Trivial and floral pursuits

Just in time for Canada Day, Premier Dalton McGuinty has launched the Ontario Trivia Challenge on his website, www.ontario.ca/premier.

The multiple-choice quiz boasts 30 questions and three levels of difficulty: easy, medium, and hard.

"Taking the Ontario Trivia Challenge is a great way to mark Canada Day," McGuinty said in a news release Friday.

"Ontarians can test their knowledge of our great province and learn more about our rich history and diversity."

Not surprisingly, one questions asks what Ontario's official flower is. The answer, of course, is a white trillium.

Oddly enough, the premier's recently launched high-technology website, which features streaming video and the most images of McGuinty this side of his mother's living room, does not display the Liberals' controversial new trillium logo.

Instead of the much-panned "three-men-in-ecstacy-in-hot-tub" design created for $219,000 by Grit-friendly ad firm Bensimon Byrne, the premier's official site still displays the traditional three-petal trillium that dates back to 1964.

Since the Toronto Star revealed last week the Liberals' puzzling scheme to replace the classic logo with one that bears a suspicious resemblance to the trillium on the party's trademark, the newspaper has been inundated with letters, e-mails and calls from readers angry about the change.

One elderly woman called the Queen's Park bureau to say she broke down in tears at the eventual extinction of a government logo that predates Canada's Maple Leaf flag.

Another gentleman wrote to the Star's editor in chief to complain about "an ugly little drawing that doesn't even look like a trillium."

On a more comedic note, a botanist rang to say the design actually resembles poison ivy.

Well, the imbroglio around Trilliumgate certainly has senior Liberals feeling itchy!

One politico who is enjoying the kafuffle is Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory, who launched a website at savethetrillium.ca, which displays the different official designs of the provincial flower over the past 42 years.

By the numbers...

The federal Liberals have been alleging for some time that the New Democrats are cozying up to the Conservative government -- all in the name of ganging up on the Grits.

But one blogger has done some number-crunching to test that charge, by counting up how many times the NDP mentioned Liberals and Conservatives during Question Period this month. The results may surprise some Liberal conspiracy theorists.

Here is what the "Vansterdam Kid" posted on rabble.ca:

There were 27 NDP QP references to the Liberals, directly or to the previous government and its perceived failures. There were at least 167 NDP QP references to the Conservatives, or the current government and its perceived failures.

Now that's an entrance

Reporters covering the three-day federal, provincial and territorial finance ministers' meeting in Niagara-on-the-Lake nearly had a collective heart attack when a 30-car motorcade of police cruisers, limousines and support vehicles -- including an ambulance -- raced into the quaint tourist village Tuesday.

Was the ever-secretive and always-unpredictable Prime Minister Stephen Harper storming into town to impose some kind of fiscal imbalance deal on the treasurers, thereby circumventing the premiers who meet in St. John's next month?

Was U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney on a hunting trip in Ontario wine country?

Er, no.

It was Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his massive entourage popping by for a visit and perhaps a little shopping for Ontario's famous ice wine, which is treasured in Japan.

Interestingly, he was chauffeured in an American-made presidential-sized Cadillac and not a Japanese Lexus or Infiniti.

The Prime Minister will be in Ottawa to meet with Harper on Wednesday.

And reporters covering the interminable treasurers' meeting will still be in Niagara-on-the-Lake waiting for something to happen.

Musical chairs at Queen’s Park

As the Legislature begins its summer break, folks are moving around and moving on from the Pink Palace.

Steve Erwin has left the Canadian Press bureau for a new role of answering questions instead of asking them.

He’s going to work as spin doctor for Energy Minister Dwight Duncan, who’s going to be busy selling his controversial plan — including two new nuclear power plants — to keep the lights on in Ontario over the next 20 years.

Given the tight power supplies in Ontario and the risk of blackouts, Steve is no doubt joining his new boss in praying for cool weather in July and August.

In another energy-related switch, Matthew Gibson is leaving the office of Progressive Conservative Leader John Tory to do government relations for Union Gas.

 

Author, author

Liberal MPP John Milloy (Kitchener Centre) is one of the best-educated members of the provincial Legislature.

Milloy is a graduate of Oxford University, the London School of Economics, and, er, Carleton University.

The PhD. - that’s Dr. Milloy to you! - is also a budding author.

He recently published a scholarly tome entitled, The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 1948-1957: Community or Alliance.

Milloy’s book discusses the early years of NATO and Canada’s pivotal role in the alliance.

For those eager to learn more, the backbench MPP - whose omission from Premier Dalton McGuinty’s cabinet is puzzling (he was also once former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s legislative assistant) - will be giving a speech on his book next Tuesday, June 27, at 7 p.m. at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, in the former Seagram’s Museum at 57 Erb St. W., Waterloo.

 

Media questions - 'A Price Worth Paying'

Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day talked a lot about being cost-effective, efficient and making "better use of our resources" as he took steps to abolish the long-gun registry today.

So why, asked one reporter, did Day choose to rent a conference room and sound system at Ottawa's Chateau Laurier hotel instead of holding the event on Parliament Hill or even in the National Press Theatre, which seems to have become "no-go" territory for the Conservatives now that they are in power.

"They are any number of rooms . . . on Parliament Hill that are available to you to make the announcement at no cost to taxpayers," the reporter noted at a news conference yesterday.

Day stumbled a bit on the answer, claiming at first it was done for the reporters' convenience so they wouldn't be "crowded out" during scrums

Finally he said that whatever it cost to rent the room paled next to the $1 billion cost of the gun registry.

"The few dollars that it costs to rent a room for as long as you ask questions is a price worth paying," Day said.

Big man, Small space

It's good to practice what you preach - just not quite this much.

Since he was talking about a provincial plan to protect farmland by forcing millions of new people expected to move to Southern Ontario to live in existing urban areas, it may have made some sense to pack 50 people into a room comfortable for 10.

But David Caplan, minister of public infrastructure and renewal, had a tough time squeezing through dozens of reporters and stakeholders to get to the front of the tiny room.

He improvised by shouting: "Let the fat guy through."

One reporter suggested the space was more appropriate for a mosh pit than a press conference.

Caplan's communication advisor, ever ready to spin bad to good, said: "See, we practice what we preach."

Half an hour in, people were feeling cramped, sweaty and dehydrated.

Mississauga Mayor Hazel McCallion said it was up to everyone to make the "Places to Grow" plan to pursue more compact living a success.

Reporters, she said, had a role to play by making sure citizens know the plan will help make their life better.

Those still standing, will try.

No Adult Supervision

Grand gestures have been left behind as the affairs of state degenerate into a slanging match over obscene hand signals on the floor of the House of Commons.

With the silly season coming on fast, Liberals are outraged that Conservative MP Pierre Poilevre made rude gestures as MPs were voting on an agricultural bill last night.

Liberals MPs claimed that Poilevre delivered an "Italian salute" derogatory to farmers, MPs and House of Commons Speaker Peter Milliken. Other Conservative MPs made similar gestures during a raucous session last night.

Before the daily question period today, Poilevre issued an apology for his behaviour but the Liberals were unmoved and demanded that Prime Minister Stephen Harper fire him from his position as parliamentary secretary to Treasury Board President John Baird.

Last night, in addition to the fist-and-arm gesture, Poilevre mocked opposition MPs and the Commons speaker by hopping around in a kind of silly jig during the vote, said Liberal MP Ralph Goodale. "He performed his pixie dance in the House. This guy simply has to go," Goodale told MPs.

The Conservatives said Poilevre had already apologized and the Liberals should get on to important issues. Then Conservative House Leader Rob Nicholson took it all a step farther. Objecting to the use of the term "Italian salute," he claimed the Liberals had just insulted all Italian-Canadians and demanded that his opponents formally withdraw that reference.

But the Liberals claimed they never used the term 'Italian salute' -- they said it was incorrect choice of words by the House of Commons translator.

Media culpa!

Oops! The cheap-shot artists on this blog may have fired too soon on Monday.

It seems that Premier Dalton McGuinty did not make the three-minute walk from the Main Legislative Building to Hart House at the University of Toronto by SUV.

"He worked from home in the morning to prepare for his event, then went directly from home to the 10 a.m. event," an aide advised us Tuesday.

"After the event, he walked from Hart House to Queen's Park," the McGuinty official said.

"Any chance you might clarify the notebook, since it takes a shot for something that isn't true?"

Consider it clarified.

Doing his bit for the environment

It is a daunting three-minute walk from the Main Legislative Building at Queen's Park to Hart House on the leafy campus of University of Toronto.

So observers shouldn't have been surprised when Premier Dalton McGuinty drove up there Monday morning for an event with international medical graduates.

After all, McGuinty was famously caught by the Toronto Star catching a ride in his police-driven GMC Yukon from Accents restaurant at the Sutton Place Hotel west along Wellesley St. to his office at the Whitney Block, a distance of perhaps 200 metres.

Still, he has at least learned one environmental lesson: he showed up at U of T in a compact Ford Escape SUV hybrid.

Well, it's a start.