Can't quite figure this one out?

The geniuses in Victoria have to help me understand why, when an electric car called the ZENN is manufactured in Canada, the BC government is purchasing a number of Japanese electric vehicles to be tested.

Did they look in the international yellow book under electric cars and find out the Mitsubishi came before ZENN and decided that first come wins out?

Or do they know something the rest of us should know?

How inclusive are we in Canada?

If I was a cab driver and told a prospective rider that I would not drive them in my cab because the lady was wearing a fur coat, what would happen to me?  If I even had the attitude that I it was my right to discriminate, how long would I be driving that cab - and more important, should I find a new line of work?  How about refusing a ride to an Aboriginal, a Jew, an African or an Muslim.

In Vancouver, a cab driver refused a ride to a blind man with a guide dog by saying, first, that his was a pet-free cab, and later, that his religion did not allow him to be in a cab with an unclean dog.

The cab company paid off the blind man with $2,500 for his inconvenience and released a policy on cabs and guide dogs.  It includes:

"North Shore Taxi was ordered to immediately establish a policy forbidding any driver to refuse a fare from a blind person accompanied by a certified guide dog. The only exceptions are for drivers allergic to dogs and those who satisfy the company that they have an honest religious belief that precludes them from transporting certified guide dogs.  However, such drivers must call dispatch for the next available cab, give their name to the blind person and remain with them until the next cab arrives. Anyone who breaches the policy will be suspended for two shifts for a first offence and be subject to termination for a second offence."

The interesting thing is that no where in the policy is there a statement to the effect of, if you can't do your job of taxiing people from point A to B because of some religious belief, then maybe you should seek a new line of work.

But let's give Mr. Gilmour the final word.  He stated that he and his guide dog rarely encounter problems with other types of public transportation. He's hoping the requirement that cabbies have to wait until another taxi is dispatched will make life easier for people with disabilities.

"My dog is well behaved and clean so what is the barrier here?" he said. "I just hope this arbitrary action will no longer prevail."

Canadian book industry is dying

Unless Canada's Greatest Government (TM: PM Harper) steps up to the plate with some ideas, the Canadian Book Industry is going to die a painful death.

Just today Raincoast Books announced that they will get out the book publishing business. The high dollar and disappearing margins can only be experienced for so long before you give up the ghost, I guess. They are not the first publisher to quit recently and they will not be the last.

The whole writing industry in the final throws due to government action and inaction.

When the dollar rose to parity and beyond, what did CGG Minister Flaherty do? Rather than finding out where the discrepancy in cross border pricing was, he demanded that Canadian retailers slash their prices, regardless of their cost! Silly Minister.

The problem with book pricing is at the publisher level of the chain.

I am a writer. I have a number of books in print. I do not control the selling price of the books, the publisher does that. I know that the retailer gets a 40% discount from the publisher and that I get about 10% for doing all the real work so that leaves 50% for the publisher. But here is where the problem arises.

The publisher sets the retail price at whatever he thinks the market will bear. He could sell my book to a retailer in New York for $10 but turn around and sell the same book in Ontario for $14. Doesn't sound like a problem until you factor in the margins for retailers. The US retailer can sell the book for $14 but the Canadian retailer must sell it for $18 just to make the same $4 as the US counterpart. If you demand, as did Flaherty that the Canadian retailer reduce his price to match the US retailer then the Canadian retailer just lost his margins and will probably go out of business or make up the lost margins selling X-rated videos (which I am led to understand have great margins and the government steers away from talking about them).

The dollar is a sh*tkicker for Canadian exporters but when you combine it with bonehead statements from Ottawa, it can hurt importers also, especially in an industry like publishing, where regulation is a joke.

But let's not stop there. Tomorrow we will take a look at how the media industry is killing the news.