N

Nafta

1992 Agreement between U.S., Canada and Mexico aimed at funneling jobs to Mexico, profits to U.S. multinational centres, and distracting Canadians with empty new conservative slogans about becoming more competitive while the countries assets are trucked south by American trucking companies using Mexican drivers.

Napo

National Anti-Poverty Organization. It is nearly as predictable as its contrary BCNI, and certain to raise diametrically opposite views. Somewhere between these two lobbies and their hurrah-for-our-side positions the real issues are asphyxiating in self-justification and righteous ideological bullshit.

Nash, Steve

Twenty-six year old Victoria, B.C. native who almost led Canada’s national basketball team to an Olympic medal, and having done that, turned down one of the Spice Girls for a local girl he was already dating. He plays in the NBA with the Dallas Mavericks, leads the league in free throw percentage and couldn’t do a slam dunk if they put a trampoline out for him. But if the Toronto Raptors had any brains they’d trade Vince Carter straight up to get this guy. He has a heart, and he could make basketball a popular sport in Canada, which is more than any those attitude-heavy Americans can hope for.

National Post

Conrad Black’s giddy experiment in news-reporting without even the slightest pretense of objectivity and printed exclusively in red ink, is, as of September 2001, over. The writing was better than that in the Globe & Mail, which might have had something to do with the fact that most of the Post’s writers were twenty years younger and hadn't had their brains pickled by job security and/or the carbon monoxide being re-circulated by closed-system office air conditioners. The paper, under the bottom-lining Aspers, is again barely distinguishable from the Financial Post Conrad Black edduced it from a few hundred million dollars in tax write-offs ago.

Nationalism

Canada's nationalism is unique in the world. It is not xenophobic and does not require citizens to wave flags, get drunk at high-school and college football games, place our hands over our hearts, start wars, or engage in other jingoistic behaviors. Canadian nationalism has an exquisitely noble purpose: to keep Canadians from becoming citizens of the United States.

Native Self-determination

Determination of native leaders in Canada to be able to sit on and oversee the activities of all government bodies and corporate boards of directors in Canada and to make long, boring speeches about animals and spirits without anyone having the courage to tell them to lighten up and get real.

Native Self-government

Euphemism adopted by Canadian governments to tag the practice of allowing Pre-European immigrant enclaves to determine what they would like to be and do provided that it doesn't impinge on corporate resource harvesting and any other high-priority financial sector pastimes.

Ncc

National Citizens' Coalition. This occasionally funny gang of aggrieved white guys was started by David Smith, made more pointy-headed by David Somerville and now run as a many-headed dog that will bark at anything to the left of libertarianism. It is the highly organized property-rights lunatic fringe of the Canadian Alliance.

Ndp

New Democratic Party: Formerly social democrats with ideas about social justice they occasionally embarrassed Liberals and Conservatives into implementing. Currently a coalition of a.) neophyte capitalists willing to delude themselves that dogs don't eat dogs b.) Safety Nazis bent on strapping all free-standing objects or persons to walls and floors c.)Trade Unionists who will sacrifice any democratic institution or industry to protect the union privileges of members over 45.

Neocons

Disgruntled Liberal and NDP party members, not to be confused with New Conservatives or Conservative Intellectuals, who loathe neoCons. There are a lot of NeoCons running around these days, and they tend to play a lot of golf and threaten to vote for Alliance party at cocktail parties after they get a few drinks.

Nep/neb

Trudeau-era national energy policy instrument (not to be confused with 1930s Soviet New Economic Plans) that crashed shortly after takeoff, leaving behind the massively debt-ridden PetroCan, Alberta's tar sands project and the Newfoundland Offshore Oil project, which has a much greater capacity for sucking money out of the Federal government than for producing crude oil.

Never Trust Anyone Who Grins While They Speak

Paul Martin Jr., Preston Manning, Ralph Klein, Brian Mulroney

New Conservatives

The ideologically-involved right wing of the conservative movement. They tend to be young business dorks of both genders, and they're our own special chapter of the international movement that believes employed workers are the chief impediment to wealth, and that the poor should be kicked hard in order to make the rich wealthier. David Frum is a leading New Conservative.

New Conservatives:

Imaginary political beings engendered by the physical fusion of the Western Canada-based Canadian Alliance (a coalition-of-cats that included Christian zealots; Calgary Bushites and other fans of Donald Rumsfeld from the 1970s; Oil Patch separatists; and retired Reform Party millionaires from B.C. who think the earth is flat and was invented in 4004 B.C.) with people from Eastern Canada who knew Brian Mulroney was an asshole but voted for him anyway, and the remaining dozen or so small-c conservatives across the country who were fond of Dalton Camp. No one has yet uncovered a New Conservative, and if it turns out they don’t exist, Stephen Harper is in for a relatively short but extremely painful ride.

New Year

Once an evening and following day when the Scottish got dead drunk and complained gloomily about the English, it has been taken over by celebration culture maniacs and RIDE roadblocks to ensure that future generations don't have any fun.

New York City

Where Torontonians phone to find out how to they're supposed to behave in complex situations. Quebec residents would like to do the same, but can't understand the behavior codings due to the language barrier. Because New York solves problems by hiring more police, it has become the New Conservative's urban redevelopment model for major Canadian cities.

Newfoundland

Nature park for chronic unemployment, folksingers and icebergs. This former British colony gave up its autonomy and its fish in 1949 for the promise that Canada would find a publisher for Joey Smallwood's memoirs, provide dental care and climate improvement, and maybe transfer a few viable industries from Ontario. The Federal government dental hygiene programs have been almost as ineffective as the Navy has been in defending Newfoundland's fishery; unemployment levels threaten to reach 75%; the fishery is closed; the only industry brought in involved imaginary oil rigs that drowned as many Newfoundland workers as it employed. The icebergs are now being studied along with island's over-supply of comedians as a source of potential new exports, while the remaining Newfoundlanders go around threatening to start clubbing seals again, along with a few people in Ottawa and Quebec they suspect are responsible for destroying the fishery, stealing their hydro resources and otherwise screwing up life on the Rock.

Newman, Peter C.

Czech-born Hudson's Bay salesperson and author of popular histories that no one outside the newspaper industry reads. This Upper Canada College grad is Canada's most convincing political gossip, for which, according to a bunch of over-60 journalists who are also UCC grads, we're supposed to be grateful.

Newspapers

Canada's most suicidal media/communications subsector. Corporate agglomeration has reduced the total number of papers operating by close to fifty percent in the last two decades, and editorial and local coverage by ninety percent. If all newspapers want todo is list sports scores and stock market results, publish photos ofnewly appointed business executives and pull entertainment industry PRreleases off the wire services, how long will it be before all ofCanada's newspapers will originate from a single office in Toronto staffed by fifteen or twenty digital technicians who all look and act like Andrew Coyne or David Frum, and secretly wear Conrad Black costumes late a night.

Ngo’s

Non Government Organizations. It is wise to be wary the moment this term appears in conversation, particularly if it is midstream in a torrent of other acronyms. If the speaker is from political right (ROC), he or she is talking about organizations meant to reduce government services while avoiding government’s traditional responsibilities. If the speaker is from the left (LOC), he or she is talking about gangs of activists on payroll (AOPs) trying to make it illegal to move, speak or even think without a permit and a full array of safety devices.

Niagara Falls

Zone of extreme commercial vulgarity overlaid on one of The Seven Wonders of the World. If you want a perfect example of the aesthetic collision between early 20th century public trust and late 20th Century mercantile "trust nothing", go to Niagara Falls. The Falls have the world's longest active tenure as a disposal unit for depressives, exhibitionists and fools. And oh yeah. Our falls are grander and prettier than theirs.

Notwithstanding

The linguistic rat in the granary of the cultural exemption Canada gained with The Canada U.S. Free Trade Agreement in 1988 and with NAFTA in 1993. The "notwithstanding" clause tacked onto the exemption allows U.S. traders the right of retaliation--to equivalent commercial value--to any attempt the Canadian government makes to protect Canadian cultural institutions. Thus, no serious new protections have been attempted since 1988, and those that were already in the works met with a hail of American threats, and thus died quietly on order papers and in Ottawa back rooms. Wary Canadians now duck whenever they hear this word spoken by anyone in a position of authority.

Npi

AKA "New Politics Initiative": currently a badly-designed web site owned by Judy Rebick and B.C. MP Svend Rob that seems to think that renewing left wing politics in Canada is a matter of pumping some oxygen into the politics of the 1970s and early 1980s, in which the virtuous and the relatively oppressed band together to heap abuse on the ruling classes, and then demand fair play from them. Hold your breath, because it may get better.

Nukes

Canada's Atomic Energy Commission specializes in the design, development and sale of obsolete nuclear reactors to such politically stable areas as Iraq, Pakistan, Rumania and Ontario. For decades, Northern Ontario was the source of much of the world's raw uranium, which is only one of the factors that makes it a leading candidate to become the eventual repository for the world's supply of spent uranium and other nuclear wastes and byproducts. This will obviate the need for street lighting in northern communities or the settling of land claims with Northern Ontario's Native Indians.