By: Ish Theilheimer, Publisher, Straight Goods
Mad Cow Disease is a good example. With all the fuss over whether Brazilian beef is infected, everyone's ignoring the possibility the disease already may have obtained a North American foothold via game farm elk in western Canada and the US. That's despite fairly well-publicized recent health orders that several herds be destroyed. Veteran Calgary journalist and editor Gillian Steward reports that the TSE infection that spreads the disease - of which the more well-known BSE is a sub-category - is transmitted by prions (great Scrabble word!), which are non-living and smaller than a virus and almost impossible to get rid of. They can remain in the environment and infect other species for years. At least one expert believes all game farm elk - 30,000 in Canada alone - will need to be slaughtered to contain the risk. Watch what you eat and whose antlers you wear.
Garbage politics. Ontario residents are so used to Mike Harris' bully tactics and power politics that we tend to shrug at new excesses. But as Charlie Angus reports what Harris is doing to get take control of the situation and get Toronto's garbage dumped in a leaky old mine in northern Ontario go so far over the top they're almost in orbit. Blatantly, in almost full public view, Harris has pulled every string he can find to force Toronto into the deal. He schemed with right-wing buddy Governor John Engler of Michigan but that was exposed. He tried rabble-rousing among municipalities along the Highway 401 truck route, but that backfired when the mayor of Sarnia went public with his misgivings. Now Harris' staff and his private sector buddies are consulting feverishly with senior environment staff trying to engineer a legal fix that will let the Province seize control of Toronto's garbage. Given the Tory record of forced amalgamations and school closures, you have to like the odds they'll find a way.
Sugar's everywhere. Do you comparison-shop for it? It isn't likely, because sugar's such a staple, right? Well, actually you can't save money on sugar because almost all consumer sugar in Canada is marketed by an oligopoly of sugar giants. Ethical business writer Paul Pellizzari tells us that when one small company tried to sell sugar in new packages to Canadian supermarkets they got squeezed out by those giants. It looks like unfair competition and probably is, but it's damnably hard to prove, so Canadian consumers pay more with each spoonful. Serves us right for switching from maple syrup, I guess.
Many Canadian innovations aren't so obvious. Take what you might call Cinevangelism (sin-evangelism is something else). The Americans gave us televangelism, but media critic Barrie Zwicker reports that a well-greased Canuck film company has launched a whole way to thump bibles. With a $17.4 million budget, Left Behind is the biggest yet of a series from Cloud Ten Pictures of St. Catharines, Ontario - feature films aimed at converting the unconverted. Also new here is that the movie's initial release was on video, targeted to evangelical Christians who get a personal video pitch from the movie's star, Kirk Cameron, telling viewers "You are part of a very select group of people. And that group makes up less than one percent of the population in this country," and urging them to get out into their communities and plug the movie to churches, book stores and theatres. Can't we just watch Crash again?
The Straight Goods Report is a new weekly column being distributed to newspapers, web 'zines and portals, and radio stations all over Canada. You need not ask permission to reproduce it in your print or web publication, but please include our URL and let us know where you are posting it.
- Ish Theilheimer
- Killaloe, Ontario
- Febuary 26, 2001
- ish@straightgoods.com
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