Canada Post Corporation
With the exception of the composition of Parliament, all the other ingredients are in place to finally privatize Canada Post Corporation.
Unfortunately, we are now behind most other countries. Here’s why we need to put the process in place, so the next majority government can take some action on this file:
1. The EU has just ruled that postal monopolies will lose this status by 2009.
2. Japan has started restructuring their mammoth postal monopoly in preparation for privatization of the pieces.
3. The UK killed Royal Mail’s postal monopoly at the beginning of this year.
4. The current CEO of Canada Post Corporation was sitting at the table when Canadian National Railways was privatized. She knows how this process works.
5. Germany’s Deutsche Post has built a global deliver powerhouse that competes aggressively against such rivals as UPS and FedEx.
Our choices are to allow Canada Post to wind down into an obsolete non-entity, continue to encourage it to compete unfairly in competitive commercial markets (the only reason they are not losing money every year), or release it to fairly compete in the private sector, giving consumers real choice, and stopping the distortion of private sector markets.
Conservatives need to sit up and take notice of what’s happening with the delivery market worldwide.
Belinda Stronach vs. Paris Hilton
I can’t decide who I love more: Peter MacKay or Belinda Stronach. Both fill slow news days so deliciously that it’s almost embarassing to be seen reading stories about them.
So it was with perverse delight to see a story once again featuring both, as Peter MacKay allegedly refers to Belinda Stronach as a dog (in Parliament, no less). Best of all, with twisted joy, the story appears to have legs!
Allegedly Peter MacKay responded to the question, “What about your dog?” or “Don’t you care about your dog?” (in reference to some brainy comment about the new Clean Air Act), with “You have her.” Of note, he also allegedly gestured toward the seat where Belinda Stronach usually sits.
First of all, if these accusations prove true, I think Peter MacKay should be disciplined in the following manner: a new, special, honourary Parliamentary humour award should be named after him (or his dog). Seriously. I almost fell out of my chair laughing when I heard this.
(It’s a remarkable sidebar that the opposition is still paying homage to Peter’s brilliant political manoeuvering following Belinda’s double-defection. He really made me want to get a dog that day. Two thumbs up!)
Instead, Judy Sgro whines in, as follows: “Nobody invented those comments. He made the comments, and the fact that he refuses to apologize to the women of Canada frankly is a complete disrespect for himself.”
Huh? Apologize to the “women of Canada”. How dare Ms. Sgro so harshly implicate the “women of Canada” by comparing them to Belinda Stronach.
Belinda Stronach is truly Canada’s Paris Hilton. Here are the striking similarities:
- Daddy’s money.
- Both are blonde and attractive (and, when applicable, “young”), and few media articles on either fails to mention at least one of these indisputable facts.
- The media can’t get enough of either.
- Both have been implicated (unfairly, of course) in various scandals of a sexual nature. It’s some nameless boyfriend for Paris, trumped easily by a married Bill Clinton and Tie Domi for Belinda (allegedly, of course). I blame the media for these vicious lies.
- Both throw really great parties!
- Both used their family celebrity to launch careers in which they had no particularly outstanding skills of their own. It’s acting and music for Paris, versus business and politics for Belinda.
The “D” Word
When diplomats speak about North Korea, they call it “DPRK” — the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”. South Korea goes by the less colourful “Republic of Korea”.
It got me thinking. What the hell is so “democratic” about North Korea? I remembered another country of notoriety using this in its name, so I got curious about what other thugocracies were attempting to make up for their reality in this fashion.
According to the ISO Country Names, there are only three.
Sharing this distinction with North Korea is the venerable “Democratic Republic of the Congo” (the one I recalled), and “Lao People’s Democratic Republic”.
Joseph Kabila of The Congo (or, the DRC, hmmm…) makes Kim Jong-Il look like a pretty nice guy. Even AU pal Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe doesn’t make laughable use of the word “Democratic” in it’s official name. But then again, this is Africa, home to places like Liberia, which has rarely lived up to its namesake.
Admittedly, I know little about North Korea’s Asian “Democratic” counterpart, Laos. I do know that it is a socialist, landlocked country in Eastern Asia that started market reforms long after China. They are only 139th in GDP per capita, so things must be going pretty good.
Well, three is clearly enough: Let’s call them the “Axis of Democracy”.
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