The scandal over fraudulent residential and expense claims by Senators such as Duffy and Wallin has led to the resignation of Senators Duffy and Wallin from the Conservative caucus and the payment of Duffy's fraudulent residential allowance claims by the PM's Chief of Staff Nigel Wright has led to Mr. Wright's resignation. Mr. Harper has previously praised Mr. Duffy for paying back the amount he should not have claimed and has defended Ms Wallin's expense claims. Mr. Harper is accountable for Mr. Wright's actions and for the attempts to cover up this scandal. In doing so he has failed to discharge his ethical and constitutional responsibilities. Accordingly the only appropriate course of action is for him is to resign as Conservative leader and step down as Prime Minister. Please sign our petition by clicking on this link:

http://www.change.org/en-CA/petitions/members-of-parliament-and-the-senate-the-canadian-public-call-on-harper-to-resign-as-prime-minister

The Arctic is assuming increasing prominence as an area of national interest for Canada. As the ice melts and other countries jockey for position in the Arctic, Canada needs to assert a greater presence in the Arctic. The Harper Govt announced a couple of years ago its intention to build 6-8 patrol ships capable of operating in the Arctic as well as a major Arctic icebreaker.  A CBC news investigation has revealed that Canada will be paying though the nose for these patrol ships compared with the prices that other countries have paid recently for similar vessels. Apparently  Ottawa will pay Irving Shipbuilding $288 million just to design — not build — a fleet of new Arctic offshore patrol ships.  A study  of other countries shows they paid a fraction of that $288 million to actually build the ships — and paid less than a tenth as much for the design. The design of Canada's new ships is based upon a Norwegian vessel whose design Ottawa has already bought for just $5 million. Denmark acquired two patrol ships for $105 million in 2007. The Irish navy now is building two offshore patrol ships for $125 million. These facts indicate that Canadian taxpayers are being fleeced by this process. An ad by Irving Shipyards did little to counter that notion.

TAGS: sustainable fisheries, patrol ship fiasco, Arctic patrol ships, Irvings, government waste

Harper's Minister of Natural Resources, Joe Oliver, continues to make a fool of himself as he jets around fighting to get pipelines approved. While in Washington he launched an attack on noted climatologist James Hansen and was appropriately ridiculed for doing so. This week while in Europe he announced that Canada would fight the EU in the WTO  if the EU proceeds with a fuel-quality directive that singles out crude from Canada’s oil sands as the most harmful to the planet’s climate. And this at a time when the Harper govt is anxiously trying to conclude a free trade deal with the EU. The following day Oliver was forced to issue a retraction by the denizens of PMO. There aren't too bright lights in the current Harper cabinet. Oliver is certainly not one of those few. There are recurring rumours of a cabinet shuffle soon to revive the Harper govt's flagging fortunes. Let's hope that Oliver is kicked off the bus when that happened.

TAGS: sustainable fisheries, climate change, Joe Oliver, pipelines

In an editorial and articles in this week's Nature, titled "Does Catch Reflect Abundance?", Daniel Pauly and Ray Hilborn resume their decade-long battle over the state of world fish stocks and how to manage fisheries sustainably. As Nature summarizes it, "In one piece, Daniel Pauly argues that 'catch data' of the number of fish caught are a vital tool for assessing the health of fish stocks. In their counterpoint piece, Ray Hilborn and Trevor Branch warn that over-reliance on this measure misses important subtleties and can misleadingly distil the health of entire ecosystems down to a landed tonnage. "This is far from an academic debate. If scientists cannot estimate fish numbers, and so the health of stocks, there is little hope that this resource can be exploited in a sustainable fashion," the editorial concludes.

Pauly has long been using raw catch data from FAO to pontificate about the state of world fisheries. Hilborn and colleague Trevor Branch argue that this is nonsense. They argue say that the changes in the amount of fish caught does not necessarily reflect the number of fish in the sea. In their view "A much better approach is to deduce the health of stocks region by region and fishery by fishery using scientific stock assessments, which collate all sorts of data – from the results of surveys conducted from research vessels to the catch per fishing effort, and the age and size distributions of the fish caught." Pauly argues that stock assessments are not available for many of the world's fisheries and are too costly for many third  world  countries.   Hilborn and Branch counter that good data are available for 40% of the world's fisheries and data exist which could be assembled for another 40%.

TAGS: sustainable, fisheries, sustain, fish, fisheries management, Pauly, Hilborn, Nature, catch data, stock assessment