June 2, 2009

Canadians will own about 12 per cent of the newly restructured General Motors once the company emerges from bankruptcy protection.

Currently, And if my math is right ... Yup. They're still not going to be making a care you'd want to drive.

This is The Current.

Cdn/Us Healthcare

We started this segment with a clip of Canadian Shona Holmes. Her story is part of an advertisement by Patients United Now, a project run by the Americans for Prosperity Foundation ... a not-for-profit group that promotes limited government and free markets. The reason groups such as that are so interested in highlighting problems in the Canadian health care system is that the United States Congress is spending the next two months working on legislation to overhaul the U.S. health care system.

According to President Barack Obama, the cost could run upwards of 1 Trillion-dollars over 10 years and the centrepiece would be some kind of public/private arrangement to make health care coverage in the United States universal. And that has some patient advocacy groups spooked ... because to them, it sounds a little too much like what we have here. So they're enlisting Canadians to help make the case against Canadian healthcare ... Canadians such as Rick Baker.

Rick Baker is a medical broker and the founder of Timely Medical Alternatives. He helps Canadians find medical treatment in the United States and he was in Vancouver.

Co-opting Canadians - Defender

We mentioned Doctor Brian Day, the former President of the Canadian Medical Association who also appears in advertisements funded by Conservatives for Patient Rights ... ads that are airing on CNN and Fox News.

But Anne McGrath has enlisted on the other side of this fight. She's the President of the Federal New Democratic Party and she was in Washington this morning talking up the virtues of Canadian health care.

Weaning Cities Off Cars

People who live in Toronto like to think of their city as a dynamic, accommodating, multicultural metropolis. But close one lane of traffic on one downtown thoroughfare and people stop pulling their punches.

We heard from two people who called in last week to Metro Morning, CBC Radio's morning show in Toronto. That was after Toronto's City Council voted to close one lane of Jarvis Street -- a major downtown roadway -- and turn it into bike lanes.

It's one of several measures Mayor David Miller and his allies have taken to make the streets more bike and pedestrian friendly. And despite the protest, the Mayor is standing his ground. This kind of debate is playing out across North America and around the world as cities grapple with traffic congestion and try to keep people moving in a variety of ways.

Last month for example, Vancouver's City Council voted to close one car lane on the already congested Burrard Street Bridge and turn it into two bike lanes. And while this all starts out as traffic engineering, it turns into social engineering rather quickly.

After all, North American cities are in large part defined by the car. Jeb Brugmann knows this better than most. He spent 10 years as the founding Secretary General of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives. He has worked as a consultant to governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations. His new book is Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing The World. And Jeb Brugmann was in Toronto.

Weaning Cities Off Cars (cont'd)

We continued our conversation with Jeb Brugmann. He is the author of Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World. He was in our Toronto studio.

Soccer Parents - Calgary Association

All over the country now soccer season is kicking into high gear. But like any other sport, even "The Beautiful Game" can get ugly. Supportive parents start out encouraging their budding young Ronaldos. But some of them soon end up heaping abuse on coaches, referees and opposing players.

In Calgary, the "sideline rage" has become so bad that two-thirds of the city's minor league soccer referees quit in their first year. Lubna bin Zayyad has thought about quitting a few times. She's 15 and she referees soccer in Calgary ... something that's a challenge for her and her mother Sabeen.

The Calgary Minor Soccer Association has just started a Field Marshall program that it hopes will help keep parents in line and make things easier for young referees like Lubna. Daryl Leinweber is the association's Executive Director and he was in Calgary.

Soccer Parents - Psychologist

Jay Goldstein has spent many years studying hot-headed soccer parents to find out what makes them tick. He's a research assistant in Sport Psychology with the Department of Kinesiology at the University of Maryland. He was in College Park, Maryland.