Satire

It's Thursday, January 20th.

President Bush was in a reflective mood on Wednesday, the eve of his second inauguration, as snow fell in Washington, D.C. A motorcade took him to the U.S. Archives, where history resonated around him as he looked at the Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution.

Currently, the President then blew his nose into the Geneva Conventions and wiped his boots on the Kyoto Protocol before returning to the White House.

This is the Current.

Mudslides

Yesterday, in the quiet neighbourhood of North Vancouver, a rain-swept wall of dirt careened down a hillside, completely destroying two homes. One woman was killed, her husband seriously injured and hundreds of people have been evacuated.

Adrian Thompson lives in the area where the mudslide occurred - at about 3:15 a.m. He recalled what happened when he went outside to see what was going on. It was there that he met up with neighbours who'd just escaped disaster.

Residents were given short notice to get out of their houses just after 3 a.m. James Boyd and Laura Martin recounted what they had to do.

A state of emergency is in effect in North Vancouver and about 20 homes evacuated overnight. The weather has been wrecking havoc across British Columbia for several days now. Heavy rains have been flooding British Columbia's south coast, and snow and freezing rain have made travel to the interior of the province a hazard.

Now mudslides aren't uncommon in the Vancouver area but some geologists say this slide should serve as a wake-up call. And communities in B.C. should consider themselves warned. Oldrich Hungr is a Professor of Engineering Geology at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. We reached him at his home in West Vancouver.

Mudslides – California

As the rain keeps falling and as residents and authorities watch for more danger, they are still burying the dead in Ventura, Country, California. Last week, a massive mudslide tore through the community of La Conchita, killing 10 people and destroying more than a dozen homes.

It's just the latest slide in an area that has seen more than its fair share - including one in 1995 that crushed 9 homes. This---despite efforts by officials to keep a close eye-out for just such a threat.

David Festerling was at the scene of the La Conchita slide minutes after the hillside came down. He's deputy chief of the Ventura County Fire Department. And he joined us on the line from his home in Thousand Oaks, California.

Mudslide Factboard

Canada's worst landslide took place in 1903, in the town of Frank, in Alberta's Crowsnest Pass. In the early hours of an April morning, the mountain above the town collapsed. At least 76 people were killed under tons of massive limestone boulders. Bad as it was, the death toll from the Frank Slide pales in comparison with slides in other parts of the world.

In 1999, 25-thousand Venezuelans were killed by a cluster of mudslides and floods. In 1970, a rockslide in Peru killed at least 15-thousand people. And in 1920 -- a series of landslides triggered by a massive earthquake killed more than 100-thousand people.

Listen to The Current: Part 1

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The Current: Part 2

China Business

Canadians are accustomed to thinking about our place in the world, especially as it relates to the superpower next door----the United States. But this week, our attention is being drawn to another world power farther east.

Prime Minister Paul Martin's visit to China this morning doesn't have quite the same amount of fanfare as Jean Chretien's Team Canada forays. But make no mistake-- this is a trade mission--and Canada has a lot riding on this trip. China, after all, is Canada's second-largest trading partner, with export to China totalling $4.7 billion at the end of 2003 and Canada wants an even bigger piece of the pie.

Paul Beamish follows trade between the two countries. He's the Director of the Asian Management Institute at the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario. And he joined us from London, Ontario.

China - Human Rights

As governments and corporations around the world rush for their share of China's economic pie, human-rights advocates say the basic rights of ordinary people are still being ignored. China, however, says it is taking steps to improve its human-rights record. The People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Communist Party, is even running a special Q and A column on human rights. But in reality, little has changed.

Few can forget the sounds and images broadcast from Tiananmen Square more than 15 years ago and just this week, the Chinese government said it stood by its bloody crackdown of pro-democracy protesters back in 1989. Those comments followed the death of Zhao Ziyang, a former Communist leader who was kept under house arrest for fifteen years for criticizing the government's handling of that uprising. Security around the symbolic square was also beefed up this week amid fears Ziyang's death might inspire a fresh push for change.

Human Rights in China is a watchdog group based in Hong Kong and New York. We asked its Executive Director, Sharon Hom, to give us a snapshot of life for people forgotten in China's economic boom and to describe what the major human rights problems are today.

China – Canada Human Rights

Balancing trade negotiations with human rights issues is always a tricky business. Especially for countries that place a premium on personal freedoms, but want to do business with countries that may not.

To talk about how Canada can better strike that balance with China, we were joined by Errol Mendes. He's a professor of Constitutional and International Law at the University of Ottawa and co-editor of Bridging the Global Divide on Human Rights: A Canada-China Dialogue.

Listen to The Current: Part 2

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The Current: Part 3

Quebec Schools – Jewish Appeal

Well, we are not sure what part of the Old Testament says "the hand that giveth, can also taketh away" but private Jewish schools in Quebec may want to add it to their curriculum. Yesterday, the province's Minister of Education reneged on a 10-million-dollar promise to Quebec's Jewish community.

Just over a month ago Education Minister Pierre Reid agreed to provide full funding for seven private Jewish schools. He said it was a way to build bridges to the community after the United Talmud Torah's school library was firebombed nearly a year ago even though private schools are already partially funded by the province and the public backlash was just too strong. We aired some angry voices from Montreal's CBC call-in show:

Montreal-based newspaper La Presse has posited that one of the government's motives was money. The paper linked the promised funding with the hundreds of thousands of dollars the Jewish community had raised for the Quebec Liberal Party. Both Pierre Reid and Premier Jean Charest flatly deny that allegation. Quebec Premier Jean Charest explained his decision to pull the funding.

No surprise that Jewish community members are disappointed by the decision. Rabbi Reuben Poupko is a board member of the Jewish Education Council and he joined us from Montreal.

Quebec Schools – Andre Pratte

This story seems to hit every hot button issue: politics, education, religion, and race. To talk about how this scandal is playing out in the province, we were joined by Andre Pratte. He is the chief editorialist at La Presse. He was in Montreal.

School Factboard

Education is a provincial matter, and typically Canada is a bit of a checkerboard when in comes to eductation funding. In 1997, Quebec replaced its Catholic and Protestant school system with one based on language.

Private schools receive about sixty per cent of their funding from the government. The province provides full funding to private religious schools if they have cultural exchange activities with a public school board. Greek private schools receive full funding.

But, not every province funds schools in the same way as Quebec.

In, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Ontario private schools don't receive any funding from the provincial government.

But, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Northwest Territories and Alberta fully finance Catholic Schools. Manitoba provides fifty per cent of funding for Catholic Schools.

British Columbia coughs up between 35 to 50 per cent of funds for some private schools - IF they follow the B--C curriculum and have provincially certified teachers.

And as usual, Alberta takes a different approach than other provinces. The government fully funds all Catholic, Charter and francophone schools. The province even fully funds one Jewish school located in the Edmonton area.

Letters

Time to catch up with our mail and our Friday host, Bernard St Laurent joined Anna Maria Tremonti from Montreal to help read our listener response to the show.

Iraq Elections Links:

www.iraqocv.org - info about the elections, requirements, eligibility etc ...
www.vote169.com - website for United Iraqi Alliance (aka Seyed Seestani's list)
www.iraqilist.org - party website for The Iraqi List (aka Dr Ayad Allawi's list)
www.newopinion.net - party website for Riyath Al-Hassani (writer & politician)
www.iri.org/ - polls from iraq about various issues
www.ieciraq.org/english.html - Independent electoral commission of Iraq
www.ieciraq.org - as above but in Arabic
www.cpa-iraq.org/government/TAL.html - Transitional Administrative Law which governs during the elections, and sets out the powers of the National Assembly to be elected
www.iom.int/ - International Organization for Migration - managing the elections for Iraqis abroad
www.nahrain.com/
www.alrafidayn.com/
http://iraqipages.com/
www.sotaliraq.com/
http://ankawa.com/
www.iraqipapers.com/index.html
www.puk.org (PUK)
www.krg.org (KDP)
http://aina.org/aol/
www.Nohra.ca
www.zindamagazine.com
www.ca-cic.org

Last Word

Today at noon---Washington D.C. time--George W. Bush will be sworn in as president of the United States----for the second time. And with a cost of about 50-million dollars--that's US dollars---the 55th inaguration promises to be the most expensive presidential party in American history.

And that figure does not include the cost of locking down the capital. In fact, taxpayers are ponying up 17-million dollars, which means Mr. Bush's big day will have the highest security bill for any event since the attacks of 9-11.

We ended the show with The Current's "Cole's Notes" on America's past inaugural festivities, just to see how this one stacks up.

Listen to The Current: Part 3

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