Starting today, Ottawa will stop accepting applications for immigration sponsorships of parents and grandparents until 2014 in hopes of reducing a growing backlog.

In launching the first phase of an action plan to expedite family reunification Friday, Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said the federal government will take in 25,000 parents and grandparents in 2012, 43 per cent above its 2011 level. Meanwhile, fewer refugees, nannies and people applying to stay on humanitarian grounds will be admitted.

By cutting new applications and increasing intake, Kenney said he hopes to reduce the current backlog of 165,000 parents and grandparents by half in two years.

To relieve the pain of immigrants separated from their older relatives, Citizenship and Immigration Canada will start issuing the new Parent and Grandparent Super Visa on Dec. 1, which will allow members of that group to visit their families in Canada on a temporary basis for up to two years.

The visa — which Kenney said will take only eight weeks to process — will allow holders to make multiple entries over a span of 10 years. But there is a catch: Elderly visitors must obtain private Canadian health-care insurance during their stay here. And applicants must still meet the minimum income requirement to apply.

“So many families say to me they don’t necessarily want moms and dads or grandparents to immigrate permanently to Canada,” Kenney told a news conference in Mississauga.

“They just want them to be able to come and stay for an extended period, to help care for their kids when they are young and also be able to go back home, where they are well settled with other families and friends.”

Kenney said he is confident Canadian visa posts have the resources to handle the anticipated influx of applications for the super visas and the enhanced targets for sponsorships.

While the super visas are welcomed, critics say the mandatory medical insurance will create an instant barrier for many families, favouring those who are well-off.

“This requirement will create a two-tier access to our immigration system. We have argued that there’s no research or experimental evidence that parents and grandparents of new Canadians are an undue burden on our social and medical systems,” said Debbie Douglas, of the Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants.

The government plans to hold consultations next year on how to redesign the parents and grandparents program to avoid future large backlogs when it takes in new applications in 2014.

On Friday, the immigration department also belatedly released the breakdown of the number of immigrants it plans to accept in various immigration streams. In its annual report tabled Tuesday, Ottawa had only said categorically that it would maintain the same immigration level.

In 2012, the government plans to take in 157,000 economic migrants, down 3 per cent from this year, with the quota allotted for live-in caregivers-turned-permanent residents slashed by almost half to 9,000.

Canada will also take in 10 per cent fewer refugees — from 29,000 in 2011 to 26,000 in 2012. Spots assigned to people allowed to stay in Canada on humanitarian grounds will be down by 14 per cent to 7,900.

The only category that will see an increase in 2012 is family reunifications, up from 65,500 to 69,000, though the quota for spouses and children will be reduced from 48,000 to 44,000.

When looking for a car last year I had couple of other makes and models in mind. Ford was definitely not on my list. Prior to the shake up at Ford headquarters Ford had a bad rap and Ford was not a brand I thought I could trust. You know, Honda, Toyota etc always got top scores in the reliability, quality, resell etc departments. But I was proven wrong and Ford has come a long way. ( No, I do not work for them, maybe I should, I always wanted to know how they put together cars).

Last year I was about to buy the new Hyundai Sonata, I changed my mind and did further research. I put the car finding on the back burner for a year and this year after much research (Consumer Reports, online forums, J.D Power etc) and hesitation I stepped into a Ford dealership and bought a 2011 Ford Fusion. 

If you're one of those who researches everything like I do and want to make a smart choice in investment I highly suggest renting different cars for a few days to get the gist of it. Test driving a car at the dealerships around the block is simply insufficient if you want to make a good choice. Unless you're the Steve Jobs type who leases a new car every 6 months, than I guess it shouldn't matter.

I've read only positive reviews on the Ford Fusion and after renting it for a bit in the summer and owning it for 3 months, I have no complaints. I actually love how it drives, very agile, inside hardly any road noise, has all the bells and whistles, tech stuff except for the review mirror and for a mid-size sedan you don't need one.

Now here comes the redesigned Fusion next year.

COLOGNE, GERMANY — The final production details and on-sale dates of all-new versions of two of Canada’s most popular new vehicles, the Ford Escape and Fusion, are still being held under lock and key behind Ford’s doors.

But during this year’s Frankfurt auto show, Canada’s best-selling automaker offered several puzzle pieces as to how its next model-year Escape compact crossover and Fusion mid-size family sedan (due sometime next year) will look, drive, ride and handle.

Despite the Escape being around since 2000, riding on a platform that dates back to the 1990s’ Mazda 626, it remains a solid seller in Canada.

With more than 31,000 sold through the end of August this year, the small SUV is Ford’s second best-selling vehicle, only behind the top-selling F Series trucks.

The Fusion, which debuted in 2005, also qualifies as an oldie but a goodie.

More: Ford’s stunning new concept shows off future style and features

More: Ford falls hard in new Consumer Reports ranking

With more than 14,000 sold so far this year, it’s the best-selling mid-size sedan in Canada.

Ford has already previewed the looks of the 2013 Escape in the shape of the Vertrek concept, first seen at last January’s Detroit show.

The 2013 Fusion and its European Mondeo platform-mate had their design previewed by the Ford Evos concept at the Frankfurt show.

The Ford concept’s gull-wing doors won’t make it to production. But the 2013 Fusion (expected at next January’s Detroit show) should wear a similar rendition of the Evos’s front grille, swept-back side window treatment, and production-ready versions of its head- and tail-lights.

To get a feel for how the next Fusion and Escape may drive, Ford offered me the opportunity to get behind the wheel of a current 2012 Mondeo sedan and the Escape’s European counterpart, the Kuga crossover, near the German city of Cologne, where many of Ford’s European engineering facilities are found.

Like the recently introduced Fiesta and Focus, Ford is minimizing the differences between its vehicles globally.

I was told that, in regards to steering, ride and handling, the current European Mondeo and Kuga give big clues as to what to expect in regards to driving dynamics for our next Fusion and Escape.

In the case of today’s Escape, that can only be a good thing.

Similar to rivals like the Kia Sportage or Volkswagen Tiguan, piloting the Kuga is similar to driving a tall compact hatch.

The model I drove (powered by a diesel engine that will not be initially offered in the next Escape) offered a lot more linearity and feel in its steering than today’s Escape.

In fact, the Kuga had a trio of driver-adjustable steering settings.

The Escape has one: numb.

Of course, much of the Kuga’s driving appeal comes from its compact dimensions, which more than likely are upsized slightly for the North American Escape.

The difference between today’s Fusion and Mondeo sedans is more subtle.

The current Fusion is one of the more fun-to-drive family sedans, but it lacks the driving refinement of its European counterpart. The Mondeo feels more composed, better planted in corners, and with more communicative steering than its North American cousin.

Even at speeds up to 180 km/h on a stretch of unrestricted speed on the autobahn, the Mondeo felt rock-solid.

If Ford can make the next Fusion drive like today’s Mondeo, fans of European sedans on a budget may have to add the Ford to their shopping list.

The other piece of the 2013 Fusion’s puzzle was what was under the Mondeo’s hood.

It’s the same 2.0-litre inline four-cylinder EcoBoost gas engine that’s becoming optional in the Canadian-market 2012 Edge and Explorer.

If you haven’t heard, “EcoBoost” is what Ford calls its new powertrain strategy. It involves using gas engines, but with smaller displacements to reduce fuel consumption (the “Eco” bit), then bolstered with high-tech (turbo charging, direct-injection and twin-independent variable cam technology, etc.) to make up the difference in performance (the “Boost” part).

The 2.0L four is one of four EcoBoost engines, which also includes the 3.5L V6 iteration (now offered in various Ford and Lincoln full-size products, including the F-150 truck), a 1.6L four available in the European Focus, and a new 1.0L three-cylinder (that will become the smallest engine Ford makes) available in European Fiesta and Focus models in 2012.

Ford won’t confirm it, but I expect the 2.0 EcoBoost four will replace the current Fusion’s V6 engines as an upgrade over a naturally aspirated four in the base model.

Compared with the 2012 Fusion’s 2.5L four, the Mondeo’s 2.0 EcoBoost has a lot more horsepower (237 vs. 175), and pound-feet of torque (251 vs. 172). But it sips about the same amount of fuel: around 7.5L 100 km combined city and highway.

Back on the autobahn, the Modeo’s 2.0 EcoBoost is more refined than racy.

As with the Mustang, Ford added a bulkhead-directed “sound symposer” to create the addition of some “naturally aspirated” engine sound at high engine revs and during stomps on the accelerator.

The engine is smooth, but the power won’t startle you. Turbo lag is non-existent. And the Mondeo is heavy for its class, which may have dulled the EcoBoost’s responsiveness as well.

Also know that there’s a large performance gap between the 2.0 and 3.5 EcoBoost engines.

A fifth engine to fill that hole, and possibly power a high-performance Fusion ST, would offer some competition to my current family sedan pick: the Kia Optima SX, with its 274 hp four.

With the looks from the Evos and Vertrek concepts, power from the EcoBoost engine family, plus vehicle dynamics and driving characteristics developed in Europe, Ford has outlined many of the pieces that will make up the 2013 Fusion and Escape models.

How all those pieces come together is another thing. Come this time next year, we should have our answers.

Travel for freelance writer John LeBlanc was provided by the automaker.

Bullied son of Ottawa city councillor commits suicide

Ottawa city councillor Allan Hubley poses with his son Jamie in this family photo released on Monday Oct. 17, 2011. Hubley says bullying was part of the reason his 15-year-old son took his own life last Friday.

COURTESY HUBLEY FAMILY/THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA — An Ottawa city councillor says bullying played a part in his son's suicide.

Fifteen-year-old Jamie Hubley took his own life on Friday.

His father, Councillor Allan Hubley, says Jamie was suffering from depression and was receiving care from doctors and counsellors.

Hubley says these professionals, along with family and friends, were trying to help him cope with his depression and his sexuality.

He says his son was a championship figure skater for years and was just beginning to excel as a singer and enjoyed acting.

Hubley, who made the comments in a statement, also says James was bullied.

“In Grade 7 he was treated very cruelly simply because he liked figure skating over hockey,” the councillor said in his written statement.

“Recently, when Jamie tried to start a Rainbow Club at his high school to promote acceptance of others, the posters were torn down and he was called vicious names in the hallways and online. We had meetings with officials at the school and were working with them to bring an end to it but Jamie felt it would never stop.”

Of all places!!! In Texas!!! A state that had the highest incarceration rate in the world and the highest execution rate in the USA. Took awhile ot figure it out but at least people in Texas got it right.

Someone send this to Harper, before he locks up all of Canada.

Conservatives in the United States' toughest crime-fighting jurisdiction — Texas — say the Harper government's crime strategy won't work.

"You will spend billions and billions and billions on locking people up," says Judge John Creuzot of the Dallas County Court. "And there will come a point in time where the public says, 'Enough!' And you'll wind up letting them out."

Adds Rep. Jerry Madden, a conservative Republican who heads the Texas House Committee on Corrections, "It's a very expensive thing to build new prisons and, if you build 'em, I guarantee you they will come. They'll be filled, OK? Because people will send them there.

The Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice Central Unit seal is painted on the cell block wall in Sugar Land, Texas. The 102-year-old jail is slated for development as Texas reducing its prison population. Pat Sullivan/Associated Press

"But, if you don't build 'em, they will come up with very creative things to do that keep the community safe and yet still do the incarceration necessary."

These comments are in line with a coalition of experts in Washington, DC, who attacked the Harper government's omnibus crime package, Bill C-10, in a statement Monday.

"Republican governors and state legislators in such states of Texas, South Carolina, and Ohio are repealing mandatory minimum sentences, increasing opportunities for effective community supervision, and funding drug treatment because they know it will improve public safety and reduce taxpayer costs," said Tracy Velázquez, executive director of the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute.

"If passed, C-10 will take Canadian justice policies 180-degrees in the wrong direction, and Canadian citizens will bear the costs."

A state with a record

On a recent trip to Texas, an array of conservative voices told CBC News that Texas tried what Canada plans to do – and it failed.

As recently as 2004, Texas had the highest incarceration rate in the world, with fully one in 20 of its adult residents behind bars or on parole or probation. The Lone Star state still has the death penalty, with more than 300 prisoners on death row today. But for three decades, as crime rates fell all over the U.S., the rate in Texas fell at only half the national average.

That didn't change the policy — but its cost did.

Faced with a budget crisis in 2005, the Texas statehouse was handed an estimate of $2 billion to build new prisons for a predicted influx of new prisoners.

They told Rep. Madden to find a way out. He and his committee dug into the facts. Did all those new prisoners really need to go to jail? And did all of those already behind bars really need to be there?

'We can't ignore the fact that our "tough on crime" stance that puts a person in prison and assumes that their drug problem will somehow magically disappear while they're incarcerated and they'll never get out again and offend, is ridiculous!'—Dr. Teresa May-Williams, forensic psychologist

Madden's answer was, no. He found that Texas had diverted money from treatment and probation services to building prisons. But sending people to prison was costing 10 times as much as putting them on probation, on parole, or in treatment.

"It was kinda silly, what we were doing," says Madden. Then, he discovered that drug treatment wasn't just cheaper — it cut crime much more effectively than prison.

That was the moment, he says, when he knew: "My colleagues are gonna understand this. The public is gonna understand this…The public will be safer and we will spend less money!"

His colleagues agreed. Texas just said no to the new prisons.

Instead, over the next few years, it spent a fraction of the $2 billion those prisons would have cost — about $300 million — to beef up drug treatment programs, mental health centres, probation services and community supervision for prisoners out on parole.

It worked. Costs fell and crime fell, too. Now, word of the Canadian government's crime plan is filtering down to Texas and it's getting bad reviews.

Marc Levin, a lawyer with an anti-tax group called Right on Crime, argues that building more prisons is a waste of taxpayers' money.

"We've see a double-digit decline in the last few years in Texas, both in our prison incarceration rate and, most importantly in our crime rate," says Levin.

"And the way we've done it is by strengthening some of the alternatives to prison."

The statistics bear him out. According to the Texas Department of Corrections, the rate of incarceration fell 9 per cent between 2005 and 2010. In the same period, according to the FBI, the crime rate in Texas fell by 12.8 per cent.

By contrast, Levin says, the Canadian government has increased the prison budget sharply, even though crime in Canada is down to its lowest level since 1973.

In fact, federal spending on corrections in Canada has gone up from $1.6 billion in 2005-06, when Stephen Harper's Conservatives took power, to $2.98 billion in 2010-1011. That's an increase of 86 per cent. Soon, it will double.

The Harper government has already increased prison sentences by scrapping the two-for-one credit for time served waiting for trial. Bill C-10 would add new and longer sentences for drug offences, increase mandatory minimums and cut the use of conditional sentences such as house arrest.

In each case, Texas is doing the opposite.

So are several other states — egged on by a group of hardline conservatives who have joined the Right on Crime movement. These include Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the tax-fighter Grover Norquist and the former Attorney General for President Ronald Reagan, Ed Meese.

That's not a list of liberals. Marc Levin says Canada is out of step with the best conservative thinking south of the border.

"We've seen in the United States, states and conservative leaders moving in a much different direction than the Conservative Party is saying in Canada," he says.

"I think the conservative thing to do is to be cost-effective and to hold offenders accountable. And, frankly, for many of them, they go to prison, they don't pay child support, they don't have to work in the private sector, they don't pay restitution — I don't believe that's holding people accountable."

Hugging criminals? In Texas?

What Levin means by accountability is what happens at Judge John Creuzot's drug court in Dallas.

Thieves, drug addicts and drunk drivers must file into Creuzot's courtroom each week as a condition of their sentences. They're on probation with the threat of prison hanging over them. They must prove they are keeping up with their drug treatment.

Judge Creuzot cajoles, threatens and lectures them to stick with the program - but he also rewards them when they succeed. If they graduate from treatment, clean and sober, he holds an awards ceremony in his courtroom. Then, he gives them a big, back-slapping Texas hug.

"Congratulations, bro!" he says as he wraps his arms around a hulking ex-addict. "Proud of ya!" he says as he hugs another and places a medal around her neck.

Hugs? From a judge in the state that gave us chain gangs?

It's not your father's Texas. But Judge Creuzot isn't all hugs. He renders a blunt verdict when he is asked what's wrong with the Harper government's plan to get criminals off Canadian streets.

"Nothing, if you don't mind spending a lot of money locking people up and seeing your crime rate go up! Nothing wrong with it at all!"

Creuzot says prison just doesn't work as well as the less expensive methods he uses — because, one way or another, drugs and alcohol lie at the root of 80 per cent of crimes.

"What we've learned," he says, "is that if you deal with those underlying issues with the proper assessments up front, doing that before you make a sentencing decision … and you fund programs that will deal with that on a long-term basis, that you avoid sending thousands of people to prison."

Prison trustees work to dismantle cubicle walls in a dormitory at the Central Unit prison in Sugar Land, Texas in August, as the facility made famous in Leadbelly's blues classic 'Midnight Special' closed its doors. Pat Sullivan/Associated Press But isn't all the treatment expensive?

"It's less expensive!" Creuzot snaps. "We had a university do a cost-benefit analysis. And every dollar we spend is worth $9 and 34 cents in avoided criminal justice costs."

Other studies in Texas agree that treatment and probation services cost about one tenth of what it costs to build and run prisons. Besides that, offenders emerge much less likely to commit fresh crimes than those with similar records who go to prison.

Getting results

At Phoenix House, a drug treatment centre in Wilmer, just south of Dallas, Dr. Teresa May-Williams is a forensic psychologist, paid to assess the risk of letting offenders out on parole or in treatment. She's found that prison is even riskier.

"We can't ignore the fact that our ‘tough on crime' stance that puts a person in prison and assumes that their drug problem will somehow magically disappear while they're incarcerated and they'll never get out again and offend, is ridiculous!" she says.

Dr. May-Williams says most offenders with drug or alcohol problems quickly resume their criminal lifestyle when they get out of prison.

"The data showed that 60 per cent of those individuals will be out and committing a new crime in, on average, about 11 months."

That's four times the rate of those who go through her six-month program instead.

"A big focus of it is getting their drug problem under control," she says, "and then beginning to work on education, job training, getting them employed, getting them focused on becoming a tax payer rather than a tax user. The recidivism rate for probation, the same kind of offender, is somewhere around 15-16 per cent."

A 'hopeless' case

Equally striking is that even the hardest cases can respond to court-ordered treatment.

Kathryn Griffin, by her own account, was a "hopeless" case.

Loquacious, loud and candid, Griffin had six felonies on her record — for drug possession and prostitution — so she was facing 35 years to life in jail when she came to court in Dallas, yet again.

"I'm a person who had a $30,000 a month cocaine habit for 22 years!" she says. But, "I am totally clean and sober today."

And she's stayed clean for eight years — because, she says, she was a "guinea pig" in what was, back then, a new experiment: drug court.

The judge gave her a choice: get clean in drug treatment or flunk out — and die in prison.

She made it. Now, she has a job counselling street prostitutes, pays taxes and tells anyone who will listen that Texas, too, has changed its ways.

"What I like about this state and our government is they are willing to listen, look, study, learn and see results."

Left, right and middle-of-the-road Texans are recommending that Canada do the same — and the Conservatives most of all.

Former U.S. president George W. Bush speaks at the Summit to Save Lives on Sept. 13, 2011, in Washington, DC.

Do not pass go. Do not collect $150,000.

That’s the message from international human rights groups to former U.S. president George W. Bush — a popular, high-rolling guest speaker — when he arrives in Surrey, B.C., for a regional economic conference on Thursday.

Amnesty International wants Canada to hand him a “go to jail card” on charges of directing torture during the CIA’s secret detention programs between 2002 and 2009.

Canada has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and the Canadian Criminal Code says that anyone suspected of torture can be arrested and subject to criminal investigation when he enters the country.

But it’s not going to happen, says Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

He accused Amnesty of “cherry picking” its accusations against Bush, and mounting an ideologically motivated “stunt” that “helps explain why so many respected human rights advocates have abandoned Amnesty International.”

Alex Neve, who heads Amnesty in Canada, retorted that “what motivates our work is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and we apply it universally. International law makes it clear that when a country is unwilling or unable to launch a case, other countries can fill the void. No country or person should be above the law.”

Amnesty is one of several human rights organizations that contend Canada can and should launch a criminal investigation of anyone who lands in the country and is suspected of torture.

They include Human Rights Watch, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Canadian Centre for International Justice, which filed a 70-page legal brief summarizing “4,000 pages of evidence of the widespread use of torture under the authorization and direction of G.W. Bush as President of the U.S. and Commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.”

They cite the U.S. use of torture techniques during Bush’s term in office, including waterboarding, allegations of torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees, and enforced disappearances.

Bush himself has admitted to authorizing waterboarding — or simulated drowning — of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and said “I’d do it again to save lives.”

Although rights groups in the U.S. have found little traction for a prosecution against Bush, other countries might use the torture convention to claim jurisdiction if he travels there.

Last February, Bush hastily cancelled a visit to Switzerland — the home of the Geneva Conventions — after arrest threats. But his former vice-president, Dick Cheney, carried on with a promotional book tour to Vancouver in September in spite of similar calls from human rights advocates to apprehend him.

For high-profile former officials on the lucrative celebrity speaking circuit, such embarrassment could be bad for business.

Talk may be cheap, but ex-presidents can command as much as $1 million a speech — a record set by Ronald Reagan in Japan. Bill Clinton tops the current list of must-haves with prices up to $350,000.

Bush, who won the Plain English Campaign’s Foot in Mouth lifetime achievement award, has pulled in some $15 million in speaking fees since leaving the Oval Office, a former spokesman told iWatch.

So far, Bush has not responded to the arrest calls in Canada, which he has visited on earlier occasions. Ottawa, which considers itself America’s closest ally, has made it clear that he has little to fear.

But according to Charlie Smith, editor of the Vancouver-based Georgia Straight, “Cheney attracted a sizeable protest here and I have a hunch this time it will be bigger.”

Plans for a protest outside the Sheraton hotel where Bush will be staying are swirling on the Internet, said Smith, who has covered Canadian attempts to arrest members of the Bush administration for several years.

“The Occupy Vancouver protest begins on Saturday,” he said. “Occupy Surrey is Thursday.”

Do not pass go. Do not collect $150,000.

That’s the message from international human rights groups to former U.S. president George W. Bush — a popular, high-rolling guest speaker — when he arrives in Surrey, B.C., for a regional economic conference on Thursday.

Amnesty International wants Canada to hand him a “go to jail card” on charges of directing torture during the CIA’s secret detention programs between 2002 and 2009.

Canada has ratified the United Nations Convention Against Torture, and the Canadian Criminal Code says that anyone suspected of torture can be arrested and subject to criminal investigation when he enters the country.

But it’s not going to happen, says Immigration Minister Jason Kenney.

He accused Amnesty of “cherry picking” its accusations against Bush, and mounting an ideologically motivated “stunt” that “helps explain why so many respected human rights advocates have abandoned Amnesty International.”

Alex Neve, who heads Amnesty in Canada, retorted that “what motivates our work is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and we apply it universally. International law makes it clear that when a country is unwilling or unable to launch a case, other countries can fill the void. No country or person should be above the law.”

Amnesty is one of several human rights organizations that contend Canada can and should launch a criminal investigation of anyone who lands in the country and is suspected of torture.

They include Human Rights Watch, the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights and the Canadian Centre for International Justice, which filed a 70-page legal brief summarizing “4,000 pages of evidence of the widespread use of torture under the authorization and direction of G.W. Bush as President of the U.S. and Commander-in-chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.”

They cite the U.S. use of torture techniques during Bush’s term in office, including waterboarding, allegations of torture of Guantanamo Bay detainees, and enforced disappearances.

Bush himself has admitted to authorizing waterboarding — or simulated drowning — of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, and said “I’d do it again to save lives.”

Although rights groups in the U.S. have found little traction for a prosecution against Bush, other countries might use the torture convention to claim jurisdiction if he travels there.

Last February, Bush hastily cancelled a visit to Switzerland — the home of the Geneva Conventions — after arrest threats. But his former vice-president, Dick Cheney, carried on with a promotional book tour to Vancouver in September in spite of similar calls from human rights advocates to apprehend him.

For high-profile former officials on the lucrative celebrity speaking circuit, such embarrassment could be bad for business.

Talk may be cheap, but ex-presidents can command as much as $1 million a speech — a record set by Ronald Reagan in Japan. Bill Clinton tops the current list of must-haves with prices up to $350,000.

Bush, who won the Plain English Campaign’s Foot in Mouth lifetime achievement award, has pulled in some $15 million in speaking fees since leaving the Oval Office, a former spokesman told iWatch.

So far, Bush has not responded to the arrest calls in Canada, which he has visited on earlier occasions. Ottawa, which considers itself America’s closest ally, has made it clear that he has little to fear.

But according to Charlie Smith, editor of the Vancouver-based Georgia Straight, “Cheney attracted a sizeable protest here and I have a hunch this time it will be bigger.”

Plans for a protest outside the Sheraton hotel where Bush will be staying are swirling on the Internet, said Smith, who has covered Canadian attempts to arrest members of the Bush administration for several years.

“The Occupy Vancouver protest begins on Saturday,” he said. “Occupy Surrey is Thursday.”

It’s a third term and a short leash for Premier Dalton McGuinty’s Liberals.

Defying pre-election polls, pundit’s predictions and rookie rivals insisting it was time for a change, McGuinty led the Liberals to a rare “three-peat” win Thursday in the closest Ontario vote of the past quarter century.

But, pending possible recounts in some tight races, he appears to have fallen short of a majority and watched Liberal cabinet ministers and backbenchers lose their seats across much of the province.

As the Liberal tally hovered below the 54-seat threshold required for a majority in the 107-member Legislature, Grit insiders told the Toronto Star McGuinty would govern with a minority on an informal “case-by-case” basis with support from the New Democrats and, on occasion, the Progressive Conservatives.

“Dalton was clear — no deals — and with these numbers there is no need. When you’re at a threshold, it’s a mandate,” a senior Liberal insider said in Ottawa late Thursday night.

Another Grit predicted in Toronto that the lifespan of a minority administration — the first functioning one in Ontario since Tory Bill Davis from 1975 to 1981 — would be only “18 months to two years.”

Coincidentally, McGuinty, 56, is the first premier to win three straight elections since Davis in 1977.

But it is a bittersweet triumph, with Education Minister Leona Dombrowsky, Agriculture Minister Carol Mitchell, Revenue Minister Sophia Aggelonitis, and Environment Minister John Wilkinson all appeared heading for defeat with incomplete returns.

The result was a hollow victory for Tory Leader Tim Hudak, 43, who until last week had led in nearly every public-opinion poll over the past two years.

“It’s been a long campaign, a hard-fought campaign, and although the result is not the one that we hoped for, we do accept it,” Hudak told disappointed supporters in Niagara Falls.

“We don’t yet know if this will be a minority or a majority government, but it is very clear that the people of Ontario have sent a strong message that they want a change in direction,” he said, hailing the “shorter leash” voters have placed on McGuinty

The apparent minority result also makes NDP Leader Andrea Horwath the most influential Ontario New Democrat since former premier Bob Rae left office in 1995. Horwath, 48, will hold the balance of power in a minority Parliament.

McGuinty had hoped to be the first premier since Conservative Leslie Frost in 1959 to form three consecutive majority governments and the first Liberal to do so since Sir Oliver Mowat, one of the Fathers of Confederation, in the 19th century.

For the past two years, it had seemed as if the campaign would be a referendum on his leadership — especially after the 13 per cent harmonized sales tax was introduced on July 1, 2010, raising levies on hydro bills, gasoline, and numerous other goods and services.

Indeed, facing a dynamic duo of younger rivals, McGuinty had braced for an all-out assault on his record in power, including past broken promises about not raising taxes and the eHealth Ontario expenses scandal, among other transgressions.

But both Hudak and Horwath released relatively centrist electoral programs months before the vote that only promised to tinker with the HST and most other Liberal initiatives, essentially arguing it was time for a change for change’s sake.

Hudak, who succeeded predecessor John Tory as PC leader in June 2009, pressed a few hot buttons — such as vowing to force provincial prisoners to work on chain gangs and equip sex offenders with GPS bracelets so they could be tracked — but he pledged to maintain Liberal levels of spending on health care and education.

That seemed to be a concession that by and large schools, colleges, universities and hospitals have improved under the Grits, a theme McGuinty emphasized almost every day of the writ period.

Hudak’s platform, Changebook, revealed he would keep running deficits as long as the Liberals planned to, not getting the province into the black until 2017.

It was a cautious, focus-group-tested manifesto that Tory strategists pored over to ensure there would not be a reprise of the 2007 election fiasco that saw them disastrously promise to expand the funding of faith-based schools beyond just the publicly financed Catholic system.

They also feared the Liberals would successfully attack Hudak, a minister from 1999 to 2003 in the PC governments of former premiers Mike Harris and Ernie Eves, as a Common Sense Revolutionary of that tumultuous era.

Still, the Tories appeared to have blundered by pouncing on a leaked Grit campaign promise to spend $12 million on tax credits to help 1,000 foreign-trained new Canadian professionals get jobs.

Thinking they had lucked into a “wedge issue” that could be exploited the way Harris used resentment over welfare benefits and pay equity in 1995, Hudak’s campaign spent their first week of the election talking of little else.

They launched aggressive ads claiming the program — which the Liberals belatedly christened “No Skills Left Behind” — was for “foreign workers” and that “Ontarians need not apply.”

Convinced the strategy was attracting voters in parts of Ontario hard hit by job losses, the Tories initially hammered away on it until realizing the attacks were hurting their fortunes in cities like Toronto.

At the same time, the Liberals couldn’t believe their luck. Instead of talking about soaring hydro bills or the rising tax burden that could be blamed on the governing party, Hudak was fixated on a boutique Grit promise and looking like a xenophobe for his trouble.

Horwath, for her part, exceeded all expectations, putting a fresh face on a party predecessor Howard Hampton had led to defeat in 1999, 2003 and 2007.

While her campaign got off to a slow start, she hit her stride in the Sept. 27 leaders’ debate.

Polls and pundits agreed she was the strongest performer, sounding honest and homespun, and coming across as more affable than her testy male rivals.

Yet aside from Horwath’s gaining attention for her likability on TV, the debate did not seem to change the complexion of the contest.

McGuinty returned to the campaign trail talking about the 50,000 green energy jobs his subsidies for wind and solar power would create by the end of next year and his plan to cut college and university tuition by 30 per cent for low- and middle-income students.

His tightly focused, disciplined campaign met with only one major controversy — the decision to move a Mississauga gas-fired power plant already under construction in order to save Liberal seats there and in Etobicoke.

Hudak, meanwhile, was hindered by problems related to municipalities. His candid admission that a Tory government could not continue the Liberals’ uploading of civic social service costs to the province infuriated mayors like Ottawa’s Jim Watson and Mississauga’s Hazel McCallion.

As well, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s surreptitiously taped summer musings at a barbecue with Mayor Rob Ford about a Tory “hat trick” in Ottawa, Queen’s Park and city hall at a barbecue did not help the provincial Tories.

By understanding human desire, Steve Jobs changed the world

FILE - In this Jan. 24, 1984, file photo, Steve Jobs, chairman of the board of Apple Computer, leans on the new "Macintosh" personal computer following a shareholder's meeting in Cupertino, Calif.

When I look at the pic of the Mac in 1984, it reminds me of Grade 3 or 4.

Apple on Wednesday, Oct. 5, 2011 said Jobs has died. He was 56. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

CUPERTINO, Calif. - In dark suit and bowtie, he is a computing-era carnival barker — eyebrows bouncing, hands gesturing, smile seductive and coy and a bit annoying. It's as if he's on his first date with an entire generation of consumers. And, in a way, he is.

It is Jan. 24, 1984, and a young Steve Jobs is standing at centre stage, introducing to shareholders of Apple Computer Inc. the "insanely great" machine that he's certain will change the world: a beige plastic box called the Macintosh.

Here is the Wizard of Cupertino at the threshold of it all, years before the black mock turtleneck and blue jeans. He is utterly in command — of his audience and of his performance. All of the Jobs storytelling staples are emerging.

The hyperbole: "You have to see this display to believe it. It's incredible."

The villain: "And all of this power fits in a box that is one-third the size and weight of an IBM PC."

The tease: "Now I'd like to show you Macintosh in person. All of the images you are about to see on the large screen will be generated by what's in that bag."

He retreats into the shadows, pulls the inaugural Mac out of its satchel. He inserts a disk and boots up. Suddenly, on the screen — roughly pixelated by today's standards but, for 1984, stunning — a typeface rolls by to the theme from "Chariots of Fire." A picture of a geisha appears. Then a spreadsheet. Architectural renderings. A game of video chess. A bitmapped drawing of Steve Jobs dreaming of a Mac.

The computer speaks. "Hello. I'm Macintosh. It sure is great to get out of that bag," it says. "It is with considerable pride that I introduce a man who's been like a father to me: Steve Jobs ."

Applause shakes the place. Steven Paul Jobs, basking in it, tries not to grin. He fails. The future, at this moment, is his.

___(equals)

It is 27 years later now, and Steve Jobs has exited the stage he managed so well. We are left with the talismans of his talent, a tech diaspora: the descendants of that original Mac. The iPod and iTunes , Nanos and Shuffles and Classics and Touches. The Apple Store. The iPhone and the App Store and the iPad 2. They are part of the cultural fabric — tools that make our lives easier and, some insist, sexier and more streamlined.

But taken together, what do they mean? Are they merely gadgets and services that sold well, that answered the market's needs for humans of the late 20th and early 21st centuries? Did Jobs' prickly perfectionism — born, some said, of outsized ego — merely create a whole run of really useful tools? Or is something more elemental at play here?

Jobs the CEO, Jobs the technologist and futurist, Jobs the inventor and innovator and refiner of others' ideas: All of them, in the end, relied upon another Steve Jobs who sewed the others together and bottled their lightning: Steve Jobs the storyteller, spinning the tale of our age and of his own success, and making it happen as he went.

From his earliest days with Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak , he was a half step ahead of the rest of us, innovating and inventing and creating and doggedly marketing it all by building a lifestyle around it. From Apple's personal computers, he harnessed the new and repackaged the existing to create something fresh, something more.

Beyond his measurable successes, though, Steve Jobs claims one spot in history above all others: He realized what we wanted before we understood it ourselves.

We wanted easy to use. We wanted to lose ourselves in what our gadgets did. We wanted sleek, cool, streamlined — things that weren't always associated with consumer electronics. We wanted the relationship between object fetish and functionality to be indistinguishable. We wanted to touch the future without seams that would yank us out of our communion with our machines. We wanted, in short, intricate simplicity.

To Jobs, the above sentences might have been commandments. They were used to denounce — in a friendly manner, but always pointed — what Apple cast as the corporate, bland chaos of the PC culture that IBM and Microsoft were creating.

In Jobs' hands those principles were potent weapons. Apple's successes and missteps are well known, but things seemed to accumulate voltage when they passed through the switching station of Jobs' brain.

"There are two sides of it. One is the interface design side. The other is his ability to persuade major media outlets and others to work with him," says Edward Tenner, a technology historian and author of "Our Own Devices: How Technology Remakes Humanity."

"His personal mystique," Tenner says, "became a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Some of it is the American penchant for big personalities. Microsoft had Bill Gates, Facebook Marc Zuckerberg. A dominant human face focuses things. Think of IBM, one of the 20th century's most influential companies: It dominated as the computer age dawned but lacked a defining figure; does it hold the same place in popular culture as an Apple or a Facebook ? The Hollywood storytelling tradition, built on the American cult of individual achievement, feeds the belief in a national history of invention and innovation.

Progress by committee? Not so compelling a script, even though Apple succeeds on the hard work of thousands. But the American inventor mystique — the notion that one guy armed with a combination of a good idea, hard work, challenging conditions and a bit of snake oil, can still change the world? That's been a big seller since Eli Whitney and the cotton gin.

When it comes to Jobs, comparisons are legion. Like Edison? A little, but not really; Edison didn't understand the elegance of interfaces. Like Barnum, selling the sizzle? Except that Jobs had the steak, too. Perhaps more like broadcast pioneers David Sarnoff and Bill Paley, who realized they must harness the pipeline — the airwaves, in their case — so that the content could flow through.

In a world of corporations and committees and consultation and collaboration, Jobs personified the power of the individual to effect an outcome — or at least the appearance of it. He was nothing if not cinematic. He projected his own image onto giant screens behind him as he rolled out product after product like some microchip Merlin. He was not merely a technologist; he was a stylemaker.

Jobs "saw there was this personal quality to computing," says Paul Levinson, author of "Cellphone: The Story of the World's Most Mobile Medium and How It Has Transformed Everything."

"The attractiveness of the product . They're gleaming, beautiful objects that are physically attractive," Levinson says. "iPods are almost worn as jewelry. Who would have imagined it would have been cool to see wires coming out of somebody's ear?"

___(equals)

Every medium, of course, needs messages. Every container needs content. Every gadget, to endure, needs to transcend itself and become what the people who use it dream it could be.

Imagine, in the Foghat and Starland Vocal Band days of 1976 when Apple came into existence, if someone said you could acquire all the music you could listen to in a lifetime, from the best bands, in a matter of moments — and not by ordering 10 eight-track tapes for a penny from Columbia House . Unthinkable.

Imagine if, on the day Jobs introduced the Mac, someone said: Hey, wanna watch "Risky Business" on this screen that looks like a thick piece of paper? And we can read magazines and newspapers AND play Missile Command while we're waiting for it to — what's the word? — "download." Preposterous.

Sure, we had downloaded music and even movies before iTunes ; yes, we had been digital when it came to reading before the App Store. But again Apple stood in the intersection of utility and desire. Those services helped free content from physical format and let it go where people were.

When Jobs introduced the iPhone in 2007, his sexy-beast patter made a great point of identifying the three fundamental gadgets that people sought out: the music player, the cellphone and the Internet-access device. The iPhone , he made great hay of saying, was all three.

Apple didn't just want to make money from things it made; it wanted to make money from things others made — to be a distributor of content through its devices. So if you want The New York Times on your iPad, Apple gets a cut. If you want premium Weather Channel maps, Apple gets a cut. If you want the Beatles or "Harry Potter" and you get 'em on iTunes , Apple gets a cut.

Put another way: Jobs built a tech company, then left. When he came back, the landscape had changed enough that he decided, hey— this should be a media company, too. The Internet era had arrived and the two notions had grown together. And there Steve Jobs stood in the middle, getting it — and controlling the conditions of distribution to benefit Apple, much to content companies' irritation.

"Asking if something is a media company or a tech company is now irrelevant. Media is technology. Technology is media," says Dale Peskin, a principal at We Media, a Virginia firm that studies how media, technology and society are changing each other.

"The distinction," he says, "has become nonsensical."

___(equals)

In one episode of " Mad Men ," the ad-exec main character, Don Draper, builds a campaign around Kodak's slide projector, which the company calls the "photo wheel." Draper understands that what resonates is not what the gadget does; it's what it means that's important.

"There's the rare occasion," he says, "when the public can be engaged beyond flash — if they have a sentimental bond with the product." And lo: Draper rechristens the photo wheel the Carousel — because, he says, "it lets us travel the way a child travels — round and round and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved."

What Don Draper did with the slide projector in fiction, Steve Jobs did with technology in the real world. He constructed meaning from desire.

"What are we, anyway? Most of what we think we are is just a collection of likes and dislikes, habits, patterns. At the core of what we are is our values, and what decisions and actions we make reflect those values," Jobs said in a Playboy interview in 1985.

For Jobs, it was about harnessing the here and now with devices that propelled you into the future — the one " Star Trek " and "The Jetsons" promised, where gadgetry lived alongside us without devaluing humans in the process.

As eulogies pour in, it's easy to conclude that Apple was Steve Jobs and Steve Jobs was Apple. The reality is far more complex. Teams upon teams of creative people built the company's dreams and hid its seams.

But on the inside, dictatorship, however benevolent, tends to be more efficient than democracy. And looking from the outside, the charismatic front man trumps communal, incremental progress. Genius may indeed be 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration, but selling genius to the masses — well, that ratio is probably far more balanced.

There is criticism that Jobs was an amplifier, a conduit of others' originality. But he understood how to turn raw ideas into applied, coveted tech. "People always knock him for building off other people. But he knew what to do with it," says Leander Kahney, editor and publisher of the tech blog Cult of Mac.

He made people believe his reality was the one they desired. He convinced us of what we couldn't live without, then packaged it and sold it to us. With a sales sensibility drawn from the 19th century, he sold us the 21st. Which did he do more of — nuts and bolts or smoke and mirrors? Does it matter? Aren't both necessary for what he and Apple accomplished?

In the end, these things are true: a beige plastic cube with a grey screen and a slot in it changed computing. A tiny box that stored bits and bytes, helped along by a virtual store that sold digital files for 99 cents each, changed music. Another tiny one-button box that did hundreds of things changed phones and media. And a flat, paper-sized slate, a latter day tabula rasa, is still changing all of the above in ways we haven't yet measured.

David Gelernter offers insight into the Jobsian personality in "Machine Beauty: Elegance and the Heart of Technology," his 1998 book. "We believe implicitly that the scientist is one type, the artist a radically different one," Gelernter writes. "In fact, the scientific and artistic personalities overlap more than they differ, and the higher we shimmy into the leafy canopy of talent, the closer the two enterprises seem."

On a recent lunch hour in Cupertino, de Anza Boulevard, which runs right through the campus of Apple headquarters, is full of pedestrians — the acolytes of Jobs. Stop at a red light and watch as they cross. Invariably, each one carries a device. A woman is engrossed in what's on her iPad. A young man is chatting on an iPhone . Three people wear earbuds with white cords snaking into various pockets. One is singing.

Here's the funny thing. Three days later and 3,000 miles east, an urban crosswalk produces the same sight — human beings interacting with the fruits of the Apple tree, doing what they do with Jobs' vision of progress, integrating his gadgets and their contents into everyday life.

Was he inventor? Salesman? Entertainer? Visionary? Those questions miss the point. Like his devices, Steve Jobs was a medium that led us to other destinations — the ones of our own choosing. That's what made him different. He's gone, but the future he saw is still, quite literally, in our hands.