The Bruce Report

Not a day in May goes by when I don’t think about my mother, which doesn’t necessarily make me a dutiful son; but only a fretful one.

I have trouble remembering routine dates – like birthdays, wedding anniversaries, doctor’s appointments, dinner engagements, and garbage pick-ups – let alone an annual ceremony manufactured by the greetings card industry to honour all the world’s maters.

I suspect I’d have no difficulty if the object of this coming Sunday’s observance was not my ma, per se, but that which Webster’s defines under “mother” (fourth meaning) as: “A slimy membrane composed of yeast and bacterial cells that develops  on the surface of alcoholic liquids undergoing acetous fermentation and is added to wine or cider to produce vinegar.”

But, then, that’s no way to talk to one’s mom, regardless of her drinking habits.

No, I’m stuck with my calendrically befuddled mind, made worse by the vast number of claims various interests have staked on the days of the month. Wikipedia independently verifies no fewer than 228 of these in any given year, of which Christmas, Easter and Halloween are only the most familiar.

There is, for example, “World Information Society Day” (May 17), which is not to be confused with “System Administrator Appreciation Day” (July 27). The objective of the former is to “raise global awareness” of the Internet among those who, apparently, have been living under a glacier these past 25 years; whereas the purpose of the latter is to thank IT geeks for not bringing the planet’s communications architecture down around our ears whenever office bullies kick metaphorical sand into their faces.

There’s “World Hello Day” (November 21) during which each of us must say “hi” to ten people, thereby demonstrating for “world leaders” the supremacy of peaceful greetings over brute force.

There’s “International Lefthanders Day” (August 13) which promotes awareness of the “inconveniences facing left-handers in a predominantly right-handed world” and seeks to reverse the discrimination that has rendered the lives of oppressed underachievers, such as Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Robert DeNiro, and Robert Redford, so tragically unfulfilled.

There’s “World Turtle Day” (May 23), “International Adopt-A-Rabbit Day (January 30) and “World House Sparrow Day” (March 20). There’s “World Thinking Day” (February 22), “World Radio Day” (February 13) and “World Puppetry Day”. There’s “World Dance Day” (April 29), “World Poetry Day” (March 21) and “World Theatre Day”, which, oddly enough, shares the same date as “World Whisky Day” (March 27).

On “Star Wars Day”, we are instructed to recognize the knee-slapping humour in the phrase, “May the Force be with you”, as the observance falls, in fact, on May 4.

“Pi Day”, the unofficial holiday commemorating the mathematical constant of the same name “is celebrated on March 14 (or 3/14 in month/day date format), since 3, 1 and 4 are the three most significant digits of Pi in the decimal form.”

“Towel Day” commemorates the work of the late author Douglas Adams, specifically his “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” in which the protagonist carries the absorbent cloth to, among other things, “avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (such a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you).”

And, there’s “International Talk Like  a Pirate Day” (September 19), the brainchild of Oregon residents John Baur and Mark Summers who, according to a Wiki entry,  “found fame in the 2006 season premier episode of ‘Wife Swap’. They starred in the role of ‘a family of pirates’ along with Baur’s wife, Tori. Baur also appeared (in an) episode of ‘Jeopardy!’, where he was introduced as a ‘writer and pirate from Albany.’”

Now, I learn with some trepidation about the impending arrival of the “National I-Can’t-Find-My-Car-Keys Day”, the “International Grass-is-Always-Greener Day” and the “World Not-Enough-Days-in-The-Year-to-Remember-Stupid-Things Day”.

But, don’t worry, mom, I got you covered. The card’s filled out and the flowers are on order. Now, tell me: When is Mother’s Day, again?

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

In the offices of some rich entrepreneurs of a certain age and a more circumspect generation, pennies hang framed behind glass as if to remind visitors that wealth, like life, is fleeting.

Restaurant owners display the first buck they ever made above their cash registers to demonstrate their gritty, enterprising souls. But, it’s almost a rule that the more financially muscular you are, the lower the denomination you honour in the capitalist cosmology.

The late K.C. Irving – it is said – was fond of observing: “Look after the pennies, and the dollars will look after themselves.”

Or was that a favorite rubric of U.S. oil industrialist John Paul Getty’s?

It hardly matters. Both were fabulously adept managers of money.

I, on the other hand, collected pennies like marbles. That is to say: carelessly.

When I was a kid, my monthly ritual before Mammon was to dump my coffee can full of loose coins onto my bed and roll around until the copper stuck to my skin. This little devotional, I imagined, would someday secure my position at the top of the big, rock candy mountain of moolah, even as the pennies dropped from my body and vanished into the cracks beneath the baseboard.

Not surprisingly, I never made a dime.

In one of his less controversial maneuvers last month, Finance Minister Jim Flaherty struck the death blow to the penny. It is “a currency without any currency in Canada,” he declared. “It costs us 1.5 cents to produce a penny. . .They take up too much space on our dressers at home and far too much time for small businesses trying to grow and create jobs.”

Noting that Ottawa spends about $11 million a year minting the lowly coin, NDP MP Pat Martin was ecstatic. “This feels pretty good,” he said. “Finally, some common sense from government.”

Now, the Americans are reviving the debate over their own monetary midget.

President Barack Obama wants Congress to authorize changing the composition of the coin, thereby reducing its cost.

Others, like Jeff Gore of Citizens for Retiring the Penny, want nothing to do with it. “Pennies are now worth so little that people often don’t pick them up off the street, despite the lucky-penny adage,” he blogged not long ago. “As Harvard professor of economics Gregory Mankiw points out, ‘When people start leaving a monetary unit at the cash register for the next customer, the unit is too small to be useful.’”

Still, as Matthew Eggers of Americans for Common Cents argued in a recent online post: “The alternative to the penny is rounding transactions to the nearest nickel. But that will make goods and services more expensive. Since the objective of any business is to maximize profits, most prices would be rounded up – and research suggests that consumers would spend an additional $600 million a year as a result.”

In fact, like everything else government enshrines (the metric system, daylight savings time, bad haircuts on Parliament Hill), we’ll probably get used to our newly penniless circumstances.

Of course, we’ll no longer know what we mean when we call our landlord a “penny pincher”, or offer our significant other “a penny for her thoughts”. Meanwhile, our penny loafers will become just loafers.

And when some scoundrel empties our bank account with a debit-card scanner, we’ll have to come up with something other than, “I don’t have two pennies to rub together”, to mourn our loss.

Indeed, we’ll have to abandon whole phrases, entire vernacular talismans on the virtue of thrift and the impermanence of wealth.

We will no longer be “in for a penny, in for a pound” or the corollary, “penny wise and pound foolish”.

To be sure, “a penny saved is a penny earned” will no longer refer to the fiscal sages, but to the monetary morons, among us. And as we won’t be looking after the pennies, the dollars really will have to look after themselves for once.”

All things go extinct. Yet, we might pity the censured cent for its passing, and turn  to the eager beaver that occupies the next rung on the currency ladder.

“Watch your back, nickel. You’re next.”

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Alas, my predictions this time last year for 2011 did not pan out, but for one: Prime Minister Stephen Harper did thank his loyal New Brunswick supporters by gutting health transfers, though he deferred a decision to build an extensive monorail from Edmundston to Sackville.

What’s a prophet to do? Owing to cheap, assembly-line Chinese manufacturing, crystal balls are notoriously unreliable these days,. This should not, however, prevent us from gazing long and hard into the foggy firmament for clues of things to come in 2012.

Barring the sudden and untimely end of the world, as promised by the Mayan long count calendar, which runs down just in time for Santa Claus, we can be reasonably certain of the following developments:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will finally say what everyone knows has been on his mind since he waltzed into Ottawa some seven years ago: Democracy is overrated. The House of Commons can’t be trusted. The Senate is irrelevant. The supreme court is disloyal. Parliamentary watchdogs (especially the Auditor-General) are despicable. And the mainstream media are traitors.

With the virtually unchecked power his majority confers, he will introduce sweeping reforms to the administration of politics and governance in Canada, beginning with a change in his official designation, from “Prime Minister” to “Lord High Executioner of the Sovereign Republic of Canuckistan”.

He will then offer the British Royal Family dibs on forming a permanent ruling class. When its members decline, he will claim that their disinterest stems from the fact that Canuckistanians are not sufficiently anglophilic to earn such an honour. To remedy this, he will instruct government House Leader John Baird to introduce legislation that will require all citizens, regardless of their national or ethnic origins, to eat crumpets for breakfast, take afternoon tea and speak with a central London accent.

In 2012, the size of the federal public service will be slashed to a shadow of its former self, but not before it balloons thanks to the presence of hundreds of new contractors hired to slash the federal public service to a shadow of its former self.

The year will also bring new challenges to the East Coast.

Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter will levy a new “stupidity tax” on the Halifax Regional Municipality. Applicable to any public officials and private individuals who insist that a structurally imbalanced budget is a small price to pay for pet projects and unlimited entitlements (re: sight-lines of George’s Island from Spring Garden Road), it will eradicate the province’s annual deficit within six months.

Prince Edward Island will cease to qualify as a province after historians uncover new evidence that it never did.

And the $48-billion worth of major capital projects in Newfoundland and Labrador will grind to a halt after a province-wide call for skilled labour produces only three applications from some guy named Buddy.

But the biggest changes in the Atlantic provinces appear to be in store for New Brunswick, which will finally abandon all pretense of one day developing a clean, renewable energy sector.

After months of meeting with residents about the future of the nascent shale gas industry, Premier David Alward will throw his hands into the air and declare, “This business of consultation totally sucks!”

By spring, the Tory government will have consigned most private land, outside urban centres, to mineral and natural gas exploration and extraction companies under existing laws of eminent domain. It will then pen deals that guarantee hundreds-of-millions of dollars a year in resource royalties and other fees.

By year end, having chewed up, bulldozed and otherwise exposed countless hectares of farms, woodlots and forests, the shale gas industry will announce that there’s not enough of the stuff to justify full-scale production operations.

They will engineer a coordinated pull-out from the province, prompting the opposition MLAs to suggest a new slogan for New Brunswick:

“Flee. . .from this place.”

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

News of a certain defence minister’s recent $2,904 two-night stay at a swank German hotel – coming so soon after the imbroglio over his Canadian military-enabled helicopter ride high above an exclusive fishing hole in the back woods of Newfoundland – has rocked the reform-minded Harper government.

Now, an unimpeachable Ottawa source, who identifies himself only as “Whistlethroat”, confirms that the feds are introducing new regulations, clarifying what officers of the Crown can claim as legitimate expenses while on “official business”.

Your humble scribbling servant, having obtained a copy of this missive, is pleased to present these stipulations herewith for the continuing edification of a concerned citizenry.

Number one: The use of government aircraft and ground vehicles for the purpose of travelling to international conferences shall be limited unless said conferences advance Canada’s security and technology interests abroad. To this end, meetings justifying unrestricted access to taxpayer-funded modes of transportation include: The Las Vegas Star Trek Tricorder and Phaser Convention, the Melbourne Wizards and Orcs Role-Playing Festival, and the Marvel Comics Superhero and Arch-villain Symposium in Cleveland, Ohio.

Number two: The per diem cost of accommodations in foreign hotels shall not exceed the price of comparable accommodations in domestic establishments except where the latter do not provide standard in-room goods and services. Such goods and services may include: Three-dozen appetizers of polar bear garnished with scorpion claws, 50 liters of Mongolian champagne stored in a gold-lined bathtub, and 75 dancing girls wearing ostrich stoles and diamond-encrusted chaps. In the absence of said goods and services, ministers may expense the Government of Canada for inconvenience.

Number three: Charges related to consultations with foreign dignitaries shall be reimbursed when, and only when, they conform to one or more of the following guidelines: Private functions must not require more than five state rooms, three Mariachi bands and six open bars; strategy sessions must not require more than two fishing lodges, three tubs of beluga caviar and one hind portion of Alberta buffalo; and multilateral policy talks must not require more than 17 pay-per-view sporting events, 300 downloads of the most recent “Angry Birds” application and 500 premium text messages on the weather in Durban, South Africa.

Number four: The use of government speech writers while on official business shall be proscribed, except when circumstances require said use. These circumstances may include: The officer of the Crown’s inability owing to scheduling conflicts with tourist guides, personal trainers and food tasters; the officer of the Crown’s incapacity owing to naval gazing, mirror gazing or, less commonly, soul searching; and the officer of the Crown’s unsuitability owing to the fact that he or she doesn’t know what he or she is talking about.

Number five: Upon their return to Canada, those engaged in official business must submit detailed expense accounts. Costs charged to the public account will be considered legitimate if they do not include one or more of the following descriptors: Bar fight, horse-drawn carriage, lederhosen, massage, audition, stomach pump, and komodo dragon (see government regulations regarding exotic pets).

Number six: Copies of all expense accounts will be posted to an as-yet undetermined government website for the information of Canadian citizens. Such information will be made freely available to the general public between the hours of 2:00 am and 2:10 am on Sundays, during Hockey Night in Canada, and on Christmas morning. Upon receiving an access to information request, properly notarized by a priest, the Government of Canada will issue a strongly encrypted password to any citizen who requests entry to the site.

Said passwords will be issued two hours before the end of business, yesterday.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

“One of Quebec’s biggest cities is rolling out the welcome mat to immigrants with a 16-point guide to local values, which include refraining from bribing officials, killing people for family honour, or cooking smelly foods. The city of Gatineau says its newly released  ‘statement of values’ is aimed at helping newcomers integrate. But critics say it. . .treats (them) ‘like they came out of a cave.’” – The Globe and Mail, Dec. 5, 2011

Hear yea, hear yea.

Let it be known that on this day, December 8, in the year of our Lord, 2011, the City of Moncton – also referred to as “The Hub City”, “The Little City That Could”, and “The City That Time Forgot” – adopted a formal, 16-point set of rules to help guide and govern the behaviour and comportment of immigrants who may not be familiar with local ways and habits.

Be advised that for each infraction of the new regulations (barring stated exceptions), violators will be force-fed a bowl of “restaurant-style” poutine.

Article 1: The use of snowblowers in the removal of said snow is restricted to 24 hours per day, seven days a week, nine months a year.

Article 2: Snowblowers must not be “donated” to otherwise friendly neighbours, until such time as the benefactor has successfully completed a 30-day psychiatric evaluation.

Article 3: Fraternizing with public officials is proscribed, except when said fraternization may result in the booking of 1970s and 80s-era supergroups at the Magnetic Hill concert site. (Such acts may include, in no particular order, Fleetwood Mac, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Bad Company, and the surviving members of The Bay City Rollers).

Article 4: Motorists are permitted only limited access to city streets, except during periods of heavy road construction, pot-hole season, and winter nor’easters when they are permitted unfettered access to city streets.

Article 5: The integrity of bike lanes is strictly enforced: They may be used only by registered owners and riders of Harley-Davidison Sportsters, Honda Phantoms and Kawasaki Ninjas.

Article 6: Killing people for family honour is absolutely prohibited. Killing people for any other reason is, likewise, frowned upon.

Article 7: All food consumed in public spaces must be free of detectable odor. It must also be free of detectable flavor and nutritional value.

Article 8: Ridiculing the head pond above the Petitcodiac River as “a manmade splash-pad”, “a riviera for hip-waders” or “a poor excuse for a puddle”, is a stringent requirement of residency.

Article 9: All conversations in public spaces must cover the following topics in the following order: The weather, the Moncton Ti-Cats, the weather, the “new Sobeys”, the weather, and the weather. (The inexplicable rash of sex toy thefts in Kent County is an acceptable substitute for one of the aforementioned subjects, but only if the purpose is to explore the recreational proclivities of said Kent County matrons).

Article 10: Any reference to the Greater Moncton Sewerage Commission as “party central” is strictly forbidden.

Article 11: Any reference to Moncton City Council as “chez George” is strictly forbidden.

Article 12: Lawnmowing before noon on Sundays is prohibited, as it tends to disturb the 14 people who regularly attend church on Wednesdays.

Article 13: Excessive use of the downtown area is proscribed, as it promotes the myth that the city actually has a downtown area.

Article 14: As children are our most precious commodities, parents must comply with standing orders to send them to schools with sufficient levels and quantities of mold, plaster dust and corroded plumbing as to ensure their desirability as robust and contributing members of the community.

Article 15: Public displays of affection are restricted to three weeks in February, when the temperature drops slightly below the freezing point of liquid nitrogen.

Article 16: Offensive and/or insulting language is forbidden, except in circumstances outlined under the aforementioned Article 1. . .Re: snowblowers

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

We must not vilify Defense Minister Peter MacKay for hitching a ride, at taxpayers’ expense, on a Canadian military helicopter whilst vacationing in Newfoundland and Labrador last summer.

Nay, we should praise the brave and noble political warrior for risking life and limb to demonstrate that not all of our aging whirlybirds drop from the sky like luggage in a samsonite commercial.

Who among us would wish to be tethered to a line suspended above the earth before being hoisted aboard a CH-149 Cormorant? Not the NDP’s Nicole Turmel, I’d warrant. Not Bob Rae, whose only recent act of selfless heroism was agreeing to become the interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada.

This must be what Prime Minister Stephen Harper means, when he says (as he did last week in the House of Commons), “The minister was called back. . .and used government aircraft only for government business, and that is appropriate.”

It is, indeed, appropriate for the elected official responsible for the nation’s fighting men and women to confirm the air worthiness of a contraption that developed cracks in its tail section mere months after alighting on these shores in the early part of the previous decade.

And shame on Colonel Bruce Ploughman, director of Canada Combined Aerospace Operations Centre at 1 Canadian Air Division, for suggesting otherwise in a recently uncovered email:

“So, when the guy who’s fishing at the fishing hole next to the minister sees the big yellow helicopter arrive and decides to use his cell phone to video the minister getting on board and post it on YouTube, who will be answering the mail (then). . . Given the potential for negative press. . .I would likely recommend against it, especially in view of the fact that the Air Force receives. . .regular (access to information requests) specifically targeting travel on (military) aircraft by ministers.”

Clearly, this man has not gotten with the Harperization program.

But others still may, if they are willing to learn from MacKay’s fine example.

Imagine, for example, Fisheries and Oceans Minister Keith Ashfield strapped to the deck of a trawler in the middle of a November gale off the Avalon Peninsula, there to measure the effectiveness of search operations once his government follows through on its plan to shutter a rescue sub-centre in St. John’s. Such first-hand intelligence to inform public policy “going forward” would be invaluable.

Or perhaps Infrastructure Minister Denis Lebel might spend some quality time traversing Montreal’s honeycomb of aging bridges, overpasses and tunnels to personally ascertain the number of vehicles required to dislodge a 15-ton block of concrete from its mooring. His resulting report would lend new urgency to the Economic Action Plan’s “shovel-ready” mantra about stimulus dollars.

And what about the famous Alberta tar sands which, it is said, are polluting soil, air and waterways with high levels of mercury, lead and 11 other toxins in Aboriginal communities up and down the Athabasca River. According to a report last year in The Globe and Mail, “University of Alberta biologist David Schindler criticized the province and industry for an ‘absurd’ system that obfuscates or fails to discover essential data about the river.”

Well, then, let’s discover.

Environment Minister Peter Kent hasn’t been up to much, lately – not since his government’s ostentatious withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol. Why not ask him to rusticate along a western riverbank or two, eat a few fish, drink some local water, and, you know, see how feels after a month or three? I’m sure he’d be delighted to comply, because if there’s one thing a minister of the Crown hates more than controversy, it’s being upstaged by his fellow cabinet inmates.

Of course, Peter MacKay might yet upstage himself.

Rumour has it that the good fellow plans to prosecute another war, only this time he’ll insert himself directly into front-line action. Apparently, his purpose is to test the quality of government services provided to returning veterans, among the ranks of which he will count himself.

Now, that’s really going the extra mile.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Weh-Ming and I (left) discussing the lighter points of heavy equipment

A few winters ago, in a fit of Christmas cheer, I offended the gods of common sense by giving away a practically new, all-metal-construction snowblower.

Had I lived in Fort Lauderdale, my soft-hearted gesture might have seemed merely unnecessary. But I didn’t live in Fort Lauderdale. I lived in Moncton. I still do, and over the years of record-breaking accumulations, I have come to believe that the decision I made then actually betrays congenital mushiness in the organ located somewhere north of my big mouth.

Until last Sunday.

That’s when I met a man by the name of Weh-Ming Cho, who lives with his wife  in a nicely appointed bungalow in one of the Hub City’s prettier neighbourhoods. Perhaps you’ve heard of him.

About a week ago, after the season’s first, real blast of winter, he posted a squib on the online classified advertising site Kijiji, seeking offers for his snowblower. But it wasn’t just any squib. It was a comedic rant worthy of the late George Carlin writing at his raucously best. It read, in part: “This isn’t some entry level snow blower that is just gonna move the snow two feet away.”

This is an 11 HP Briggs and Stratton machine of snow doom that will cut a 29-inch path of pure ecstasy. And it’s only four years old. I dare you to find a harder working four-year-old. My niece is five and she gets tired and cranky after just a few minutes of shoveling. This guy just goes and goes and goes.”

You know what else? I greased it every year to help keep the water off it and the body in as good a shape as possible. It’s greasier than me when I was 13, and that’s saying something. You know how many speeds it has? Six forward and two reverse. It goes from leisurely slow up to light speed. Seriously, I’ve never gone further than five because it terrifies me.”

Weh-Ming, who now prefers to hire others to move his snow around, explains he was just having some fun. But within hours, something that could only make sense in this Internet-addicted, glued-to-the-blinking-screen age of ours happened. Weh-Ming and his haughty Briggs were getting famous. Everywhere.

Views of the ad jumped from 100 to 1,000, then to 10,000, 50,000, 100,000. By Sunday night, the counter at the bottom of the screed registered more than 300,000 hits. Emails poured in from Europe, New Zealand, the United States. Facebook was on fire. The twitterverse was. . .well, all atwitter, and the mainstream media were muscling for interviews. Who was this guy, and how did he get so funny?

Weh-Ming, who is actually an office worker in real life, graciously complied, chortling merrily for CBC hosts on the regional and national networks. Meanwhile, the Huffington Post gave the ad two thumbs up for hilarity.

I came late to the party, catching wind of the fine fellow’s adventures only after hearing him talk in a radio item late last week. But after checking out his prose online, I recognized a man who had clearly missed his calling. And I began to cogitate.

All my recent efforts to secure a snow-removal contract had come to nothing and I was not looking forward to another winter of sinew-stretching shoveling. My only question was: Why was he selling? He had an answer for that, too.

“I’ll tell you why,” his ad obliged. “Because I heard it was time for you to man up and harness some mighty teeth and claws and chew your way to freedom.”

That was good enough for me, so I sent him an email: “I will buy your snowblower for the listed price, plus the cost of having it shipped over to our place in Moncton. As a professional writer, I think we writer guys ought to stick together on matters of snow jobs!”

He agreed, and the deal was done.

Do I need a snowblower? Yes.

Do I have anywhere to stow it? No.

But when it comes to supporting great scribbling, I believe in putting my money where my big mouth is.

UPDATE: Kudos to Junk-Away Moncton for dropping their cargo, speed-washing their ride and getting their asses in gear just in time to be CTV-filmed taking the fame monster to her new home on the other side of town.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

Every so often, my generally stern and sober-minded wife can be a truly wicked wag. Upon hearing the news, this week, that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the “Butcher of Chechyna”, had won an international peace prize, she quipped with perfect sardonic timing, “Moammar Gadhafi must be rolling in his grave.”

In fact, the dispossessed dictator, now dead, didn’t even make the shortlist because while the bright lights behind China’s Confucius Awards may dispense their accolades indiscriminately, they don’t do it posthumously.

But if they did, one imagines a raft of candidates plucked from history’s bloody pages worthy of the selection committee’s sage consideration.

There’s Ghengis Khan, whom scholars attest once remarked, “The greatest happiness is to scatter your enemy, to drive him before you, to see his cities reduced to ashes, to see those who love him shrouded in tears, and to gather into your bosom his wives and daughters.”

There’s Atilla the Hun, who conquered half the known world in the final days of the Roman empire, killing tens of thousands in the name of “unification”, before succumbing, himself, to deeds both dark and dastardly.

There’s Peter the Great, who ruled Europe’s frozen north with an iron fist before lamenting, near the end of his life, “I have conquered an empire but I have not been able to conquer myself.”

And who can forget Vlad the Impaler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot, Francisco Franco, Benito Mussolini, Osama bin Laden and Mao Tse-Tung, himself?

Ah, yes, they don’t make peace activists like that anymore.

As it is, the so-called “Confucians” had to settle, this year, for a vastly less accomplished humanitarian, though they made the best of a bad lot by celebrating Putin’s “iron hand and toughness revealed” in the Chechnyan war of 1999 that, not incidentally, “impressed Russians a lot.”

Added the official communique: “He was regarded to be capable of brining safety and stability to Russia. He became the antiterrorist No. 1 and the national hero.”

The committee also praised him for “acting as the propagandist of current political events. . .which made true his teenage dream of joining the K.B.G.”

Noting that the Russian strong man opposed NATO’s air strikes against Libya, Qiao Damo, the co-founder and chairman of the Confucian cabal of state-sponsored apologists, explained: “Those wars (in Chechnya) were righteous wars. Mr. Putin fought for the unification of his country.”

Those “wars” were certainly righteously barbaric, as combatants on both sides of the conflict committed unspeakable atrocities against their fellow men and women. But, hey, you can’t make peace without breaking a few eggs – or skulls, as the case may be,

Still, Putin’s newfound status as the Mother Theresa of the Caucuses does seem a little incongruous given the company he trounced to win the nod. Also in the running were Microsoft founder Bill Gates, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, South African President Jacob Zuma, former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, Chinese scientist Yuan Longping, and Taiwanese politician Soon Chu-yu.

Conspicuous by their absence from the honour roll were 2010 Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo and 2009 runner-up to U.S. President Barack Obama, Hu Jia – Chinese pro-democracy advocates currently spending quality time in one of The Middle Kingdom’s finer penal institutions.

The Confucius Peace Prize – now in only its second year – is, of course, an international joke, though a bad and unintended one. The 2010 winner was a Taiwanese factotum who declared he’d never heard of the competition or of his triumph until a journalist contacted him for a quote. Reports The New York Times: “He did not show up at the ceremony, even though the prize came with the equivalent of $15,000 in cash. Instead, a young girl with no relation to (him) accepted a statuette and a bundle of bills.”

Heaven only knows how Mr. Putin intends to celebrate his victory this year. Perhaps, my beloved suggests with a studiously straight face, he should invade Afghanistan.

Then again, I remind her, they don’t give out awards for repeating yourself.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

In the exacting language of financial reporting, the mental disease industry is worth a gagillion dollars worldwide. I don’t know how many zeros are in a gagillion, but that’s only because I suffer from a neurological disorder that prevents me from caring about neurological disorders.

Fortunately, Big Pharma can help me with this, as it manufactures a powdered concoction that’s guaranteed to render me passionately concerned about my obvious deficits and equally committed to its annual profits. The drug’s clinical name is “Sickuare”, but it’s more commonly known on the street at “Get With the Program”.

Now, when I say I don’t care about all neurological disorders, that’s not strictly accurate. I am keenly aware of the personal, social and economic ravages caused by genuine illnesses, such as schizophrenia, depression, alcoholism, narcotic dependency, and a veritable cornucopia of wayward mood conditions.

But, I draw the line at what Allison Ford, a staff writer and beauty editor at Divine Caroline, pithily observes is society’s fondness for labels of the psychological kind. “These days, people love characterizing everything as an addiction, from the frivolous to the frightening,” she writes. “In pop culture parlance, you can be a rage-aholic, a shop-aholic, and a choc-aholic.”

Even love, itself, has come under serious scrutiny. One J.D. Murrah, opinionating on Hubpages.com, concludes, “Although it sounds extreme to some segments of the population, there is a phenomena known as ‘love addiction’. Those afflicted with it are often seeking the strong blast of feel-good brain chemicals associated with falling in love rather than the long-term commitment. They are chasing the ‘high’ that goes with love rather than love itself.”

Which just goes to show that some joneses can be both good and bad for you. “Exercise addiction is probably the most contradictory of all the addictions,” writes Elizabeth Hartney, a PhD in psychology, on About.com. “As well as being a widely promoted health behavior, important for the prevention and treatment for a range of ailments, it is an effective part of treatment for other mental health problems.”

On the other hand, she reports, “There are several similarities between exercise addiction and drug addiction, including effects on mood, tolerance and withdrawal. Neurotransmitters and the brain’s reward system have been implicated in exercise and other addictions. For example, dopamine has been found to play an important role in overall reward systems, and regular, excessive exercise has been shown to influence parts of the brain involving dopamine.”

It follows, then, that anything that pleasures your brainpan too efficiently also imperils your mental health. That goes for bird-watching, gardening, singing, dancing eating, sleeping and breathing. And if these are clear and present dangers to your sanguinity, there must be a talk show you can watch, a self-help book you can scour, a course of therapy you can take, or a pill you can pop.

The infantilization of daily life is well-nigh total. We no longer talk about the choices people make, but the compulsions (which can be managed, don’t you know) that make them behave badly. We no longer hold children accountable for their actions; we dose them with expensive chemicals until the little blighters are too stuporous to cause anyone (except, of course, themselves) much harm. We no longer speak in the now dreadful absolutes of good and evil; we check our diets to see if we’re eating too much wheat, not enough gluten and just the right amount of probiotics.

We are addicted to the idea of our afflictions, and the world’s legal drug lords wouldn’t have it any other way. Imagine what would happen to their obscenely portly bottom lines if their goodies actually worked. Pretty soon, we wouldn’t need them or their wares. Then where would they be?

Personally, I’m addicted to practically everything, which merely makes me high on life. I say, “practically” because the two things for which I’ve never developed a slavish devotion is corporate balderdash and timid groupthink.

I count myself lucky, for there’s no profit to be made from a pill that gets those particular monkeys off anyone’s back.

Alec Bruce is a Moncton-based writer on politics, economics and current affairs. Check out his other blog here at Atlantic Business Magazine (ABMOnline): The Uneasy Chair.

It will pain many Canadians to admit, but Senator Nicole C. Eaton’s characterization of the beaver as a symbol that’s wholly unrepresentative of this nation’s evolving position in the world is both brave and correct.

Indeed, when she says, “Many accuse the dentally defective rat. . .the toothy tyrant. . .of being a nuisance that wreaks havoc on farmlands, roads, lakes, streams, and tree plantations” and should, therefore, “step aside as a Canadian emblem,” she is merely demonstrating those qualities of reflection and sober second thought we expect from members of our Upper Chamber.

Regrettably, however, her nomination of the polar bear as an appropriate replacement displays far less discernment and only reminds us that Senate reform cannot arrive a moment too soon.

As Ms. Eaton – who graduated “in production” from Montreal’s National Theatre School before becoming a “field producer” for CFTO television in Toronto – should know, Ursus maritimus is a fussy, preening, devious beast with a voracious appetite for (gasp!) baby seals.

According to polarbearsinternational.org, the creatures locate their prey’s breathing holes through the Arctic ice and then “lie in wait” before snatching and devouring them whole. As if this behavior were not despicable enough, they also stalk the poor, little fuzz-balls that bask on the ice by “taking advantage of sleep-wake rhythms. The bear crawls slowly forward and freezes in place when the animal raises its head. At about 20 feet from the seal, the bear pounces, killing it before it can escape back into the sea.”

Now, I ask you: Does this seem fair? Is this the Canadian thing to do?

The brutes also plunder belugas, narwhals and birds of every variety, which only confirms they are gluttonous to boot. Still, it is their bathing and cleaning habits that are especially at odds with Canuck values. After chowing down on some defenseless “Bambi”, they spend upwards of 30 minutes preparing for their photo shoots with camera-hauling eco-tourists and marine biologists who note, with trepidation, that these vicious carnivores are actually endangered.

Vain and threatened is hardly an image this country should want to embrace as it prepares to save the world’s financial system from the predations of the greedy, the incompetent and self-absorbed.

But if not the polar bear, then what Canadian icon would serve as a more relevant and resonant alternative to the beaver in the 21st Century?

I’ve always been partial to the caribou. It’s vegetarian, docile and inclined toward herd mentality – not unlike many members of the House of Commons.

There’s the crow, which is tricky, annoying and ubiquitous – just like Bay Street bankers and those house-hunting realtors on The Learning Channel.

There’s also the squirrel (that hoarding chatterbox), the groundhog (that risk-averse troglodyte), the raccoon (that unwelcome house guest), the coyote (that understudy to the American timber wolf), the moose (that notorious highway obstacle),  and the common house cat (that fair-weather friend).

And yet, if we’re serious about our archetype during this period in history, we should select an emblem that accurately reflects the full measure of our salient qualities.

As Lester B. Pearson once said, “Our national condition is still flexible enough that we can make almost anything we wish of our nation. No other country is in a better position than Canada to go ahead with the evolution of a national purpose devoted to all that is good and noble and excellent in the human spirit.”

Of course, that was before Marshall McLuhan opined, “Canada is the only country in the world that knows how to live without an identity.”

And so, while we are hopeful, generous and inquisitive, we are also complacent, entitled and privileged. While we are sturdy, stolid and inventive, we are also distracted, dissolute and lazy. Though we are noble, high-minded and serious, we are also spoiled, coarse and, every so often, patently ridiculous.

Which creature best represents this country today? What is our better beaver?

Members of the Canadian Senate, get ready for your close-ups.