate," as Harper said again Tuesday, why did the Conservative Party pay for the senator's legal fees? Mulcair asked.

Harper did not directly answer the question, saying only that he has said "it was inappropriate all along."

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In Canadian politics, 30 is no longer 'young'

At age 30, David Joanasie is the youngest person to be elected to the Nunavut legislature, but by the current standards in the House of Commons and some of the country's provincial legislatures, the newly elected MLA who won a seat Monday night in the territory's fourth election is long in the tooth.

Entering politics at a young age is nothing new. Joe Clark was just 39 when he became prime minister of the country, having been first elected to Parliament at age 33 in 1972. Bob Rae won his first seat in the House of Commons at age 30 as an NDP MP in a 1978 federal byelection.

We take a look at some recently elected politicians who've attracted attention for their young age.

Who did we miss?

Let us know about the young politicians making news in your region: community@cbc.ca

Pierre Luc Dessault, NDP MP, Sherbrooke (Born: May 31, 1991) — The youngest MP in Canada's history, Dessault was part of the NDP's crop of young, fresh-faced MPs elected in the May 2011 election. He was a few weeks shy of his 20th birthday when he was elected and has recently been chosen to chair the government operation and estimates committee.

The McGill Four — Charmaine Borg (Born: Nov. 3, 1990), Matthew Dubé (Born: May 3, 1988), Mylène Freeman (Born: March 7, 1989) and Laurin Liu (Born: Nov. 13, 1990) got their nickname because when they were elected as NDP MPs in Quebec in May 2011, three of them were still enrolled as students at McGill University and the fourth had only just graduated. All were in their early 20s at the time. 

Andrew Scheer, Conservative MP for Regina-Qu'Appelle, Sask. (Born: May 20, 1979) — Scheer was elected in June 2004 at the age of 25 and made history seven years later when he became the youngest Speaker of the House.

Niki Ashton made her first failed bid for a seat in the House of Commons at age 23. She lost the 2006 election, but ran again two years later and became the NDP MP for Churchill, Man. (Liam Richards/Canadian Press)

Niki Ashton, NDP MP for Churchill, Man. (Born: Sept. 9, 1982) — Ashton was just 23 when she made her first bid for a seat in the House of Commons in 2006. She lost that election but was successful two years later. A mere four years after that, she made a bid for the leadership of her party, promising a new kind of politics that would inspire people of her generation. She lost the race to replace Jack Layton but earned a spot in winning candidate Tom Mulcair's shadow cabinet, heading up the portfolio devoted to women's issues.

Ruth Ellen Brosseau, NDP MP for Berthier-Maskinongé, Que. (Born: April 26, 1984) — Brosseau grabbed headlines not only for her relatively young age during the 2011 election campaign but also when her legitimacy as a candidate was questioned. The then 28-year-old was criticized for not living in the riding she was seeking to represent, going to Las Vegas on vacation during the campaign and accused of not having her nomination papers in order. She survived those scandals and continues to serve in Parliament.

Pierre Poilievre was 25 when he was elected as the Conservative MP for Nepean-Carleton, Ont. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

Pierre Poilievre, Conservative MP for Nepean-Carleton, Ont. (Born: June 3, 1979) — Poilievre was 25 when he was first elected in June 2004 and has held several high-ranking positions since then, including parliamentary secretary to the prime minister, to the minister of intergovernmental affairs and to the president of the Treasury Board; and, currently, minister of state for democratic reform.

Chris Warkentin, Conservative MP for Peace River, Alta. (Born: Nov. 20, 1978) —​ Warkentin began his political career as a member of the Reform Party and the Canadian Alliance before being elected to the House as a Conservative MP at the age of 27 in the January 2006 federal election. He chaired the standing committee on aboriginal affairs and northern development from June 2011 to September 2013.

Young politicos thriving locally, too

There have also been some notable young faces at the local, provincial and territorial level.

Canada has its share of young mayors. Luke Strimbold was 21 when he was elected mayor of Burns Lake, B.C., in November 2011 and got a literal baptism by fire when, less than two months into his term, there was an explosion at the local sawmill that destroyed the town's main employer, killed two workers and injured almost two dozen people. 

La Ronge, Sask., mayor Thomas Sierzycki was also 21 when he was elected in 2009 and, like Strimbold, still holds the position.

By comparison, Edmonton's new mayor, Don Iveson, who was sworn in Tuesday, is an old fogey at 34, and Windsor's mayor, Eddie Francis, who was elected at age 29, is no longer such a standout.

Quebec saw youngest MNA elected last year

Provincially, there are quite a few 20- and 30somethings filling the seats in the country's legislatures. Below is a small sampling of some of them.

Léo Bureau-Blouin was just 20 and a leader of Quebec's student movement when he was elected to the province's national assembly in September 2012 as the Parti Québécois MNA for the Laval-des-Rapides riding. He became the youngest person to be elected to the Quebec legislature and took the shine off other young MNAs such as the PQ's Mathieu Traversy and Dave Turcotte, who were 24 and 25, respectively, when they were elected.

Léo Bureau-Blouin is the youngest person to be elected to Quebec's national assembly. (Mathieu Belanger/Reuters)

Residents of Hammonds Plains-Lucasville, N.S., took a chance on 26-year-old Ben Jessome earlier this month, giving the Cape Breton University graduate and Liberal Party member his first full-time job by electing him to the provincial legislature. The same riding in 2009 elected Mat Whynott of the NDP, who at 23 was the province's youngest MLA ever. 

Another young Nova Scotia lawmaker, Zach Churchill, who was 26 when he was elected Liberal MLA for Yarmouth in 2010, recently showed his age when he had his BlackBerry confiscated by the sergeant-at-arms in the legislature. He told the Halifax Herald newspaper rules that banned cellphones during sittings of the legislature were out of date and out of step with the work and lifestyle habits of his generation. He was also tossed out of the legislature for heckling NDP MLAs.

Several of New Brunswick's MLAs are in their late 20s or early 30s. Progressive Conservative MLA Ryan Riordon was around 28 when he was first elected in 2010. Current Leader of the Opposition Brian Gallant was just 30 when he was chosen to head the New Brunswick Liberals at a leadership convention in October of last year. He won a seat in the legislative assembly in a byelection this past April.

Newfoundland and Labrador MHA Christopher Mitchelmore, who made news this week when he quit the NDP caucus to sit as an independent, was just shy of his 26th birthday when he was elected to the province's house of assembly in 2011 and is currently the youngest member of the province's legislature.

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Russia denies spying on G20 leaders with teddy bears, other gifts

Russia has denied reports that its intelligence services spied on hundreds of foreign delegates at a Group of 20 summit in St. Petersburg in September using gifts such as teddy bears, diaries and free USB keys.

Quoting a report from the European Council's security office to Italian intelligence services, Italy's Corriere della Sera daily has reported this week that at least 300 such devices were issued at the Sept. 5-6 summit and were revealed to be spy gear during security debriefing sessions last month.

The report fuels controversy over international espionage after reports that U.S. intelligence services had conducted telephone surveillance of allied countries and leaders.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said he did not know what the source of the latest allegations was.

"This is undoubtedly nothing but an attempt to shift the focus from issues that truly exist in relations between European capitals and Washington to unsubstantiated, non-existent issues," he was quoted as saying by RIA news agency.

Tension between the United States and its allies has grown over reports that European leaders including German Chancellor Angela Merkel had been spied on by U.S. intelligence services.

According to Corriere della Sera, a regular debriefing with European Council President Herman Van Rompuy and other EU delegates revealed they had been given souvenir USB keys and cables to connect smartphones with personal computers.

It said EU officials alerted German intelligence services which conducted detailed tests on the devices.

"These are devices adapted to the clandestine interception of data from computers and mobile telephones," the newspaper quoted an initial report as saying.

Daily La Stampa newspaper said the devices showed "anomalies" and signs of "manipulation" but it was not certain how much information had been collected by Russian spies.

The reports appear to show a more traditional pattern of intelligence gathering than the reported U.S. snooping.

The Guardian newspaper reported in July that British intelligence services had spied on G20 delegates at a summit in 2009, tricking some delegates into using free internet cafes apparently set up for their benefit.

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Sears Canada to close flagship Toronto store, 4 others

Sears Canada is closing five of its department stores, including its flagship location in Toronto's Eaton Centre, as part of a $400-million deal.

Sears plans to sell the leases of those five stores to mall operator Cadillac Fairview, in what would be the biggest sale since the retailer began shedding assets and cutting jobs in an effort to turn around its struggling operations.

The planned closure of the Eaton Centre location, by 2014, is notable as it is considered the company's flagship store and is in a central tourist area.

About 965 employees will be affected by the closure of the five locations, although Sears Canada says they will have the option to apply for other jobs within the company.

As part of the sale, Sears will close stores at Sherway Gardens in Toronto and London-Masonville Place in London, Ont., by February, and the Markville Shopping Centre in Markham, Ont., and Richmond Centre in Richmond, B.C., by February 2015.

The company's U.S. parent is also planning some drastic changes to cut costs.

Sears Holdings Corp., which owns 51 per cent of Sears Canada, is considering separating its Lands' End and Sears Auto Center businesses from the rest of the company. The retailer also plans to continue closing some of its unprofitable stores as it moves ahead on its turnaround efforts.

Sears has been working for some time to cut costs and lower its debt. The company said Tuesday that it would likely pursue a spinoff of Lands' End and not a sale. The retailer also said that it has already started repositioning Sears Auto Center around services other than tires and is evaluating strategic options for the business.

Sears anticipates closing unprofitable stores, including locations with leases that are set to expire soon. The retailer said that it would take the capital from the unprofitable locations and redeploy it elsewhere.

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The faux outrage of America's bugged allies: Neil Macdonald

Try to follow the logic here.

In the spring, former CIA contractor Edward Snowden tells the world about the true extent of America's electronic surveillance: it's just about total. Everyone's communications, everywhere, are collected and, at the very least, analyzed for patterns.

A huge number of foreign citizens are upset, as well as a lot of Americans.

So a few months later, President Barack Obama orders a review of America's foreign intelligence gathering.

That review confirms certain things that, Obama's officials are now telling reporters, the president didn't know, such as the National Security Agency's wiretapping of at least 35 world leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Obama then tells the NSA to stop bugging some of them. It's a safe bet the review told, or will tell Obama other things he didn't know, as well.

Had it not been for Snowden, who is now hiding out in Russia, President Obama would probably not know about these practices he's now reviewing and halting.

Certainly the American public wouldn't. Meaning Snowden fits the classic definition of a whistleblower.

At the same time, if it could lay its hands on Snowden, the U.S. government would lock him up.

It may not sound logical, but it is, perversely. Because this particular whistle is one America and its allies are anxious to leave unblown.

Snowden has laid out the stark difference between what the U.S. and most countries say in public and what they do behind a vigorously enforced curtain of secrecy.

Yet the whole uproar rests on a ridiculous notion: that there is, or should be, some sort of morality governing the way nations deal with each other.

Faux outrage

I've met my share of (mostly Canadian) spies over the years, and while some of them are remarkably sensitive to civil liberties, the notion of citizen privacy never even enters the equation for them.

"I'm a believer in intelligence," one of them told me the other day. "I'm not sure there are limits. Spying is a way for governments to make better decisions."

In other words, gather all the information you can, period. And let others decide what to do with it.

Americans upset at the country's electronic spying take part in a "rally against mass surveillance" in Washington on Saturday. (Jonathan Ernst / Reuters)

Fortunately for Canada it is part of the so-called Five Eyes network, along with the U.S., Britain, Australia and New Zealand.

These nations are in fact so integrated that they effectively comprise a single colossal listening organization, the most powerful in history, with America in charge.

In principle, at least, membership in the Five Eyes immunizes the individual members from being spied upon by the other Four Eyes. So the Americans aren't listening to Stephen Harper, said one of my contacts, "unless it's an emergency."

The second tier of Western surveillance expertise comprises Israel, Sweden, Germany, Finland, Norway, Italy and France.

All are proficient, say the professionals, and all spy on any target deemed to be in their national interest, whether related to security or commerce.

France has long been regarded as the most adept at stealing trade secrets.

So, "there's a lot of faux outrage out there" whenever a Snowden bomb drops, one contact says.

In fact, one of the few straightforward reactions amid all the indignation over the NSA spying came from Bernard Kouchner, the former French foreign minister (and founder of Doctors Without Borders): "Let's be honest, we eavesdrop too," he told an interviewer.

"Everyone is listening to everyone else. But we don't have the same means as the United States, which makes us jealous."

What privacy?

Another Canadian I know, who has considerable expertise in secret eavesdropping, says that when you're involved in negotiating something like a trade treaty the job is clear.

"The PM's going to say 'what's their position?' and you'd better know."

The Snowden disclosures, because Snowden worked for American intelligence, relate strictly to the Five Eyes, and have caused panic, he says, in Ottawa, London, Canberra, Wellington and, of course, Washington.

Task forces have been set up and are desperately bracing government leaders for upcoming bombshells.

Again, not because these revelations will be news to anyone in the secret world, or to politicians who have been briefed, but because of the anger they can provoke in unbriefed general populations.

Governments facing that sort of public anger have to make gestures, perhaps even serious ones. Hence the warning from European leaders about damage to trade talks, and Germany's threat to expel American diplomats who might have passed along Merkel's cellphone number.

The other danger of the Snowden disclosures, of course, is that they reveal methods that should make any sensible person more careful about what he or she says on a cellphone or landline, or in an email.

While most of us have long understood that privacy is a fading commodity, something in human nature still expects that a phone call or email is a closed communication, and we tend to behave as though it is.

That behaviour is what the electronic spies count upon, and want to preserve.

Which explains the utter silence from national leaders on the subject of surveillance. They know such work is most efficiently done in the dark, and they treasure the intelligence it produces.

As for the notion that the U.S. will stop listening to certain foreign leaders, or anyone else for that matter, reality would suggest otherwise.

Stewart Baker, a George W. Bush-era security official, described the issue last week with characteristic neoconservative bluntness.

"Even the countries we usually see as friends sometimes take actions that quite deliberately harm the United States and its interests," he wrote in an op-ed piece in the New York Times.

"Ten years ago, when the U.S. went to war with Iraq, France and Germany were not our allies. They were not even neutral. They actively worked with Russia and China to thwart the U.S. military's mission.

"Could they act against U.S. interests again in the future — in trade or climate change negotiations, in Syria, Libya or Iran?" he asked rhetorically.

Nearly a century ago, then U.S. statesman Henry Stimson famously said about spying that "Gentlemen don't read each other's mail."

Spies, though, aren't gentlemen. And neither are nations they serve. 

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Canada far behind U.S. on making pipeline safety data public

After a long day tending his expansive canola farm near Swan Lake, in central Manitoba, Dan Hacault turns on his computer to try to find out more about what's buried below his cash crops — eight pipelines.

The veteran farmer says he spends hours looking at the website of the federal pipeline regulator, the National Energy Board, but finds it a confusing labyrinth that leads him in circles.

"Sometimes you luck out" and you find what you are looking for, says Hacault, who is also a director with the Manitoba Pipeline Landowners Association. "Usually, it's just by accident."

Hacault may not be the only one frustrated. When it comes to being transparent about pipeline data, a U.S. pipeline watchdog says Canada lags far behind its southern neighbour.

"I was kind of shocked how little there is available in Canada," says Carl Weimer, executive director of Pipeline Safety Trust in Bellingham, Wash., a non-profit group focused on improving pipeline safety.

The group publishes annual reports ranking pipeline regulators across the U.S., at both the federal and state levels.

This past summer, Weimer came to Canada to speak at a safety forum organized by the NEB.

He told an audience made up of oil and gas company heavyweights as well as government representatives that the NEB would rank a "pretty low" — nine out of 30 in the transparency rung — if he used the trust's criteria.

Maps, data in U.S.

Over at the NEB, the head of business operations, Patrick Smythe, acknowledges that its information may not always be available online.

"But if anyone wants any information on any Canadian pipeline that we regulate they can come to us and ask us for that information and we'll provide it," he said.

In Canada, general maps are available from individual pipeline companies, but there is no comprehensive one showing all the systems and their exact locations.

The difference in the U.S. is that any member of the public can go online and view maps of pipelines accurate to about 150 metres right across the country.

The National Pipeline Mapping System allows citizens to search by operator, pipeline name or even the status of the pipeline, whether it's in service or abandoned.

U.S. pipeline maps first went online in 2000, though security fears prompted the government to pull them down after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, says Weimer.

They came back online about two years later. "We kind of came to the realization that it was more important for the public to know where the pipelines were than to worry about the terrorists," says Weimer.

Reams of pipeline data are also available about incidents and much of it is downloadable.

A homeowner can look up a company to see how many barrels of oil or gas it spilled in a year, what the associated property damage cost and even details about how often the company was inspected.

U.S. a 'little further ahead,' says NEB

"Once a person realizes that they have a pipeline near their house, the questions they want to know is 'What's the potential impact, am I far enough away from it if something fails?'" says Weimer.

The federal regulator oversees about a tenth of pipelines in the country. Provinces monitor lines within their own borders. (John Rieti/CBC)

"The second thing they often ask is 'How well has this pipeline been operated, how many incidents has this company had on this pipeline in the last 10 years?'"

Most importantly, the U.S. data covers pipelines and incidents across the country. Nowhere in Canada can the public find out details about pipeline incidents across the country. That's part of the reason why the CBC has produced a map of federally-regulated pipeline incidents over the past decade, gained from access to information data, and is looking to expand it.

At the NEB, Smythe acknowledges that the U.S. is "a little further ahead," and noted that it has a different structure, with a tighter relationship between the national regulator and state counterparts.

"We don't have that same relationship here in Canada," he said.

The NEB only oversees 71,000 pipelines that cross borders and are run by about 90 companies, about a tenth of the overall network. Provinces monitor the remaining 760,000 kilometres that are contained inside their borders.

This past August, the Senate energy committee recommended that the NEB and the Transportation Safety Board, another body that probes pipeline issues, give the public more detailed information about safety issues. 

The committee called for the regulators to produce an interactive map, which would not only tell Canadians about spill amounts but also what caused each incidents.

Smythe says the NEB agreed with the Senate committee recommendations for a website and understands the need for greater transparency. The board plans to consult with Canadians about "what it is they need and how to get it to them."

More demand for raw details

In June, Alberta Energy Regulator, the new body watching over the province's vast internal network of pipelines, took the bold step of posting all pipeline incidents that affect the public.

A unique trust

The Pipeline Safety Trust is a unique advocacy group with no Canadian equivalent. 

It was born out of a catastrophe in Bellingham, Wash., in 1999 when three young people died after a pipeline ruptured and was set ablaze. 

The first victim was an 18-year-old who was fishing in a creek and drowned after he was overcome by noxious fumes. Two 10-year-old schoolmates also died after suffering burns to 90 per cent of their bodies in the explosion.​

After that, the community vowed to fund an oversight agency. And when criminal fines were imposed on the company in 2003, the judge ordered $4 million of that to go to the trust. 

Source: Pipeline Safety Trust

"The NEB doesn't have that," said Barry Robinson, a Calgary-based lawyer with Ecojustice. "You kind of have to hear through the grapevine that there might have been an incident."

Robinson says that some of the key information the public should have access to is the specific location of a spill and what action regulators took against the company involved.

Canadian Energy Pipelines Association (CEPA), a group representing some of the largest companies, says that the industry strives to present accurate data about their members' 99.999 per cent safety record.

"What has changed is an expectation for the public to be able to parse that data themselves and we welcome that," said CEPA president Brenda Kenny.

At the Pipeline Safety Trust in Bellingham, Weimer says pipeline data should be as transparent as possible so that the public can make informed decisions about the oil and gas lines crisscrossing their neighbourhoods.

"We feel that we can really help strengthen pipeline safety regulations by getting more people aware that they do have these pipelines and what the impacts can be," he says.

Filling the gaps

The data that the CBC collected for our searchable map suggests that the rate of pipeline incidents has doubled, from one to two incidents for every 1,000 kilometres, between 2000 and 2011.

It was difficult to do much analysis with the data set since some reports were incomplete or had inconsistent information.

NEB said the database provided through access-to-information was a "snapshot in time," and that while its employees didn't always update the records, there are supporting documents in other files.

Weimer notes that the move to more transparency can involve growing pains. When the U.S. began publishing pipeline data, similar holes appeared.

"Because of the transparency, people were able to push to fill in those gaps," he says.

Now, he says, the conversation between industry and interest groups has turned to more important issues, such as the best way to measure pipeline safety and how to make all the data easier to understand.

"That can't happen in Canada at this point because there really isn't any data to argue about," he says.

If you have any pipeline-related stories, please email us at pipelines@cbc.ca.

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5 new questions after Mike Duffy's Senate bombshell

As the Senate continued to mull over motions to suspend Senators Mike Duffy, Patrick Brazeau and Pamela Wallin over the expense controversy, Duffy unloaded another series of bombshell revelations Monday afternoon. 

He claimed that there were actually two cheques arranged by the prime minister's former chief of staff, Nigel Wright. The first for $90,000 to pay back Senate expenses and a second for $13,500 to pay his legal bills. 

He also claimed the Prime Minister's Office concocted a story to explain how he repaid the $90,000. The revelations raised a whole new set of questions about the ongoing scandal. 

1. Who in the PMO and outside the PMO were involved in the negotiations to repay Duffy's expenses?

When the $90,000 cheque scandal first broke, Prime Minister Stephen Harper insisted Wright acted alone in paying back Duffy's expenses and that Wright's decisions "were not communicated to me or to members of my office."

But Wright himself later informed the RCMP, which is investigating the expense controversy, that he told four people, including three members of the PMO, about the cheque he was going to write to Duffy. Those people are Conservative Senator Irving Gerstein; Wright's assistant, David van Hemmen; Chris Woodcock, then director of issues management in the PMO; and Harper's legal adviser at the time, Benjamin Perrin. 

However on Monday, Duffy alleged that another top Conservative was involved.

He told the Senate that Wright arranged to have his legal fees paid and that his lawyer received a $13,500 cheque, paid by Arthur Hamilton, the Conservative Party's top lawyer. Duffy also revealed emails and the cheque stub to back up his claims.

2. Why were Conservative party funds used to pay Duffy's legal fees?

Later on Monday, the communications director for the Conservative Party told CBC News it had paid Duffy's legal fees. 

"At the time these legal expenses were incurred and paid, Mike Duffy was a member of the Conservative caucus," Cory Hann wrote.

"The Conservative party sometimes assists members of caucus with legal expenses."

Duffy himself said the funds for his legal fees came from party donors to make an embarrassing political situation go away.

3. Did Harper know about the legal fees repayment?

Harper has insisted he did not know about Wright's $90,000 payment to Duffy. 

Jason MacDonald, a spokesman for the prime minister, issued a statement reacting to Duffy's revelation about how his legal bills were paid: "Nigel Wright is on the record naming those he informed of his arrangement with Mr. Duffy, and he's assumed sole responsibility for his actions. The prime minister was not aware of the arrangement and had it been presented to him he would not have approved of such a scheme."

But while Duffy said that the $13,500 legal fee repayment was negotiated by Wright, he suggested on Monday that the prime minister had his "legal bills fully paid."

He questioned why the prime minister would do that if he believed that Duffy's expenses were improper.

"He did this because, as I have said from the start, this was all part of his strategy, negotiated by his lawyers and the Conservative party's lawyers, to make a political situation, embarrassing to his base, go away," Duffy said. 

4. Did the PMO coach Duffy on how to explain the source of the $90,000? 

Duffy claimed that the PMO, anticipating that the media would ask where he got the $90,000 to pay his expenses back, concocted an explanation. He said when the PMO heard he had been using a line of credit to renovate his home in Cavendish, P.E.I., they suggested he go to the Royal Bank of Canada and borrow the cash to pay off that line of credit.

He alleged the PMO said that he could then tell the media that he took out a loan at the Royal Bank to pay the $90,000.

"Well, that's technically correct, we took out a loan, but that loan wasn't to repay money, the $90,000 that the PMO agreed I didn't owe," Duffy told the Senate. "That line was written by the PMO to deceive Canadians as to the real source of the $90,000."

Duffy claimed that he had "reluctantly agreed" to go along with the scheme, that the script was written and emailed to him by the PMO and that the lines he would use with the media were "rehearsed with me right up until minutes before I went on television."

CBC's Power & Politics obtained an email exchange allegedly between Duffy and former PMO staffer Chris Woodcock, a note that seemingly attempts to undermine Duffy's credibility. 

"Can you confirm whether you advised the Senate Ethics Officers of any loans/gifts involved in the March 25th repayment? Trying to cover off all the angles," Woodcock, who Wright has said knew about the $90,000 payment, wrote to Duffy on midnight of May 14, the same night the Duffy-Wright $90,000 cheque story went public.

"No," Duffy replied the next morning, "Anyone who asked was told the truth: that I paid with a personal cheque on my RBC account. Did I have help? Yes from the RBC and my wife who co-signed for the extension of my line of credit."

The email raises questions about what Duffy meant when he said he "told the truth" about the RBC loan and whether he was just sticking to the story he said was created by the PMO.

5. What's in the so-called email trail that Duffy alleges will back up his claims?  

Duffy claimed on Monday that the Senate leadership, under the direction of the PMO, wanted to destroy his credibility if he ever went public about the real source of the $90,000.

"You wait until Canadians see the email trail in the hands of my lawyers and, I hope, in the hands of the RCMP," Duffy said.

Duffy said the emails between his lawyer and the PMO and its lawyers prove that "this was a setup from the start and that I am innocent."

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Get Marc Emery home from U.S. prison, say 3 MPs

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B.C.'s Prince of Pot eligible for early release from U.S. prison in 251 days

CBC News Posted: Oct 29, 2013 7:26 AM PT Last Updated: Oct 29, 2013 7:37 AM PT

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Three members of Parliament are backing B.C. marijuana advocate Marc Emery's bid to return to Canada from a U.S. prison.

Nicknamed the Prince of Pot, Emery was extradited to the U.S. and sentenced to five years in 2010 for conspiracy to manufacture marijuana after his Vancouver-based seed mail order business was busted in a joint operation involving U.S. and Canadian law enforcement agencies in 2005.

NDP Deputy Leader Libby Davies, Liberal public safety critic Wayne Easter and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May have joined Emery's wife, Jodie, on Parliament Hill to call on the Conservative government to approve Emery's request to serve the remainder of his sentence in Canada.

In June, the U.S. government approved Emery's transfer back to Canada, but the Canadian government has yet to approve the move.

According to his wife, Emery is eligible for early release from U.S. prison in 251 days.

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Budget watchdog sees surplus by 2015 despite slow growth

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The Canadian Press Posted: Oct 28, 2013 10:01 AM ET Last Updated: Oct 28, 2013 10:29 AM ET

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The parliamentary budget office says economic growth will remain sluggish over the next couple of years, but that won't keep the federal government from hitting its balanced budget target in 2015.

In its latest report, the office predicts that the economy will grow by two per cent in the second half of this year, with a 1.6 per cent increase for the year overall.

It forecasts two per cent growth in 2014 and 2.6 per cent in 2015. Beyond that, it predicts growth to average 2.0 per cent in the 2016-18 period.

It says this near-term weakness likely will lead to a modest increase in unemployment, which was at 6.9 per cent in September. The report says the Bank of Canada is likely to keep its key interest rate at one per cent through the first quarter of 2015.

More to come

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The House

• Trudeau challenges Harper to testify under oath Oct. 25, 2013 11:13 PM This week on a special edition of The House, Evan Solomon takes a closer look at the unfolding Senate controversy with Liberal Party leader Justin Trudeau, Conservative Senator, and former leader of the government in the Senate, Marjory LeBreton, as well as fellow Conservative Senator, and former party president, Don Plett.

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The Barack Obama big spender myth: Neil Macdonald

I'm generally against using any word invented during my lifetime. But "meme" actually does seem to best describe the ill-informed discussion here about Barack Obama and spending.

A meme, according to Webster, is "an idea that spreads from person to person within a culture."

And the meme here, at the moment, is that Obama's wild, uncontrolled spending is dragging a once prosperous nation into a future of indentured servitude.

Obama's opponents are constantly inventing new apocalyptic metaphors. Mitt Romney, when he was running for president last year, settled on "Obama's debt and spending inferno."

And Americans seem overwhelmingly to believe them — by more than 80 per cent, according to some polling.

The assumption also seems to underpin a lot of popular journalism. Articles here on the deranged political brinkmanship of the past few weeks would often nod toward the idea that, whatever the tactics employed by the Tea Party extremists, their primary concern about America's disastrous fiscal escalation was correct.

Well. To quote the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, everyone's entitled to his own opinions, but not to his own facts.

And the fact is that while government spending here did seem out of control just a few years ago, it is now declining, two years in a row in fact. So is the deficit, sharply.

Hey, big spender

Also, according to the Pulitzer-prize-winning fact checkers at PolitiFact, when compared to the spending of the nine presidents who preceded him, Obama's rate of spending in his first term in office ranks at or near the bottom of the list.

Whether in raw dollars or adjusted for inflation, both George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan increased spending at a much faster clip than the current president, who is so commonly described by his conservative opponents as a free-spending socialist.

Republicans, like Ohio congressman Steve Chabot, shown here at a town hall meeting in Montgomery, have been making political hay out of U.S. budget problems this past year. Though lately the focus of the attack may be shifting as spending and the deficit continue to decline. (Associated Press)

​

Now, it is true that statistics on the U.S. economy comprise a dense, confusing undergrowth that most people, including most journalists, would rather not enter.

And those who are fearless enough to crawl in sometimes emerge with different conclusions.

After PolitiFact published its findings last year, and Obama's officials tweeted them, the Washington Post's fact-checking department, which is equally respected, rendered a somewhat different view. (Both organizations used data from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget).

The Post chose to judge Obama's spending in relation to the size of the U.S. economy.

By that measure, spending in 2009, when Obama took office, jumped from 20.8 per cent of GDP to 25.2 per cent, a historic high, but one that should be seen against the backdrop of a tanking economy.

Federal spending has since declined to 23.3 per cent of GDP in 2013 – still above the 40-year average, according to the CBO, but on a precipice to continue falling for the next few years, at least as a proportion of the country's economic output. 

Still, the Post's assessment also defied the whole idea — the meme — that spending under Obama is "out of control."

The nanny state

The idea of Obama as a pathological spender seems to have originated early in his administration.

His detractors, especially those in the Tea Party, blamed him for two pieces of policy they despised above all else: the $787-billion stimulus package of early 2009, and the massive Wall Street bailout a few months earlier.

Thing is, the Wall Street bailout was the creation of staunch Republican and self-described "market guy" George W. Bush. He signed it into law on Oct. 3, 2008, a month before Obama won the White House and nearly four months before Obama took office.

If the stimulus package made Obama a socialist, what exactly did rushing to rescue grossly negligent private banks with hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars make George W. Bush? (Or, for that matter, Bush's earlier decision to provide American seniors with subsidized drugs?)

In any event, the blazing central fact is that the 2008 economic meltdown, and not any single president, was responsible for the crash in revenues and the balloon in U.S. debt whose effects are being felt to this day.

Bush did what he had to do. So did Obama. But in the years since, Obama has brought both spending and the deficit down considerably.

Still, a serious spending problem remains. It's just a lot of people here don't want to talk about that aspect of it at all, let alone see it remedied.

Social Security, America's version of the Canada Pension Plan, and Medicare, under which the government pays health-care costs for Americans over the age of 65, are indeed careering out of control.

They become less sustainable every year, as the boomer generation retires and falls back on government support. Those entitlements are growing at a rate of six and seven per cent a year, well above everything else.

For obvious reasons, most Americans don't want to discuss hacking those particular programs, aging Tea Partiers included, there being no greater economic or political force than self-interest.

So, for now, Americans are taking shelter in their pet misconceptions. For example, that they are only taking out of Medicare and Social Security what they paid in over the years.

Or that sufficient savings can come from cutting "waste, fraud and abuse." Or, among conservatives, that cutting taxes will cause wild economic growth and solve everything.

Obama says his four-year old law, Obamacare, will bring health-care costs down. Republicans say it'll do the opposite. But the Obama-spender meme is embedded in that subject, too.

Recently, CNBC polled two groups. One group was asked about Obamacare, and 46 per cent of respondents were opposed. A second group was asked about the Affordable Care Act, and 36 per cent disapproved.

Obamacare, of course, IS the Affordable Care Act.

The U.S. government almost certainly needs to spend less and raise taxes if the entitled American way of life is to continue.

As Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics puts it: "I don't think we can realistically grow out of our long-term fiscal problems. We will need more long-term fiscal restraint and tax revenues."

Barack Obama will almost certainly be an ex-president by the time entitlements are fixed, if they ever are. And Americans will no doubt find someone else to blame for the underfunded nanny state they treasure.

U.S. government spending projections from Congressional Budget Office, 2013. (U.S. Congressional Budget Office)

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Drivers fined for parking when not parked

A company that says it's the world's largest privately-owned parking firm is again under fire from drivers, who complain they were slapped with unjustified $110 fines.

"If they are doing this over and over — they are probably making quite the profit," Jade Messiah, 20, who was hit with the fine from Diamond Parking in September.

"I think maybe it's just a money scam."

Diamond patrols 1,000 private parking lots in B.C., Alberta and several U.S. states.

Diamond Parking says it manages 1,000 parking lots in B.C., Alberta and several states. (CBC)

Go Public has received several complaints from people who believe the company fined them unfairly, over the last two years.

Messiah's complaint stands out, because she has hard evidence showing she was nowhere near the Diamond-patrolled parking lot, when it claimed she was parked there.

"I was like, there's no way I am paying this. I know I wasn't in the city," she said.

Proof she wasn't there

Messiah is a student who lives in White Rock, B.C., but spends much of her time in the city of Richmond.

The morning she got the parking ticket, she said she left home after 10:30 a.m. and stopped for gas.

Diamond Parking ticketed Jade Messiah's car for being parked a time when she was nowhere near the parking lot. (CBC)

Messiah then drove to Richmond, a 35 to 40 minute drive away.

She parked in a Diamond-patrolled lot, which has two hour parking for mall customers.

"I knew there was a two hour parking time limit so I made sure to get out before two hours," said Messiah, who said she was back at her car around 12:30 p.m.

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She said she was shocked to find a $63 ticket on her windshield, suggesting her car was there almost an hour before she'd arrived.

"There's no way it was possible at all," she said.

Diamond attendants place chalk marks on vehicle tires then write tickets if they find the vehicle still parked there beyond the lot's posted time limit.

Messiah's ticket said her car was 'chalked' at 10:27 a.m.

She has a bank records to prove she was actually buying gas, at a Husky station at 10:38 a.m. The station is in White Rock, near her home.

The ticket left on Messiah's car by a Diamond attendant is time stamped 10:27 a.m., almost an hour before she said she parked in the lot. (CBC)

 "I really do think they need to be brought to justice about this and I would like to see it stopped," said Messiah.

Fine jumps, told to pay

She later got a past due notice in the mail from Diamond, which stated that her fine had jumped to $110.

"I did call [Diamond] and I explained my situation. All the supervisor said to me was, 'No I'm sorry we can't listen to you. Our patrol officer says he was there, therefore you were there. You have to pay the ticket.'"

Kevin Roman of Maple Ridge, B.C., is another driver who was upset when a $110 fine from Diamond arrived inexplicably in the mail.

Messiah's bank records show she bought gas at 10:38 a.m., a 40-minute drive from the lot where her car was ticketed. (CBC)

"He got a past due notice. And he was like — 'wait a minute, from what?' He didn't even know what it was about," said Roman's brother-in-law John Leonard, who then complained to Diamond on his behalf.

Roman didn't park in the local mall's parking area. Instead, he pulled up curbside for a few minutes, in a no-stopping area, where he said he'd seen couriers stop many times.

"I was in my half-ton with a trailer and we were going camping," said Roman. "Because of my over-length vehicle, I pulled over there."

He stayed in the vehicle, while his wife ran in to use the nearby bank machine.

Roman said a security guard tapped on his window and told him he couldn't park there, because it was a fire lane, so he left immediately and parked on the public street. 

A Diamond parking attendant took this picture of Kevin Roman's vehicle in front of the bank. Roman said he had stopped briefly and moved his vehicle when he was told to. (Diamond Parking)

"And I didn't get any parking ticket," he said.

What Roman didn't know was, a Diamond attendant patrolling the lot also snapped a picture of his licence plate. Diamond then mailed him the fine for a parking violation.

Diamond attendants record vehicle licence plates, then B.C.'s provincial licensing agency gives the company the address of the registered owner. The Insurance Corporation of B.C. has said this is perfectly legal. It is how Diamond knows where to mail its violation notices.

Fines cancelled after complaints

The company acknowledges what happened in these cases and told Go Public it has cancelled the fines for both Messiah and Roman. In the second case though, Diamond maintains the fine was justified.

John Leonard is a bylaw enforcement officer who went to bat for his brother-in-law to fight a violation notice sent out by Diamond. (CBC)

"We are under contract with the mall property manager to enforce this exact form of infraction for the safety of the general public," said Diamond's Vancouver manager Michael Murray. "This area is clearly marked as a fire lane."

Roman's brother-in-law, who is a bylaw enforcement officer, questions how Diamond can issue tickets and fines when there is no law explicitly giving it authority to do so.

"I don't see anywhere in legislation that says a private parking company can even write those tickets in the first place," said Leonard, who said the company said if his brother-in-law paid $40, the fine would be cancelled immediately.

"He's being told we'll give you a deal if you just pay… As a bylaw officer, when I write a ticket, I have to prove that in court."

Diamond says it has sought legal opinions on its practices and it points out, in most cases, it is working for private clients on private property.

"We can designate any area as, 'no parking' for any reason and enforce it accordingly," said Murray.

It also says it cancels many of the fines when people complain.

"Inevitably, a small percentage of consumers that are issued notices are going to feel that they have been wrongfully ticketed and will contact us," said Murray.

"I can tell you that we void a significant percentage of the notices we issue as a courtesy to those that receive them, or on behalf of our client that we have been contracted to serve."

Others still pay 

Messiah and Leonard suspect many more people simply pay, because they're intimidated by the official looking fines and they fear the bill will be sent to collections, which Diamond does regularly.

"People are afraid. They don't want the hassle. They go, 'what is this? Oh I'm just going to pay this because I don't want my credit ruined'," said Leonard. "It's just bonus money in [Diamond's] pocket."

"It's rare that people will go to this extent to get something taken care of," said Messiah.

Hamilton, Ont., lawyer David Thompson tried unsuccessfully to mount a class action against Impark — another large private parking company — for issuing similar parking fines in Ontario. 

He is calling on provincial governments to bring in consumer protection laws to govern the practices of these private parking companies.

"Consumers have no bargaining power to negotiate or alter the terms of [private parking] agreements. Consumers typically do not realize that they will be charged significant fines if they overstay at a lot," said Thompson.

"They might enter a lot with a maximum daily parking rate of $5.00... If the consumer overstays, even let's say by half an hour, they could face a violation fee of close to $70.00... [which is] 14 times the maximum daily rate."

Consumer Protection B.C. said it has had 55 inquires about Diamond Parking in the last five years. In Washington State, regulatory authorities have adjudicated 64 complaints against the company since 2009.  

A handful of claims have been filed in B.C. small claims court, but it appears all were settled before trial.

The common theme among all complaints is that when the driver pushes back, Diamond cancels the fine.

Submit your story ideas to Kathy Tomlinson at Go Public 

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Pipeline safety incident rate doubled in past decade

Pipelines regulated by the federal government — which include some of the longest lines in the country — have experienced a swell in the number of safety-related incidents over the past decade, documents obtained by CBC News suggest.

In recent months, a spate of oil and gas spills both from train derailments and pipelines have raised questions about what mode of transport is the safest.

The pipeline industry has touted its record as it seeks support for numerous controversial projects across the continent, including TransCanada's Keystone XL to the U.S. Gulf Coast and Enbridge's Northern Gateway to the B.C. coast.

However, according to figures from a National Energy Board (NEB) data set obtained under access-to-information by CBC, the rate of overall pipeline incidents has doubled since 2000.

By 2011, safety-related incidents — covering everything from unintentional fires to spills — rose from one to two for every 1,000 kilometres of federally-regulated pipeline. That reflects an increase from 45 total incidents in 2000 to 142 in 2011.

Pipeline watchers like Pembina Institute associate Nathan Lemphers suggest the rise may be a worrisome sign of aging infrastructure.

"The pipelines that are in the ground are getting older and in some cases there's more products flowing through them so you're going to see increasing incidents and increasing defects in those pipelines unless they're properly maintained," Lemphers said.

The NEB documents give detailed information about 1,047 pipeline safety incidents from Jan. 1, 2000 until late 2012.

The federal regulator oversees any pipeline that crosses provincial or international borders, which includes about 90 companies that own about 71,000 kilometres of pipelines. The data does not include smaller pipelines monitored by provinces.

The National Energy Board attributes the rise in incidents to heightened awareness among companies about what they need to report.

"We've been out there talking with industry associations and the companies themselves to ensure that they are fully aware of what the reporting requirements are and I think that's why we're seeing an increase right now," said NEB's business leader for operations, Patrick Smythe.

Leaks, spills triple

Each company overseen by the NEB must report safety issues including the death or serious injury of a worker, fires, explosions, liquid product spills over 1,500 litres and every gas leak.

Among the other findings based on NEB's pipeline database is that there's been a three-fold increase in the rate of product releases spills and leaks — ranging from small leaks and spills  to large — that have been reported in the past decade.

B.C. saw the most reported incidents for a single province, followed by Alberta and Ontario (John Rieti/CBC)

More than four reportable releases happened for every 10,000 kilometres in 2000, or 18 incidents in total, according to NEB data. By 2011, that rate had risen to 13 per 10,000 kilometres, or 94 incidents.

Those numbers include any oil or natural gas releases companies are required by law to report.

Carl Weimer, executive director of U.S. advocacy group Pipeline Safety Trust, says each small leaks may not  be significant on its own, but taken together they provide a better picture when looking at safety trends.

"It shows how really carefully they are taking care of the pipelines," said Weimer.

British Columbia experienced the most pipeline safety incidents for a single province, with 279 recorded events from 2000 to 2012 in the data set. Alberta came in second with 244 incidents, followed by Ontario with 146.

The community with the highest number of incidents in its vicinity is the remote town of Norman Wells, Northwest Territories, which has seen 71 events.

NEB concerned about severe incidents

CBC News turned the NEB data set into a user-friendly map that allows Canadians to explore pipeline incidents using filters such as the nearest community, year, company, pipeline or substance spilled.

It provides an unprecedented bird's eye view of safety issues plaguing pipelines over the past decade and also gives users the ability to drill down into the details of each report.

NEB's Smythe says that the regulator has not seen an alarming increase in the "significant, serious or major incident over the last little while."

Recent documents published by the NEB show that they have expressed some concern over rising numbers.

"Notwithstanding the safety record of NEB-regulated pipelines, the board has noticed an increased trend in the number and severity of incidents being reported by NEB-regulated companies in recent years," one 2012 report states. 

Another 2011 document citing the same concern also notes the need for NEB to "enhance data collection" in order to tackle that problem and other troubling trends in the industry.

It goes on to say that a reduction in the numbers ultimately "depends on actions taken by the industry."

Brenda Kenny, president of the Canadian Energy Pipelines Association, which represents major companies, says there's an industry-wide commitment to "get to zero incidents."

"We're driving that out very hard through our risk-based management approach at the industry level that involves a lot of best practices, integrity, management, technology and these indicators," said Kenny.

"The Canadian pipeline industry is one of the very safest in the world second to none in terms of actual results," said Kenny.

Pipelines have faced unparalleled attention in recent years as global demand fuels a production boom across the continent, resulting in a rise in pipeline proposals.

"Pipelines were very much out of sight out of mind until recently," said Ian Goodman, a U.S. energy consultant who works with regulators and community groups across North America.

The pipeline debate is not generally "front-page news day after day … the way it now is. That's a new development."

If you have any pipeline-related stories, please email us at pipelines@cbc.ca.

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Bomb-making material confirmed in luggage at Montreal airport

The carry-on bag of a 71-year-old man detained at Montreal's Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport contained components for making an explosive device, though it did not contain actual explosive material, police say.

"He had numerous parts of an explosive device, except the explosive itself," said Ian Lafrenière of Montreal police. 

Police searched the man's home in the city's LaSalle borough, trying to find clues in connection with a suspicious package that caused panic and delays at the airport for part of Sunday.

Several homes were evacuated and about 20 residents were displaced as the search was conducted.

Lafrenière said no explosive devices were found at the man's home, however, police recovered documents that they hope will provide answers.

"We have a lot of questions but not a lot of answers."

The incident began when the man's carry-on luggage was flagged in the U.S. customs area Sunday at around 5:45 a.m. ET by an airport employee.

A spokesperson for the airport said a police tactical team set up a large security perimeter near the terminal at 10:35 a.m. so officers could analyze the package, which was removed at about 1 p.m. The contents were sent to a lab for tests.  

"We didn't want to take any risk and any chances, because when there's an airport, there's a lot of people, so that's why we evacuated certain parts," said Const. Jean-Pierre Brabant, a Montreal police spokesman.

The man, who is known to police, was taken into custody at the airport.

Lafrenière said everyone on the plane was searched, thinking the man may have been working with an accomplice.

However, Lafrenière said police have no reason to suspect anyone else is involved.   

The man has not been charged, but is being questioned by police

"This is still a mystery for us. Why was he doing that?" said Lafrenière.

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