If you hold CIBC Aerogold VISA, you can get emergency travel medical insurance for an addition fee of $122/year for a family of 3 (this example assumes that your family of 3 includes me, Catherine and Oliver: your mileage may vary, depending on your age). This covers you for multiple trips of up to 15 days, with additional top-up days available for $5.13/day.

However, CIBC also offers the CIBC Club Privileges Travel program, which costs $199/year, and includes family emergency travel medical insurance for multiple trips of up to 7 days, with the top-up amount the same $5.13/day. However this program also includes priority boarding, lounge access, and a yearly free companion ticket.

Depending on your travel patterns, this second program might end up being a better deal. It was for me.

I don’t know what the statistics are, but I imagine many people travel without insurance (many people probably have it included in their work health plan, I imagine). I’ve heard enough “if I didn’t have that insurance I would have had a $50,000 hospital bill” stories from travelers to the U.S. to invest in it every time I go out of the country. Thanks to brother Johnny, I remembered to do so for a trip coming up later this week.

One of the things we have realized about Oliver is that he has a very detailed mental map of Charlottetown in his head, and he attaches events and characteristics to geographical locations in a very sticky way.

Every Saturday, Oliver and I go to the Formosa Tea House. We always walk the same way: up Prince, down Kent, up University.

And every time we go, as soon as we get within spitting distance of the big Department of Veteran’s Affairs building on Kent St., Oliver starts saying something that sounds like “epo, epo, epo.”

It was only this week that I realized that he has been saying “echo, echo, echo” — the entrance to the basement parking garage in this building makes your voice echo if you’re talking when you walk by. I pointed this out to him once about 9 months ago, and he remembered.

I am obviously not very quick on the uptake.

My ACOA, KPMG and how they used CBC post this weekend appears to have unearthed some strong feelings.

There is a somewhat confusing thread here (which includes the line, referring to me, “While there are some who appear to follow his guidance like sheep…” Who knew I had such power!).

Matthew posted here about bloggers “atop high horses (or Shetland Ponies)” taking “shots at the local CBC.”

Nils offers an uncharacteristic defence of the CBC.

And the readership has commented here on the original post.

I know, respect, and consider as friends, many people who work at the CBC, or who have worked at the CBC. My brother Steve works for the CBC. I have worked for the CBC as a freelance contributor, both paid and not. I listen to CBC Radio and watch CBC Television 10 or 20 hours a week in one form or another. I would go (and have gone) to the barricades to preserve the CBC, as I consider it vital to the national interest.

I am also an occasional critic of the CBC: I’ve written on my weblog about the Corporation’s attitude towards RSS, about seemingly misguided experiments with technology, about Andy Barrie. And more.

I always consider my criticism to be reasonable (if sometimes overly rhetorical), and offered out of care and concern for the institution. I offer criticism because I consider the CBC to be relevant, and worthy of criticism. I think the CBC matters, and I consider it vitally important, and a responsibility on my part, to engage the CBC as an active listener / watcher / consumer when the opportunity arises.

I don’t think there’s any reasonable excuse for what amounted to reprinting an ACOA news release. Nils says that “nobody is getting slandered or seriously hurt” when the CBC does this. But it’s the CBC itself that is hurt by this: its journalistic integrity has been compromised, if only slightly, and every loss in that column chips away at the integrity of the institution regarding things that do matter.

I don’t know what the answer to decreasing budgets and overtaxed employees is, but I’m absolutely certain that it doesn’t involve letting the integrity guard down.

One more thing: this weblog isn’t news. It’s not comprehensive. There’s no editorial oversight. I am not a journalist, and I couldn’t be one if I tried. This weblog is, at best, a personal commentary on matters that catch my attention. I claim no authority. I am self-funded, and responsible to nobody but myself. While I invite comment about anything I write, I don’t promise that I’ll pay any attention to it (although often I do). I write here mostly for selfish reasons, with occasional sprinkles of Jeffersonian pretense, and everything you read here should taken in that light.

The Formosa Tea House is shutting down on February 27 in its current location on University Avenue and reopening the following week in its new location on Prince Street. Because they’ve been so good to we bloggers over the last year (Zap Your PRAM was conceived and born there, after all), I propose a Meeting of the Bloggers to take place Tuesday, February 24 at 1:30 p.m..

If you can make it, please RSVP by adding a reply to this post (click DISCUSS).

A story posted yesterday by CBC Prince Edward Island starts:

An international accounting firm has ranked Charlottetown the second best city in the G7 countries to set up a business.

Later in the story, we read:

Officials at the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency, who plan to take the study on the road to trade shows and business conferences, are affirmed that they have been right all along.

“Wow!” you might think: reading that lead, and the rest of the story, you might think, quite reasonably, that Charlottetown is “the second best city in the G7 countries to set up a business.”

And you would be wrong.

Here’s why.

First, the study, “Competitive Alternatives,” (which you can read here) was actually partially sponsored by ACOA (here’s the list of sponsors), so their enthusiasm is to be expected. The CBC story never reveals that ACOA was a sponsor. Of course neither does the ACOA news release.

If you dig through ACOA’s website, though, you come across this, in their Parliamentary Report, 1998-2003, referencing earlier versions of the same KPMG study:

The Agency participated as a sponsor in both the 1999 and 2001 studies in an effort to ensure the inclusion of Atlantic Canadian communities.

So ACOA basically bought its way into the study. That’s important, and the CBC should have picked up on that.

Second, the study only covered the 121 cities in the G7 countries that were willing to pay (or “sponsor”). That’s a very small slice of the G7. For example, in the “New England/Atlantic” area, the study only compares Burlington, Lewiston, St. John’s, Halifax, Moncton, Charlottetown, Hartford, Providence and Boston. It’s quite possible, as a result, that Fredericton, Brantford, Regina, or any of the hundreds of other cities in the G7 they didn’t survey, would rank better than Charlottetown.

Third, the study compares only “the after-tax cost of startup and operation for representative business operations in 12 industries, over a 10-year time horizon.” That might mean that Charlottetown is a cheap place to do business; it certainly doesn’t prove that Charlottetown is the best place to do business: the study didn’t look at environment, lifestyle, health care, labour standards, work force or any of the myriad other measures that might go into making for a successful business. KPMG makes that clear in their study; the CBC glossed over this in their story.

Indeed, given that the study says that labour “represents 56 to 72 percent of location-sensitive costs for manufacturing operations, and 75 to 85 percent for non-manufacturing operations,” what the study really reveals, perhaps, is that Charlottetown employers don’t pay their employees very well. The CBC story might very well have been titled “Study reveals Charlottetown workers second worst paid in G7.” But of course that’s not what the news release said.

Finally, the study itself cautions about interpretation of the results:

While care has been taken in developing these findings, the results are necessarily of a general nature and should not be interpreted as a definitive opinion on the merits of locating any specific facility in one jurisdiction as compared to another.

In light of this proviso, the CBC’s headline, “Set up shop in Charlottetown: report” reflects a misinterpretation of the study.

I expect the CBC to do more than republish KPMG and ACOA’s propaganda: by doing so, the CBC serves only to reinforce the reputation of the study. This is a disservice to we taxpayers who paid for the study, a disservice to potential businesses who rely on the results of the study and, ultimately, a disservice to ACOA, which is freed from the responsibility that deeper media oversight would engender.

As of 3:30 p.m. today (Friday, Feb. 20, 2004), downtown Charlottetown is still pretty closed down, post-blizzard.

Tim Horton’s on Kent St. has been open all day, and there’s a steady from of customers. Timothy’s and the Formosa Tea House are both closed.

All of the stores in the Confederation Court Mall are closed for the day, with the exception of Shoppers Drug Mart and Nature’s Harvest (although Nature’s Harvest might close early: I was their first customer in a couple of hours).

There appears to be at least one lane open on most of the streets downtown, although there are plenty of huge snowbanks all over the place, and the sidewalks are hard to navigate.

Here’s Kent Street, looking west from the pedway:

One of the many benefits of having a neighbour with a Bobcat is that your sidewalk gets blown out early:

The sidewalks along the east side of University Avenue hadn’t been plowed as of noon today (I’m not complaining, just commenting: there’s one hell of a lot of snow to get moved, and the City is doing an admirable job). Here’s what it looked like:

On the left: my boots and Catherine’s snowshoes after my 15 foot attempt to get to work. On the right: the view out our front door of our neighbour’s compost bins, left in the driveway.