overthere

McLellan got fired for a reason. A quite specific reason. Babcock coaches ther Olympic team, also for a specific reason. But I doub thet the Oilers structure-old or new- could manage the very strong personal;ity of Babcock. He will want a lot of control, both in Edmonton and AHL Bakersfield. It's a reason that Detroit is so very successful, the NHL and AHL teams play his system so players moving up are interchangeable parts, or at least know exactly what is expected.

They are a .500 team, as always. MLB Pitching stats, 30 teams, Toronto is: Team ERA- 27th walks allowed - 2nd earned runs allowed- 3rd Quality Starts- 29th oppistion onbase %- 26th home runs allowed- 3rd opponent total bases- 4th Wow.

Nothing that has happened or will happen will interrupt the net outflow of Alberta income tax $ to Quebec, Manitoba, the Maritimes and ... Ontario. The concern with the economy is not that companies will move their office to Vancouver. It is that they'll move their money somewhere else on the panet. There were already some big projects cancelled last year before the big oil price crunch. The two things that are going to speed that process are our national inability to build the infrastructure to get our resources to market(: pipelines,LNG facilties and marine terminals) and a shifting uncertainty with tax regimes. That just got worse on both counts. Yeah, we can bluster and blubber all we want about fighting the oil companies, but the reality is there are many, many places to make a profit. Increasingly, Canada is not one of them. They just shrug and move their billions to other projects that are less hassle and more profitable. You know, like what happened with the manufacturing and industrial output of North America. While we bicker, the jobs are gone for good. And we did it to ourselves.

CBC Radio- big surprise- had the lead story yesterday described implicating the entire PMO now busting out at the Duffy trial. They went in great excitement 'several senior Senators' suspected of involvement of attempting to suppress Senate audit results. I wonder who wrote the story, and why they think we are all dumb enough to believe that the Senate has somehow become part of the PMO.

He left for 2 reasons. One was to be closer to his estranged family in SoCal. The other was because he was poorly treated by the Oilers and particularly Tambellini The game the Canadian team played at the Sochi Olynpics was puck possession and hardcore defence. It's a style that wins. The scores may have been close but Canada dominated every minute they played. It was the perfect strategy. And Babcock writes that song.

No. of course not. This is not like every other government. Read the candidate biographies. They are very similar to the Orange wave in Quebec last fedewral election, with the critical distinction that the NDP under Layton then Mulcair did not actually have to make any decisions. Her immediate and real handicap is the lack of experience of her candidates, and selection from that group for Cabinet. I'm not talking only about lack of experience in whatever area the Cabinet post holds. That comes with the territory. It is the lack of experience in any kind of running business operations involving a lot of money and a lot of staff. Few even have supervisory experience. Ministers run large businesses. It is far more than an ideological undertaking.

complete and utter baloney. Canad is not and never has been unaligned. We are not and never have been a neutral country. We have been on occasion part of peacemaking ventures when peacemaking is possible, but far more often we fight in concordance with our allies. Very very few Canadians believe this stupid 'we are the blessed peacemakers' nonsense.

And Islam is the Religion of Peace. I'm surprised the two haven't done some joint marketing. I don't know why people are disappointed. This fight is exactly the same as every Mayweather fight: boring. His style is to present a perfect and superb defence, he rarely gets hit by an opponent and almost never gets hurt by a punch. He is an excellent counterpuncher that never suckers himself into attempting a knockout. He scores points, wins rounds, then retreats into defence until the next opportunity. He is really good at it, and it is not interesting to watch.

That won't be a problem for Notley. The AB civil service is already numerous and the best paid in Canada. Both their numbers and pay can only spike even higher under Notley. On the other hand, I don't their competence at their jobs.. Indeed. Who was it that said democracy ain't perfect, but it is better than the alternatives?

I'll take the Hawks to win. They are really really good defensively as a team, as well as having some great individual defensemen . Montreal has a similar style except for one thing: the Hawks have several people who can score goals as well as defend. Anaheim has yet to face an opponent that puts heavy pressure on their defence and particularly their goalie. That would change with the Hawks. Confession: mancrush on J Toews. What a player.

It put Alberta in a position to spend more per capita than anybody else in health, and near the top in education. It put Alberta in a position to finance their own massive infrastructure spending post 2008 recession, when they knew that the feds were not going to give the province anything while splashing cash elsewhere. It put the province in a position of nearly no debt. It put the residents of the province in the position of cranking around $10 billion per year every year into the coffers of other provinces via equalization. And they'll continue to do that even if the province is suffering an economic downturn now. It will be interesting to see how Notley proposes to spend even more on health care and education and civil service salaries, increase program spending across the board, while at the same time taxing corporations into going elsewhere with their capital and jobs. All while balancing the budget during a recession! I guess the answer is easy: tax, spend and borrow borrow borrow.

mmmmmm. no. If you read the biographies of the successful NDP candidates you won't find many of those. Most seem to be students still in school, teachers or former teachers, social workers and civil servants of all kinds. And of course plenty of union leaders. Notley appears to have an immediate and horrific task on her desk today- choosing a cabinet from people with no background in politics, business or managing people. I'm thinking former NDP leader Brian Mason for Finance Minister. He used to be a city bus driver and collected fares, made change, sold tickets etc. Notley is going to have to rely very heavily on the civil service to carry her government. That will be expensive.

The goals for workers and managers are very easy to define- maintain their job indefinitely. It is pretty easy in Canada for the most part. As long as nothing actually happens, public sector workers and managers (there is no effective difference between those two groups) are willing to talk about this at 'stakeholder' meetings indefinitiely. They know there will be no outcome that threatens their jobs, which are essentially tenured in Canada. What is irresponsible is continuing the status quo. It is not that difficult to change, but what it takes is an iron political will that is sustained for a few years. There have been very few politicians with the required spine in the history of Canada.

There are many examples of successful contracting out of services, and there are Fortune 500 hundred companies doing it for several decades now. Johnson Controls and Honeywell are two examples fo many. There are also many in Canada. They are called 'performance contractors' , which means they get paid from the savings they generate. In general, no savings means no pay. Loads of corporations avail themselves of these service providers in acknowledgement that the performance contractors are better and cheaper at it. Examples are countless, including all the major banks in Canada and Canada Post. The feds have dabbled in it and the reason it usually fails with them and with public sector in general is not on your list of three.(though the failure is not universal, for example the federal government contracted out tens of thousands of cleaning and maintenance jobs decades ago). Thwe reason is that their is classic, systemized resistance not just from front line workers, but from management at every level including to the Deputy Minster level. Everybody pretends otherwise, but every manager in the whole tottering gigantic pyramid of management knows that their job depends on the failure of outspourcing. How do you maintain that direcor or manager pay designation when there is a far small structure beneath you. This is one area where the public sector unions- of course- work hand in glove with their masters to make certain the contract is designed, written, supervised and assessed with failure guaranteed. NObdoy ever adds in the cost of all those manager levels into the service cost either....... Big surprise.

Australia- for example- has the majority of its civil servants under renewable employment contracts of 2 to 5 years. Flushing non performers, or more importantly adapting the civil service to respond to shifting business requirements is far easier. I can hardly believe that nobody above has addressed the primary problem with the civil service in Canada: lack of accountability. Not just rank and file workers, but more so on managers and polticians. There just aren't many circumstances where job security is directly linked to performance indicators or industry /metrics. Neither success or failure at a job has much relationship to reward or punishment.

It must be a handholding kind of romance with the handmaiden then, because GreyWorm is missing his worm.

If these folks want to do soemthing useful they should break the coffee machines at Starbucks.

Yep. Mclellan has had zero success in the NHL playoffs, his buddy Renney is giving him two gifts in Prague. One is the chance to coach a winer, the other is to give him a bit of time and space to wait for job offers. I know some award Toronto or Vancouver the annual NHL choke award, but San Jose is the winner for several years now. Feel free to ignore the magic of them getting there at all with so very many injuries and a team of geezers.

I would stay and hope I caught a furtive glimpse of a womans ankle peeping out from under the tarp she was wearing. I live for those kind of thrills.

I think people are getting the state of the auto industry in Canada confused with the overall financial health of the Big Three US based automakers. They are pulling out slowly but surely and steadily from assembling vehicles in this country. They are not shutting down globally, it is a reduction and eventual elimination of their assembly capacity in Canada. We can argue about bad decisions in the past, but strictly from a corporate viewpoint they are doing exactly want they need to do to maintain their profitability. And they cannot compete by paying high wages and benefits in this market. So they won't.

Little Finger probably doesn't want to stick around Winterfell either with Stannis en route. He can argue that he has been working against the Lannisters in some significant ways, but Stannis won't want a master conspirator and puppetmaster like Little Finger around, period. Somebody is going to chop up Lord Baelish, he does not have many friends. I don't think Grey Worm and Ser Barristan are dead just yet.

I hope they can turn it around, but without major help in pitching.... It looks like boom or bust season ahead... if they cant score 8 or 10, they won;t win. Awesome offence, but it won't win enough games to matter. I think Dickey is close to being done, Buehrle too. Dickey gets hit hard, often. Pilar and Travis have been pleasant surprises and good building blocks for the future. I also like how Goins appears to be getting more comfy at the plate, he is awesome on the field. Pompey and the young pitchers.... need some time in the minors. Donaldlson looks to be a large upgrade from Lawrie. Reyes..... semi-permanent IR dweller.... not much he or the Jays can do about it with his contract.

I apologize. I just reliazed that my questioning attitude may adversely affect the Ontario Happiness Index.

The pitching on the Jays, pretty much all of it- sucks. And again today Gibbons left Hutchison in too long when he was clearly tiring. Once again, Gibbons is guilty of pandering to players and trying to get him the win by completing five innings instead of recognizing the obvious and getting him out when he starts to tire.. They don't have an ace in the starting rotation. They actually don't seem to have any competency at all in the rotation. Their vets Dickey and Buerhle are really looking their age. Their starting kiddy rotation of Hutchison and Sanchez is not good enough, and the other baby Norris is already gone. His replacement Estrada is a journeyman mutt. The bullpen has been mostly awful. They don't have a closer despite auditioning a few. If all goes well, the Jays will finish .500 again. Unless they miraculously locate an entire staff.

If the protesters really want to affect capitalism they should Eat the Rich. Yes, drag them out of their Mercedes at a stoplight, run a spit through them and toast them on site. Not only will they help the working man gain some much needed protein in their fight against the running dog oppressors, I think they'll find that these scum are nicely marbled and tend to baste themselves.