Sandro Contenta

Sandro Contenta writes a weekly column on Canada for GlobalPost. Contenta has been a staff reporter with the Toronto Star, Canada’s biggest circulation daily since 1981. In 1998, he was...

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Sandro Contenta's Notebook:

November 17, 2009 22:44 ET

Could a carbon tax have political legs?

Back in May, I wrote about how a carbon tax won popular support in British Columbia:

TORONTO — Americans who couldn’t care less that British Columbia had an election last week are in good company — most Canadians living outside the west coast province feel the same way.

In fact, many Canadians would be hard pressed to name any premier — similar to the governor of a U.S. state — apart from their own. There are only 10 of them, but a vast geography and small population have made parochial regionalism a defining element of Canadian identity.

Yet provinces have been known to launch initiatives so attractive that the federal government eventually transforms them into national programs. The most famous example is medicare, Canada’s publicly financed health insurance for all residents, which emerged from a 1947 policy in Saskatchewan.

A policy with similar trailblazing potential was implemented in British Columbia last July, under Premier Gordon Campbell’s Liberal government. With the new policy, the province became the first jurisdiction in North America to fight global warming with a tax on carbon emissions. ...

For more on the carbon tax, click here.

November 17, 2009 22:41 ET

Meet Michael Ignatieff

In May, Canada's Liberal Party leader got no shortage of attention:

TORONTO — When it comes to getting noticed in the United States, Canada’s main political rivals are somewhat of a mismatch.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party, recently needed the help of two former presidential press secretaries — Ari Fleischer, who spoke for George W. Bush, and Mike McCurry, who did the same for Bill Clinton.

They booked Harper a round of interviews with CNN, Fox News and the Wall Street Journal, and gave him talking points. Harper explained his government’s recession-busting strategy and flaunted the health of Canada’s banks.

Much of the coverage back home, however, focused on the more than $24,000 each consultant received for the work. Media reports questioned why the many well-paid diplomats at the Canadian embassy in Washington weren’t chosen to do the job.

Liberal Party leader Michael Ignatieff, Harper’s main political opponent, doesn’t need the hired help. His circle of close friends includes Lawrence Summers, head of the White House’s National Economic Council, and Samantha Power, President Barack Obama's friend and former adviser on foreign affairs.

Read the rest of my column here.

November 17, 2009 20:35 ET

Unnecessary security on the US-Canada border?

My last column in April was on the U.S. Homeland Security Secretary causing a ruckus up north:

TORONTO — Desidero Fortunato is a Canadian citizen who regularly visits his second home in Blaine, Wash., crossing the border by car two or three times a week.

Last month, a U.S. border guard — who apparently had no cause for suspicion — ordered him to shut off his engine and get out of the car.

The Canadian penchant for politeness can, admittedly, be irritating. But the 54-year-old competitive dancer got more than he bargained for when he asked the guard to say, "please." First came a blast of pepper spray in the face. Then a handful of guards threw him to the ground, pinned him with their knees and slapped on handcuffs.

Fortunato says the tense interrogation that followed eased only when the guards learned he was born in Portugal.

“Their shields dropped slightly down. It was like you know: ‘OK, he's a westerner, OK, he's not a Muslim, okay, he's a Christian — he's one of us.’ That's what I read,” he told a newspaper.

Fortunato was let go, and the latest reports had U.S. officials investigating the use of force against him.

The thought of U.S. border guards on the lookout for politeness-wielding terrorists sounds like fodder for "Saturday Night Live." But with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano as the guards' boss, Canadians are beginning to think anything is possible. ...

For more on the ruckus, read on.

November 17, 2009 20:31 ET

Canada latches on to mandatory minimums

A few months ago, I wrote a colum on how Canadian politicians moved to impose minimum sentences, even as the U.S. government was rethinking them:

TORONTO — It surprised no one recently when Prime Minister Stephen Harper traveled to Vancouver to demonstrate yet again that he is “tough on crime.”

The Pacific coast city, host of the 2010 Winter Olympics, is in the grips of a murderous gang war over drugs and turf. It was the perfect backdrop for Harper and his ministers to announce a new batch of laws that impose mandatory minimum sentences on crimes from drug possession to drive-by shootings.

Under the proposed changes, judges would have no choice but to impose, for example, a minimum six-month prison sentence for someone caught growing just one marijuana plant, a minimum three-year sentence for producing methamphetamine in a residential area, and a minimum of four years for anyone convicted of a drive-by shooting. Maximum sentences are, of course, far higher.

There’s little doubt the proposals will be passed by Parliament, despite the conservative government’s minority status. Two opposition political parties — the socialist New Democrats and the centrist Liberals — supported an earlier batch of mandatory minimum sentencing laws for gun-related crimes proposed last year. Alone in bucking the trend is the Bloc Quebecois, a party dedicated to breaking up Canada by making the province of Quebec an independent country. ...

If you'd like to read more, click here.

November 17, 2009 20:27 ET | Updated: November 17, 2009 20:27 ET

The last westerner in Guantanamo

Back in April, I wrote about how Canada's government refused to call for the release of a young Canadian held at the U.S. prison, Guantanamo:

TORONTO — On the morning of July 27, 2002, American Special Forces soldiers were pinned down by an outnumbered handful of suspected Al Qaeda fighters in a compound south of Kabul. Two F-18 warplanes proceeded to drop 500-pound bombs.

When the smoke cleared, Sgt. 1st Class Christopher Speer went to survey the rubble. The Denver, Colo. native never saw the grenade that landed at his feet, killing him. A U.S. soldier says he then saw an injured fighter lying in the debris and shot him dead. He saw another — later identified as Omar Khadr — sitting on the ground, and pumped two bullets into his back.

Khadr survived. As an army medic treated the gaping exit wounds on his chest, Khadr whispered, in English, "Shoot me.”

He was 15 years old. He was also a Toronto-born Canadian citizen.

Today, Khadr is the last westerner languishing in America’s notorious Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba. Other western countries have demanded and secured the release of their citizens. But successive Canadian governments have steadfastly refused to even ask for Khadr’s return. That fact alone challenges Canada’s self-image as a standard-bearer for human rights and international law. ...

If you'd like to read more, visit the article in full at GlobalPost.