From: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca (Cdn-Firearms Digest) To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Subject: Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #187 Reply-To: cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Sender: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Errors-To: owner-can-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Precedence: normal Cdn-Firearms Digest Monday, July 4 2005 Volume 08 : Number 187 In this issue: Re: lead [LETTER] (Some rights are more right that others, according to the new pro gun site for the left Re:"On Protracted Struggle" Democracy: Freedom of Dissent Re: lets do it A good manager, poor leader Bear attack in Alaska, 25-26 June 2005: Cdn media's response EDITOR (We'd say simply "there's no way") ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 21:01:52 -0600 (CST) From: Bill Farion Subject: Re: lead Hi; Thanks to the fools who voted lieberal! PUBLICATION: National Post DATE: 2005.06.18 BYLINE: Peter Shawn Taylor This year's fishing season could be the last time Canadian anglers are allowed to use those ubiquitous lead fishing sinkers. That's because the federal government is proposing to ban lead tackle and force fishermen to find more expensive alternatives. But even non-anglers should be concerned with how and why the government is making this decision. The circumstances surrounding the proposed lead-sinker ban reveal that whimsy and fabrication have replaced science in setting environmental policies. The government and the environmental group that has spearheaded this crusade, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), claim the move is necessary to save Canadian loons from lead poisoning. Yet the actual evidence suggests the size and danger of the lead-sinker issue has been grotesquely exaggerated. And if the Liberals are prepared to pervert scientific evidence in order to justify new laws for picayune issues such as fishing tackle, what does this suggest for bigger and more significant policies? Now urban folk might require a bit of background on the lead debate. In 1991, the U.S. banned lead shotgun pellets because of evidence that they found their way into lakes and rivers and were then ingested by water birds, causing lead poisoning in loons. Canada followed suit in 1997 with its own ban on lead shot. But success on lead shot prompted a broader and bolder agenda, one that appears to be part lead hysteria and part anti-fishing campaign. Today the WWF and the federal government's Canadian Wildlife Service (CWS) argue that if banning lead shot makes sense, then it must also make sense to ban lead fishing tackle, since those small sinkers could get snagged or lost and end up on lake bottoms as well. The WWF and CWS even came up with a catchy factoid -- they claim 500 tonnes of lead sinkers are deposited in Canadian waterways annually. "That's the equivalent weight of dropping 500 cars into our lakes, rivers and streams each year," said former Environment Minister David Anderson last year in announcing the proposal to ban lead sinkers. And this is where policy parts ways with logic and science. There's a fundamental difference between firing a shotgun shell over water and watching the pellets fall into the lake, and fishing with a sinker. Shotgun pellets are not designed to be reused. Sinkers are. In fact there is no reason why a careful fisherman couldn't use a handful of sinkers his entire life. That famous 500-tonne figure -- and the image of an endless parade of cars being driven off piers into our lakes - -- assumes that every fisherman in Canada manages to lose his entire collection of sinkers at the end of every season. Selling a sinker is, in the government's mind, the same as ramming it down the throat of an unsuspecting loon. Then there is the fact that a sizeable portion, perhaps even a majority by weight, of lead sinkers sold in Canada are not the tiny bits of metal you squeeze on your line, but what are called downrigger balls. These are five- to 10-pound weights used for trolling for Great Lake salmon and other deep-water fish. And if there are loons out there swallowing 10-pound balls of lead, the environment has bigger problems than sinker ingestion. But of course all this is just speculation. If there really is a credible danger to waterbirds from lead sinkers, then there should be a scientific process to determine the extent of the havoc being wreaked. In fact, ingestion of lead sinkers has been studied extensively on both sides of the border. When environmentalists first began moving against lead sinkers, the U.S. National Wildlife Health Center in Madison, Wisc., was asked to study the issue. Scientists there examined 2,240 individual waterbirds over four years and found only 23 birds (including 11 loons) that had lead sinkers in their stomachs. A larger study in Illinois found one bird out of 16,651 was carrying a lead sinker. As a result of these findings, the U.S. government abandoned plans for a nation-wide lead-sinker ban. Canadian research reveals the same basic level of lead-sinker mortality north of the border. Between 1964 and 1999, the CWS was able to identify 71 birds and one turtle that had died from swallowing lead sinkers. A more recent study shows much the same thing. A 2003 CWS publication says: "An average of six cases of wildlife mortality from sinker ingestion have been documented annually in Canada between 1987 and 1998." Six dead birds. Per year. It's not exactly a bird holocaust out there. Now this might be compared with the thousands of loons that have died over the past three years on Lake Erie due to botulism. Or the fact that virtually the entire loon nesting habitat was wiped out in 2004 on Lake of the Woods when the water table rose precipitously. Or that the North American loon population is estimated at 700,000 birds. Six dead birds nationwide due to lead sinker ingestion is insignificant to the point of amusing. Or it would be, if not for the fact that the federal government has seen fit to ignore its own scientific evidence when making policy. Brochures from Environment Canada call lead-sinker ingestion "the leading cause of death reported in adult common loons." The WWF for its part has claimed that the lead-based loonie death toll "could be as high as 30,000 birds per year" in Ontario alone. It is pure fantasy. This winter, Environment Minister Stephane Dion claimed to hold a consultation on the lead-sinker debate. But with his department working hand in glove (or worm on hook) with the WWF and a ban already unveiled as the preferred policy of the government, the fishing community is bracing for an inevitable end to lead sinkers some time this year. The actual monetary impact of a ban is a question mark. Sinkers themselves are relatively inexpensive and phasing out lead might only add a few bucks a year to the cost of fishing. Yet the proposed regulation talks about banning any tackle with a 1% lead content, which would include brass fishing reels and a wide variety of spinners, jigs and other paraphernalia. And at a much greater cost to the industry. Regardless of whether the cost is big or little, however, the key issue remains the process by which government is making this decision, since it appears to be driven by an egregious misrepresentation of scientific evidence. Biologist David Ankney is a member of the CWS editorial board, but he takes a dim view of what passes for science at that government agency. "In my 30 years as a wildlife scientist, I've seen bad science and I've seen abuse of science," he says of the 2003 CWS report on lead-sinker ingestion. "But never have I seen so much bad science and abuse of science in one document." If six dead loons can become the basis for a policy that could force Canadians to spend more money, change their habits or even give up fishing -- in other words, if a fact-blind environmental agenda can drive government actions -- then what else is Ottawa capable of manipulating? Easy question, of course. The answer is Kyoto . ****************** ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 21:01:58 -0600 (CST) From: "Bruce Mills" Subject: [LETTER] (Some rights are more right that others, according to the Grits.) Sender: owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Precedence: normal Reply-To: cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca http://www.canoe.ca/CalgarySun/editorial.html#letters I'm glad Prime Minister Paul Martin made the pronouncement that "a right is a right." Now maybe he'll get to work restoring Canadian's right to property, and the right to keep and bear arms, which were "conveniently" -- that is to say, deliberately -- withheld in the Charter of "rights." As he said, you can't cherry-pick which rights you're going to uphold. Bruce N. Mills (Some rights are more right that others, according to the Grits.) ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 21:02:27 -0600 (CST) From: "Tracey Kleim" Subject: new pro gun site for the left >new pro gun site for the left > >Check this out.... > >http://www.redgunsforus.com/redgunsforus.htm Tracey Kleim Canadian Director Women Against Gun Control "Women helped take away guns. Now women must help get them back." ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 21:03:07 -0600 (CST) From: Edward Hudson Subject: Re:"On Protracted Struggle" On 2005 Jul 03, at 3:34 PM, Bruce Mills wrote: >> plan to rid Canada of guns >> incrementally, > > It takes them so long because they don't want to get the peons up in > arms. You are indeed correct that we have much to learn from Mao Tse-Tung. Mao lead his followers on a 10,000 kilometer Long March (more correctly a retreat) in which the majority of the troops starved and died, but they saved their cause. If we learn nothing else from these Chinese, we must learn the virtue of Commitment. As Bruce correctly states, the government obviously does not want to get us too upset. They just give us a "gentle" push here, and a "mild" poke there, slowly turning up the heat under their boiling pot of water. If we relax in the ever warming water, registering another firearm to "just to keep it 'safe' for hunting season," or renewing a licence "because we own handguns" we are doomed. Getting out of the boiling water is going to take Commitment: We are going to go into the fire ! But we must TURN OFF THE STOVE !! We can not do that sitting in the water. Sincerely, Eduardo ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 21:03:33 -0600 (CST) From: Edward Hudson Subject: Democracy: Freedom of Dissent Snipped from: On 2005 Jul 03, at 7:47 PM, paul chicoine wrote: Some view protest movements as anti-democratic because the rules are made by elected representatives. They forget that democracy is far more than mere majoritarianism that assumes that the greater number is always right. Democracy is also freedom of conscience and dissent even in the face of a disapproving majority. Julius H. Grey, a Montreal lawyer ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 21:04:17 -0600 (CST) From: "Jim S." Subject: Re: lets do it Ross - I know nothing about these things, but I think this is an excellent plan. I heartily endorse this type of approach, if for no other reason than the Liberals are getting complacent, and I'm not ready to roll over yet. The RFC has lost some momentum. Notwithstanding the excellent letter writing/ information campaign that Bruce and others have so diligently been investing energy into, and with the CUFOA folks and Bruce Montague taking most of the challenge load these days, organizing a new group may revitalize the discussion around RFC goals and efforts. As the old saying goes: "If at first you don't succeed, you're about normal." I'll sign on. If you want, you can send me a PEM at: mudman1@telusplanet.net Jim Szpajcher St. Paul, AB > I am willing to draft the bylaws, as I have done so for our martial arts > federation. With some cutting and pasting and revising, it can be > something that should take wings and fly > > Anyone else willing to step up??? ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2005 21:04:17 -0600 (CST) From: "Bruce Mills" Subject: A good manager, poor leader http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Artic le_Type1&c=Article&cid=1120168212495&call_pageid=968332188774&col=9683501164 67 Jul. 2, 2005. 10:25 AM A good manager, poor leader SUSAN DELACOURT OTTAWA BUREAU CHIEF OTTAWA-What happened to the old Paul Martin? It's a question that more than one person has asked over these past few months, as the Prime Minister's not-even-one-year-old government seemed to be perpetually teetering on the abyss of chaos and collapse. The people who ask this question are MPs, even some ministers, who feel that as things got more intense, Martin became increasingly distant. Sure, he was there - this frenetically travelling, hands-in-everything politician won't get any marks taken off for absenteeism in the public spotlight - but he seemed to be missing the spark that attracted so many to his supporters' circle when he was only the heir apparent. At his end-of-session news conference this week, Martin became similarly elusive when asked whether the past year had changed him. Never comfortable talking about himself at the best of times, he dodged and weaved and diverted the topic toward the nature of minority governments. Even when reporters joked that he couldn't leave the room until he said something personal, Martin stuck to the abstract and impersonal. "When I was the minister of finance, I set out certain objectives," he said. "I set out certain objectives and we achieved them. And as Prime Minister, despite the fact that we had a minority government, I set out certain objectives and we have achieved them. We've gotten the job done. And so I think that what I've done as prime minister is what I did as finance minister." In other words, it seems, he doesn't think he has changed. The world is more complicated, yes, but Paul Martin is still Paul Martin, charting his path through the complexity. Or, it's more like managing his way through the complexity. That self-evaluation goes a long way to explaining why he can only boast a C+ in leadership at this one-year mark of his minority government. Several months ago, at the Liberal party's big convention in Ottawa, the Prime Minister's Office communications chief Scott Reid stood watching his boss field reporters' questions at yet another news conference. A few of the reporters began their questions by reminding Martin of statements or promises he had made in the past. Reid joked: "I'm thinking of a new communications strategy for this type of question. Let me try it out on you: When people say, `Mr. Martin, you once said or used to say ...' I think he should just cut them off and say, `No, I didn't.'" If only it was that simple. Martin spent so long waiting to take the top job - 13 long years between his failed leadership bid of 1990 and his takeover of the party in 2003 - that he has a long chain of past statements and positions to haunt him in his current job. He is in the unenviable position for any politician of being measured against himself, or, more specifically, against what he promised to be. Martin and his people were the champions of high expectations. He would be everything that Jean Chrétien, his predecessor and the master of keeping things low key, was not. One of the biggest areas in which Martin promised to be different was on the question of leadership versus management. Where Chrétien was a manager, Martin would be a leader. Let there be no doubt, to use one of Martin's favourite phrases, this was to be a defining difference. Several years ago, after reading a column that explored the difference between leadership and management, some of Martin's closest strategists got in touch with the reporter who wrote the column and said Martin would be the man who would turn managerial government into visionary leadership. So, what were those differences? The column was based on an article in the fall 2001 edition of the Harvard Business Review, which set out four basic distinctions between leadership and management: - - Management copes with complexity; leadership copes with change. - - Managers plan and budget; leaders set direction. - - Managers deal with people by organizing and staffing; leaders deal with people through alignment and building coalitions. - - Managers control and solve problems; leaders motivate and inspire. If these were the benchmarks by which Martin wanted to establish his governing style, it's hard to argue that he's achieved them yet. He's coped with complexity by merely surviving. The direction of the Martin government is difficult to find amid all the planning and budgeting. Organizing and staffing are the main tools of control in Martin-land, most people would agree, although minority government has plunged the strategists into building ever-shifting coalitions. The precarious minority has also kept the Martin PMO constantly focused on controlling and solving problems rather than motivation and inspiration. And that leads us right back to Martin's inability or unwillingness to talk in the realm of the personal. On each of the major decisions that Martin had to make this year, he displayed a stubborn resistance to explain himself. The same-sex marriage controversy was the most notable example, when Martin kept saying it was the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that led him to support equal rights for gays and lesbians to wed (although he seems to have a lot of trouble blurting out the words "gay" and "lesbian," as more than one commentator has noted). This Prime Minister, who has admittedly struggled with the whole concept himself, hasn't articulated the struggle or the conclusion all that well. The same thing can be seen on the decision not to go along with the U.S. missile defence program. Martin could say how he arrived at the decision, especially the timing of it around the federal budget, but not why he came to it. Conservative Leader Stephen Harper has been watching this trait of Martin's closely and says it reminds him of an old episode of the Barney Miller TV sitcom from the 1970s, which revolved around the characters in a grubby police station. In one particular episode, Harper recalled recently, a street person is trying to tell the cops how he became a bum. He goes on and on about his former, middle-class, ordinary life and then is asked what happened. "One day, I became a bum," he simply explains. Harper, watching Martin's decision-making or, more correctly, his decision-explaining, skills, says he has come to believe that this Prime Minister only comes to a conclusion because he wants to stop talking about something, that he's decided the conversation is over. It's not that the conversation has led anywhere, it's just that it's dragged on long enough. It's an astute observation, which echoes what others more friendly to Martin also say: That in his time in business and at finance, he only needed to be preoccupied with the how of the decision rather than the why. Business and finance are only about the bottom line. There's no debate about what the goal should be. But being prime minister is all about sorting out which goals to pursue, deciding what purposes are better than others. Martin is still learning that skill, government insiders say. Comedian Rick Mercer has recently started an online blog, and with his trademark acerbic bite, he thinks he's fastened on to how Martin leads. "When it comes to his style of governing, Paul Martin is bit like a kitten chasing a string. Half the fun is watching the poor creature stumble around and slam into things with wild abandon. Like most Canadians, at the outset, I was pretty shocked by the spectacle. For a while there, whenever he was asked a direct question, he practically broke out in bumps. When you look in the eyes of the Prime Minister, it's a bit disconcerting to realize you are gazing into the eyes of a hysteric," Mercer recently blogged. Everything changed, however, when Harper threatened to bring down Martin's government, Mercer argued. "I remember the moment. Martin came out of a daycare centre in Gander, Newfoundland, and spoke to the press. I don't remember what he had to say exactly, but what stuck me was how he said it. The stuttering disappeared. He didn't start every sentence with five uhhs and an umm. Basically, he didn't come across like a blithering fool, which I guess is a good ambition to have in politics. It was like he got hit in the head and was suddenly cured. The difference being he was no longer the prime minister, he was the candidate." It's funny, but it also rings true. Whether it was in giving his testimony at the inquiry into the sponsorship scandal, racing around the country or addressing the nation on TV to save his government, Martin seems most comfortable when he settles back into his old role as the finance minister/would-be prime minister - the candidate. His friends and even his foes are still waiting to see how he does when he realizes he actually is the prime minister; when he realizes that he has changed over the past year, that he's not the man he used to be - and nor should he be. ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2005 06:24:18 -0600 (CST) From: "Murray" Subject: Bear attack in Alaska, 25-26 June 2005: Cdn media's response Ladies & Gentlemen: This killing of two campers in northern Alaska by a grizzly bear received almost no coverage by our media. Why? This was, after all, the 8th bear attack in western North America during less than a three-week period. Four fatalities, and one attack that was very nearly a fatality. Is this not news? After seeing a brief notice of the 8th attack on Cdn Firearms Digest, I looked for further coverage on CTV News, CBC News, some American channels, and in the Globe and Mail, the National Post, and other papers. Correct me if I'm wrong, but nothing appeared in any of these outlets. So, I headed for a news organ closer to the source: the Anchorage Daily News. Its June 28th edition contained a two-page-plus report. The ransacked campsite in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, of Richard and Katherine Huffman, was discovered by a local fellow, who tried to investigate, but was chased off by a grizzly bear. The search-and-rescue team found that the campers had been killed in their sleeping bags. A grizzly bear on the site, who had moved off when the team's helicopter approached, was tracked down and shot. It was apparently a healthy male, five to seven years old. A necropsy was to be performed on the animal. The Huffmans were long-experienced and very careful campers in bear country. They took care to keep food away from their tent, and employed bear-proof containers. In areas where bears were common, they were known even to eat in one place and camp in another -- downstream, for example. They had a firearm, but it had not been fired. An unprovoked attack and, given the circumstances, very rare. Why no coverage in our media? I have my own ideas, and a low opinion of our mainstream media, but I'd like to hear from subscribers to Cdn Firearms Digest. Regards//jmb ------------------------------ Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2005 06:24:49 -0600 (CST) From: Breitkreuz@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca, Garry - Assistant 1 Subject: EDITOR (We'd say simply "there's no way") PUBLICATION: The Toronto Sun DATE: 2005.07.04 EDITION: Final SECTION: Editorial/Opinion PAGE: 18 COLUMN: Letters to the Editor DOES ANYONE truly believe that the number of deaths from guns being halved in the last 20 years is due to the gun registry ("Gun death rate drops," June 29)? How about better trauma teams at the hospital? Better trained and equipped paramedics who arrive first on scene? Cellphones that allow a person to call 911 without having to find a neighbour who will let you in to use their home phone? There are many possible reasons for a reduction in deaths. Arbitrarily choosing the gun registry just proves that statistics can be manipulated to support any argument. Ollie Bourque Toronto EDITOR (StatsCan said "there's no way to know" if the gun registry was a factor. We'd say simply "there's no way") ------------------------------ End of Cdn-Firearms Digest V8 #187 ********************************** Submissions: mailto:cdn-firearms-digest@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Mailing List Commands: mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca Moderator's e-mail address: mailto:akimoya@cogeco.ca List owner: mailto:owner-cdn-firearms@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca FAQ list: http://www.magma.ca/~asd/cfd-faq1.html and http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/Faq/cfd-faq1.html Web Site: http://teapot.usask.ca/cdn-firearms/homepage.html FTP Site: ftp://teapot.usask.ca/pub/cdn-firearms/ CFDigest Archives: http://www.sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca/~ab133/ or put the next command in an e-mail message and mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca get cdn-firearms-digest v04.n192 end (192 is the digest issue number and 04 is the volume) To unsubscribe from _all_ the lists, put the next five lines in a message and mailto:majordomo@sfn.saskatoon.sk.ca unsubscribe cdn-firearms-digest unsubscribe cdn-firearms-alert unsubscribe cdn-firearms-chat unsubscribe cdn-firearms end (To subscribe, use "subscribe" instead of "unsubscribe".) 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