[PHOTO] Looking west at the Galleria towards The Crossways, 6:45 am

Looking west at the Galleria towards The Crossways, 6:45 am
Originally uploaded by rfmcdpei

I took this photo early one morning at 6:45 in the morning. In the front of the photo to the left are some of the long narrow houses typical of the area east of the intersection of Dufferin and Dupont Streets, while to the right is a piece of Dupont Street itself. Further in the distance near the centre of the photo is the vertical pillar pointing passersby to the Galleria Shopping Centre located on the southwest corner of the Dufferin/Dupont intersection, while barely visible beyond the Galleria is the Crossways complex, a brick strucutre a couple dozen stories high located at the intersection of Dundas Street West and Bloor Street in the middle of The Junction neighbourhood.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Canada's biggest have-not province

The National Post is one of many Ontario-based media outlets to carry the news that the province of Ontario is now eligible, as a have-not province, to receive equalization payments from the federal government.

Jim Flaherty, the Finance Minister, is set to announce another revamp of the equalization program that helps ensure Canadians across the country are able to access similar levels of public services like health and education. He claims that volatility in resource prices and the current economic crisis have made the program “unsustainable”. Future growth in equalization payments will be linked to the growth of the economy - more specifically a three year moving average of GDP growth.

There were fears on the part of Dalton McGuinty’s government that the new ceiling on equalization payments to be announced by Mr. Flaherty today would see Ontario being squeezed out. In fact, the province is likely to receive payments of between $200-300-million, which is better than a kick in the pants. But if the system had not been reformed again, Ontario would have received closer to $1-billion, so it will be interesting to see if Mr. McGuinty is a glass half full kind of guy. Given that provincial premiers have the alimentary canal and big appetite for federal dollars of a hungry baby, the answer is probably no.

There is absolutely no doubt about the reaction that will come from Quebec, the biggest recipient of equalization payments, which is likely to get $700-million less than it would have done. The federal government claims that it has restored fiscal balance to the federation through increased equalization payments and social transfers to all the provinces. This is unlikely to pass muster with Mr. Charest, who is about to launch an election, with high hopes for majority government. We can expect a “blame Ottawa” campaign, even if this is unlikely to faze Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who probably holds the Quebec premier culpable for the loss of his own majority.

The new program being unveiled by Mr. Flaherty today scraps the 10-province standard he introduced in his 2007 Budget. He now claims that the program is growing at an unsustainable rate and that a ceiling must be imposed on the rate of increase. For next year, the new ceiling will mean that the provinces will receive $2-billion less than they would otherwise have done - the total cost of equalization will rise to $14.1-billion from $13.6-billion, instead of the near $16-billion planned under the old system. The bulk of that hit will be felt by Ontario and Quebec, although Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick will also see a small reduction from forecast payments. Alberta, British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador were not entitled to equalization under either the old system or the new, mainly because of their windfall natural resource revenues.

It's rather shocking that Ontario, once the prosperous economic engine of Canada, now has a GDP per capita below the Canadian average. It's even more shocking to note that, with the two central Canadian provinces of Ontario and Québec, Manitoba, and the three Maritime provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island all receiving transfer payments, more than two-thirds of the Canadian population lives in provinces with below-average economic output.

[BLOG-LIKE POSTING] Language and politics

In the Sunday Star, Sarah Barmak explored the interesting question of whether or not dialectal differences played a role in American politics by examining how different people reacted to Sarah Palin's speech style.

[A]dded to the lines drawn by race, gender, geography and class, could there be another, quieter split that defines the way Americans will vote when they head to the polls this Tuesday--a language divide?

Though it might not seem so to watch American television, where most traces of regional accent tend to be carefully excised from the general English used by news anchors and actors, the country is populated by a multitude of different dialects.

Some linguists identify at least three major groups that define the way Americans speak; others insist there are 24 distinct varieties--or more.

So a voter might be a Midwesterner, like the peeved University of Illinois student who slammed Palin's "gosh dern golly-gee" debating style, writing in his student paper that her informal diction "may be okay to say in casual talk among friends, but not when you're talking to the nation... Just because people aren't from Wall Street doesn't mean they stopped at sixth grade."

But go a little further south, and you might find rural voters talking about Palin as someone they could gab with around the coffee table.

"What happens in this scenario is things are so ideologically divisive that people either can't stand to hear her speech or love her speech," says professor Walt Wolfram, an expert on sociolinguistics at North Carolina State University. "It's a reflection of the political divisiveness that now exists."

People who hate the way Palin talks are more apt to judge her as incompetent or lacking intelligence, he explains.

"There is a sense in which people are biased and do make judgments of competence based on speech style," he says. "In Sociology 101 we claim that speech style has nothing to do with intelligence. But people do judge that."

With the exception of Atlantic Canada, which was settled directly from the British Isles, Ontario and points west were originally settled by Americans. As a result, Canadian English bears quite a few similarities to American dialects of English, particularly to Western American English and the Midland and other dialects of the Midwest and upstate New York. The famous pop vs. soda map provides a broad illustration of these similarities.



Now take a look at the famous 2004 Jesusland map, based on the divisions between states in the 2004 United States presidential elections.



One news source claims that 64% of Canadians support Obama's candidacy while only 14% support McCain's. I wonder if the dialectal factor might be playing a role in Canada, too, in determining which candidates Canadians like. Thoughts?