I stopped by this morning with the specific aim of watching the Gen-X train go off the rails on the Court Challenges Program. Ahh, the sweet nectar of outrage! Please, more!

In your pre-judgment missed my mention of its personal uselessness to me and the statement that it was not about the policy. If you are not going to read the words, Dr. Flea, I will have to express myself to you through meat-based baked goods delivery or shopping mall performance art. Have that cup of coffee before you hit "comment" next time - and then actually comment.

It could be you are incentivising the opposite of what you are after.* Your offer of meat-based baked goods delivery sounds like it might be off the table if I read the words carefully so I think I shall carry on carrying on. I am partial to steak and kidney pie, btw.

*Sort of like the Court Challenges Problem; the irony!

Best joke. Man in pub. Orders "steak and kidley pie". Waiter says "Ha ha. You said 'steak and kidley'". Offended man responds "No, I didly!!!"

PS - you use big words: incentivising.

The technocrat-speak is thanks to years of work as a consultant to the Major and Blair administrations. "Disincentivising" is quite possibly my favourite word.

It's a good thing the're only running a $13 billion surplus or maybe they'd cut back on our Kyoto commitments as well - oh wait - they did that. Oh - wait - that's a surplus??

They say they want to pay down the debt. Must be getting ready to buy something pretty big. Oh yeah, CF-18s in Afganistan. Rock n Roll!

And yet Canadian reserves of indifference toward the people of Afghanistan remain at an all-time high. No rock n roll for them once the Canadians leave... it's burqas for everybody!

Note as well the similar deduction from the Law Commission is not remarked upon despite or perhaps due to my summer job there in 1991.

A quick look through the Law Commission's research projects suggests why it got the ax(e). Research into accounting for "group rights" in addition to individual rights (i.e. rights) would have added it to my list of things best left to Master's students' seminar projects. No need to pay for this sort of thing twice when we already subsidize it heavily through higher education. Which raises another area of Kobe beef-style spending to have a look at...

Our "Kyoto commitments" were long since dead, though I can understand how words mean more to some than actions.

Now, onto the meat -- I think Al's "whose is it?" questions are akin in practice though perhaps not intent to "are you still beating your wife?" types. That is, the multifacted nature of the topic makes any straightforward answer unsatisfactory in some regards or another.

However, the cancelling court challenges is a good step toward saying who's government it isn't: that is, the government belonging a wealthy and radicalized clique.

Long term funding of such programs provides an avenue for people who would otherwise have to democratically convince others of the worth of their ideas a powerful (a profitable) way of circumventing the same. Students can go into law programs (and law professors can look forward to students) that enter law programs with the intent to move power from the electorate/the existing to themselves.

The scope of the money saved on anticipated lawyers-fees by settling the softwood lumber dispute gives some tiny clue of the vested interests working against finding a solution to that problem lest the gravy train run out of, uhh, gravy.

I find your suspicions that I have a hidden "AH-HA" card charming...but sadly not so. I ask this question openly and naively.

I think David's point about whose it is not is very interesting. Unlike the US and their concept of "the People" we have been left with the clique. We are, however, exchanging cliques are we not? I become more and more jealous of local politics in NY state and am glad I am situated as I am to follow it and learn from it more and more. Canada may have an issue of the scale of administration (not the size but the location of administration) that it may have a problem resolving.

I would like to unambiguously state I do not believe for a moment your concerns/questions are related to a personal stake in them in any crude financial sense of the term. Or indeed that they have any necessary or particular correspondence to your professional vocation.

Well, Alan, local politics in NY state vary. Some in this county wonder why our gas is 40-50 cents a gallon higher than just over the Pennsylvania line. We have an amazing bus system is part of the reason. People in this community rightly feel the schools are great. People in Buffalo may wonder why the schools have cutbacks. There may be awesome salaries in NY city, but nowhere for the middle class to live. So, NY is not a perfect state, but what I see tells me this: the state TRIES. Which is, I think, what local, county and state gov'ts are supposed to do: try to help improve the lives of the citizens.

But there is a whack of goverance that is below the state level that we do not have. I have noticed at gas stations in Watertown, NY for example that the job of weights and measures is delegated to the County level. Cape Vincent NY has its own open beer can law. We up here are so distanced from so many of the decisions as a procedural matter that it is inevitable that cliques arise. If you cannot participate in a decision due to distance from the decision making process, is it not a watered down form of democracy? Sort of a doublely representative one.<p>Local also has its own issues, of course.

One of the most disconcerting facts of life in England is the constant reminder of how centralized government is in Whitehall. The whole intermediary role of provincial/state politics and their critical constitutional role is entirely lacking in the UK; not excepting the new national parliament/assembly in Scotland and Wales which exist (almost) entirely at the behest of Westminster.

I was going to say I don't have a problem with cliques, but in this case I have a problem with this particular clique:
- it's unrepresentative of Canadians (otherwise, they'd not need to be funded)
- it distorts law schools, lawyers and hence the law
- I don't particularly care to be paying for it; certainly there's no natural or consistitutional reason to.

Local does have its own issues, of course, but that's the beauty of constitutional protections and precidence: the nature of the system isn't "once I get in power you'll have to do what I say".

All governing cliques are unrepresentative and twist the law to suit their needs. They also cost money.

Your point Alan, about NY county gov'ts seems true. Tompkins County runs the buses, the library and most of the road and bridge stuff. A person has a very direct connection to the governance. In New Hampshire, where we were many years, the state barely had anything and localities had all the tax power and most other powers too. It was absurd, because some towns had it made and others struggled. When we were in Chicago, the city ruled most of Cook county and state, it seemed, although the suburbs represent another type of power there. The US was founded on the idea of states having certain powers, and so I have only a dim idea of what sort of central control you describe. HOWEVER, centralized gov'ts have the power to do the right thing sometimes, like end slavery or institute health care for all.

Somehow I new you were going to say that Al.

But we've got a way of deciding how something is going to "cost [us] money" if it's the government doing the spending -- we elect them!

Taking a slightly different tack: If the program didn't exist, would we expect this (or any) government to create it? My answer is no, as it is for oh so many programs ;-)

I am experiencing a growing astonishment that the Canada Council has yet to hand out grants to blogs nobody reads. This would be characterized as "protecting" "Canadian" "culture" from "commodified" "American" blogs that people actually read.

Of course, it could be there are already blogs in this category and I will never hear of them.

Just, then, let me know David when this government cuts spending and lowers taxes as it is shuffling spending and raising taxes so far. But your point is taken. There is many a legacy. I think we three having more than ten collective years of blogging between us ought to draft the form for the application for the grants.

I guess no one else is concerned about the cessation of funding for medical marijuana research?

I take it that the "research" aspect of it means they know what it does, are not cutting back the scope but do need not know any more.

For those of us on the West Coast, it came as a shock to many that the government was pulling the plug on 12 millions smacks worth of funding for the mountain pine beetle epidemic.

Although 12 million dollars will buy a lot of meetings and conferences and "awareness", it will not purchase three weeks of sustained weather below -40 celcius.

Pity though, because if you could put a price on weather, I know a few forestry companies that would be willing to foot the bill.