Luka Magnotta posing in front of the Hollywood Sign in a picture dated to 2007. (Photo: Flickr)

Could Canadian killer and infamous internet villain Luka Magnotta be behind a Hollywood murder mystery? After an international manhunt, German police say they have arrested Luka Magnotta in Berlin over ten days after he allegedly killed and dismembered a man named Lin Jun, posted a gruesome video of the crime online and mailed the body parts to the headquarters of Canadian political parties. However, The Observer has uncovered information that could potentially link Mr. Magnotta to an infamous case from earlier this year where the severed head and hands of a man were found on a wooded trail near the Hollywood Sign.

Update (6/8/12 8:37 A.M.): The LAPD has confirmed they are investigating the possibility Mr. Magnotta was involved in the Hollywood Sign killing.

Mr. Magnotta is a self-described male model and sometime escort who became infamous on the internet in late 2010 after online sleuths tied him to a series of videos showing a man killing kittens by drowning them and suffocating them in a vacuum bag. Over the past few years, Mr. Magnotta has used a series of online accounts and aliases to promote himself and discuss his alleged participation in the kitten killings. Immediately after the video of the Canadian murder, which includes footage of necrophilia and potential cannibalism, was posted online, Mr. Magnotta disappeared and law enforcement began an international manhunt saying they believed he fled to Europe.

Luka Magnotta posing as James Dean in Los Angeles. (Photo: Luka-Magnotta.Deviantart.com)

While Mr. Magnotta was on the lam, a series of YouTube accounts appeared commenting on the case. Experts have said at least one of the accounts, which used the user name "Beavis Butthead," "sounds exactly like" it was being operated by Mr. Magnotta himself. An online gaming account that had been used by Mr. Magnotta in the past also showed activity following his disappearance. When the German police arrested Mr. Magnotta, they found him at an internet cafe, further indicating he was accessing the web while on the run. Detective Sergeant Antonio Paradiso of the Montreal Police Service told us Mr. Magnotta "most probably" made online postings while he was on the lam, but it is very difficult to confirm for certain.

"That's very difficult to verify, we're still making verifications. There are all these sites anyone can access, it's incredible how difficult and complicated it could get," Mr. Paradiso said of the YouTube accounts potentially belonging to Mr. Magnotta.

One suspicious account that emerged while Mr. Magnotta evaded capture used the name HollywoodLoveLetters.

Update (6/6/12 3:31 A.M.): A group of activists affiliated with the organization Last Chance For Animals has taken responsibility for creating the HollywoodLoveLetters account on YouTube. They claim it was part of an "investigation" into Mr. Magnotta.

The account opened on Friday and its first action was"liking" footage of an interview with Mr. Magnotta. HollywoodLoveLetters followed that up soon afterward by posting a video entitled "The James Dean Killer - Luka Rocco Magnotta." Prior to the video's being posted, no public accounts attributed the "James Dean Killer" moniker to Mr. Magnotta, but the alleged killer himself has a documented interest in the late movie star. He once named Dean as one of his idols, has claimed to have undergone cosmetic surgery to look more like the actor and has posed for photo shoots dressed as Dean.

The "James Dean Killer" video featured a description calling Mr. Magnotta "the sexiest serial killer ever to walk the earth." Many of the online sleuths who have been following Mr. Magnotta commented on the video claiming the poster must be the alleged killer himself, but HollywoodLoveLetters never directly responded to these comments.

Purported family photos of Luka Magnotta that appeared in the YouTube video entitled "The James Dean Killer - 1 Man 1 Icon - Luka Rocco Magnotta." (Photo: YouTube)

Originally, the avatar used on the HollywoodLoveLetters profile was a mashup of the gay pride flag and the U.S. flag. Over the weekend, HollywoodLoveLetters switched the picture to a shot of the Hollywood sign. On Sunday, HollywoodLoveLetters began directly referring to the Hollywood Sign killing by "liking" a video news report on the case. That day, HollywoodLoveLetters also posted another video about Mr. Magnotta entitled "The James Dean Killer - 1 Man 1 Icon - Luka Rocco Magnotta." This second video features several purported personal photos of Mr. Magnotta including pictures described as showing his parents in the 1980's and him at five months old that do not seem to have appeared online prior to the video's release. In the purported photo of his parents, his mother is scrawled out. A distorted voice in the video also utters the words "The Nine Satanic Statements," which come from the bible of the Church of Satan. Last April, a post titled "The Nine Satanic Statements, Sins and Rules Of The Earth" appeared on one of the many blog sites that seem to have been maintained by Mr. Magnotta. The naming convention of the newest HollywoodLoveLetters video also matches the title of the gruesome video of the Canadian killing that was posted online, which was "1 Lunatic 1 Icepick." The account has shown no new activity since Mr. Magnotta's capture this morning and the user did not respond to a request for comment last night.

In addition to the YouTube activity and the obvious similarities in the methodology of the Jun killing and the Hollywood Sign murder, which both involved severed body parts placed in prominent locations, Facebook postings on one of the many accounts attributed to Mr. Magnotta indicate he was in Los Angeles less than one month after the Hollywood Sign killing. In the postings, which were dated February 19, the Facebook user who identifies themselves as Mr. Magnotta tries to arrange a meeting with a friend and informs them he is "doing massages" in Los Angeles. He lists a phone number that traces to an L.A. escort agency as the best way to contact him.

Facebook posting showing a user who identifies themselves as Luka Magnotta claiming to be in Los Angeles in February.

The severed head and hands were found by the Hollywood Sign by two women who were walking their dogs on January 17. Police later identified the victim as Hervey Medellin, 66. Mr. Medellin was reported missing by his boyfriend on January 9.

We have given this information to police in both Montreal and Los Angeles. Both agencies have told us they are reviewing our tip.

"For the moment we're still working on what we have here. We have a lot of things to do on that," Mr. Paradiso said. "Maybe tomorrow, or sometime this week, I'm going to call LAPD or speak with someone there to see if there's a link between our file and their file."

With the online information being difficult to quickly verify, Mr. Paradiso said the only confirmed links between Mr. Magnotta's case and the Hollywood Sign killing are "there's a body that's cut up, that the guy was gay and that our guy may have frequented Los Angeles."

At this stage, it's impossible to say for sure whether the HollywoodLoveLetters account belongs to Mr. Magnotta and whether he actually had anything to do with the Hollywood Sign killing. The only thing that's certain is that someone out there is going to great lengths to associate him with it.

"Canada." (Courtesy Ecco)

Near the end of Canada (Ecco, 432 pp., $27.99), the new novel by Richard Ford, the narrator suggests a few literary parallels to the story he’s just finished telling. It’s quite a crib note:

[These books] to me seem secretly about my young life—The Heart of Darkness, The Great Gatsby, The Sheltering Sky, The Nick Adams Stories, The Mayor of Casterbridge. A mission into the void. Abandonment. A figure, possibly mysterious, but finally not...

Only someone fairly certain of his bearings would presume to insert himself into the middle of that lineup. Hemingway, Hardy, Fitzgerald, Conrad and Bowles—and Ford. It is unthinkable that a first-time novelist, for example, would risk placing himself (in print) alongside even one of them. But Mr. Ford, who has written seven novels and won a Pulitzer prize, is a grandee—some would say a great. Can he pull it off? That his immodesty merely makes you frown (that it doesn’t make you send his book flapping to the floor) is a measure of Canada’s success. The new novel isn’t Conrad, but who cares? It’s good enough to rise above its pretensions to greatness.

Canada takes place in 1960. It describes a spate of “very bad things” that swamps a 15-year-old boy living in Montana as the adult version of that boy broods on them. You could call it a coming-of-age story, but you could equally call it a horror story, and perhaps that’s the point. “It was the event of our lives, wasn’t it?” the narrator’s sister reflects. “A great big fuck-up, with everything piled on top.” I suppose you would have to call Canada an ugly story. It contains a stickup, a suicide, a double-homicide and a drunken night of incest, and its locales are unvaryingly unlovely. The bulk of the action takes place in the “hell-hole” of Great Falls, Mont., and a “terrible shack” in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan (“the void”). They are landscapes of inexorable nullity, meant to put one in mind of The Sheltering Sky—though the kooky names of the key characters do it first. Dell Parsons, the narrator, has a fraternal twin sister named Berner. Their parents are Beverly and Neeva. “Bev,” surprisingly, is the father.

It is this unhappy couple who kicks off the great big fuck-up. Having incurred “a trivial debt … to a small group of ineffectual Indians,” Bev and Neeva decide to rob a bank in North Dakota. The results are predictably dismal; the desperate klutzes of a film like Fargo are not far away. “You two don’t seem like bank robbers,” notes the policeman who arrests them a few days later. “You look like people who’d work in a grocery store.” Soon the Parson parents are in prison and their twins have hit the road. Berner goes to San Francisco; Dell heads north, and it is his fate that, by default, we follow, as a family friend drives him over the Canadian border and into the lair of  Arthur Remlinger, an American hotelier living in exile on the Canadian prairie. Remlinger is stylish like Jay Gatsby and psychopathic like Kurtz. His life is a powder keg of lies. Dell is first his drudge, then his mentee, then his patsy. “To say something’s founded on a lie isn’t really alleging much,” Remlinger tells him. “I’m much more interested in how those lies hold up.” Canada is mostly about lies that break down.

The novel is a small-time tragedy that does a lot of nodding at big names. As well as the lessons he has taken from the many greats he explicitly cites, Mr. Ford quotes from Yeats, Ecclesiastes and Rimbaud, and “William Maxwell’s presence will be obvious to any reader,” as he notes in the “Acknowledgments.” Yet for all its loans and allusions, Canada is very much a novel by Richard Ford. Great Falls, where Canada begins, is the closest thing Mr. Ford has to home turf; it provides the setting for many of his finest short stories, as well as his 1990 novel, Wildlife. Canada’s themes will be similarly resonant to readers familiar with Mr. Ford’s oeuvre. “How amazingly far normalcy extends,” Dell notes as he imagines his parents passing the time on their doomed drive to North Dakota. Later, having acquired a more dramatic proof of this point, Dell will urge us: “Think how close evil is to the normal goings-on that have nothing to do with evil. Through all these memorable events, normal life was what I was seeking to preserve for myself.”

The emptiness just beyond the edge of normal American life has always been the great subject of Mr. Ford’s fiction. “The more normal the April day the better for me,” thinks Frank Bascombe, the protagonist of the Bascombe Trilogy. Frank is Mr. Ford’s most famous character (the second Bascombe novel, Independence Day, won the Pulitzer). He is a writer of short stories who gives it up to be a sportswriter, a trade he subsequently drops to sell real estate. Frank’s life has been willfully scaled down, and so too his ambitions: “to participate briefly in the lives of others at a low level” is all he wants from a career. He is a deep thinker who sticks to small talk, a romantic who has become besotted with suburbia. Of course, it’ll never work out. He gets “dreamy” at crucial moments, he can’t keep a woman close, and garrulous strangers pick on him with their sob stories. Frank wouldn’t want to be a novelist’s good character, but usually he can’t help it.

Canada’s hero, Dell, is like that: if he’s not a dull kid, it’s not for lack of trying. As his world goes to pieces, his aim monotonously remains “to find a way to be normal.” One difference between Frank and Dell is that Frank’s abnormality is a matter of character, whereas Dell’s is imposed by circumstance. This manifests itself in Mr. Ford’s prose style. Not much happens in the Bascombe books. They are adventures of the inner life, and what drama they possess tends to rise and fall on whether Frank thinks his way in or out of a good mood. This leads to self-consciously loopy prose. The idea, presumably, is to suggest a man who spends an unhealthy amount of time in his head. He calls a bedroom a “nuptial sanctum,” and death a “wormy stupor”; “the gradual numbly-crumbly toward the end stripe” probably means something like existence.

Though the Bascombe novels are long, they confine themselves to short spans of time and move slowly, a formula that affords great scope to their hero’s habit of dizzy abstraction. Horrible things actually do happen in Canada, though, and Mr. Ford’s tics as a stylist are accordingly muted. The results are gratifyingly spare. “The jail was a place you smelled more than anything else,” Dell thinks at one point. It’s a sharp apprehension of an alien environment, vivid on its own—something a narrator like Frank Bascombe might have fussed the energy from.

Of course, fuss isn’t all bad, and Canada’s ultimately no less thoughtful than any of the Bascombe books. “To me, it’s the edging closer to the point of no return that’s fascinating,” Dell thinks, brooding on the outcome of his parents. He proves a storyteller much preoccupied with pinning down his points of no return—the country of Canada (“Indistinguishable. Same air. But different”) has a symbolic function here—and one thing he does is catalog the final times he does anything. It’s a practice that is shocking at times (“I never saw [Dad] again”) and at others endearingly neurotic: “We left the café,” Dell notes of one unremarkable Saskatchewan diner. “I was never there again.” The gloomy vigilance of an unhappy child, one of its effects is to make an adult reader wonder if he’ll ever return to the page on which he read about it. Somehow, the thought would be less morbid if the pages weren’t numbered. Surely Frank Bascombe, the dreamer, would agree. As Paul Bowles put it, “It’s that terrible precision that we hate so much.”

editorial@observer.com

Speedman in Citizen Gangster.

A cross between Robin Hood and Baby Face Nelson, Edwin Boyd was (and still is) Canada’s most popular and notorious bank robber. A decent family man and decorated war hero, he returned from World War II with one dream in mind: to provide for his wife and two children by making a living as an actor. All he got was frustration, desperation, rejection and tragedy. Thanks to careful writing and direction by newcomer Nathan Morlando and a powerful, charismatic centerpiece performance by Canadian heartthrob Scott Speedman, Citizen Gangster is a sympathetic portrait of this legendary career criminal as steeped in nuance and controversy as that of Clyde Barrow in Bonnie and Clyde.

Dismayed by public indifference toward wounded veterans, “Eddie” Boyd quit his job as a bus driver to take acting lessons. The film begins with him recording a love song as a present for his wife, Doreen (Kelly Reilly), but his aspirations founder quickly. With no job and no prospects, unable to find employment even as a movie extra and seeing nothing but disappointment and disapproval in the sullen face of his dad, a retired policeman played with quiet but dignified resolve by the great Brian Cox, Boyd used his thick stage makeup to disguise himself and turn to crime. His capers begin as a series of friendly, nonviolent attempts to relieve banks of a few piles of small bills, but in time his experience grew into a full-time scheme to stay afloat in a time of postwar economic hardship. Eventually Edwin Boyd turned into a folk hero.

Rising from obscurity to criminal celebrity and eventually years of incarceration during which he lost everything he held dear to his heart, his story makes for a film of throbbing intensity and nonstop fascination. There is also humor as Eddie amused even himself with his dashing disguises and fearless adventures. By the time he got caught and went to jail for the first time, he was already a glamorous headline star. His bank heists were like movie scenes, replete with dance steps, greasepaint and flirtatious dialogue. (Even the bank tellers were thrilled to see him coming; some of them formed an unofficial fan club and wondered what he would be like in bed.)

Eddie eventually became the head of the Boyd Gang, a group of celebrated crooks he met in prison. They included Lenny Jackson (Kevin Durand), a thug with a severed foot that concealed tiny hacksaw blades that enabled him to break out of prison, and a few others who orchestrated their own downfall by killing a detective who had devoted his own career to tracking them down. During every crisis, Eddie’s wife remained loyal. But the fun had a shelf life that expired too soon. Prison life, escape and hiding on the run was grim, and although Eddie never killed anyone himself, he watched his gang on the gallows while he faced a life sentence. The little-known facts of how the real Edwin Boyd ended up, a hero at last, provides a poignant ending more dramatic than fiction.

It takes an actor of some dimension to pull off a role of such complexity, and Mr. Speedman meets every challenge. He’s always been known for his camera-ready good looks (he was last on view as Rachel McAdams’s drop-dead boyfriend, competing for Channing Tatum’s affections, in The Vow) but this movie really explores his range. He’s a hard character to like, but his refusal to surrender to failure makes him oddly noble. Director Morlando is a talent to watch, but for one major caveat: he’s one of those filmmakers who encourages and indulges a lot of sloppy whispering and mumbling that passes for realism. The irritating result sinks whole scenes in a muddled lack of comprehension. As good as Citizen Gangster is, it would be even better if you could understand the dialogue.

rreed@observer.com

CITIZEN GANGSTER

Running Time 105 minutes

Written and Directed by Nathan Morlando

Starring Scott Speedman, Kelly Reilly and Kevin Durand

2/4

Speedman, Hampshire and Baruchel.

In dramatic Contrast to the usual vapid monotony that permeates most Canadian  films, Good Neighbors is a toxic thriller with unbearable intensity about an odd group of tenants in a small Montreal apartment house in the dead of a Quebec winter. Shades of Roman Polanski’s The Tenant and Alfred  Hitchcock’s I Confess come to mind as the eerie ambience unfolds around three English-speaking outsiders (called Anglophones) in French-speaking Notre-Dame-de-Grâce in 1995, the year Canada was in the midst of a referendum to decide whether the French province should secede from the  nation. In this divisive political landscape, hostile tensions mount, dangers lurk, and to make matters worse, there’s a rapist-serial killer on the prowl, paralyzing Montreal in a vise of terror.

Spencer, played by impossibly handsome Toronto native and heartthrob Scott Speedman, is a moody cripple, confined to a wheelchair after the car crash that killed his wife and left him bitter and reclusive. His only friend is Louise (Emily Hampshire), a pretty waitress in a seedy Chinese restaurant who brings Spencer occasional remnants of the outside world like bottles of scotch and newspapers, but reserves her only affection for two cats that scamper up and down the fire escape, annoying the neighbors. Victor (Jay Baruchel) is the newcomer, a nervous, lonely Jewish schoolteacher with a cat named Balthazar, who moves in on the fourth floor after spending a year in China. Desperate for human contact, he forces his way into his two neighbors’ lives without invitation, but has no idea what a price he will be forced to pay later on. None of them are exactly normal, but there’s something especially unsettling about the smirking Spencer. The first time we see him, he’s feeding smaller fish to the big fish in his tank. Is there a secret behind his sugary smile? Does he make hostile gestures toward Louise’s cats and rude remarks that come out of nowhere because he’s masking his anger and pain? Or does he have a dark side? And then there’s Valerie, a native French-Canadian alcoholic with a nasty temper who poisons Louise’s cats. All of them set the stage for a very unusual thriller filled with graphic violence, sex, blood and sinister mayhem, but which mostly relies on the kind of psychological suspense that comes on stealthy fingers and hides behind the curtains.

In the snowy shadows, a world comes to life that freezes the breath. Overcome with grief and rage, Louise carefully plots a way to destroy Valerie and make it look like the work of the homicidal maniac, framing Victor at the same time, so she can take possession of his cat. The characters go their wicked ways until the inevitable finally happens. On her way up the fire escape from one of the most brutal murder scenes in recent memory, Louise accidentally runs into Spencer, on his way down in his death mask. This is where the gears shift and the plot thickens. Adding tension, Victor sees them both. The rest of this blood-curdling cat-and-mouse game is about the traps they set for each other with multiple solutions that are nothing less than hair-raising.

This third feature by writer-director Jacob Tierney establishes him as one of Canada’s most original and acerbic young filmmakers. Using only the most basic primary set pieces—three apartments connected by a fire escape and the always empty Chinese café—he creates an atmosphere that seems rich and claustrophobic at the same time. From a shocking scene of necrophilia to a vivid throat slashing in the glow of a Christmas tree, Mr. Tierney shocks and provokes but leaves no trace of ennui—and you’ll be amazed how much curdled drama you can get out of the contents of a can of cat food.  Some of the imagery overreaches and the climax is something of a letdown, but the excellent performances are perfectly focused and the bleak cinematography by Guy Dufaux, with lighted windows in the lavender night, really makes you feel like you  are in the middle of a frozen Montreal winter. Good Neighbors is a hotbed of twisted ideas with a straightforward yet novel approach to the Gothic horror in the hearts of mistakenly everyday people. Stressful and disconcerting but highly recommended, it gave me nightmares.

rreed@observer.com

GOOD NEIGHBORS

Running time 98 minutes

Written and directed by Jacob Tierney

Starring Scott Speedman, Jay Baruchel, Emily Hampshire

3/4

mchaban@observer.com

Lehman says it's owed the $3 billion because CIBC and others were unfairly allowed to make claims against it as it filed for bankruptcy.

Lehman needs all the cash it can get, seeing as it currently owes creditors somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 billion, including some who, according to Lehman, may only reap between 10 and 44 cents on the dollar after waiting several years. The firm has previously sued Barclays Capital over additional funds. Meanwhile, the Canadians aren't taking kindly to being shaken down, Reuters says: "CIBC, in a statement, said it believes its obligations under the applicable contracts have been properly addressed, and that it intends to defend itself vigorously."

Mr. Kiernan also suggests going to Duane Reade to pick up some Delish chocolate chip cookies, "known in Canada as the President's Choice 'Decadent' cookie." We hear that reading Time magazine and dreaming of distant places is a very Canadian thing to do as well.

A few lucky contest winners will get to retroactively celebrate this day of confederation with Mr. Kiernan over poutine.

Real estate bankers, be on guard: The International Monetary Fund has set its gaze on a share of your firms' profits. More than six months after the Group of Twenty (G20) leading nations put forward a global bank tax, the I.M.F. presented its interim report on April 16. Titled "A Fair and Sustainable Contribution by the Financial Sector," the report proposes a Financial Stability Contribution (FSC) that would offset the cost of future bank crises, as well as a Financial Activities Tax (FAT).

An updated report on the global bank tax is due from the I.M.F. in June. Given the apparent dysfunction characterizing the current financial reform debate in the United States, one might dismiss the idea of near-term coordination on the global stage. Observing the rhetorical buildup to last week's G20 meeting in Washington, my peers at The Economist concluded that "any banker who assumes [the I.M.F. proposals] are another bit of theoretical wonkery should think again." In explaining the broad support for the I.M.F. proposal, they added that "many hard-up Western governments now have a recipe for raising levies that are lucrative, wildly popular, and [that] come with the imprimatur of capitalism's policeman."

A Tax on Liabilities

In reaction to the events of the past two years, recognition of the systemic risks presented by large bank failures is at the heart of the proposed Financial Stability Contribution. In fact, the FSC is designed to reduce the incentives for banks to take on liabilities and, as described by the I.M.F., should be "linked to a credible and effective resolution mechanism." This resolution mechanism calls for receipts to be paid into a fund that will cover the costs of bank failures. As I described in last week's column on Senator Dodd's proposed financial reform bill, the creation of a fund has been a major point of contention between Democrats and Republicans. The latter have expressed concerns about the potential for moral hazard.

In the assessment of policy makers, banks that are perceived as being too big to fail face lower borrowing costs, since the risk of outright failure and a default on debt obligations is lessened given the assumed backstop. In effect, the expectation of government intervention when and if a crisis arises acts as a subsidy on the banks' cost of capital throughout the cycle. But this subsidy, by definition, distorts behavior. In this case, the subsidy creates an incentive for large banks to take on more debt. While the I.M.F. proposal does not make it explicit, the taxation of large banks' liabilities offsets the subsidy.

The tax is hardly perfect. Among its potential stumbling blocks would be a proposal to tax the full range of financial institutions, and not just large, systemically important banks. After an initial period during which the tax would be assessed using a flat rate, the tax should ultimately evolve, the I.M.F. proposes, to become sensitive to banks' risk-taking. Any risk officer who has followed the travails of the New Basel Capital Accord (known commonly as Basel II) can speak to the conceptual and implementation complexities of a risk-based capital regime.

Apart from a tax on debt, the I.M.F.'s proposal would also tax banks' profits before salaries and bonuses. The Financial Activities Tax is not designed to correct any particular behavior in the market. Inasmuch as the I.M.F. proposes that receipts should be paid into governments' general revenues and not into a resolution fund, its relevance for financial stability is unclear.

Consensus Will Prove Elusive

In seeking to address banks' incentives to take on risks, levies are a poor substitute for effective regulation. It would be naïve to assume that the implementation of the I.M.F. plan will serve as a panacea. Moreover, bank levies may be altogether unnecessary if sound regulation is able to bring banks' incentives into alignment by addressing market-structure issues directly. And so it should come as no surprise that Canada has been among the countries objecting to the proposal as it now stands. In both Canada and Australia, relatively healthy financial institutions have not required stabilizing capital injections.

At last week's meeting of the G20 nations' finance ministers and central bank governors, Canada's objections held sway with many of the participants among emerging economies. Going into the meetings in Washington, Canada was largely on its own in opposing the bank tax. By the meeting's close, a number of emerging economies had apparently offered support to Canada's position. Canada's dissent could scuttle the proposal, since anything short of universal implementation opens the door for regulatory and tax arbitrage.

In the United States, the creation of the specific fund may prove to be the I.M.F. proposal's Achilles' heel. The British government has expressed concerns about moral hazard that parallel the Republican Party's opposition to the "bailout" fund. Britain's chancellor of the Exchequer, Alistair Darling, has said that "a systemic risk levy should not be seen as an insurance policy to benefit individual institutions, shareholders or creditors. To minimise moral hazard, the proceeds of a levy should go into general taxation rather than a stand-alone fund."

The Institute of International Finance (IIF) disagrees. "The IIF sees no merit in the idea that any levy on the financial sector should be paid into general revenue. Neither do we believe that an ex-ante levy on the banking system should be used to finance the bailing out or recapitalization of failing institutions," it wrote in an a statement released over the weekend.

In sending the I.M.F. back to the proverbial drawing board, the G20 conceded substantive disagreements on the fund's proposal: "We call on the IMF for further work on options to ensure domestic financial institutions bear the burden of any extraordinary government interventions where they occur, address their excessive risk taking and help promote a level playing field, taking into consideration individual countries' circumstances."

Not since February's Olympic hockey final has Canada wielded so much power on the rink. The Canadians hold the advantage: The G20 heads of state will revisit the I.M.F. proposal when they reconvene for their summit meeting in Toronto in late June.

schandan@rcanalytics.com

Sam Chandan, Ph.D., is global chief economist and executive vice president of Real Capital Analytics and an adjunct professor of real estate at Wharton.

The Canadians unveiled an 80-square-foot artwork by Inuit artist Irene Avaalaaqiaq, and Mayor Giuliani declared Nov. 14 Canada Day in New York. Or so claims a press release in Lexis Nexis.

Be that as it may, now the government of Canada is looking for fresh accommodations. The Canadians have hired Studley chief executive Mitch Steir and executive vice president David Goldstein to scout for between 80,000 and 100,000 square feet in Manhattan.

It’s unclear whether the government wants to consolidate its Consulate General offices at Mitsui Fudosan’s 1251 Sixth and its offices at Ruben Companies’ One Dag Hammarskjold Plaza, where the Mission of Canada to the United Nations is located. The latter lease for 30,000 square feet was reportedly signed in 1992.

drubinstein@observer.com

USA Today reports that that Canadian home-buying spree that took hold earlier this year as the loon reached parity with the buck has evaporated. The U.S. dollar, for those who don't obsessively read the Journal's Money & Investing section every morning, has started to climb back against several other curriencies--including the Canadian dollar.

More here on Canadians in New York City.