There’s been a fair amount of concern – and rightly so – over American protectionist legislation and its potential effect on Canada’s economy.

Essentially, the bill (which was tacked on to President Barack Obama’s $819 billion stimulus plan) aims to ban foreign iron and steel to be used in any infrastructure projects related to the plan.
Canada exports almost $7 billion worth of steel annually – a large chunk of which goes to the U.S.

Good job, Obama – you’ve been President for how long?

Prime Minister Stephan Harper is planning to lobby the U.S. over this legislation.
“Some of these measures go against not just the obligations of the United States, but frankly the spirit of our G20 discussions”, Harper said yesterday in Parliament.

He also added that he expects the U.S. to respect its international obligations.

Today, Ontario Premiere Dalton McGuinty expressed concern over the provisions, and added his support to the comments Harper has made on the issue.

“The American provisions will cause harm to the Ontario economy, further job reductions, and will cause more pain and anxiety for Ontario families,” McGuinty said.

Interestingly enough, back in August during campaigning for the American election, Wendy Sherman (who is a senior adviser to Obama) said she had “total confidence” that Obama would be working closely with Canada to ensure a strong trading relationship.

“Senator Obama values the trade relationship with Canada and Canada is a very, very crucial trading partner for us,” she said.

Let’s hope someone reminds President Obama of this during his visit to Ottawa on February 19th!

Premiere Dalton McGuinty was in Ottawa today to discuss an investment in a new “surveillance” program – designed to track information about Ontario’s children from an early age.

The program will begin collecting information about babies approximately a month before birth, and will continue to observe and track their growth until they are at least five months old.

According to McGuinty, the information gathered will be collected in a database that will help the province better deploy its resources.

For instance, if a certain community has higher than average birth weights, it will indicate that external factors – such as the environment – need to be examined closely.

Ontario is the first province to implement such a program.

It’s an interesting concept - and I think one that could be beneficial long-term - but it will be just that: long term. I have to question investing so much money (and while I missed the actual amount - it was a lot) into such a program with the economy the way it is.

While paruising through The Star’s website today, I stumbled across an interesting banner ad - it was fun, cartooned, and advertised a cooking site called “SOS Cuisine”.

Being the disaster in the kitchen that I am (my most recent adventure involved lighting the microwave on fire, I kid you not), I realized I could most definitely benefit from a culinary site that used the SOS distress call in their name, and took a look.

I am so glad I did - this site is amazing! It’s a Canadian site, based out of Montreal (available in both English and French!), and offers beginner recipes, recipes for when you’re cooking for one, weekly meal plans, shopping lists, and more. My favourite part is how much more information you get from the recipes.  They tell you how many of your daily servings (of fruits, veggies, etc) you’re getting in each meal, the calorie content for the meal (and for a calorie counter like myself, that’s awesome), and the approximate price per serving.

It’s a new site, so it doesn’t have everything up yet - but they’re planning on adding “express” meals soon (meals you can cook in under 30 minutes - can I say amazing again?). Those in Quebec can already access “budget” meals - recipes that incorporate food items on sale in your area.  You enter your postal code when you register to make this possible, and it’s coming to Ontario soon! They have gourmet recipes, veggie recipes, you can search for recipes that conform to specific dietary needs (for instance, gluten-free), and recipes tailored towards kids. You can customize your serving size, and the recipes adjust, and you can favourite recipes in your cookbook, or even add your own. You can use their weekly meal plans, or edit them to suit your tastes - and they’ll design a grocery list for you based on your choices.

Best of all, the site is 100% free to access and use. I highly recommend you check it out - unless you’re a chef, in which case I bet you wish you thought of this site first!

So, it only took me… oh, 6+ hours to figure it out, but this is the greatest thing ever!

Honestly, Wordpress makes it so easy to make a visually appealing web page - basically exactly the way I want it to look - with minimal effort. (Okay, minimal compared to hours and days and weeks I normally put into a page, only to still have coding problems).

This is so easy to update, to edit layouts, to add fun features - I don’t know why it took me so long to try it! I’m in love.

And on that note, I’m also off to bed since I have class in… less than 4 hours! Oops.

Thank god for afternoon naps!