All those e-scooters you see? They're illegal

If you are becoming increasingly exasperated recently by those annoying and apparently lawless electric scooters, you are not alone.

Stats on e-scooter crashes with pedestrians are hard to find, but accidents resulting in e-scooter rider visits to hospital have doubled in the last year or two, and there have been at least two deaths of e-scooter riders in July alone.

How does it make you feel, then, to know that pretty much all of the e-scooters you see zooming around our streets, sidewalks and bike lanes are doing so illegally?

Having said that, it depends where you live. You see, there are no national or even provincial rules or laws in place regulating e-scooters. What rules do exist are municipal. (And when was the last time you saw municipal laws being enforced?)

Thus, in Mississauga or Brampton or Ottawa, e-scooters my be legal due to a six-year old provincial pilot program they are part of. Even there, though, they are only legal if the scooters are unable to go faster than 24 kph (can YOU tell?) and if the driver is over the age of 15 (again, can YOU tell?) Also, you can't ride with a passenger, under-18s must wear a helmet, you can't ride them on the sidewalk, and if there is a bike lane available you have to use it. In Mississauga specifically, you can't ride them on a road with a speed limit of more than 50 kph.

So, it's complicated, and most people you see are probably breaking at least one of those rules.

In Toronto, on the other hand, it's not complicated at all. Toronto is not part of the pilot project, and you can't legally ride an e-scooter ANYWHERE in Toronto except on private property (so up and down your driveway, for example). You can buy them, but you can't use them. Once again, no-one is enforcing this ban - e-scooters are everywhere.

Outside of Ontario, it's just as confusing. In Vancouver, Halifax and Calgary, for instance, e-scooters are allowed, at least in bike lanes. In Calgary, though, e-scooters are only allowed if they are rented/shared, not if you own your own e-scooter. Plus, you can use your (shared) e-scooter on some sidewalks in Calgary but not others. Like I said, it's complicated (and unenforced).

Canadians are surprisingly cosmopolitan

Visual Capitalist does it again: produces a striking and unexpected graph, this time of the extent to which the inhabitants of different countries travel abroad.

Not unexpected: Sweden, Netherlands and Germany top the list, with 99/96% reporting having travelled abroad, with the UK not far behind at 94%. 

More unexpected: Canada comes next, with 92% reporting having travelled abroad (although most to the USA, I'm guessing). This is more than the French (90%), Australians (88%), Italians (86%), and Spaniards (84%), and significantly more than the Americans (76%) and the Japanese (65%). 

Ha! How cosmopolitan we are!

Clear up your mess, Elon

I hope Elon Musk is going to go up there and clear up the mess his SpaceX rocket made on the Moon.

Trump's hold over US Supreme Court is weakening

The US Supreme Court had a busy day yesterday, as it prepares to wind down for a long and leisurely summer break. Among its mixed bag of decisions was one particularly important one: a 6-3 decision to strike down Trump's attempts to end "birthright citizenship", the right of children physically born in the USA - even to undocumented immigrants, tourists, and people on short-term work or study visas - to have US citizenship.

This was a big deal for Trump. His executive order on this issue was one of the very first things he did on taking power. He even attended the Supreme Court's oral arguments in person, the first time a sitting president has ever done so, his intention presumably being to stare down the judges to make sure they voted with him. In the end, though, the court voted against him in one of the few checks to his many illegal attempts to re-write American law and way of life.

Perhaps the biggest surprise, though, considering how clear the wording of the American Constitution is on the matter, and the century-plus of corroborating case law and legal precedent, is that three of the Court's most conservative judges - let's name names: Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas - still managed to justify dissenting against the decision. A fourth, Brett Cavanaugh, decided to prevaricate and knit-pick, concluding that Trump's order was not unconstitutional but did still violate immigration law. The other two conservatives on the Court (John Roberts and Amy Coney Barrett), who have in the past been guilty of voting ideologically, voted according to the clear legal principles this time, siding with the three Democrats on the Court.

Legal scholars are at something of a loss to understand how, and on what legal grounds, the three conservatives could vote to allow Trump to force through this clearly unconstitutional measure. But it just shows the hold Trump still has over them, even if his hold over some of the others appears to be weakening.

The Washington DC Reflecting Pool Saga

The Washington DC Reflecting Pool Saga in three minutes flat. In case you care...

Does Canada really need high-speed rail?

Canada has been talking about a high-speed railway line for decades. You only have to visit Europe or Japan or China to experience the wonder of an ultra-high-speed train, but these things don't come cheap. And, in North America at least, they don't come quickly.

The current Alto plan for a high-speed rail link from Toronto to Ottawa to Montreal to Quebec City (possibly via Kingston) is about 1,000 kilometers in length, and is protected to cost between $60 and $90 billion. The fact that the estimated cost covers such a large range suggests that they actually have no clue how much it will cost. Alto, the Crown corporation tasked with developing the project, itself warns that these figures are "for planning purposes only and should not be considered as a project budget". As with every other large Canadian development project, cost overruns are all but guaranteed.

As for how long it will take to build, well, that's anyone's guess. Not much of any size gets built in Canada in less than 15 or 20 years. The experience of California's foray into high-speed rail is salient here: a line from Los Angeles to San Francisco (just over 600km) was proposed in 2008 but, eighteen years later, just a tiny stretch of track has been laid, with most of the rest still at the planning stage. Currently, projections are that a 260km stretch from Merced to Bakersfield is expected to be completed by 2032, but don't hold your breath.

The bottom line, though, is the bottom line: $90 billion (plus) is an awful lot of money for Canada. Think what just a part of that that kind of money could do for public transit in Toronto or Montreal. Think what it could do towards eliminating poverty or propping up ailing Trump-tariffed businesses. 

Many politicians, though, seem excited by such a large-scale "nation-building project". It's often pointed out that Canada is the only G7 country without high-speed trains (although, as mentioned, America's is marginal). But is this really the best use of taxpayers' money? Do we really want to spend $90 billion - and it would probably end up costing much more than that, it always does - to save a few wealthy businessmen an hour or two on their commute, or to cannibalize customers from domestic airlines. 

Because, make no mistake, the cost of a ticket will probably put it outside the budget of the average Canadian (or the average tourist, for that matter), so it could end up as the biggest white elephant in Canada, the ultimate vanity project of the kind that we regularly mock other countries for undertaking. Canada's population is much less concentrated than France's or Japan's, and the distances are greater - what works over there won't necessarily work over here. Maintenance in the Canadian Shield terrain, and through those long hard winters, is also a differentiating issue.

I don't buy the argument that it is somehow miraculously going to fix traffic congestion and reduce our carbon footprint. It will not suddenly become the no-brainer option for travelling from Toronto to Montreal or Ottawa to Quebec City - it will be too expensive for that, for one thing, and will probably only appeal to people who currently take the train anyway. Neither will it magically boost GDP and create national prosperity, let alone improve access to housing and jobs and - most improbably - advance reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, all of which Alto is promising.

Yes, high-speed rail is cool, and yes, it would be nice. But can we really justify jt? Call me small-minded and anti-development, but I think not. And, just think, $90 billion!

Predictable outrage over Palestianian wxhibit at CMHR

A planned exhibit at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) entitled Palestine Uprooted: Nakba Past and Present is having the expected controversy and protest.

It's only a small exhibit, 12 metres wide, tucked into a corner on the first floor, just a few panels with some photos, video clips and first-person accounts, and it comes at the request of many Palestinian-Canadians who want to see some exposure of the violent displacement of some 800,000 Palestinians from their lands by the nascent state of Israel in 1947.

Many influential Jewish people, including "honorary board member" Gail Asper (who, with her father, Israel Asper, was instrumental in fundraising and getting the museum up and running), are taking issue with it, complaining that it lacks historical context and might inflame antisemitism. Jewish museum trustee Mark Berlin, who describes himself as pro-Palestinian, also resigned his position over the exhibit.

They argue that the exhibit lacks "context" in that it does not also cover the history surrounding the establishment of Israel, or the displacement of Jews from Arab lands after 1948. But, hold on, does any discussion of Nazi Germany have to include a countervailing segment on the Huns' invasion of Germany in the 4th century or Napoleon's invasion in the early 19th century, "for context"? How much context is enough context?

The so-called "Jewish nakba", in the years following the establishment of the state of Israel, is its own story, and probably merits a separate exhibit, although it bears noting that some of the resettlement of Jews was voluntary, and at least they had a homeland to resettle to, rather than languishing in refugee camps for decades like the Palestinians. 

The museum's CEO Isha Khan (not Jewish!) has defended the planned Palestinian exhibit, saying that it is not anti-Zionist, and that it does not challenge the legitimacy of the state of Israel. It is merely a piece to highlight a little-known aspect of Middle Eastern history and its human rights connotations. Moreover, the museum has for years had an exhibit on the second floor that specifically highlights the mass displacement of Jews from Arab lands, not to mention extensive galleries about the Holocaust.

An indication of just how knee-jerk a reaction this is: most of the people complaining about the display have not actually seen it yet! It only opened this weekend. The curators beg people to come and see it for themselves before they criticize.

What would the objectors have the museum do? Gloss over these historically-validated events? Grow the exhibit by two or three times in order to encompass the Israeli "context" (and thereby dilute the poignancy of the Palestinian story)? This is not a Jewish museum. Israel and the Jewish people have been the perpetrators of some pretty bad stuff over the years, as well as being the victims. Those stories need to be told too. This does not detract from Israel's - or rather the Jewish people's - vicissitudes and victimhood.

It was so predictable that there would be outrage expressed whenever Israel is criticized in any way. It was equally predictable that the "antisemitism card" would get played at some point. It's all part and parcel of the usual Israeli tendency to shut down any and all forms of criticism. I find it hard to understand that some people identify so closely with a race or a religion or a nationality that it subsumes almost everything else. But I do understand, from having observed it, that that's how it is with some people.

Hungary still out of step with Europe

You have to wonder about Hungary. By which I mean the Hungarian people. I know they just recently voted out Victor Orbán for a much more moderate president, so that's something. But, from what I can glean from international polls, they do still seem pretty out to lunch on political matters.

For example, a recent poll of different countries' views of Trump, Macron, Zelensky, Xi, Putin and Netanyahu, shows Hungary very much out on a limb where no-one else wants to be. While Canada and most European countries have very little confidence that Trump would do the right thing for world affairs and peace (in the range of 10-20%), 44% of Hungarians still have faith in Trump. Ditto with Putin: Canada and most of Europe's confidence in Putin ranges from 4% to 20%, apart from Hungary (33%) and, equally inexplicably, Greece (35%). They also have a much more positive view of Netanyahu than other countries.

As for their views on whether Donald Trump is a reliable partner to their country, Hungary and Greece are the only countries where their percentage has actually INCREASED over the last few years. Hungary's approval of Trump as a partner (65%) is much higher than any of the other countries polled.

Likewise, views on whether the USA contributes to peace and stability around the world have seen substantial decreases in most countries in recent years. Except Hungary, where the positive views have in RISEN from 33% to 46%! Hard to believe I know.

So, yes, the good burghers of Hungary have swapped out Orbán for Magyar. But they still seem to be totally out of step with the rest of Europe. And they clearly still have a soft spot for a good strong dictator.