New Media

Canada’s best and brightest are going where the opportunity is: right here in the true north.

The brain drain to the US is finally slowing to a trickle, Vancouver blogger and technologist David Drucker points out, with Vancouver Sun in hand. Indeed, Americans are coming Canadians in increasing numbers. Will the movement of gray matter finally reverse itself entirely?

Probably, right around the time that the Canadian dollar reaches parity with the US greenback. Right now, the USA is the number one target for bad guys all over the world, with a declining economy and increasingly unrepresentative political system.

Canada has its own set of problems, but whether it’s the economy, politics or just the ability to stay out of the firing line no matter where our foreign policy goes, the smart money seems to be on Canada these days. If anyone has a reputation for following the smart money, it’s our southern neighbors.

Just like Microsoft testing the waters in Vancouver, it’s a sign of the times.

The Vancouver suburb of Burnaby is recovering from an Exxon Valdez-sized disaster and my co-workers are having to deal with giant globs of oil on their roofs. I thought this sort of thing only happened on isolated Alaskan coastlines to defenseless birds. Who knew us city slickers could get hit by something like this?

I didn’t even know there were oil pipelines running through the suburbs. The black gooey mess arrived with perfect timing, just as Vancouver is dealing with a garbage strike.

This summer just keeps getting better and better.

Vancouver’s rat population is about to explode.

The garbage men are on strike and the vermin are having a feast. About 1,800 outdoor workers walked off the job today, accounting for the third civic work stoppage in a decade.

One wonders how this will affect the legions of dumpster divers who earn their crack and meth budget from selling recyclables fished out of public waste bins. As if they didn’t have enough to be miserable about already, they now have bubonic plague to add to their worries.

As for those of us who live in tiny condos overlooking back lanes with open garbage bins, it’s just a matter of time before the aroma wafting up turns our homes into olfactory torture chambers.

Looking forward to that, let me tell you.

In the latest self-inflicted blow to Canadian sovereignty, a judge has ruled that our border guards need warrants to search vehicles of people coming into this country.

In the process, the judge threw out the drug-smuggling case against Ajitpal Singh Sekhon, who had attempted to import 50 kilograms of cocaine past a Vancouver-area border crossing.

This comes after unarmed Canadian border agents in 2006 abandoned their posts en masse and literally ran for their lives at the approach of murder suspects from the USA.

Oh, well. The border’s really just an imaginary line on a map, anyway.

This just in, courtesy of the New York Times: Vancouver’s a fun, quirky, beautiful place to be!

Um, well, yeah, we knew that already. Nice to see the writeup, anyway (brought to my attention by Vancouver blogger and loud murmurer David Drucker). Seems like every other week, I’m reading another testament to our Pacific Metropolis’ scenic views, verdant green spaces, funky neighborhoods, not to mention our uber-cool, laid-back west coast citizens.

Thanks for the recognition, y’all. It’s an honor to be your North American tourism mecca – uh, outside New York City, of course.

Take that, Cleveland, Ohio!