Canadá (Continuación)

Could Shipwrecks Lead the World to War?

Internacional, , , , ,

Archaeology has long been exploited as a political tool. Hitler used artifacts and symbols to manufacture a narrative of Aryan racial superiority. The Islamic State proves its zealotry by destroying evidence of ancient history. Underwater archaeology — the world of shipwrecks and sunken cities — has mostly avoided these kinds of machinations, though. Since no one lives beneath the sea, leaders haven’t found many opportunities for political gains from archaeological sites there.

That is, until now.

In the past few years, politicians in Canada, Russia and China have realized that they can use shipwrecks on the sea floor to project their sovereignty into new maritime territories.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The resounding demand for change that saw the Liberal leader Justin Trudeau swept into the Canadian prime minister’s office, and Stephen Harper out of it, also introduced other auspicious changes, setting the country on a different but familiar path. The 338-seat House of Commons now has more female representatives than ever before, and there are 46 members from minority groups (though African-Canadians are still underrepresented). The country’s first lawmaker born in Afghanistan was elected. The 10 members from Canada’s indigenous population of about 1.4 million is also a record.

These results are immensely gratifying to a majority of Canadians who understand that aboriginal peoples, referred to as “First Nations,” hold a pivotal place in Canada, and that the modern nation-state was founded on the labor of successive tides of immigrants who left behind wars or natural disasters and built new lives here.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

The day after Monday's Canadian federal election, Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister designate, received a congratulatory call from U.S. President Barack Obama. During their conversation, Trudeau told Obama that he was going to keep his promise to the Canadian electorate to end the bombing mission against ISIS in Iraq and Syria initiated by his predecessor, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, late last year.

In early October 2014, Parliament approved an initial 6-month bombing campaign that was restricted to Iraq. Both opposition parties, the Liberals and the New Democrats, voted against it, though public opinion was generally favorable.

On October 22, 2014, a lone gunman shot dead Corporal Nathan Cirillo while he was on ceremonial sentry duty, guarding the National War Memorial in Ottawa.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The Monday night election defeat of Stephen Harper, the Conservative prime minister of Canada, and the triumph of his most hated rival, the Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, gave many Canadians that rush of feeling they so rarely enjoy: “It’s a girl.” “The lab says it’s benign.” “Your long national nightmare is over.”

But after what was seen here as a painfully protracted 11-week campaign, we are more relieved than triumphant. (It’s a different high than Americans might have after an election: How do you tolerate an almost permanent level of high-cortisol stress?)

It’s not that Canada has the same impossibly high expectations of Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The story of the general election in Canada that catapulted the Liberal Party back into power after its near-death decade in exile is the unlikely story of Justin Trudeau, Canada's Prime Minister-elect.

The charismatic son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, the iconic leader of Canada from 1968 to 1984, Justin Trudeau spent his first 12 years at 24 Sussex Drive, the official residence of the Prime Minister. He taught mathematics and English before entering politics and was elected to parliament from Montreal in 2008. Like his father, he skis, boxes and canoes.

Now 43, the same age John F. Kennedy became president, he is Canada's second-youngest prime minister.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

According to the Reputation Institute, it is the "most admired" nation on earth. Immigrants flock there from all over the world -- for the most part politely standing in line for the opportunity.

Taxes seem to get lower every year and the government runs a surplus. Burdensome regulations have been slashed and the tax code's been rewritten to encourage business investment and pro-family policies. Abroad, it's taking the fight to ISIS with a reinvigorated military, standing side by side with Israel and against aggression from the mullahs of Iran and Vladimir Putin's Russia.

No, it's not three years into the Marco Rubio administration -- it's present-day Canada, and its courageous leader just got booted out of office after nine years of steadily maneuvering the ship of state.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

It is easy to tut-tut the overindulgences of the American right. For Canadians, it is practically a birthright. None of our politicians, many of us would like to believe, would dare invoke the Trumpian galaxy of Mexican rapists, or ponder publicly, as the Republican nominee Ben Carson did, that Europe’s Jews would have fared better against Hitler if only the Third Reich hadn’t instituted gun control.

Yet over the last several weeks of an increasingly caustic election campaign, Prime Minister Stephen Harper and Canada’s ruling Conservative Party have managed to erase much of our trademark smugness.

Faced with a stalling economy and a corresponding dip in the polls, Mr.…  Seguir leyendo »

Canada’s History of Violence

MundoAmérica, ,

For many Americans, the phrase “Canadian violence” is an oxymoron. But the start of the National Hockey League season is a reminder that Canadians are, like everyone else, capable of violence, even if it is in the form of a butt-end, crosscheck, slash or gloves-down brawl.

To be sure, the violence is mostly confined to the ice rink. But the nature of violence and people’s attitudes about it differ dramatically in our northern neighbor. Canadians kill 1.6 out of every 100,000 people in a year. Americans nearly triple that rate, killing 4.7 out of every 100,000 people in a year. And while Canadians long ago agreed to restrict gun ownership, Americans are far from reaching a similar consensus.…  Seguir leyendo »

A pro-refugee rally in Vancouver last month. Credit Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

MundoAmérica, ,

When I saw the photo of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying dead, facedown, on a Turkish beach last month, I felt an electrifying stillness.

At the same age as that toddler, I came to Canada as a Chinese refugee soon after Hong Kong fell to the Japanese in late December 1941. Thanks to the Red Cross, my family took two ships and a train and arrived in Canada in August 1942; the voyage took us through Mozambique, South Africa and Brazil before we arrived in New York harbor and, eventually, Ottawa.

My parents, my seven-year-old brother and I were nearly turned away at the dock when boarding in Hong Kong because someone noticed that we weren’t white and Canada at the time had a notorious restriction against Chinese immigration.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper, has called an election for Oct. 19, but he doesn’t want anyone to talk about it.

He has chosen not to participate in the traditional series of debates on national television, confronting his opponents in quieter, less public venues, like the scholarly Munk Debates and CPAC, Canada’s equivalent of CSPAN. His own campaign events were subject to gag orders until a public outcry forced him to rescind the forced silence of his supporters.

Mr. Harper’s campaign for re-election has so far been utterly consistent with the personality trait that has defined his tenure as prime minister: his peculiar hatred for sharing information.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaEspañaModelo de EstadoModelo Territorial,

Me escribe un colega desde Barcelona que procure almacenar el muy necesario oxígeno en algún bosque canadiense para observar los acontecimientos que se van a producir en nuestro país en los próximos meses. Lo cierto es que el abundante cauce del río San Lorenzo y los frondosos bosques que verdean en el paisaje de Quebec, un territorio más extenso que la península Ibérica, invitan a pensar en la singularidad de esta provincia que se ha definido como una nación, ha intentado sin conseguirlo en dos ocasiones pronunciarse en referéndum sobre su independencia de Canadá .

El partido no ha terminado y el total reconocimiento de la lengua francesa, la única oficial en Quebec, más la aceptación por parte del Parlamento federal canadiense de que Quebec forma una nación dentro de un Canadá unido, no han apagado el deseo de una parte de quebequeses de volar por su cuenta y declararse independientes.…  Seguir leyendo »

No Justice for Canada’s First Peoples

MundoAmérica,

I believe in justice. I can’t say I’ve seen that much of it in my lifetime, but I like the concept.

On June 2, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its executive summary on the ill-advised system of government-mandated, church-run residential schools that persisted until 1998. For over a century the program sanctioned the kidnapping of native children from their families and communities. All under the guise of education.

The full report, a result of six years of research and public meetings across the country, along with the testimony of some 6,000 residential-school survivors, will be released later this year.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional,

The Canadian Parliament is debating the country’s most significant national security reform in over a decade. The proposed act, known as Bill C-51, would supplement antiterror laws enacted following 9/11. Responding to United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for the criminalization of terrorism, that legislation — passed without partisan rancor — modified Canada’s criminal code, creating a host of new terror offenses.

In contrast, Bill C-51, proposed in January by the Conservative government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper, is a highly politicized response in a parliamentary election year to the October terrorist attacks in Ottawa. With Conservatives controlling the House of Commons, it is widely expected to pass before Parliament breaks in June.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAmérica,

The Supreme Court of Canada overturned a ban on physician-assisted suicide on Friday, unanimously reversing a decision it made in 1993 and putting Canada in the company of a handful of Western countries to make it legal.

The top court said mentally competent, consenting adults who have intolerable physical or psychological suffering from a severe and incurable medical condition have the right to a doctor’s help to die. The illness does not have to be terminal. The decision takes effect in 12 months.

“We do not agree that the existential formulation of the right to life requires an absolute prohibition on assistance in dying, or that individuals cannot ‘waive’ their right to life,” the court said.…  Seguir leyendo »

Credit Mark Blinch/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

MundoAmérica,

In December, a new prostitution law came into force in Canada. The Protection of Communities and Exploited Persons Act, or Bill C-36, criminalizes the purchase (but not the sale) of sexual services, and restricts the advertisement of sexual services and communication in public for the purpose of prostitution. The bill replaces legislation, overturned in December 2013 by Canada’s Supreme Court, which criminalized acts associated with selling sexual services. In its 2013 ruling, the Court deemed these laws in violation of sex workers’ rights to safety and security, and gave Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government one year to implement new legislation.…  Seguir leyendo »

The battle for the Arctic’s resources heats up

MundoAméricaEuropa, , , ,  

A couple of years ago, a Canadian minister proudly declared that Santa Claus was a citizen of Canada. After all, his home and toy factory are at the North Pole, which, according to the minister’s interpretation, belongs to Canada.

Though Santa Claus has not commented on the matter, it is now clear that he could choose several passports when he travels the world. In 2007, a privately funded mini-submarine planted a Russian flag directly beneath his alleged home. And last month, Denmark, which has sovereignty over Greenland, staked its own territorial claim, also covering the North Pole.

By filing its claim with the United Nations Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, Denmark has joined our era’s “great game”: the contest for economic control over a large part of the Arctic.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaReflexionesNaturaleza, , , ,

From early on in the fight over Keystone XL, environmental activists have argued that mining Canadian tar sands (and moving that oil to market through a massive transcontinental pipeline) would be “game over” for the climate. As a result, part of the discussion about the pipeline’s impact has been about whether and how much approving this one single project would add – or not – to the entirety of planet-heating emissions being blown into the atmosphere.

But despite the time and lobbying money and words that have been spent on it, Keystone XL isn’t all that special, necessarily. It’s not just this one construction project that could doom us to a much hotter and more uncomfortable future: we’ve already discovered more oil than we can possibly use and still keep the climate in any sort of humanly tolerable shape.…  Seguir leyendo »

La disputa sobre la procedencia de Santa Claus

MundoAméricaEuropa, , , ,  

Hace un par de años, un ministro canadiense declaró con orgullo que Santa Claus era un ciudadano del Canadá. Al fin y al cabo, su hogar y su fábrica de juguetes están en el Polo Norte, que, según la interpretación del ministro, pertenece al Canadá.

Aunque Santa Claus no ha comentado ese asunto, ahora está claro que, cuando viaja por el mundo el 24 de diciembre, podría elegir varios pasaportes. En 2007, un minisubmarino con financiación privada plantó una bandera rusa directamente debajo de su supuesto hogar y, hace dos semanas, Dinamarca, que tiene la soberanía sobre Groenlandia, señaló su propia reivindicación territorial, que también abarcaba el Polo Norte.…  Seguir leyendo »

Yonathan Araya fills up a Payless car rental shuttle van at a Clean Energy Fuels station in Santa Ana. (Los Angeles Times)

MundoAméricaReflexionesNaturaleza, , ,

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Lima, Peru, is wrapping up Friday after 12 days of negotiations on global carbon emissions.

Yet, even as we work through the complexities of an international agreement, it would be a mistake to miss the extensive change that's already taking place here on North America's Pacific Coast. Last year, our four governments — the states of California, Oregon and Washington and the Province of British Columbia — reached a landmark agreement to align climate and energy strategies for 54 million Americans and Canadians.

The Pacific Coast represents the world's fifth-largest economy, with a GDP of $2.8 trillion.…  Seguir leyendo »

MundoAméricaInternacionalTerrorismo Internacional, ,

Canada, so the reigning cliché goes, is a peaceable country, the quaint counterpoint to the aggressive ways of its southern neighbor. And while part of that cliché is hardly true — we’ve seen our fair share of wars — its central idea generally holds: Canadians tend to be less reactionary in the face of a perceived threat. Witness how Canada didn’t participate in the Vietnam War, or the Iraq invasion in 2003. Cooler heads prevailed, perhaps because (to borrow another cliché) they were watching a hockey game.

Two recent attacks on Canadian soldiers threaten to lay waste to this cheery sensibility.…  Seguir leyendo »