T H I S  O U R  C A N A D A

Vancouver third best livable city

THERE were never many doubts. But now we are told by experts that Vancouver ranked third in a global survey for its overall quality of life, narrowly losing out to Swiss cities Zurich and Geneva. Vancouver had high scores across the board, but its weak spot was crime. Crime rate in North America are higher than Europe.

All  the cities in Canada covered by the survey were  the top 25 ranking for health and sanitation, with Calgary ranking as the top city in the world, followed by Ottawa in fourth, Montreal and Vancouver tied for 10th and Toronto ranked 21st.

Mercer Human Resource Consulting gave Vancouver a score of 107.7 in its annual ranking of quality of life, tied with Vienna for third place and behind Zurich with 108.1 and Geneva at 108. . The survey ranked 215 cities around the world based on 39 quality- of-life determinants including social, economic, environmental and personal safety factors. Cities were ranked against New York as the base city, which was given a base score of 100.The five Canadian cities included in the survey all ranked higher than any of the U.S. cities surveyed.

Honolulu was the highest ranked U.S. city at 27th. Baghdad courtesy war and bloodshed ranked the world's least attractive city with a score of 14.5. Other low-scoring cities included Brazzaville in Congo (29.5), Bangui in the Central African Republic (30.6) and Khartoum in Sudan (31).

Other low-scoring cities include Dhaka in Bangladesh, Antananarivo in Madagascar and Port Au Prince in Haiti, which scored 29.6, 30.1 and 34 respectively.

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No political obituary for the rock star' MP yet

FOR the fifth straight year, Belinda Stronach, 40, the Liberal MP from Newmarket-Aurora, has announced that she was leaving federal politics.

 But it may not be the end of a short and entertaining career in politics, as journalists are saying, “it’s far too soon to write her political obituary, and that she's merely regrouping for a run at the Liberal leadership down the road.”

 Senior Liberals assert Stronach made a smart move because she saw the writing on the wall.  She's not a favourite of the current leader, Stéphane Dion's caucus.

David Peterson, the former Ontario Liberal premier pointed out that Stronach made a splash with her interest in Third World issues.  She visited Africa with Jeffrey Sachs, the American academic who has led an international campaign against the spread of AIDS in Africa, and she is a friend of former U.S. president Bill Clinton. People do listen when she speaks, but she is not that kind of human rights activist to go a long way fighting. Yet as some guess, Stronach's impact on Canadian politics has been strong.

 She is indeed colourful, existing one party and entering another. She helped broker the merger between the Progressive Conservative party and the Canadian Alliance to form the Conservative Party of Canada. And, in 2004, she lost the leadership of the Conservative party to Stephen Harper. In 2005, she astounded Conservatives by leaving them to cross the floor to Paul Martin's Liberals. She did help Martin’s survival for a while. Watch here now for another move.

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Toronto Star series among national nominees

Investigative journalists at Toronto Star have won six nominations for national awards. It is the single largest contingent to win laurels. The Star's nominations as Canadian Association of Journalists' finalists include:

Kevin McGran and Andrew Bailey were nominated for "Tragedy on the Tracks," a chilling retelling of deadly factors behind a derailment that killed two women. Laurie Monsebraaten and Joan Sweeney-Marsh won for "Poll 37," a series examining a north Etobicoke area with fewer voters than anywhere in Canada.

Photographer Steve Russell was included for "Exodus from Lebanon," a collection of 20 powerful images of Canadians frantic to leave Beirut during last summer's Israeli bombing. Same way Robert Cribb and Jessica Leeder won for "Road Unworthy;" an investigation into the lack of regulation of driving school instructors.  Kevin Donovan and Jessica Leeder got the covetous nomination for "Addicts at Risk," in which some doctors were found exploiting a programme meant to wean addicts off drugs and   Cribb was part of a team, including reporters from sister papers in Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo, behind "Collision Course' about near-misses between airplanes in Canadian skies.

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U.S. papers close shops in Canada

BAD news for Canada as more full-time American newspaper correspondents left after closing their offices for good. The closing of the Washington Post's Toronto bureau followed the lead of the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Boston Globe, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, all of which have shut their Canadian offices in recent years.

It is indeed intriguing for the cash rich American newspapers to lose interest in a major close by country and a power political assistant.

 U.S. papers have been closing foreign bureaus around the world. Only a few elite American newspapers still have correspondents based abroad. The closures will force papers to rely on news services and freelance writers to cover Canadian events. This would mean sameness of news and opinions. Already Americans get less Canadian news in their papers. This would loss of Canadian voice in America. Canadian message already being ignored will lose further relevance to decision makers in Washington. This could widen the divide between the two neighbouring nations, already struggling to understand each other.

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