Child who caused Porter flight to be cancelled maybe not at fault

You will by now have probably heard or read the story of the Porter flight out of Victoria, BC, which was cancelled late at night after staff and parents were not able to get a young child to sit in his seat and buckle up his seatbelt. The child and parents eventually had to leave the plane, by which time it was too late for the plane to take off, and all the other passengers also had to disembark.

There have been mixed reactions to the incident, some (most) severely critical of the child and parents, some more empathetic. This eye-witness report, for example, makes.it clear that the child was clearly terrified, not just a spoiled brat having a temper tantrum.

I actually tried to find some video footage of the incident - you'd think, in this day and age, that someone would have been assiduously filming the whole thing. But all I could find was a very short clip, showing staff calmly (and obviously unsuccessfully) reasomong with the child.

My first reaction on reading about it was along the outraged "spoiled brat" lines. But, on reflection, I think the staff and parents probably did what they could, and the traumatized child probably could not help himself.

Soccer closes ranks against Infantino's vision

Football (soccer) federations across the world are closing ranks in opposition to FIFA boss Gianni Infantino. 

In an "open letter to the football family" yesterday, UEFA (representing Europe), CONCACAF (representing North amd Central America and the Caribbean) and AFC (representing Asia)  presented Infantino and FIFA with a joint declaration of solidarity and opposition to Infantino's money-grabbing vision of world football.

It took infantino's latest faux pas - his plan to sell off a large share of FIFA to private investors - to bring these disaparate federations together in joint outrage, reflecting the outrage expressed by most of the world at Infantino's excesses. His time at the helm of FIFA is surely limited.

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!