statement by family of Sgt George Miok

George was the youngest of four brothers, raised in a loving home by Anna and Illés [popularly known as Eli, since Illés is Hungarian for Elijah]. The fact his father Eli had served in the military on behalf of his country was a factor in George's decision to join the Engineers in 1998 in response to an army recruiting advertisement.

George attended Archbishop Jordan Catholic High in Sherwood Park, and in his Grade 12 scrapbook George titled the following entry "The Event That Has Changed My Life":

This last summer, the summer of '98, I did Basic military training at the Wainwright training base. The experience was long but it made me look at things differently. I went through many tough times, long nights, and early mornings. I got through the days with the help of friends and my own inner strength. Once, when I was in the field late at night, I looked at the sky and saw stars like I've never seen before and I knew that there was more to life. The whole experience made me appreciate my life more and made me think about everything I was fortunate for.

George was happy spending his Wednesday evenings and Saturdays with his new friends at the Debney Armoury [just west of 75 st on Roper Rd in Edmonton]. He enjoyed the occasional weekend-long adventures in the field, the travel opportunities, the income a reservist receives which allowed him to buy gas for the car, and, most of all, the camaraderie. George took time off from his Bachelor of Education program at the U of Alberta to serve in Bosnia in 2002. He would later teach at École St Cecilia Junior High [a few blocks southeast of Northtown Mall].

A gifted athlete, George loved to play sports: soccer, baseball, hockey, football, and rugby. He was a natural on the dance floor and a coveted two-step partner. He was a long-time member of Edmonton's Csárdás Hungarian Folkdance Ensemble. He loved watching movies and laughing at funny TV shows. He enjoying socializing and was known to go for a long run after a night of merriment.

Before George left on his first overseas deployment to Bosnia he explained his decision to go to his mother by saying that Canada has been good to the family and he wanted to pay his country back. He was also interested in helping those who lived in other countries achieve Canada's peace and prosperity. Anna recalls her son reading a passage from the Bible that included the verse "Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God." George went on his first tour of Afghanistan in 2006. His decision to return not just once but twice was a reflection of his belief that he could continue to make a difference.

George will be loved and remembered forever by his parents, his three older brothers Michael, John, László (Les) and his sister-in-law Melissa, his large extended family (aunts, uncles, and so many cousins), and by his many friends.

The family appreciates the public's sympathy and interest but asks that media inquiries be directed to Grant Cree at (780) 949-3228 or jgcree [at] yahoo.ca during this difficult time.

2010: moving forward

The year has started off under something of a cloud with 8 Field's (Edmonton predecessor to the Alberta-wide 41 CER) first death in theatre to any current member's recollection. On New Year's Day a number of guys from the unit visited George's mother and said that it was the most difficult experience in their military careers. In the evening guys came here to the house to polish George's boots. For hours. Gorecki will take them with him when goes to Trenton with the CO to repatriate the body. When one considers the origins of the injured as well, December 30 may have been Alberta's worst day in Afghanistan.

Not all of the guys were on the best of terms with George but the few who had a falling out with him at one point or another have, if anything, been doing the most to ensure that his memory is preserved and his long service honoured. If there was any one thing that suggests the mentality of the military man to me, I think it may be this way in which a sense of solidarity with one's brothers in arms comes so automatically as a natural priority. That and the job focus. I could see how some observers might think more emotion should be expressed by unit members, but the reality is that the soldiers accept the ultimate sacrifice as something that comes with the territory. A combat zone is not a horror free area, and when they happen people are expected to continue to do their jobs. Men who are extremely sensitive are generally not the dominant type in the armed forces. That does not mean that events like the New Year's Day meeting with the family were not agonizing to all involved.

George would have wanted the guys to have a good time on New Year's Eve and a real effort was made on that count. DJ Earworm, who does a mashup of the top 25 American pop songs every year, did a good job with 2009, packing two dozen different tracks together into a theme of getting back up when down, and I'm sure the mix was popular at a lot of New Year's Eves.

I thought 2009 was going to be the year I ended up more settled but that didn't end up being the case. The year ended with me alive and kicking so by that metric it was a good year.

grim toll in Afghanistan

I have not seen DND disclose the names of the soldiers killed on December 30 yet so I best not disclose those details either, but suffice to say that Wednesday was a difficult day for 41 Combat Engineer Regiment.

One of my two current house mates made a little memorial (photo below) to a guy he knew for 12 years on the main floor here at the militia house.

I didn't know the departed as well but if I could talk to him I'd say it was my pleasure to hang out with you those few times years ago and your sacrifice will not be forgotten.

UPDATE:
The red circles were not in the original photos. I added them with Windows 7 Paint after to identify Sgt George Miok. Below is a photo of George (centre) on a 35 km march in Bosnia in October 2002 with fellow Canadians.

#yegcc: consultant hiring "completely mismanaged" - auditor

Amongst the various gems in the report by Edmonton city auditor David Wiun are the revelations that "consultants are being hired to check with other consultants, and thousands of dollars has been spent on contracts that haven't been completed" and "documents show 25% of consulting contracts cost more than what was agreed upon. And almost 60% of the time, the information submitted was deemed insufficient." Moreover, "contracts were awarded even though no business plan was drawn up detailing what the administration wanted from the consultant, and with several contracts, no final report was ever delivered."

Now one would think that if one isn't delivering a final report, one would lose the city's business to competing consultants (never mind in-house staff, who are even less expensive), but the people in this racket apparently have little to worry about since "only 12% of consulting engagements in [a] sample were acquired through open tender, 68% were awarded through the sole-source process".

Mayor Stephen Mandel explains that city government has grown so much under his watch that city council has to farm out its responsibilities to unelected contractors: "City council is doing more now than we ever have in the past... I think when I first became mayor, we were spending $400 million in capital and now it's up to $1.7 billion last year..."

I'd make two observations here. One, whatever one's opinion of increasing government spending, surely we can agree that the spending that is the most inefficient and vulnerable to abuse should be increased at the slowest rate. Yet consultant spending has soared 30% annually since 2000 to $92 million in 2008. To put $92M into perspective, the Salvation Army's Christmas Kettle fundraising goal is less than half a million, the Salvation Army having raised its goal by one-twentieth of a million this year in order to keep up with a 21% increase in demand for its services.

Two, perhaps city council would not have to hire so many expensive consultants without documentation, competitive bidding, or even a final report if the people in the council chair had more of a relevant skill set themselves. If one truly can't let city management make the decision, or approve the hiring of the people the city needs to make such decisions, then how about doing more analysis of one's own? One of the many councilors who seem to have no comment about the auditor's report relays information that was provided to him by the city with respect to the cost estimates for expanding the LRT west that cries out for NPV analysis. A Net Present Value calculation is taught in every 1st year MBA program and if the city were run like a corporation there would be no chance that competing billion dollar investments like this would be considered apart from a NPV analysis. Before anyone suggests that Brian Dell is displaying his snobbery again I remind readers of the $92 million in taxpayer resources that were spent on consultants do this sort of analysis and the fact city council does not seem to understand what they are receiving from the consultants (why is it left to the auditor to note the lack of real work done? why haven't councilors expressed dissatisfaction with what they have been receiving as opposed to just a professional expert like the auditor?) This isn't to say that the current council is completely out of its depth (it may compare favourably to previous councils which have included tax evaders, thieves, drunks and wife batterers), but rather to suggest that a gap remains between the typical background of an Edmonton city councilor and the private sector manager of a corporation with comparable revenues.

How can council approve a $3 billion+ LRT expansion decision, which will require double digit property tax increases even with the province and Ottawa carrying half the cost (as admitted by Mayor Mandel on Dec 15), without providing us with estimates of the numerator to a NPV analysis? That is to say, the revenue expected to be generated from the various route choices. This is not just a matter of accountability but demonstrating to the province and the feds that city council knows what it is doing. Besides the fact that operating the LRT along 87 avenue to West Ed is 25% less than Stony Plain Road by the city's own analysis, and that not going the 87 avenue route will mean the NAIT trains will require their own permanent turnaround facility south of Health Sciences, and the fact a whole new sort of "low level" train is to be used for Stony Plain Road, how many of the increasing number of residents living west of West Edmonton Mall are going to be inclined to take trams along Stony Plain Road to downtown relative to the faster 87 ave route? The fact that ETS Planning is proposing just 2-car trains here and ETS wants 5 car trains to the U of A from the south should speak volumes on this point. It is well established that the majority of transit users are commuters, and the idea here is to get cars off the road, no?

At issue here is the added risk of cost over-runs and lower with a new "low floor" system relative to building out the existing system. With respect to revenues, the European experience with trams is not analogous because many more of them do not have a car option to begin with, and the "potential development" of Stony Plain Road's urban stops should be considered in the context where development around the urban stops of Stadium, Coliseum, and Belvedere in Edmonton's northeast has been scarcely comparable to around the more suburban final stop at Clareview. Even the New York Times, the voice of the liberal US northeast, notes that costs for Denver's FasTracks project have soared from US$4.7 billion to nearly US$7 billion since approval in 2004 such that residents are being asked to support another tax hike while the project is mostly still just on the drawing board.

The real head scratcher for me is how this 3 comma expenditure on transit expansion can make sense when the communities themselves don't want it. Both west end councilors (Karen Leibovici and Linda Sloan) voted against the plan that included the Stony Plain Road expansion. This is the route that is supposed to keep west enders and residents from other areas of the city attracted to west end services! How is increased private investment along Stony Plain Road likely when existing businesses don't want this? If 87 ave residents don't want it either than why spend a billion plus to take rail to the west at all? I lived in Ottawa for years and the level of ridership is far higher than Edmonton's, despite the fact its rail network is negligible. If the private sector is skeptical that Stony Plain Rd can be turned into the northwest's version of pedestrian-oriented Whyte Avenue that ought to be a red flag. Dare I add that Whyte became more upscale over the last couple decades without a tram? 87 avenue has long been perceived as the logical route but in recent months Mayor Mandel seems to have concluded that the U of A, the biggest jewel in the city's crown, shouldn't be the anchor tenant of the transit system.

Lest anyone think I am public transit hostile, I have not owned my own vehicle for almost 8 years now. A possible difference between me and a lot of environmentalists is that I am more interested in my own responsibility for emissions and road congestion than in telling others what to do. I wonder if the councilors who approve of a tram stopping every few metres have any idea how the biggest headache for people who depend on public transport on a day to day basis is the time involved.

The overriding problem with Edmonton city council is, as is usually the case with left-leaning politicians, an over-focus on what they want to do as opposed to a focus on how to increase the resources that enable them to do what they want to do. Thinking about all grand things to be done instead of how to pay for them, in other words. The second question is what good politicians concentrate on, in my view, because the first question inevitably gets reduced into how much to steal from Peter to pay Paul. Compare the typical town and its council from the Middle Ages with 21st century cities; the difference between then and now is economic innovation and growth, not coming up with schemes that increased taxes on the businesspeople and merchants in town.

Lowe's, the world's second biggest home improvement retailer, applied in January for a permit to construct and operate a warehouse store in South Edmonton Common, but because Edmonton dragged the approval process out so long relative to Calgary, Calgary will get not one but three stores (along with the corresponding jobs and tax revenue) before Edmonton sees a store. "We believe in the economy of Calgary," said Lowe's Canada president. "As retailers of this calibre choose Calgary as their entry point for Western Canada, it tells the market Calgary continues to be the go-to market," an analyst observed. While business might not have any confidence in #yegcc, consultants enjoy council's full faith and confidence!

If this post weren't so lengthy already, I would call attention to Don Cayo's Vancouver Sun columns on municipal taxation, the sort of the thing that ought to appear in the Edmonton media and occur to #yegcc but does not. One problem at a time!

Alberta politics in the national news

After wishing everyone a Merry Christmas - yes, I spell out the whole word instead of calling it Xmas, it's the so-con in me ;) - let's look at some recent headlines.

According to the cross-Canada Sun chain of newspapers, the leader of the federal (but anti-federal!) Bloc Quebecois believes that the Canadian government's action (or, more precisely, inaction) at Copenhagen was ultimately the fault of Alberta's Wildrose party.

I think Harper’s Conservatives have woken up to what’s happening in Alberta and will move even closer to the demands of the Wildrose party.
- Gilles Duceppe

Duceppe also says that Wildrose's rise in Alberta polling could prompt Harper’s government to strengthen its “tough on crime” position and its opposition to the gun registry.

Duceppe's claims don't seem to acknowledge that the Harper Conservatives had staked out the "tough on crime" and pro-gun territory well before Wildrose seriously threatened to form the opposition in Alberta, never mind government. Why would the federal Tories chew their cabbage twice by going over this ground again? How would getting even tougher on any or all of the environment, retributive justice, or opposition to gun control help them take back Edmonton Strathcona, or hold on to Edmonton Centre and Edmonton East, the only real swing ridings in Alberta? And that's just Alberta.

Having said that, I'll note that I never did appreciate the mentality of the Tom Flanagans which dismissed pleas from Tories in large urban centres to tread more lightly on social issues and the environment on the grounds that "we're never going to win places like downtown Toronto during this campaign." This short-sighted attitude has meant that Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal are scorched earth for the federal Conservatives in future Harper-led campaigns in a way that they never were for Brian Mulroney's free trading Tories. It seems to me that Flanagan's attitude is perfect for locking down 100 seats in in the House of Commons, but has simultaneously created a permanent obstacle to getting to 155. If it is a matter of principle to not water things down then stand up for that as such instead of calling playing to a geographic base a shrewd tactic for winning a national majority.

It was accordingly quite satisfying to me that a poll came out earlier this month which showed Wildrose with a double-digit lead over the Liberals in Edmonton, since that should have nipped in the bud Flanagan-like attitudes that the party cannot win in Edmonton because of Liberal and NDP strength. It's theoretically possible to form a provincial government without a seat in Edmonton but it makes no sense to me to try for that since at least 10 out of 18 Edmonton seats are routinely well in play for fiscal conservatives and the party is going to want those 10 at some point in the future since there are likely to be at least 10 in the rest of the province which are going to end up tough to win because the local Wildrose candidate turned out to have some sort of liability or the PC candidate was unusually popular locally or because the local Wildrose organizers didn't have their act together or some local issue like nuclear power became the decisive issue etc etc. It's my hope that Wildrosers remain open to the possibility that a north-south divide is a consequence of the party being too dominated by the south as opposed to a cause that leaves the party dominated by the south.

Another Alberta political story that originated (to my knowledge) with the national media was carried by the Toronto Star, Canada's most widely read daily (unsurprising given the size of the Toronto market) and the national paper with the strongest left lean editorially (hence its occasional description as the "Red Star"). The Star quotes Alberta Liberal leader David Swann as saying that "[w]e need to move to the next stage for both of our parties, the Liberals and the NDP." And what's the next stage?

Swann said he's like to see an arrangement so incumbent Liberals or New Democrats run in their ridings without competition from the other party.

At seems natural to me that David Swann would be interesting in cooperating since he has never struck me as a John Manley sort of Liberal who has fundamental philosophical disagreements with the NDP over economic openness while sharing with them a discomfort with the mean-spirited backward-looking provincialism all too frequently found within "conservative" parties. Swann has always been at least as interested in "human rights" as in a free trading, open economy, and has hardly been more critical of government spending than the Alberta NDP. But there might not be as much news here as it sounds. Even if the NDP were on board with this (which they are not), it means business as usual in ridings like Edmonton Calder and Edmonton Beverly - Clareview which don't have either Liberal or NDP incumbents but which would easily go NDP if the Liberals were to not run a candidate (and both Wildrose and PC candidates were in the mix). All Swann would be giving up with his proposal is running a Liberal in Strathcona and Highlands-Norwood, which are NDP strongholds and the Liberal constituency associations could very well be defunct there anyway such there may be hardly any Liberal workers who would need to be told to stand down (in their home constituencies).

Swann's proposal accordingly doesn't strike much fear into me as someone interested in seeing Wildrose candidates elected in Edmonton since it would only apply to 5 out of 18 Edmonton ridings (the two with NDP incumbents plus Goldbar, Riverview, and Centre). That said, if the current Whitemud riding gets divided by the Boundaries Commission such that the upper half of it including the Riverbend neighbourhoods joins a Riverview riding that gets redistricted to south-side of the river only, it would create very big problems for both PC and Wildrose candidates based in Riverbend if there were no NDP candidate by virtue of (the additionally popular) Liberal Kevin Taft being deemed the incumbent not just in the left-leaning Belgravia neighbourhood near Strathcona but southwest across the Whitemud Ravine in right-leaning Riverbend as well.

Cooperation between the Wildrose party and PC party with respect to beating Liberals and NDP candidates faces a number of obstacles. First of all, polling results between these two have much more unstable with respect to not just each other but to other parties. For a long time the PCs saw the Wildrose Alliance and its antecedents as a fringe parties. Today, however, polling suggests that if one makes the (large) assumption that the PCs and Wildrose both exclusively draw on the "right wing" vote, it is the PCs that are "splitting" it, not the Wildrosers, since it is currently the Wildrose party that is polling ahead of the PCs by double digits.

Also, I don't think Wildrosers see the Liberals as worse than the P"C"s with anything like the unanimity that the NDP would see both the PCs and Wildrose as worse than the Swann Liberals. What good things have the Stelmach PCs done that would not have been done had the Liberals been governing? Not nearly enough things to warrant taking the side of a party that for years has been a Goliath against the David of Alberta Liberals, in my view. I suspect that the idea of helping Stelmach's party block Liberals has little appeal to the vast majority of Wildrosers, some of whom (especially the younger) might also feel they have more in common with anti-establishment projects like the modernizing Reboot Alberta than with an establishment tied into the ancient PC machine. The dynamic is also different because most Wildrosers see developments that help the Liberals as strengthening opposition to the currently governing PCs as opposed to strengthening a potential competing government to Wildrose.

If these news stories in the national media are not really news in Alberta, which might explain why they didn't originate in the local media!

Alberta govt plays anti-Ottawa card again

While BC and Ontario have tried to work with federal Finance Minister Jim Flaherty's department on tax issues, Alberta and Quebec are trying to be as obstructionist as possible with respect to another Finance Canada initiative, namely, a national securities regulator.

I've discussed this topic before, so suffice to say that what we are seeing from the Alberta government is protectionist sentiment dressed up as putting Alberta first. It is a page from the playbook of the crowd who condemn free trade at every turn on the basis that it erodes Canadian sovereignty.

If one asks "ordinary" Albertans whether they believe securities should be regulated by Alberta or by Ottawa, of course they are going to say Alberta. It's like Canada ceding power to the UN, right? In fact, a better analogy would be the WTO, whereby governments understand that giving up the right to regulate a globalized market unilaterally is in everyone's interest. And the people to ask here are Alberta-based issuers and investors in primary offerings. The overwhelming majority of us trade on the secondary market (if we play the market at all), dependent upon a developed primary market which few of us have a close knowledge of.

On an unrelated note, how did Ken Chapman become an authority on the Wildrose Alliance? Chapman continues to insist that "Danielle Smith's Wildrose Alliance Party has deep roots in social conservativism and religious fundamentalism." Now perhaps Paul Hinman's Alberta Alliance Party had such roots. But I am at a total loss as to what Chapman's source could possibly be for what he actually said. I've been to multiple Wildrose or Wildrose Alliance AGMs and social conservative policy planks have come up again and again for a general vote and failed to be adopted by the membership. As for the leader, after an extended, wide-ranging conversation with Danielle it became apparent to me that she would not give any "dog whistle" signals to social conservatives whether she wanted to or not because she doesn't hail from that background. I asked an associate who was privy to this same interaction what his primary impression was and he said plainly, "she's not one of us [social conservatives]." What Danielle does come across as is someone who is unusually (for a politician) interested in listening, including listening to social conservatives. This is not the same as appearing to social conservatives as someone who naturally identifies with them. If I introduced her to a Promise Keepers or Alpha course group she would be well-received and in turn feel quite comfortable but her previous experience with these sort of groups would be limited.

I accordingly have to call Chapman out here and say bull****. He is misrepresenting the Wildrose Alliance as some sort of stalking horse for legislating morality, which would not be an issue were it not for the fact that the media continues to quote him as an authority. It happened with SEE Magazine and most recently with the Edmonton Journal, which cites Chapman in order to claim that Wildrose practices "old-style, top-down, party politics." There may indeed be a character or two inclined to pursue a "top-down" approach when possible, but when it comes to the leader if she has any fault it is that she is not inclined enough to practice "old-style, top-down, party politics." Again, it's a highly misleading picture that is being painted. The party has some political weaknesses that will need to be worked on, but Chapman missed the mark completely with his assertions about what those weaknesses are.

Chapman's baseless hostility should at least lay to rest one argument I've seen employed against inviting non-partisan academics to address the Wildrose membership, which is that people invited to speak to Wildrose members or host seminars need to be people connected to the party or otherwise friendly. In October Chapman was invited to give a seminar to Wildrosers on the use of social media, but if he is Wildrose-friendly (never mind a member) I can only wonder what an enemy would look like!

Brian Dell vs William Connolley on Wikipedia

Lawrence Solomon has written an interesting piece in the National Post about William Connelley's Wikipedia edits and deletions.

As one can see from here, almost 2 years ago I was the first to take issue with Connelley with respect to the Wikipedia article for the "hockey stick controversy." I finally gave up but not without writing a "Note to Article Readers" where I stated:

I have attempted to provide more balance to this article but my edits have been reverted wholesale and I fail to see the point of extended revert war. So I would just caution you that a critical criticism of Mann's graph is that it implies no Medieval Warming Period or Little Ice Age and these phenomena are well documented in other sources. ...

Wikipedia is leftist. Even TIME's Obamaphile pundit Joe Klein grants that much. In Wikipedia one can find laughable assertions like "the question of [Alger] Hiss's guilt [as a Soviet spy] or innocence remains controversial." But it is interesting to see some recognition of this in the MSM.

Despite my taking up the guantlet for the skeptical side, however, I think that it is still important to tread carefully with respect to climate change. In Copenhagen Obama said, "This is not fiction, this is science," and I would be very reluctant to challenge that claim head on. Just as no government, either elected or unelected, anywhere in the world denies the climate change thesis, no scientific body of national or international standing is currently denying the reality of climate change either. In a community like Wikipedia editors, the need for a neutral point of view requires editors to give more representation to the views of the skeptics, but in a community of self-identified "conservative Albertans," there is the danger of going too far to the other side in one's rhetoric and advocacy.