Iceland looking at Canadian currency to replace krona

Icelanders have toyed with the idea of doing away with their own krona currency and adopting the Canadian dollar or loonie as it is called since there is a loon depicted on one side. The krona has had its problems ever since the collapse of the Icelandic financial system in 2008.

Iceland has taken the initial steps to join the EU so one might think that the Euro would be a better currency to adopt. However the Euro zone is encountering problems itself.

Canada on the other hand has a strong banking system relatively low debt and a dollar that is just above par with the U.S. The U.S. has a much higher debt than Canada.

The Canadian ambassador was supposed to speak to a group about the issue but the Foreign Affairs Dept. of Canada said the ambassador would not be participating in a convention on currency conversion in Reykjavik the Icelandic capital.

A Bank of Montreal economist said that the conversion could be accomplished simply by Iceland buying enough Canadian currency. This might put some upward pressure on the loonie. The impact on Canada would probably be small as Iceland's population is only 317,000 and the economy less than one per cent of that of Canada. For much moresee this article.

Other countries such as El Salvador and Ecuador have unilaterally changed their own currency for the U.S. dollar. Kosovo did the same for the euro.

CSIS allowed to share information even if it could lead to torture

The Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews has given CSIS permission to share information with foreign agencies even when this could lead to torture. The four page directive to CSIS came from Toews in July 2011. The directive was secret and was just released to the Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

Amnest International secretary-general for Canada Alex Neve said that the directive contradicts Canada's commitments against torture. This is not likely to embarass Toews or the Conservatives. This is all for a good cause the war against terror and to keep Canadians safe. Unless that is you happen to be a wrongly accused Canadian such asMaher Arar. In that case you will be rendered to Syria or no doubt some new country now and tortured and interrogated.

CSIS can also use torture-tainted evidence if Canadian public safety is at rick. Many experts point out that under torture most people will confess to anything in order to have the torture stop. In the case of Maher Arar somehow information that only Canadian intelligence services likely had that Arar had trained in Afghan terror camps was leaked to the press. This was later shown to be obtained under torture and to be false. Nevertheless it was used to try and subvert attempts to get Arar released from a Syrian jail'

The source of the leak was never found. The investigators in Arar's case sent completely unvettted intelligence reports with much false information to their U.S. counterparts. In the U.S. Arar is still considered a member of AL Qaeda even though an expensive and extensive hearing here found him innocent of any terror connections and paid him ten million in compensation. No one was ever punished of the Canadian investigators. The operation had the patirotic name Öh Canada! NOTE: The O Canada group came from the RCMP not the CSIS).For more see this article.