Announcement
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Web-Quarterly will be the final full issue after 15 years of publication. However,
we hope to add worthwhile articles to the 90th issue from time to
time without fixed schedule. We take this opportunity to thank you all for your
unflinching and unwavering support.
The General Editor & the Publication
Committee
Breaking News
1
The Taxpayer – Fall 2012
By Derek Fildebrandt
For those not living in
Most non-Quebecers watched in
disbelief as tens of thousands of students took over entire cities opposing an
extremely modest increase in tuitions, spread over the better part of a decade.
A handful of commentators chalked
this up to a combination of the usual radicalism that pervades North American
university campuses and
In the shadow of the eurozone debt
crisis, some in
Quebecers enjoy a lavish welfare
state with $7-a-day daycare and the lowest tuition fees in
In such fiscal straits,
Rock-bottom tuition fees have been a
basic entitlement in
But this is not he message that they
are carrying with them, and even if it were, it would not provide a solution
for maintaining the status quo. Even if what is transpiring in
While a solid majority of Quebecers
opposed the student strikers, enough of them voted for the Parti Québécois to
make Pauline Marois premier of minority government. This is the same Pauline
Marois who wore the emblematic red patch in solidarity with the
strikers/rioters. One of the most radical student leaders was even elected to
the National Assembly under the PQ banner.
In one her first acts as Premier,
Marois cancelled the tuition hike. This will be subject to the politics of a
minority government however, as both the opposition Liberal Party and the
upstart Coalition Avenir Quebec (CAQ) support the tuition increase.
But as we witnessed, threatening
2
Going to court for the health of it
Just
Centre for Constitutional Freedoms takes government health monopoly to court
The Taxpayer – Fall 2012
By John Carpay
“Access to a waiting list is not
access to health care.” These words, from the 2005 Supreme Court of Canada
decision in Chaoulli v.
Across
Dr. Darcy Allen was forced to stop
practicing dentistry in 2009, due to extreme, debilitating and continuous back
pain. What started in 2007 as a seemingly minor injury from playing hockey,
gradually turned the dentist’s life into a nightmare of around-the-clock pain.
Normal tasks, like shoveling snow or tying shoelaces, became impossible. On the
occasion, Dr. Allen watched helplessly as his one-year-old daughter, while
crawling on a bed, lost her balance and fell off, and he could not move to
catch her. When not working, all he could do was lie on his back, in a futile
attempt to ease his pain.
Dr. Allen finally received a
referral for surgery in 2009. In spite of some helpful political interference
from the
Unable to work, unable to enjoy
life, unwilling to continue living in a state of forced unemployment and
unwilling to face many more long months of continuous and severe pain. Dr.
Allen paid $77,503 out of pocket for back surgery in
Small businessman Richard Cross face
a similar challenge, living in a state of severe and continuous pain for years,
with no surgery available to him in Canada. He paid $24,236 for back surgery in
In defending its ban on private
health insurance against these new constitutional claims, the
When Tommy Douglas established
Monopolies don’t work. They don’t
serve the needs of people who cannot buy a product or service elsewhere. When
politicians refuse to abandon the failing policies of the status quo, a court
action is often the best option to push them in the right direction.
3
Ex-police-chief jailed 15 years in scandal
Chinese
government hopes sentencing marks an end to messy political affair
By Gillian Wong
A Chinese court sentenced the former
police chief who exposed a murder by a Chinese politician's wife to 15 years in
prison Monday in a decision that sets the stage for
The Intermediate People's Court in
the central city of
The sentence is lighter than the
20-year prison term suggested in sentencing guidelines and reflects what
prosecutors at his trial called his "meritorious service" for
co-operating in uncovering the central element in the scandal – the murder of a
British businessman by the wife of Wang's former boss, once political
high-flyer Bo Xilai.
The scandal has been the messiest,
most public one Communist party leaders have had to confront in decades,
triggering bruising internal jostling as the leadership prepares to transfer
power to a younger generation. In the scandal's wake, Bo was removed from the
leadership, his wife confessed to the murder and relations among the leaders
were strained. As a result, arrangements for a party congress to install the new
leadership this fall were complicated.
After Wang's sentencing, the
leadership is expected to announce long overdue dates for the congress and
dispose of the scandal's stickiest issue – whether merely to expel Bo from the
party or hand him over for criminal prosecution. Pronouncing judgment on Bo
will allow the new leaders to take charge without the scandal's overhang.
Wang's trial and conviction mark the
spectacular downfall of a publicity-grabbing police official who rose to
nationwide fame by leading a high-profile but law-bending crusade against
organized crime in the inland city of
According to an official account of
his trial, Wang had grown close to Bo's wife, Gu Kailai, and after she confessed
to murdering Briton Neil Heywood, Wang covered it up until his estrangement
from her, and later Bo, drove him to flee to the U.S. Consulate in
"When mafia members break up
with their bosses, they can attempt to seek police protection. But in
The official account of Wang's
trial, carried by Xinhua, portrays Wang as unbound by the law. It says he
ordered surveillance of people without authorization and took bribes from
businessmen connected to Bo in exchange for releasing suspects from detention.
While he first told Gu he would hide
evidence and cover up her crime last November, the account said he secretly
recorded her confession to poisoning Heywood, a business associate whom she
said had threatened her son's safety in a dispute over money.
After his falling out with Gu and
Bo, Wang ordered subordinates to gather up the evidence and in February fled to
the U.S. Consulate, where he applied for political asylum, though he later
surrendered to Chinese authorities. Gu was convicted of the murder last month
and given a suspended death sentence.
Xinhua has portrayed Wang as being
contrite. "I acknowledge and confess the guilt accused by the prosecuting
body and show my repentance," Wang was quoted as saying in court last
week. "For the Party organizations, people and relatives that have cared
for me, I want to say here, sincerely: I'm very, very sorry, I've let you
down."
As for Bo, who was dismissed as
party boss of
4
John Martin's defection signals more trouble for B.C.
Conservatives
Media
pundit was a star candidate for his former party, but his crossing likely won’t
be enough to save sagging Liberals
By Vaughn Plamer
The B.C. Liberals spent the week
planning “a little surprise” for the B.C. Conservatives and sprang it mid-day
Friday, on the eve of the rival party’s annual general meeting.
“John Martin Resigns from B.C.
Conservative Party, Seeks B.C. Liberal Nomination,” said the press release from
the governing party’s headquarters, as the Liberals displayed their newest
recruit at a press conference in
Martin, a criminologist and
right-of-centre media pundit, had been touted as a star candidate by the
Conservatives when they persuaded him to run for them in a byelection in one of
the two
He’d given the party one of its best
showings in a provincial election in three decades, winning 25 per cent of the
vote on a shoestring campaign.
Still, the third-place finish
(behind the Liberals and the winning New Democratic Party) wasn’t good enough,
Martin conceded Friday.
He’d gone with the Conservatives
believing they were on the rise and likely to supplant the Liberals as the
party of choice for voters not wanting an NDP government. “I was wrong,” he
told reporters, noting the party’s slide in the opinion polls.
On Thursday, for instance, Ipsos
Reid reported the Conservatives were at 12 per cent support among decided
voters, a loss of about one quarter of the 16 per cent support they’d
registered in a similar poll taken in June.
Plus there were the party’s internal
troubles, on display in a series of leaked memos and coming to a head at this
weekend’s annual general meeting in
“The party has not performed up to
expectations,” said a disillusioned Martin, explaining his decision to switch
to a party that he’d wanted nothing to do with just a few months ago.
He says he still has significant
differences with the Liberals. He doesn’t like the carbon tax and opposes a
regional garbage incinerator in
“It’s not that far a leap,” Martin
insisted. “I’m a free enterpriser. It’s a big tent.”
But it was a big leap in rhetorical
terms, witness the fabulous quotes that were readily available from even the
most cursory troll of the media coverage of the byelection campaign.
Among the Martin characterizations
of the Liberals that are certain to be recycled by his opponents in the next
election: “Theirs is a legacy of deceit, incompetence, and financial
mismanagement.”
Then there’s Premier Christy Clark’s
klutzy, if true, response when some of the Martin comments were played back to
her Friday: “We all say things when we are trying to get elected.”
For his part, the newest member of
the party of deceit, incompetence and financial mismanagement – a.k.a. the
party that will say anything to get elected – came as well prepared as could be
expected for the inevitable media barrage.
Joking with reporters, Martin
advised that his private hobby is competitive barbecue and “if anyone can make
that crow that I’m eating taste good, I’m probably the guy to do it.”
But in fairness, he is hardly the
first B.C. politician to switch parties out of an estimation that it was the
best way to get a seat at the cabinet table and/or keep the party on the other
side of the political divide at bay.
Examples abound: Liberals Pat
McGeer, Allan Williams, Garde Gardom, Jack Davis and Bill Vander Zalm and
Conservative Hugh Curtis crossing to Social Credit in the mid-70s. Reformers
Richard Neufeld and Jack Weisgerber going to the Liberals in the late 1990s.
Ex-Liberal turned Progressive Democratic Alliance leader Gordon Wilson joining
the NDP cabinet in 1999.
Recently you had Liberal supporter
(and ex-Christy
Liberals fumed that Trasolini and
van Dongen were traitorous opportunists and good riddance to them. New
Democrats in the first instance, Conservatives in the second, welcomed the new
recruit for having finally come to his senses and acknowledged a winner.
With the situation reversed Friday,
so were the politically self-serving nature of the responses. More significant
was the question of what the Martin switch means for the fortunes of the
respective parties.
It surely adds to the troubles of
the Conservatives, who go into this weekend’s meeting having lost the momentum
they had in the spring. Less certain is Martin’s claim that his move might help
generate winning momentum for the Liberals.
“I don’t want to wait until Adrian
Dix and the NDP are elected to unite forces,” he said. “I have made this
decision to prevent that from happening.
As things stand today, it remains
doubtful whether the party he joined can really make that happen.
The Ipsos poll had the New Democrats
at 49 per cent, 17 points ahead of the Liberals and well into landslide-winning
territory, however many parties are arrayed against them.
NDP leader Adrian Dix has been
warning supporters to expect the race to tighten up. But it would have to
tighten up a great, great deal to head off a change of government next spring.
5
Why Obama will be a one-term president
By
As much as I do not like it, Barack
Obama will be a one-term president. Why? Because his 2008 election win took so
much effort, resulted from such unusual circumstances at a unique time, and
cannot be duplicated.
In 2008, Obama was running against
the record of an unpopular president who doubled the
Obama was also running against an
uninspiring septuagenarian senator who chose an ignoramus as a running mate,
and who became the campaign’s laughing stock. George Bush at least knew he
could not see
Given all that, Obama should have
won easily. He did not. It took extraordinary, enormous, unprecedented effort
to identify, organize, and register millions of citizens who had never voted
before and get them to the polls to cast that ballot. It was an effort that
resulted in the highest percentage voter turnout in 40 years. And Obama was
able to raise and spend much more money than McCain.
But, in the course of the campaign,
to extract both the funds and the votes, Obama raised expectations so high for
so many that, even in good times, they could not be met.
He has not been able to make real
the dreams and aspirations of so many of his supporters, largely because
Republicans have gridlocked almost everything in Congress, slowing economic
recovery, and obstructed dealing with the national debt. Obama can rightfully
complain, but politics is an unforgiving business. This time, there will not be
that degree of enthusiasm, that outpouring of emotion, money, and
organizational effort.
And the
Why is Obama doomed?
Three reasons: First, much of the
idealism and freshness of the Obama image has been lost, and too many of his
2008 supporters have lost heart, and will just not vote. Others have had their
Obama-fostered idealism rubbed off.
Second, the Republicans are four
years away from the policies, performance, and problems of George W. Bush. And
vice-presidential candidate Ryan is a knowledgeable, competent, articulate,
serious politician, in stark contrast to Palin.
But most important, in 2012, is
money, which every practical politician anywhere will tell you, “is the
mothers’ milk of politics.” In 2008, McCain did not have enough. This year,
Mitt Romney will have too much, certainly much more than Obama. The Republicans
will almost be embarrassed by the tsunami of cash flooding into their election
coffers, and, since court decisions in 2010, there is now no limit to how much
money can be spent by third-party advertisers, specifically Political Action
Committees, or Super PACS, of which there are now about 220. Of even greater
concern is that billionaires are giving millions of dollars, while the merely
rich are donating in never-before-seen amounts. One very rich couple, the
Sheldon Adelsons had, as of July 1, contributed $38.6 million US to various
right-wing PACS. The Adelsons say they are prepared to spend $100-million this
year to support right-wing candidates
The numbers gathered by the U.S.
Federal Election Commission concerning expenditures during the first half of
2012 are truly startling. Of the $312 million raised by Super PACs of all
political stripes, 73.8 per cent of donors gave an average of $19,944, and 94
per cent of donors gave over $10,000. But 57 per cent of individual
contributors gave a total of $230 million, with 47 individuals giving more than
$1 million each.
This is not the grassroots
fundraising using Facebook and Twitter popularized by Obama. This is a blatant
attempt by a few very wealthy people to drown out the voices and choices of the
many. Worse, many of the Super PACS are not required to disclose the identities
of their donors. Former president Jimmy Carter estimates that $6 billion will
be spent in this
Evidence of the corruption in
What does this kind of campaigning
mean for
6
Dangerous-offender status change process unjust, judge
rules
By Douglas Quan
A relatively new section of the
Criminal Code makes it too easy to label certain serial offenders as
"dangerous offenders" and infringes upon the principles of
fundamental justice under the Charter, an
Typically, when prosecutors want to
designate someone a dangerous offender – a label that carries the possibility
of an indefinite prison sentence – they have to call on the opinion of experts,
such as forensic psychiatrists, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt the
offender is dangerous.
But in 2008, the Tackling Violent
Crime Act streamlined the process for certain serial offenders. If someone was
convicted at least three times of certain serious or violent offences, he was
automatically presumed to be dangerous and the burden fell on the defence to
prove otherwise.
This presumption and the reverse
onus of proof, wrote Ontario Superior Court Justice Alan Bryant on Sept. 13, is
a fundamental change in the dangerous offender process and a
"significant" infringement of Section 7 of the Charter.
The ruling stemmed from the case of
Roland Hill, a
Hill had previously been convicted
in 2000 of sexual assault and in 2004 of assault causing bodily harm. Each of
those previous cases had resulted in sentences of at least two years in prison.
Crown lawyers argued Hill met the
dangerous offender criteria spelled out under Section 753 (1.1) of the Criminal
Code.
They said the streamlined
dangerous-offender designation process applied only to a "small class of
individuals who have been proven to be very dangerous in the community."
But the judge did not accept the
argument.
"I do not accept the Crown
counsel's submission that there is a pressing need to streamline the process
for labelling a small class of individuals as dangerous offenders," he
wrote.
"A breach of an individual's
(Section 7) rights cannot be justified or condoned in a free and democratic
society because the class of affected individuals is small."
The judge noted that between 1978
and 2005, just under 400 people had been designated as dangerous offenders.
The judge also cited the testimony
of forensic psychiatrist, Philip Klassen, who evaluated Hill. The expert was
asked whether he could offer an opinion about whether Hill was a dangerous
offender based solely on the knowledge of his previous convictions.
"I would decline to do
it," Klassen replied.
Even though the judge found the
law's presumption that certain serial offenders are dangerous to be a violation
of the Charter, he still concluded based on the Crown's evidence that Hill was
a dangerous offender.
Hill is due to be sentenced in
October.
Still, Hill's defence lawyer, Peter
Behr, said Tuesday the ruling is significant because it upholds the concept
that when someone has been found guilty, aggravating facts that could lead to a
harsher punishment still need to be proven by the Crown beyond a reasonable
doubt.
"The prosecution should have
the burden," Behr said. "The burden shouldn't be shifted to the
person whose liberty is at stake."
A spokesman for
7
Tolerance turned tyrannical
Can
the government compel a Christian photographer – who disapproves of same-sex
unions – to photograph a lesbian couple’s ‘commitment ceremony’?
National Post – September
18, 2012
By George F. Will
Elaine Huguenin, who with her
husband operates Elane Photography in
But instead of being allowed a
reasonable zone of sovereignty in which to live her life in accordance with her
beliefs, she is being bullied by people wielding government
power.
In 2006, Vanessa Willock e-mailed
Elane Photography about photographing a “commitment ceremony” that she and her
partner were planning. Willock said that this would be a “same-gender
ceremony.” Elane Photography responded that it photographed “traditional
weddings.” The Huguenins are Christians who, for religious reasons, disapprove
of same-sex unions. Willock sent a second e-mail asking whether this meant that
the company “does not offer photography services to same-sex couples.” Elane
Photography responded that “you are correct.”
Willock could then have said
regarding Elane Photography what many same-sex couples have long hoped a
tolerant society would say regarding them – “live and let live.” Willock could
have hired a photographer with no objections to such events. Instead, Willock
and her partner set out to break the Huguenins to the state’s saddle.
Willock’s partner, without
disclosing her relationship with Willock, e-mailed Elane Photography. She said
that she was getting married – actually, she and Willock were having a
“commitment ceremony” because
Instead, Willock, spoiling for a
fight, filed a discrimination claim with the New Mexico Human Rights
Commission, charging that Elane Photography is a “public accommodation,” akin
to a hotel or restaurant, that denied her its services because of her sexual
orientation. The commission found against Elane and ordered it to pay $6,600 in
attorney fees.
But what a tangled web we weave when
we undertake to regulate
more and more behaviors under overlapping codifications of conflicting
rights. Elaine Huguenin says that she is being denied her right to the “free
exercise” of religion guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment and
a similar provision in the New Mexico Constitution. Furthermore,
So
Eugene Volokh of the UCLA
School of Law thinks that Huguenin can also make a “compelled speech argument”:
She cannot be coerced into creating expressive works, such as photographs, that
express something she is uncomfortable expressing. Courts have repeatedly held
that freedom of speech and the freedom not to speak are “complementary
components of the broader concept of ‘individual freedom of mind.’ ”
A
New Mexico’s Supreme Court is going
to sort all this out, which has been thoroughly reported and discussed by the
invaluable blog the Volokh Conspiracy,
where you can ponder this: In jurisdictions such as the District of Columbia
and Seattle, which ban discrimination on the basis of political affiliation or
ideology, would a photographer, even a Jewish photographer, be compelled to
record a Nazi Party ceremony?
The Huguenin case demonstrates how
advocates of tolerance become tyrannical. First, a disputed behavior, such as
sexual activities between people of the same sex, is declared so personal and
intimate that government should have no jurisdiction over it. Then, having won
recognition of what Louis Brandeis, a pioneer of the privacy right, called “the
right to be let alone,” some who have benefited from this achievement assert a
right not to let other people alone. It is the right to coerce anyone who disapproves
of the now-protected behavior into acting as though they approve of it, or at
least into not acting on their disapproval.
So, in the name of tolerance,
government declares intolerable individuals such as the Huguenins, who
disapprove of a certain behavior but ask only to be let alone in their quiet
disapproval. Perhaps advocates
of gay rights should begin to restrain the bullies in their ranks.
8
Not the government’s kids
Parents
have a right to direct the spiritual and moral education of their children.
School boards have a duty to respect that right
National Post – September
12, 2012
By George Jonas
Last week an advocacy group called
The Parental Rights In Education Defense Fund (PRIEDF) held a press conference
to seek support for the view that educational authorities should “accommodate
the religious beliefs of a Christian parent.” I went on automatic pilot,
scribbled “you bet” on the margin of the press release, and threw it into the
garbage.
This being the 21st century, I did
it electronically – a good thing, too, because I had less trouble retrieving it
when something started bothering me a few hours later.
I must say, fishing something out of
the electronic trash isn’t as grimy as fishing it out of garbage of the other
kind. Hmm, just as I thought. The press release illustrates how tricky it is to
formulate these things.
Next thing I knew, I split in two
like an amoeba, starting a spirited argument with myself.
Why specify “a Christian parent”?
Surely
You can’t, can you? What if the
parent’s religion requires the ritual sacrifice of a maiden to an Aztec god,
Tlaloc, say, or Tezcatlipoca, every month? How should the school authorities
accommodate him? By not mentioning the subject, or not mentioning that it’s wrong?
By excusing his child from attending a class that deals with controversial
topics, like human sacrifice? Or by subsidizing sacrificial virgins, maybe?
Don’t be silly, there’s no such
religion today. Why worry about something extreme that isn’t likely to ever
occur? Cross that bridge when you come to it. I predict you never will.
Oh really? What about female genital
mutilation? That’s pretty far-fetched by our standards but it does occur. How
do they accommodate parents who object to it being discussed critically? Can
schools say it’s wrong? Hint at it, maybe? Or can they say only that it’s a
crime in
By the way, just what does
“accommodate” mean? Say there’s a church on school property that rings its bell
every day at
How do you accommodate a Muslim
parent who objects to his child being reminded every day, precisely at noon, as
ordered by Pope Callixtus III, to mark the moment in 1456 when the Christian
general Janos Hunyadi, in charge of Belgrade’s defenders, lifted the Ottoman
Sultan Mehmet II’s siege of the city, thereby delaying Islam’s expansion in Europe
by three-quarters of a century?
How? I don’t know how. Stay awake
all night and worry about it if you like. No one raised church bells at noon.
You don’t have to solve extreme examples no one is asking about. Why not deal
with what’s on the table?
Okay, what’s on the table?
Well, it says in the press release
that, “The Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board has denied the father of
two elementary school children the right to be notified about lessons which may
contradict his Christian beliefs. This prevents him from withdrawing his
children from such classroom lessons or exercises.”
What kind of Christian beliefs? Sex?
What difference does it make? Yes,
it includes sex.
Well, maybe the father thinks
they’re too young to discuss sex.
That’s not being argued. The press
release says: “This family holds sincere religious beliefs which guide their
views on various issues, including marriage, family and human sexuality.” It
seems this guy has certain values, and he doesn’t want his children exposed to
contrary views until he’s good and ready. He’s entitled to that, isn’t he?
Does the school board think he
isn’t?
Well, according to Lou Iacobelli,
chairperson for the legal defence fund, “the father was met with the
condescending suggestion that if he didn’t like the curriculum, he ought to put
his kids in a private school or homeschool them instead.”
Well, that’s probably what I would
suggest to him. If he can afford it.
Sure, that’s fine as private advice,
but it’s pretty arrogant if you have a duty to accommodate someone. The
educators don’t seem to dispute that he’s entitled to take his children out of
certain classes, but having to warn him is a big nuisance, and they just want
to make it difficult for him. That’s a kind of petty, bureaucratic vengeance.
Well, what do you expect? That’s
government. Shakespeare called it the insolence of office. It’s the same all
over the world.
What about the merits? Who is right?
The whole point, surely, is that it
doesn’t matter who is right. What I think about sex education is probably
closer to what the school board thinks, but it’s immaterial. The applicant, a
Dr. Steve Tourloukis, said he is seeking a court order “to acknowledge my
inherent parental rights to direct the spiritual and moral education of my own
children. They’re my kids, not the government’s.”
Unless someone suggests he’s an
unfit parent, and no one has, there’s nothing more to be said.
9
Cutting corporate welfare helps
National Post – September
12, 2012
Editorial
Canadians value our mixed economy because
it offers the best of both worlds: a system in which people who work hard can
get ahead, while the poor, sick and infirm are protected by a generous social
safety net. We can squabble about how much freedom the market should have to
distribute goods and services or how much money should be put toward social
programs, but there is one thing that all of us – small- and big-government
advocates alike – should be able to agree on: Corporate welfare is bad for
society.
And yet, between 1994 and 2007, the
government of
A new report from the Fraser
Institute analyzes the loans and grants distributed by Industry
According to the Fraser Institute,
Industry
Industry
Mark Milke, senior fellow at the
Fraser Institute and author of the study, concludes that “peer-reviewed
research on business subsidies does not support claims that corporate welfare
is responsible for economic growth or job creation, two of the most oft-heard
claims. At best, a generous interpretation of the literature suggests that
subsidies may, in very specific locations, produce some effect on local
economic behaviour. Also, this impact is typically offset by losses elsewhere
in the economy from tax rates that are greater than would be the case without
business subsidies.”
It is important to remember that
businesses already receive private funding through the stock market, loans and
private investment. When the government provides businesses money at rates that
undercut the market, it is either taking business away from the banks (which
would otherwise have supplied the needed funds to businesses with a good chance
of making a go of it), or supporting ventures that have little chance of
success. After all, in cases where the government needs to step in with
interest-free loans or grants to keep a business afloat, there was probably a
very good reason that private lenders didn’t see enough value in the investment
to get involved. The bottom line is that corporate welfare serves either to
needlessly enrich businesses that would have been just fine on their own, or to
prop-up businesses that would, and should, have failed under normal market
conditions. In all cases, corporate welfare makes competition unduly difficult
for new businesses, or foreign companies, that aren’t receiving the
preferential treatment.
This is not an issue of partisan
politics:
Reducing the amount of money we
spend on business subsidies would go a long way toward furthering the
government’s goal of maintaining a healthy, stable and competitive economy,
while reducing the debt burden that is left behind for future generations.
10
Marijuana smoking linked to testicular cancer: study
'We
need to take this seriously now,' says researcher, noting rates of the disease
are rising
Young men who had smoked marijuana
recreationally were twice as likely to be diagnosed with testicular cancer than
men who have never used marijuana, according to a
Researchers whose findings appeared
in the journal Cancer said the link appeared to be specific to a type of tumour
known as nonseminoma.
"This is the third study
consistently demonstrating a greater than doubling of risk of this particularly
undesirable subtype of testicular cancer among young men with marijuana
use," said Victoria Cortessis of the University of Southern California,
Los Angeles, who led the study.
"I myself feel like we need to
take this seriously now," she added, noting that the rates of testicular
cancer have been rising inexplicably over the past century.
The research isn't ironclad proof
that the marijuana is to blame, and even if it is, the danger isn't
overwhelming. According to the American Cancer Society, a man's lifetime risk of
get-ting testicular cancer is about one in 270 – and because effective
treatment is available, the risk of dying from the disease is just one in
5,000.
So far, little is known about what
causes it. Cortessis said undescended testicles, in which the testes remain in
the abdomen beyond the age of a year, are a risk factor. Both pesticide and
hormone exposure have also been associated with the tumours. Cortessis and her
colleagues used data from 163 young men who had been diagnosed with testicular
cancer and nearly 300 men in a comparison group without the disease. Both
groups had been interviewed about their health and drug use between 1987 and
1994.
Among the men with cancer, 81 per
cent had used marijuana at some point, whereas that was the case for 70 per
cent of the comparison group.
By contrast, cocaine use was linked
to a smaller risk of the tumours. That's important because it signals that men
who have been diagnosed with cancer aren't just more honest about their drug
use, thereby creating a spurious link between marijuana and cancer, Cortessis
said.
It's not entirely clear how
marijuana would influence men's cancer risk, but Cortessis said developing
testicles may somehow respond to the drug's main active ingredient.
The new study is
"interesting," said Carl van Walraven of the
For instance, it didn't find an
increased risk among men with higher marijuana use, and it was relatively
small.
But Cortessis highlighted the
consistent results from all the studies so far.
"It is hard to imagine a
scenario whereby it is due to chance and I can't think of a systematic bias
that would cause this. I will feel very confident that this is cause and effect
once we have worked out the biology," she said.
11
B.C. government continues to fail
By Daphne Bramham
The B.C. government is failing to
protect the rights and freedoms of children in the polygamous community of Bountiful,
continuing a years’ long pattern of indecision, indifference and, at
times, sheer naiveté.
Since January, a number of boys have
been banished. At least 40 children have been taken away from their fathers and
parcelled out to “new” dads after their biological fathers were deemed unworthy
and expelled by leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter
Day Saints.
One source says there are fewer than
30 men left among the nearly 500 FLDS followers in the southeastern B.C.
community.
Those followers are taking their
orders from their prophet Warren Jeffs, a pedophile jailed in
Jeffs, the convicted sex offender,
is directing every aspect of children’s lives from his jail cell.
Four children whose father was
declared apostate have been banished. They range in age from six to nine.
FLDS leaders following Jeffs’s
orders have all but shuttered the
Mothers have been ordered to
minimize physical contact with children. Fathers – even those who haven’t been
expelled – are forbidden from having any physical contact with their children,
warned that they will be deemed to be “adulterers” if they even hug a toddler
or pat a little one on his or her head.
Play is forbidden. Toys, games,
sports and all other recreational activities are banned.
Six of the expelled men – fathers to
40 children – said in sworn affidavits last week that they’re concerned their
children’s education will come from listening to hour after hour of Jeffs’s
sermons, both taped and accessed through YouTube, now that the Bountiful
Elementary-Secondary School has been all but shuttered.
And what has the B.C. government
done? Nothing.
And that is “very disturbing,”said
Child and Youth Representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond in an interview Monday.
Following the “egregious behaviour” by the FLDS, she said, what happens next is
“a test of the government,” which has “tiptoed around the issue for a long
time.”
This test, as she described it,
comes on the heels of the lengthy and expensive reference case that was decided
by Chief Justice Robert Baumann. He determined that polygamy is so inherently
harmful to children, women and society as a whole that it justifies limiting
religious freedom and freedom of association.
But while it may be a relief to some
taxpayers not have to spend $1.1 million supporting
Some of Jeffs’s tapes from the 1990s
were entered as evidence in his
Even if BESS opens later this month,
as the school authority has promised the Education Ministry, children will no
longer be required to be taught by accredited teachers.
What Turpel-Lafond wants – and what
anyone who cares about the welfare and protection of children should support – is
more aggressive and more creative action from the government.
She wants more vigilance from the
Education Ministry to ensure that Jeffs’s sermons – the words of a convicted
sex offender – are not being read or played to children or any home-schooled
FLDS children.
Attorney-General Shirley Bond should
consider a Canadian court order to bolster the American restrictions on Jeffs
to include a ban on him having any contact with Canadian children via social
media or taped sermons, Turpel-Lafond said.
If necessary, she said, the
government should not shy away from charging mothers or anyone else who carries
out Jeffs’s orders.
Meantime, Turpel-Lafond said, child
welfare officials need to step up investigations within the FLDS community to
ensure that children are not being neglected, abused or “passed like baggage
from one home to another.”
But she rightly acknowledged it’s
not easy. Even banished FLDS members have little experience in the outside
world, and even if they are aware of their rights and what services are
available, they’re distrustful.
None of the six fathers told child
welfare officials that their children have been stripped from them, that they
were concerned about their children’s schooling or that their children may not
have enough to eat. None of the boys who have been kicked out of
This banishing of men and boys,
rearranging of families and the forced marriages of girls shouldn’t be
happening here or anywhere.
While laws and regulations can’t
cover everything, the B.C. government needs to catch up to the egregious and
disturbing reality of
12
Illegal Citizen Probe Widens
National Post – September
10, 2012
By Stewart Bell
A widening federal crackdown has
identified a record number of people suspected of acquiring their Canadian
citizenship and immigration status through fraud, according to a government
source.
The number of newcomers under
investigation for misrepresenting themselves in their dealings with Citizenship
and Immigration Canada has ballooned to an historic 11,000 as a result of
nationwide enforcement.
The figure is almost double the
6,500 identified by federal officials less than a year ago, suggesting that
Jason Kenney, the Minister of
Citizenship and Immigration, was expected to brief reporters on the new figures
on Monday. A source said he would announce that officials were stripping 2,900
Canadians of their citizenship for fraud.
The announcement comes nine months
after Mr. Kenney said his department was working with the Canada Border
Services Agency and RCMP to combat the problem, and vowed to prosecute those
involved and strip them of their Canadian status.
Since then, dozens of charges have
been laid, mostly against immigration consultants accused of helping clients
defraud the government. Mr. Kenney has said consultants were collecting
"upwards of $25,000" per family for this service, making it a multi-million
dollar racket.
At least 5,000 of the 11,000 now
under investigation are permanent residents suspected of committing residence
fraud, which occurs when an immigrant claims to have moved to
Immigrants are required to actually
live in
They then return to their home
countries. Nonetheless, they pretend to be living in
Many of those involved in the scam
are from the Middle East, particularly
"Anecdotal evidence suggests
that a percentage of applicants from the
The study, released under the Access
to Information Act to
Only residents of
The problem is also said to be acute
in the
"As a result," reads
another government report released to Mr. Kurland, "many permanent
resident applicants are reluctant to leave the Gulf to settle in
A common scenario involves immigrant
families. While the spouse and children do live full-time in
A source said the spike in the fraud
numbers was also the result of a new case management system that alerts
enforcement officials when a large number of immigrants give the same address
as their home in
Revoking permanent resident status
from fraudsters is fairly straight forward, but a Cabinet order is required to
strip citizenship from a Canadian. Some are expected to fight the decision
through the courts.
13
Leader
does about-face on mandatory patriotism classes
By Sisi Tang
About 3.4 million of the city's
seven million people are eligible to directly elect just over half the seats in
the 70-seat legislative council at a time when anger over perceived Chinese
influence in the former British colony is growing.
On Saturday,
"It will, at least, contain the
damage, and I'm sure it will relieve the pressure on the pro-establishment and
the pro-Beijing candidates," said political scientist Joseph Wong.
Hong Kong is a freewheeling
capitalist hub which enjoys a high degree of autonomy, but
Sunday's polls are a rough barometer
of public support for Leung and his pro-Beijing allies on the one hand, and the
opposition pro-democracy camp on the other, which is seeking to maintain its
one-third majority to give it veto power over policies.
A host of China-linked controversies
have dealt a blow to Leung and may help bolster the pro-democracy par-ties at
the ballots, analysts say, making it more difficult for his administration to
enact policies in a fractious legislative council.
"I see many more voters this
time round. Usually the mornings are quieter," said one voter surnamed Hon
as ballot centres opened across
"Before it didn't matter so
much who got in, but this time, I thought it was important to vote to stop
people and parties I didn't want from getting into the legislature," said
another voter surnamed Chan.
In 2003, a demonstration by half a
million people against Hong Kong's first China-backed leader, Tung Chee-hwa,
led to the scrapping of a controversial anti-subversion bill and his
resignation midway into his second five-year term in 2005.
While tensions have grown over mass
Chinese tourism, an influx of mainland mothers giving birth in the city and the
national education plan, others said livelihood issues were crucial. "I
vote for people who can help us the most," said Anthony Tsang, a
deliveryman voting at a rural polling station in a sleepy offshore island.
"I care about livelihood, housing costs, wages and medical care."
Over the past week, the
administration has scrambled to quell some of the anger by providing more
afford-able housing and mitigating the impact of mass
14
Hong Kong to vote amid discontent over
Plan
to extol virtues of Communist party in schools fuels protesters' anger
By James Pomfret &
Tan Ee Lyn
Tens of thousands of people
protested in
But the results are likely to
reflect a recent upsurge in anti-China sentiment, which has been exacerbated by
a plan for a school curriculum extolling the achievements of the Chinese
Communist Party.
Thousands of people have
demonstrated outside government headquarters for the past week demanding the
school program be scrapped, forcing Leung Chun-ying to cancel what was to have
been his first major international engagement as Hong Kong's leader at an
Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in
On Friday evening, the crowds
swelled further as tens of thousands of citizens, many dressed in black,
denounced the curriculum as Communist party propaganda that glossed over the
darker aspects of Chinese rule, hitting a nerve in the former British colony
that remains proud of its freedoms 15 years after London handed it over to
Beijing.
"I am really scared (about)
this national education," said a retired fireman in the crowd with his
five-year-old grand-son. "They really aren't talking the truth. They are
telling a lie to the children."
Organizers said 120,000 people
showed up, while police put the figure at 36,000.
The protests have included hunger
strikes and the parading of a replica of the Goddess of Democracy statue that
was erected in
The demonstrations have also thrown
a spotlight on a new generation of activists deter-mined to have their say.
"He feels that just by
repeating the same lines, the problem will go away," Lo Chi-kin, a public
affairs consultant, said of Leung, who has had deep-rooted ties to
"These post-'80s and -'90s
young people will not just go away after hearing the government utter the same
old lines. They really want a part in the decision-making process – and if you
don't give them an equal chance at being a part of that process, the only way
is for them to take to the streets."
Hong Kong is a freewheeling
capitalist hub that enjoys a high degree of autonomy, but
The latest outbreak of discontent
represents yet another headache for
15
Three more Liberal MLAs announce their exit plans
Abbott,
McNeil and Les follow Falcon out the door
By Lindsay Kines
Premier Christy Clark lost two more
high-profile cabinet ministers Thursday as Education Minister George Abbott and
Children's Minister Mary McNeil confirmed they would not seek re-election in
May.
The pair joined Chilliwack MLA John
Les, parliamentary secretary to the premier, who announced his retirement
earlier in the day.
Neither Abbott nor McNeil resigned
from their ministries, and they will continue to sit as the MLAs for Shuswap
and Vancouver-False Creek, respectively, until the next election.
But
"That cabinet will be comprised
of MLAs who are committed to running in 2013," he said. "That's
exactly the right thing to do, and that's what I would have done, as
well."
The trio of retirements followed
that of Finance Minister Kevin Falcon, who resigned Wednesday.
A former legislative intern, Abbott
was first elected to the B.C. legislature in 1996 and joined cabinet
immediately after the Liberals took power in 2001.
He has served as minister in the
health; aboriginal relations and reconciliation; community, aboriginal and
women's ser-vices; and sustainable resource management portfolios.
Abbott acknowledged that he would
have run again had he defeated
"I would not be here, taking
this step, were I to have the extraordinary opportunity to be premier, but
history didn't work out that way for me, so one gets to do some other
things," he said.
Nor does he have any plans to return
in the future. "For me, never is never. I've had a great run politically,
but I've exhausted that part of my life."
To date, 10 sitting Liberal MLAs
have indicated they would not seek re-election.
Two others – Iain Black and Barry
Penner – departed last year, triggering byelections that the Liberals lost to
the NDP. John van Dongen, a former solicitor-general, jumped to the upstart
B.C. Conservative Party earlier this year.
Despite those departures and the
government's sagging popularity, Abbott refused to rule out
"She is a remarkable
campaigner, a remarkable communicator," he said. "She has, I think,
an opportunity because of those assets to turn this around."
But NDP leader Adrian Dix said
"what
Dix said the Liberals had lost their
way since the 2009 election, and that the government's principal legislative
achievement remains the HST, which was withdrawn in the face of public
pressure.
"The challenge for them is
that, since the 2009 election, they haven't delivered on what people expected
from them and they seem to be out of gas," he said.
Dix contrasted that with his team,
which he said is united and strong.
"There is traditionally in
election campaigns an advantage for the government at the candidate level
because they have cabinet ministers and they're better known," he said.
"I think clearly the team that's strong is the NDP team, and I think our
message of positive politics is resonating."
MLA PENSIONS
Future pension payouts to age 80 for
B.C. MLAs who will have left office before the next election.
Liberal
Gordon Campbell – 15 years
Vancouver-Point Grey left office in 2011
$1.7 million $98,175/year
Bill Barisoff – 17 years
$1.57 million $90,992/year
George Abbott – 17 years Shuswap
$1.54 million $89,084/year
$1.54 million $89,000/year
Kevin Krueger – 17 years
$1.5 million $87,700/year
Barry Penner – 15 years
Chilliwack-Hope left office in 2011
$1.35 million $78,500/year
Kevin Falcon – 12 years
Surrey-Cloverdale
$1.09 million $62,893/year
Harry Bloy – 12 years
Burnaby-Lougheed
$720,000 $42,000/year
John Les – 12 years
$835,000 $48,289/year
Dave Hayer – 12 years
Surrey-Tynehead
$824,000 $47,600/year
Iain Black – 6 years Port
Moody-Coquitlam left office in 2011
$520,000 $30,000/year
Kash Heed – 4 years
Vancouver-Fraserview
Mary McNeil – 4 years
Vancouver-False Creek
Ineligible for MLA pension with less
than six years of service
NDP
Michael Sather – 8 years Pitt
Meadows-Maple Ridge
$490,000 $28,500/year
Dawn Black – 4 years
Ineligible for MLA pension with less
than six years of service
16
Doctors among worst offenders for poor hand hygiene
Latest
statistics show physicians and nurses fall well short of compliance target
By Michael V’Inkin Lee
Nearly one-third of hospital workers
are not washing their hands regularly, despite strong evidence that it is one
of the primary ways to prevent the spread of infection in hospitals.
A recent report from the Provincial
Infection Control Network found that while sanitation-compliance rates have
improved since 2007 – when regional health authority programs were set up to
tackle hand hygiene issues – the latest statistics show physicians and nurses
are still falling well short of the 80-per-cent compliance target.
Good hand hygiene practices can help
mitigate the spread of germs like C. difficile, a virulent stomach bug that
causes diarrhea and may progress to bowel perforation, sepsis and even death,
according to the World Health Organization. The WHO recommends washing with
soap and water as the preferred way to deal with C. difficile, which is
resistant to hand sanitizer.
The Provincial Infection Control
Network documented close to 1,500 cases of C. difficile in B.C. during the past
year, with almost half of them in the Fraser Health region.
The Infection Control Network's
study found that hospital-acquired infections like C. difficile kill 8,000 to
12,000 Canadians a year.
Physicians were among the least
likely to wash their hands both before and after contact with patients,
according to the report. Nurses, with a 73percent hand-sanitizing compliance
rate, were the most likely to do so. Slightly more than half of the physicians
observed by auditors made use of basins or alcohol-based handrubs.
"There's no excuse for not
cleaning your hands," said Dr. Shelley Ross, president of the B.C. Medical
Association. "There's probably as many reasons as doctors as to why it
doesn't happen, but we're planning to send out a little reminder [to
physicians] that it's good practice, and to please remember that the patient's
wellbeing is at stake."
The BCMA sends its members an
information circular twice a month, Ross said, adding that the hand hygiene
reminders will be included in the next issue.
In another attempt to stem the
spread of viruses, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Perry Kendall introduced new
rules last week that would require health care professionals to get a flu
vaccination or wear a mask to stem the spread of influenza.
To monitor hand washing, the
Provincial Infection Control Network sends trained auditors across B.C. every
quarter to observe a sample of staff in acute care facilities. The compliance
rates in the report reflect how often workers wash their hands when the
opportunity presents itself. Some of the barriers identified by the study
include lack of sinks, availability of hand hygiene products, and people
feeling that they are too busy to be washing their hands all the time.
"We know compliance is better
if you have hand wash stations close by," said
A provincial mandate to tackle the
hand-cleaning issue is in place,
Initiatives include putting up
posters reminding staff to wash their hands, placing alcohol-based sanitizers
in strategic areas, and getting patients in the habit of asking caregivers if
they have washed up, he explained.
Care facilities in B.C.'s Northern
Health Authority, in particular, have been making strides to ensure more hand
sanitizers and wash basins are readily available and accessible, said Fraser
Bell, the authority's vice-president of planning and quality.
The Northern Health Authority ranked
last among the six B.C. health regions observed by the network last quarter.
Auditors noted only 58 per cent of the health-care staff cleaned their hands
before and after working with patients.
"It's most assuredly a number
we want to raise," said
The Northern Health Authority's
efforts to raise compliance levels is largely in line with what other regions
are undertaking, said
Information and education campaigns
and in-house auditing run alongside an employee recognition scheme, where the
names of fastidiously clean staff are posted on the health authority's website.
The push for better hand hygiene
seems to be moving in the right direction,
But Dr. Bonnie Henry, director of
the BC Centre for Disease Control, said the study is not definitive. The
report's reliance on audits is a potential weakness, she said, and is one of
the reasons why the target performance rate is pegged at 80 per cent and not
higher.
Auditors may not be given access in
certain situations to collect data and observe, Henry said, such as when staff
are in rooms meeting with patients. Nevertheless, she insisted the report's
value as a means to raise awareness cannot be discounted.
"It's a big-picture indicator
that helps us understand what's going on," she said. "The report
focuses [the health authority leadership's] attention on the issues. It's very
important that authority CEOs look at this and say, we need to do
something."
HAND HYGIENE
Hand washing is considered an
effective way of preventing infections for hospital patients. Between 8,000 and
12,000 Canadians die every year from infections they acquire during hospital
stays. Below are the hand hygiene compliance rates for health-care workers in
B.C. last year:
Source: Provincial Hand Hygiene
Working Group of
17
Asylum-seekers rush to
Those
who arrive by boat will be sent to tent camps on islands in Pacific atoll
National Post – August
31, 2012
By Rod McGuirk
About 150 people were aboard an
overcrowded wooden fishing boat that sank off the
The emergency was the latest created
by a growing human smuggling trade in which thousands of would-be refugees from
countries including Afghanistan, Iran and Sri Lanka attempt dangerous sea
voyages from Indonesia to Australia.
The new approach will begin when the
The numbers have been steadily
climbing: More than 9,800 asylum seekers have arrived this year, more than
double the total for all of 2011.
"People smugglers are running a
closing-down sale," Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said. He predicts
asylum seekers will stop paying people smugglers $10,000 or more to trans-port
them more than 400 kilometres from
A previous conservative government
established camps in
A Labor government closed the camps
after winning elections in 2007, a year when only 339 asylum seekers arrived by
boat. As the numbers have grown, the influx, and the deaths of would-be
migrants at sea, have angered many Australians.
No asylum-seeker deaths have been confirmed
since the policy change was announced, but more than 300 have lost their lives
making the perilous journey across the
Authorities also fear the worst for
67 asylum seekers who have not contacted family or friends since they left
In the latest incident, a boat
reportedly carrying 150 asylum seekers sank off the main Indonesian
The crew of a merchant ship taking
part in the search, Liberian-flagged APL Bahrain, spotted survivors in the
water early Thursday 75 kilometres southwest of Java and rescued six, Clare
said.
"There are grave fears for a
lot more," Clare told reporters.
The
Nistorescu said the six rescued, all
Afghan men, appeared to be in good condition and had been in the water for
almost 24 hours. There were also women and children aboard the asylum-seeker
boat when it sank, he said.
He added he believed he saw bodies
in the water. "I think I saw some of them dead," he said.
Other merchant ships, Indonesian
government ships and Australian military boats and planes also were involved in
the search.
18
B.C. NDPer leaning to the Red
National Post – August 30
By Brian Hutchinson
When last seen, B.C. New Democrat
Jagrup Brar was making a long point about welfare rates in his province. The
MLA from Surrey-Fleetwood spent a month last winter living on $610, the current
welfare rate for a single, employable adult in B.C.
"I've not been able to buy
enough food," Mr. Brar complained one day in January, as he walked to a
temporary new home in
Recently, he went to
Sure, Cubans may not "have as
much right to free speech" as Canadians, and they "lack the freedom
to travel outside the country," which Mr. Brar ascribed only to their
relative poverty. "The business community there as a percentage, compared
to ours, is quite low," conceded Mr. Brar, the NDP's small business
critic. But these were niggling concerns, because "the gap between the
rich and poor does not exist."
This was too good to ignore. The
ruling Liberals pounced. "Jagrup Brar expressed over the top admiration
for nanny state communist
A caucus, British Columbians hardly
need reminding, that will likely form part of a new NDP government after May
14, 2013, when the next provincial election is scheduled. The NDP has for
months enjoyed a commanding lead in voter-intention and opinion polls, much to
the chagrin of right-leaning B.C. voters, many of whom can no longer support
the Liberals and have migrated to a third party, the B.C. Conservatives. A
Liberal-Conservative vote split would almost guarantee an NDP victory in 2013.
On Wednesday, B.C. finance minister
Kevin Falcon announced his resignation from cabinet, effective immediately. He
will not seek re-election next year. A scrappy politician with a reputation as
a strong fiscal conservative, Mr. Falcon finished second to Christy Clark in
the Liberal party's 2011 leadership contest. He's the highest-profile
government member to bail from cabinet. Rumours have swirled around the province's
brainy education minister, George Abbott, who came third in the leadership
race. He could be the next big name to fall.
Mr. Bennett, on the other hand, will
definitely run again; he made public his intentions just last week. That may
not be a good thing for B.C. Liberals; he's a notorious hot head who was turfed
from caucus a few years ago after intemperate attack on former Liberal leader
Gordon Campbell, whom he described as a verbally abusive bully. Mr. Campbell
once got so angry with him, he recalled, that "he got in my face, he
actually spit in my face. He is not a nice man."
Now he's being mocked for desperate,
hyperbolic "red-baiting." This, just as Ms. Clark announced her plans
for another trip to
This is B.C. It gets stranger. What,
precisely, did Mr. Brar tell his radio interviewer? The National Post asked the
two-term MLA for an interview; the request was turned down by NDP officials in
The Liberals provided a transcript
of his Radio India interview, translated from the Punjabi. According to the
transcript, Mr. Brar told his radio interviewer that in
He went on at length about
There is no crime in
"He told me that the 'rat race'
that exists in our society doesn't take place there. He said they enjoy their
lives and live their lives to the fullest. That's the type of life there,"
Mr. Brar said. "People roam free in the streets whether in the cities or
the villages. I witnessed young women in the streets catching rides or waiting
for the bus."
Everything is spic and span in
communist
A socialist's paradise, in other
words. Free of crime, free of dirt, free of worry, free of wandering cattle,
free of critical thinking. Where "everyone is dressed the same."
Coming soon, to
19
Ryan pledges shake-up of status quo
National Post – August
30, 2012
"I think people are going to
like what they see because we are offering specific bold solutions to get
people back to work, to get this country back on the right track," Mr.
Ryan said. He acknowledged having a stricter anti-abortion stance than Mitt
Romney but said he's comfortable with the Republican nominee's position
"because it's a vast improvement on the status quo."
Mr. Ryan was speaking in a
television interview before making a late night speech to the Republican
National Convention that was expected to both energize and reassure
conservatives who had been wary of their nominee to unseat President Barack
Obama.
Mr. Ryan's address will highlight
the convention's second day, after Mr. Romney's wife and others played to the
deep economic anxiety of
In his speech, Mr. Ryan wanted to
talk policy, but Mr. Romney's team wanted him to focus more on his immigrant
family and small-town values.
"Words matter a lot and I'm
putting a lot of effort into them," said Mr. Ryan, a former speechwriter
to 1996 vice-presidential nominee Jack Kemp and former Education Secretary
William Bennett.
Mr. Ryan, a 42-year-old congressman,
is the author of a tough Republican budget plan that makes heavy cuts in social
programs.
In advance of Mr. Ryan's speech, the
Obama campaign released an online video targeting him as a politician from a
"bygone era." The video criticizes him for being the architect of a
budget that would overhaul the federal health care system for seniors and for
seeking to defund Planned Parenthood, a national nongovernmental organization
that provides health care to poor women and counsels those seeking abortions.
Mr. Romney ducked out of
The military budget and many other
government programs face deep cuts after Congress failed to agree on a spending
plan that would work toward reducing the
"This president's greatest
failure has been his failure to deliver those jobs" for veterans, Mr.
Romney said.
Also scheduled to speak Wednesday
night was Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state under former President
George W. Bush. She told CBS television earlier in the day that the
Delegates rocked the convention's first
night with enthusiasm for Mr. Romney, the multi-millionaire former
Ms. Romney recalled meeting her
husband at a high school dance and described how he had attacked every
challenge he has faced – from reviving the struggling 2002 Salt Lake Olympics
to helping her battle multiple sclerosis and breast cancer.
"At every turn in his life,
this man I met at a high school dance has helped lift up others," she
said. "He did it with the Olympics, when many wanted to give up.
"This is the man
She added, "I read somewhere
that Mitt and I have a 'storybook marriage. Well let me tell you something--in
the storybooks I read, there were never long, long rainy winter afternoons in a
house with five boys screaming at once. And those storybooks never seemed to
have chapters called MS or breast cancer.
"A storybook marriage? No, not
at all. What Mitt Romney and I have is a real marriage."
Mr. Romney, who will give his
convention-ending speech on Thursday night, made a cameo appearance on stage
after his wife finished her speech. He gave her a kiss on the podium and waved
to the roaring crowd before leaving as a band played My Girl.
20
The problem with being nice
National Post – August
31, 2012
Editorial
It would be lovely to think that
Liberal senator Joyce Fairbairn, who is sadly afflicted with Alzheimer’s-style
dementia and was declared legally incompetent in February, was allowed to
continue performing her duties in the Red Chamber – i.e., vote along party
lines – as a gesture of universal compassion and goodwill among her colleagues.
Logic suggests her illness would have been well-known. And Conservative
senators David Tkachuk, chair of the Senate’s board of internal economy, and
speaker Noel Kinsella were both made officially aware of her condition last
month, at the latest, and hadn’t made a fuss.
But according to at least one Senate
source, this is too much to ask: While Mr. Tkachuk and Conservative Senate
leader Marjory LeBreton expressed their well-founded concerns delicately, one
of their colleagues anonymously voiced his frustrations to a National Post
editorial board member on Tuesday.
“[Senate Opposition Leader] Jim
Cowan [is] a serious guy who was appointed to the [Senate] by
This claim is unproven but
plausible, unfortunately, and indeed the senator’s stated intent to go on sick
leave, as opposed to resigning, has somewhat the same effect (though
admittedly, it does seem heartless to deny someone sick leave simply because
her condition is irreversible).
But even if it had been a gesture of
compassion and goodwill from her colleagues – as Liberals insist it was – it
would have been a misplaced one – not simply because it made perfectly legitimate
controversy of a widely respected senator’s unfortunate medical condition; but
because it brought Parliament into disrepute. Letting a mentally incapacitated
senator run out the clock professionally serves to insult the body that Joyce
Fairbairn herself has long loved and taken seriously
Many commentators have focused on
the obvious tie-in with the Senate’s do-nothing reputation. While that
reputation is not entirely deserved (there are a number of very hard working
senators, including some whose op-eds regularly appear in these pages), any
tolerance for incompetence among its members – whether due to illness or
disposition – certainly exacerbates it.
The far more insidious argument is
to allow Senator Fairbairn to run out the clock because it would be a “nice”
thing to do, and because it wouldn’t make a difference to the outcome of any
vote. Never mind important committee work, which requires keen analytical
minds. To argue, effectively, that it doesn’t matter who sits in a seat is to
argue that Parliament itself is irrelevant.
One could make the same case for
this misplaced compassion – in fact a stronger one – if Senator Fairbairn had
been, say, a Conservative MP in a majority Parliament. What difference does it
make, the argument might go, if the member for Canuckton East is doped up,
drunk or asleep most of the time, or non compos mentis? She’s just there to
vote to enact the Prime Minister’s Office’s wishes.
The fact that Parliament is ever
more irrelevant, and that most MPs and Senators are in
On the bright side, anonymous
kvetching aside, the obvious discomfort those inside the
21
Falcon's departure adds to premier's re-election challenge
Editorial
Kevin Falcon played the family card
while resigning as finance minister and backing out of the commitment he made
during the Liberal leadership race to run in the next election, win or lose.
No doubt his desire to spend more
time with his family played a part in his decision. He has a young child and
his wife is pregnant. But he leaves Premier Christy Clark with yet another
challenge.
Falcon was careful to express
confidence in
Unfortunately for
That speculation is fuelled by her
failure to turn around the party's dismal standing in public opinion polls and
the number of senior Liberal MLAs who are announcing they won't face
re-election. In advance of every election, MLAs decide not to run again for a
variety of reasons. But the prospect that those who are re-elected may find
themselves in opposition for the next four years rather than as part of a
government will undoubtedly be part of the decision they make this time.
All of this adds up to an uphill
climb for
Her first challenge will be to find
a credible replacement for Falcon, who has been a competent administrator and a
credible salesman for the difficult decisions a finance minister has to make.
That appointment may have to wait
until some of her other veteran ministers declare their intentions. The next
time she realigns her cabinet it will be in the form of a team that she will
have to persuade British Columbians is a better alternative than the group
Opposition Leader Adrian Dix is able to assemble.
The finance minister will play a
pivotal role, as will the budget that she or he will present in February. That
budget will have to reflect the fiscal reality of a sluggish economy while
showing optimism for a brighter future that politicians who hope to be elected
have to be able to promise to deliver.
The creation of a new team will also
be an opportunity for Clark, who has been labouring under the heavy bag-gage
left by the departure of former premier Gordon Campbell under the cloud of the
disastrously imposed HST.
But if she can beat the odds and put
together a winning team and a winning platform on the back of a sound fiscal
plan, it is not too late for her to use a clean slate for her advantage.
22
Falcon leaves Liberals in dire straits
Ironically,
the finance minister’s departure mirrors premier
By Vaughn Palmer
As the B.C. Liberals prepared to
pick a new leader in early 2011, Kevin Falcon made a supreme effort to undercut
front-runner Christy Clark.
The Falcon campaign commissioned and
circulated two opinion polls showing that
“Christy Clark is the candidate who
poses the greatest risk to the coalition, and thus the future success of the
party,” declared Ryan Beedie, Falcon’s key backer in the business community, in
a missive leaked to the news media on the eve of the leadership vote.
Falcon himself took aim at Clark’s
other weak spot, the suspicion that she was only interested in the leadership
and would likely reclaim her spot as a host on radio station CKNW if she didn’t
win.
“Christy, I’ve made a commitment to
run in this election win or lose,” he challenged during the most pointed
exchange in the campaign’s only televised debate on Shaw TV. “So whether I win
or lose, I’m going to be a candidate for the party.”
When
She rose to the occasion, appointing
him deputy premier and minister of finance, putting him in charge of keeping
the government on track to balance the budget within two years.
She also deferred to his
determination to try to save the harmonized sales tax in lieu of her own
notion, floated at the outset of the leadership race, that the thing was beyond
rescue.
It was. But even after the
government wasted six months and millions of dollars on that exercise in
futility, she stuck by him. She did the same when his fingerprints turned up
all over the botched naming rights deal with Telus for BC Place Stadium.
This spring he fired off a memo to
all members of cabinet, warning them not to make big spending announcements
without first ensuring that every penny was approved by the ministry of
finance. She backed him.
Even as the rumours multiplied that
he would renege on the commitment to run again,
At her big fundraiser in June, she
praised him as a finance minister who “sweats the details” on fiscal matters,
“putting in the late nights away from his family,” leaving others to speculate
about how much longer the restless Falcon would be staying in her government.
Not much longer as it turned out.
Wednesday Falcon announced that he was leaving the cabinet for the proverbial
more time to spend with family and greener pastures (meaning “greenbacks”) in
the private sector.
His accompanying statement, as
carefully crafted an exercise in not burning bridges as I’ve seen in many
years, even included a thanks for provincial news media. The man is shameless.
As a once and future leadership
candidate, he didn’t even pretend to be going for good. “Never say never,” he
told reporters, adding, in the course of an interview with Bill Good on CKNW,
that he didn’t want to say any words that he might be obliged to “eat” in the
years to come.
As for that pledge he made back in
the leadership race, he offered variations on “that was then, this is now.” The
away-from-home grind of the ministry was getting to him. He and his wife are
expecting a second child about the time he’d have been delivering the next
provincial budget.
But as a dedicated player of the
political game, he knows as well as anyone how this action will be interpreted.
He’s leaving party and premier in the direst straits, just 18 months after he
vowed to stick with them win or lose.
Ironically, the one member of the
government who can’t complain publicly about being left in the lurch is person
who defeated Falcon for the leadership. For as Clark noted in a press
conference that followed closely on the heels of his announcement, his
departure bore a more than passing resemblance to her own exit from provincial
politics eight years ago.
Sept. 16, 2004: Christy Clark
resigns from the cabinet of the then first-term B.C. Liberal government to
pursue what proves to be a successful and lucrative career in the private
sector.
She cautions reporters against interpreting
her departure as a comment on the government’s political fortunes: “This is a
personal decision not a political decision.” She wants to spend more time with
her son: “The government’s going to be able to find another politician but
Hamish is never going to find another mother.”
What about a comeback? No
“immediate” plans,
She wrote the script. But this time
around, somebody else is following it.
23
Falcon bows out, premier expects more to leave soon
By Jonathan Fowlie
Just hours after Kevin Falcon
announced his departure from politics Wednesday, Premier Christy Clark promised
to soon unveil the inner circle of cabinet members she will take into the next
election.
Speaking at an afternoon news
conference,
To help combat the perception of a
mass exodus, the party is also expected on Thursday morning to issue a list of
nomination meetings that have been scheduled in the first half of September for
11 returning Liberal MLAs, including John Yap, Bill Bennett and cabinet
minister Margaret MacDiarmid.
On Wednesday,
"That cabinet is a cabinet that
is ready to take on the task over the next eight months, and into the election,
of making sure that we are assuring the future for B.C. families, creating jobs
all across the province and making it possible for our kids and our grandkids
to take advantage of the kinds of opportunities that we have."
So far, two of
Those include former cabinet
ministers Murray Coell, Kevin Krueger and now Falcon.
It is not uncommon for several
government MLAs to retire before an election, especially when the government is
facing a tough fight, as the down-in-the-polls B.C. Liberals are now.
In advance of the 2001 election, 15
incumbent NDP MLAs, about 40 per cent of the then government caucus, chose to
retire rather than face the electorate.
Fifteen Social Credit MLAs retired
in advance of the 1991 election, which spelled the end of their days as a
governing party.
On Wednesday, Falcon said his
decision to leave was both a personal and a practical one, explaining he and
his wife are expecting a second child in February.
"After almost 12 years in
public life, I wish to return to the private sector in a yet-to-be-determined
role," Falcon said, adding he is hoping to find a proper balance between
his family and work lives.
Falcon also gave up his role as
Falcon said he did this in part
because he would have had to deliver a budget in February, when his wife is due
to give birth.
But he also said Clark's government
needs a finance minister who will not only make the tough calls needed to
return the government to a balanced budget – as it has promised to do this
coming February – but who can also fight for those fiscal decisions during the
next election campaign.
Falcon's departure robs
On Wednesday,
"What we are going to be doing
is building a very broad coalition of really exciting candidates that are going
to be going forward in the next election."
Falcon will remain the MLA for
Surrey-Cloverdale until the 2013 election, and said he does not have any job
offers at the moment.
New Democratic Party finance critic
Bruce Ralston said he thinks Falcon will be a difficult minister for the
Liberals to replace.
"He was a very strong
performer, a very capable minister who approached his job with gusto,"
Ralston said, adding it would be a mistake to interpret Falcon's departure as a
definitive sign that Clark and her B.C. Liberals are done.
"Obviously they're experiencing
some difficulty, but what our leader Adrian Dix has said is that as we approach
the election, the numbers will tighten up," he added.
"It will be a competitive
election and we are certainly not underestimating the ability of the B.C.
Liberals to recuperate."
In a statement, B.C. Conservative
Party leader John Cummins thanked Falcon for his contribution to public life,
but said he believes the departure is a sign of greater discord for the
governing party.
"Kevin Falcon's announcement
today signals the beginning of a dramatic change in
"It is evident that both the
government and the governing party are in turmoil."
24
Former
Bencze
guilty of sexually assaulting boy
By Jacob Zinn
Former
At the sentencing, Judge Robin Baird
said the Crown's request of two to three years in prison was "too
lenient." The defence had asked for an 18-to 24-month conditional sentence
followed by probation, or an intermittent sentence.
Bencze, 45, will also have to
register as a sex offender and is prohibited from using electronic devices to
contact minors for the next 10 years and from going to such public areas as
parks, schools, playgrounds, community centres and daycare centres for the next
20 years.
Bencze was arrested in January 2011,
and later charged with nine sexual offences related to three children. He
pleaded guilty in July to one count of sexual assault involving a boy, who is
now 14. The offending began when the boy was around six years old.
A number of other related charges
against Bencze were stayed by the Crown.
Bencze has been on bail for 18
months, unable to live at home with his wife and three children and only able
to visit his children while supervised.
Bencze's assaults on the boy
included sexual touching and acts, as well as sexually explicit text messages.
Judge Baird read statements the boy
and his mother made previously regarding the offending.
"I feel that I have missed out
on a childhood that was meant for me, not the tainted one that I have
experienced," the boy wrote.
25
Clerk under fire for travel expenses
Craig
James claimed more than $43,000 in four-month period
By Jonathan Fowlie
IntegrityBC released documents
Tuesday showing Craig James – acting chief electoral officer from June 2010
until August 2011, and now clerk of the B.C. legislature – claimed $43,295 from
Elections BC for travel between Aug. 25, 2010 and December 12, 2010.
"This is an individual who
chose to fly in the lap of luxury whenever possible on flights, and to stay at
some of the finest hotels throughout
"It demonstrates a sense of a
culture of entitlement," he added, saying his non-profit organization
requested the travel expenses after receiving a tip about the costs.
Documents show James' expenses
included $14,523.58 for him and his wife to fly to
Other expenses included almost
$6,000 for James to attend a National Conference of State Legislatures in
Disclosure documents posted to
Elections BC's website show James' successor as chief electoral officer, Keith
Archer, has spent only $15,409.17 on travel in his first 11 months on the job.
James stayed at the Cosmos Club in
On Tuesday, James defended the
expenses saying they were all legitimate, and that all bookings were done in
accordance with the policy of the day.
"The trip to Kenya was the
annual conference for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association, and [New
Democratic Party MLA and then deputy speaker] Claire Trevena and her husband
Mike, and the speaker [Bill Barisoff] and his wife, and myself and my wife
attended this conference," James said in an interview, adding he gave a
talk at the conference on the recall and initiative process.
James said he was asked to give the
talk because he had been overseeing the high-pro-file initiative vote on the
Harmonized Sales Tax.
James said he was able to bring his
wife because of a policy allowing senior Elections BC staff to expense two
tickets – for themselves and a spouse – if they are cheaper than one business
class seat.
"The practice has been that you
can take that business class ticket and split it in two, provided the economy
fare doesn't exceed the business class fare," said James.
Documents released Tuesday show that
policy at Elections BC was contained in a document approved by James himself,
shortly after he took the job.
James also said that much of his
travel was subsidized by other organizations, and so taxpayers are not footing
the entire cost of his travel.
"A lot of my travel is with the
World Bank, the Common-wealth Parliamentary Association and most recently with
La Trobe University, which has now been shifted over to
Documents obtained by IntegrityBC
through a freedom of information request show James submitted documentation
showing an executive class trip on Air
The release by IntegrityBC comes at
a time of widespread fiscal austerity in government, with Finance Minister
Kevin Falcon having cracked down on executive salaries and perks recently at
several Crown corporations.
The release also came on the same
day James was overseeing the first public meeting by the committee that
oversees the management of the legislature and its spending.
In that meeting, James pro-posed
that on a quarterly basis he would provide the commit-tee with a financial
report on the legislature's activities and spending.
On Tuesday, Elections BC spokesman
Don Main said James's
"That trip was planned before
he started with Elections BC, but because that happened in his tenure while he
was at Elections BC, Elections BC would have paid for that,"
That policy states that travel
expenses of a spouse can only be expensed when "a spouse is formally
representing the government and a written invitation has been issued to the
spouse," when "travel is to a pre-retirement seminar or awards
function," or when the employee is relocating.
The Speaker's office did not respond
to a question about the budget for Barisoff and Trevena to go to
The NDP said Trevena's trip was
funded entirely by the Speaker's office.
26
Economic downturn spurs Romney's momentum
Obama's
handling of the recession will be deciding factor in presidential election as
gap between parties narrows
By Andrew Coyne
After a long summer of bombarding
each other with attack ads, Barack Obama and Mitt Romney enter the convention
season almost exactly even.
Not only do the polls have them
within a percentage point or two nationwide, but in the crucial swing states,
where the Electoral College will be won or lost, the race has demonstrably
narrowed.
Narrowed, that is, in Romney's
favour. In
If you're a Democrat, you're
comforted Romney is not doing better, what with the state of the economy and
all.
But if you're a Republican, you're
astonished the Democrats have not been able to put Romney away, given the
resources devoted to "defining" (politics for "smearing")
him as a tax-dodging, job-killing, out-of-touch phoney. With more money left in
his war chest, and millions more to spend via "independent" political
action committees, the convention is Romney's chance to "redefine"
himself as thoughtful, decent and caring.
Well, maybe.
Conventions matter, don't get me
wrong. If they are no longer the place where the substantive business of
picking a nominee or drafting a plat-form is done, they are important showcases
all the same.
And not only for the candidate. An
impressive speech, in a political culture that, much more than ours, values
oratory, can launch a career in national politics, as witness the performance
by a little-known state senator from Illinois in 2004.
New Jersey Governor Chris Christie's
keynote will be closely watched, as will Florida Senator Marco Rubio's
introduction of the candidate, and of course Paul Ryan's acceptance of the
nomination for vice-president: the race for 2016 or even 2020 has already
begun.
But elections, especially in the
States, are hardly ever determined by a single event.
We media types have just spent
several weeks pulling our hair out over a succession of gaffes and slip-ups (oh
my God, did you see what the British press said about him?) that were sup-posed
to have sealed Romney's fate by now: Todd Akin's musings about rape and
pregnancy are the latest in a long line.
It hasn't turned out that way. By
election day they will all have been forgotten.
Likewise, if Romney's vastly
off-putting public persona – the smarminess, the clumsy ad libs, the Thurston
Howellish references to his enormous wealth, the periodic casual exchanges of
one position for another – were going to sink his candidacy, they would have
done so long ago.
Like George Bush the elder, whom he
resembles in many ways, Romney seems to erect a mental screen between private
life (generally upright) and politics (wildly unscrupulous): politics is that
nasty thing you do on the way to governing. People know that about him, and
have largely discounted it.
So whatever the convention's gauzy
attempts to present the "sensitive" side of Mitt Romney, I don't
think that's what will close the deal. Rather, he has to convert widespread
public disaffection with Obama over the economy into a conviction that he can
do better.
The Republican base is as lukewarm
about him as ever. At a pair of rallies on the eve of the convention, one
organized by the socially conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition, the other
by the small-government Tea Party, his name was barely mentioned – and raised
scant cheers when it was. What drives both groups is a determination to be rid
of Obama, who they are convinced is leading
Well, there was one reference to
Romney that was guaranteed to elicit whoops at both rallies: his choice of Ryan
as his running mate. Socially conservative enough to reassure the Christian
right, fiscally conservative enough to excite the most ardent Tea Partier, Ryan
has given Republicans a positive reason to show up at the polls, beyond dishing
Obama.
At the expense of frightening off
centrists and independents? At other times, his radical plans to reshape the
Obama may have extended health
insurance to the (sizable) minority without it, but the already insured
majority are concerned what it will mean for them. On the economy, like-wise,
it is not the eight per cent who do not have a job who will decide this, but
the much larger number who worry they will be out of a job before long, if
things carry on as they have.
Is Obama responsible for the state
of the economy – for good or ill? Probably not, even if neither side wants to
admit it.
The financial crisis predated his
presidency, as did most of the important measures that prevented crisis from
becoming collapse: the Federal Reserve's massive purchases of private and
public debt, and the bank bailouts.
Probably there was little anyone
could have done to boost economic growth beyond that: recovery from
"balance-sheet" recessions is almost always a painfully slow
business. Probably, too, the
What can be fairly argued is that
Obama's stimulus efforts have plunged the
That is the case Romney needs to
make: if not that he can restore the economy to full health, at least that he
can stop the government from dragging it down. The convention is as good a
place as any to start.
27
Legislature's financial oversight committee lets the sun
shine in
By Vaughn Palmer
For the first time in a long and
secretive history, the all-party committee in charge of managing the affairs of
the B.C. legislature is scheduled to meet publicly in the provincial capital
Tuesday.
Observers, including news media
representatives, are welcome to attend. Hansard is recording the proceedings
for those unable to make it for a long-overdue moment in open government. The
six-member legislative assembly management committee (LAMC), which has been
around in various con-figurations for 25 years, decided late last month to let
the sun shine in at its next meeting.
Or rather, it was shamed into doing
so by a devastating report from Audi-tor-General John Doyle, who documented the
lack of proper controls over the assembly's $70-million annual budget and his
own five-year struggle to get those in charge to fix the problem.
With the committee having also
decided to accept Doyle's recommendations, there's some thought that the
opening of its meetings may turn out to be somewhat anticlimactic news-wise.
But I doubt that will be the case with the one scheduled for late next month,
when his scrappy-ness him-self, auditor-general Doyle, is scheduled to make an
appearance to defend his findings.
Tuesday's proceedings are also
expected to take up another lingering controversy arising out of the Doyle
report, namely the role played by the office of the clerk of the legislature.
The auditor-general spread the blame
around for the lapses documented in his report to include the committee as well
as the offices of the Speaker and the office of the clerk.
The committee, as noted above, has
moved to clean up its act. Speaker Bill Barisoff, duly chastised, has recently
announced he will not seek re-election, though he was already contemplating
that course before the Doyle report came out.
The clerk through most of the time
when Doyle was auditing the assembly was George MacMinn.
He is one of the most respected
figures in the 140-year history of the provincial assembly and the
longest-serving legislative clerk anywhere in the
As an authority on parliamentary
procedures here in B.C., he has no equal. He literally wrote the book on it:
Parliamentary Practice in B.C., now in its fourth authoritative edition.
But as the senior clerk, he was also
the administrative overseer of operations for the assembly, including the
chamber, Hansard services, security, the library, the gift shop, and, ahem, the
keeping of the accounts through the office of the legislative comptroller.
While there is plenty of blame to go
around on this issue – I fault the Speaker and both parties for lack of due
diligence, first and foremost – the fact remains that Doyle's repeated warnings
went unheeded, for the most part, on MacMinn's watch.
His concern, from all appearances,
was to preserve the assembly's hard-won independence. But to what end? The
question arises from a report on the controversy regarding the legislature
accounts that was commissioned by MacMinn's successor as clerk of the assembly,
Craig James.
"
He also warned that in the public
realm, there were other risks to the assembly's reputation besides the loss of
independence.
"There is a risk of a loss of
public confidence in the operations of the assembly and its members," he
wrote, taking note of the fiscal shenanigans that brought disrepute to the
mother of parliaments in the United Kingdom as well as to the legislatures in
Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
"A series of financial
indiscretions can raise questions about the over-all integrity of the
legislature," said van Iersel in the report delivered last fall and
released this summer. "It is extremely important, therefore, for the
assembly to have a well functioning internal control system – including
well-developed oversight by the committee as well as periodic audits." The
office of the clerk cannot operate as an office unto itself. Without proper
oversight and periodic audits, the assembly risks its standing with the public.
It is hard not to interpret those comments as a verdict on the goings-on at the
B.C. legislature.
MacMinn retired a year ago after
more than 50 years at the clerk's table, to be replaced by James.
But the octogenarian former clerk
remains on contract to the assembly as a consultant until September 2013 at the
not-inconsiderable fee of $240,000 a year, as disclosed earlier this month by
reporter Rob Shaw of the Victoria Times Colonist.
Severance or not, the continuing
payout to MacMinn has proved to be too much for the New Democrats.
"I'm disappointed he's still
being employed by the legislature," declared NDP house leader John Horgan,
strongly suggesting the clerk consultant should leave altogether after Doyle's
damning report.
Attempts to persuade MacMinn to go
quietly have to date failed. As the day ended Monday, Horgan was planning to
raise the issue at LAMC, ensuring its first public meeting will not lack for
controversy.
28
Chaotic first day back to school
National Post – August
28, 2012
By Andy Blatchford and
Jonathan Montpetit
UNIVERSITÉ DU QUÉBEC À MONTRÉAL
Small groups of masked protesters,
armed with lists, sought out classrooms in faculties where students voted to
remain on strike. They interrupted the classes by shouting and shutting off the
lights. Some of the classes were cancelled.
One professor, who teaches students
from departments that are on strike and others that aren't, summed up his
dilemma.
"I was hoping that either
everyone would show up, or no one would show up – so I wouldn't have to make
the decision whether to teach or not," said the professor, who declined to
provide his name.
As it turned out, when masked
students barged into his class shortly after 9 a.m., he was there by himself
and the class had been cancelled.
In one psychology class a masked
protester attempted to convince another student of the democratic legitimacy of
the disruption. The actions, he explained, came after legitimate strike votes
were held by student associations.
"We're only disrupting classes
in departments that voted to strike," he said.
But the student simply turned her
back on the protester.
The striking students continued to
bang on desks and blew an air horn until the professor raised his hands in
frustration and cancelled the class.
Protesters blocked media cameras and
one demonstrator muttered: "It's voyeurism."
UNIVERSITÉ DE MONTRÉAL
Seven protesters were detained at the
Université de Montréal, but released without charge.
A standoff had erupted in the
corridors between security guards and masked protesters as they tried to free
the seven demonstrators who had been detained in a fourth-floor classroom.
Lines of guards stood shoulder to
shoulder to block a hallway against a couple of dozen protesters.
The guards faced a barrage of shouts
and a couple of plastic garbage cans were tossed in their direction.
At one point, the protesters held a
vote about whether to charge the line of guards. The group decided against
rushing the line after not enough people in the huddle raised their hands in
agreement.
Moments later, word spread that riot
police had entered the building. The protesters scattered, knocking over
garbage cans and chairs in their wake.
One protester, who said he was
caught between security staff and angry demonstrators, sported several red
finger marks on his neck.
"A security guard grabbed me by
the throat and pushed me," MarcAntoine Bergeon said outside the school
after the confrontation.
"It's really intense because
there's so much negative energy."
Two protesters, their faces covered
with clothing, warned a news photographer at the school that he had better not
try taking pictures of them: "Be careful," a woman told him.
"They're going to take care of
you."
29
When Paul Ryan MET 'WMR'
National Post – August
25, 2012
By Conrad Black
It is refreshing to see the
metamorphosis of the
The earlier part of 2012 was filled
with the snipers of the Democratic media – especially the giggly sharpshooters
of the New York Times, Maureen Dowd and Gail Collins – aiming their derision at
the ludicrous succession of Republican challengers that originally contested
with Mitt Romney. Congresswoman Michele Bachmann was exposed as a parrot for
hypochondriacal vaccine-averse mothers on the primary trail. Texas governor
Rick Perry, who jogged with a handgun and had his father-in-law (i.e. the
grandfather of his children) perform a vasectomy on him, and had his infamous
"Oops" moment at a televised debate, returned to the Lone Star state
a laughing stock. "Hermanator" Cain, a pizza executive, was flying
high until his extra-marital paramours massed in such numbers that they could
not all have been shoe-horned into the Republican convention hall in
As each rose to rival Willard Mitt
Romney, they rushed over the wire and entered a conviction-free zone whose
answer to the economic crisis was 59 platitudes interspersed with shrieks of
"Freedom!" – and then fell away under the withering fire of the
Democratic shooting gallery and Romney's attack ads. All the while, the
administration, which has been guilty of the worst fiscal mismanagement in
American history and the most unsuccessful foreign policy since Jimmy Carter,
if not Warren Harding, did nothing more than stand at a safe distance from the
battlefield and take pot shots at Romney and his Republican allies. "Wedge
issues" popped up like bunnies, and muddied the pre-convention waters
while Mitt dispatched the non-Mitts, but ineffectually decried the volcanic
hemorrhages of federal debt – a failing that Ryan was brought in to remedy.
Todd Akin's remarks about
"legitimate rape," and the failure of the Missouri GOP candidate to
drop out of that state's Senate race, serve to obscure the truth that it was
Obama who first provoked controversy in the bioethical arena. The Roman
Catholic Church was ordered by the administration to pay for the contraceptive
desires, including abortion-inducing drugs and sterilization treatments, of
employees and students in Catholic institutions. When objections arose that
this was a violation of the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment, and that it
was both offensive and illegal to try to force the Church of 80 million
Americans to pay for what it disapproved of (though in practice the widespread
recourse to contraception by Catholics is not deemed a hindrance to their good
standing in their Church or eligibility for its sacraments), the administration
and its national media amen corner perceived a Republican "war on
women." Maureen Dowd instantly uncovered a plot by the Republicans to
"force women back into chastity belts" (a device that not 50 women in
American history had worn, and a plot that not one sane American remotely
wished).
Until Ryan was picked, the country
was evidently discouraged by this dismal contest. Never in
Taxes would be reduced and greatly
simplified under Ryan's policies, and Medicare (which in the
Now the president will have to make
the statist argument and plead his case before the country. The Republicans
will have to fend off an avalanche of fear-mongering, but the country knows
that their vastly wealthy nation has been chronically mismanaged by both
parties and all levels and branches of government. The trivial, demeaning
claptrap and back-biting that was all that has been politically on offer in
that country since the piping days of Ronald Reagan will give way to debate on
serious subjects, no matter how tinged with pyrotechnics about impending misery
and bankruptcy (even if the incumbent vice-president, Joe Biden, an amiable
malapropistic airhead, kicked off by telling an African-American audience last
week that Romney and Ryan would put them "back in chains").
What was shaping up as a real
snoozer of an election between a failed president and a preternaturally
unexciting challenger, may turn out to renovate the whole corrupt, hackneyed,
clichéd, blowhard American political process, and generate the debate the times
and the country require. If WMR,(I know it hasn't caught fire like FDR, JFK or
LBJ, but I still can't chin myself on calling a possible successor to
Washington and Lincoln "Mitt"), can make such a tactically and
substantively inspired choice of running mate, he may be able, as the oath
requires, to "faithfully execute the office of president."
30
Playing identity politics
National Post – August 25,
2012
By Graeme Hamilton
You wouldn’t guess it listening to
Parti Québécois leader Pauline Marois these days, but there was a time when the
separatist party courted ethnic minorities rather than treating them with
suspicion. “We have to form with the cultural communities a new world, a model
society, better, free, open and welcoming,” said Gérald Godin, immigration
minister under René Lévesque in the 1980s. “For cultural diversity is the
guarantee of a nation’s enrichment and open-mindedness.”
The contrast with the PQ’s current
campaign is striking. If elected, the party says it will prohibit public-sector
workers from wearing such religious symbols as the hijab, yarmulke and turban.
It will force immigrants to pass a French test before they can run for public
office, submit a petition to legislators or make political donations. And it
will block new arrivals and their children from attending English
post-secondary colleges, going further than the original architects of Bill 101
dared.
Now when Ms. Marois declares her
openness to immigrants, there is a significant “but” that follows.
“We insist on conserving our
identity, our language, our institutions and our values,” she says. Those
values “are not negotiable. We do not have to apologize for who we are.” What
has traditionally been a party of the left, attracting voters as much for its
social-democratic program as its independence project, has veered sharply to
the right on the question of
Pierre Bosset, a law professor at
Université du Québec à Montréal, said he was a lifelong PQ supporter until the
party transformed after finishing third in the 2007 election. Leader André
Boisclair, who had proposed removing the crucifix from the National Assembly
and defended accommodations for religious minorities, was squeezed out and
replaced by Ms. Marois, who immediately adopted tougher language.
“For me, that is the ugly strain of
“I think it’s significant that
people who have been sovereigntist for a very long time and voted for the Parti
Québécois, who voted Yes in both referendums, are leaving the PQ,” he said.
Jacques Pelletier, a literature
professor at UQAM, is an indépendentist who quit the PQ decades ago. He sees
the party’s embrace of an inward-looking nationalism as a reaction to the failure
of the PQ’s sovereignty project. “It’s a return to a kind of traditional
nationalism that defends a history, defends a culture, defends a past, rather
than a project for the future,” he said.
Daniel Weinstock, a law professor at
The current PQ approach, he said,
has a dual purpose. On the surface, it is an appeal to francophone Quebecers
outside
But the PQ’s proposed secularism
charter, which would ban public servants from wearing “conspicuous” religious symbols
(a crucifix on a chain would be OK) and its citizenship law, which would oblige
candidates for office to have an “appropriate knowledge” of French, also seem
designed for constitutional challenges. Mr. Weinstock said the initiatives
would never survive a Charter challenge, which would allow a PQ government to
argue that
“It’s a way of trying to create
winning conditions [for a referendum], not by proposing a positive inclusive
view of
Jean-François Lisée, who advised Ms.
Marois on the citizenship initiative when she first proposed it in 2007, is
running for the PQ in the Montreal riding of Rosemont and would be a shoo-in
for a cabinet post should the party be elected.
He said opinions are divided on
whether the PQ’s plans would withstand a court challenge, but he acknowledged a
defeat in the Supreme Court of Canada would not be all bad. It would be a
rejection of a “reasonable demand” by judges “named without our advice or
consent,” interpreting a Constitution “that was adopted without our advice or
consent,” he said. “Will that say something about our ability to be free within
Mr. Lisée said the restrictions the
PQ proposes are necessary to protect the French language and the core values of
gender equality and the neutrality of the state. He cited demographic studies
predicting that people whose primary language is French will be a minority in
“We’re in peril of losing critical
mass in
The PQ might have helped its case if
Ms. Marois had managed to present its identity platform in a more coherent
fashion. The party has never specified which religious symbols it would ban and
for which jobs. Mr. Lisée said there might be a more “laissez-faire” approach
to religious symbols among hospital staff. On citizenship, Ms. Marois said the
French requirement would apply to all Quebecers, before correcting herself a
day later to say anglophones and First Nations members would be protected by a
grandfather clause.
The PQ proposals are not in the same
league as the discourse of far-right parties in
Mr. Bosset fears the PQ platform, if
enacted, will strain inter-cultural relations. “The message it sends is that it
is acceptable to discriminate against new arrivals in
31
Breivik sentence should keep him in prison for life
Right-wing
extremist who killed 77 apologizes to 'militant nationalists' for not executing
more people
By Karl Ritter
Accepting a sentence that could keep
him imprisoned for life, Anders Behring Breivik regretted not killing more
people in a bomb and gun massacre that left 77 people dead.
Breivik's gruesome and defiant
statement Friday marked the end of a legal process that has haunted
Prosecutors said they, too, would
not appeal the ruling by
"Since I don't recognize the
authority of the court, I can-not legitimize the
Then, Breivik said he wanted to
issue an apology, but it wasn't for the victims, most of them teenagers gunned
down in one of the worst peacetime shooting massacres in modern history.
"I wish to apologize to all
militant nationalists that I wasn't able to execute more," Breivik said.
Earlier Friday, Breivik smiled with
apparent satisfaction when Judge Wenche Elisabeth Arntzen read the ruling,
declaring him sane enough to be held criminally responsible and sentencing him
to "preventive detention," which means it is unlikely he will ever be
released.
The sentence brings a form of
closure to
But it also means Breivik got what
he wanted: a ruling that paints him as a political terrorist instead of a
psychotic mass murderer. Since his arrest, Breivik has said the attacks were
meant to draw attention to his extreme right-wing ideology and to inspire a
multi-decade uprising by "militant nationalists" across
Prosecutors had argued Breivik was
insane as he plot-ted his attacks to draw attention to a rambling
"manifesto" that blamed Muslim immigration for the disintegration of
European society.
After first telling the court they
needed time to review the verdict, prosecutors later told reporters Norway's
chief prosecutor had decided not to appeal. Breivik argued authorities were
trying to characterize him as sick to cast doubt on his political views, and
said during the trial that being sent to an insane asylum would be the worst
thing that could happen to him.
"He has always seen himself as
sane so he isn't surprised by the ruling," Breivik's defence lawyer Geir
Lippestad said.
The five-judge panel in the
"He has killed 77 people, most
of them youth, who were shot without mercy, face to face. The cruelty is
unparalleled in Norwegian history," Judge Arne Lyng said. "This means
that the defendant, even after serving 21 years in prison, would be a very
dangerous man."
Some far-right leaders argued
Friday's verdict played into their core beliefs, though they have spoken out
against his violent rampage. "It was obviously wrong what he did, but
there was logic to all of it," said Stephen Lennon, the 29-year-old leader
of the English Defence League. "By saying that he was sane, it gives a
certain credibility to what he had been saying. And that is, that Islam is a
threat to
Survivors of the attacks and
relatives of victims welcomed the ruling.
"I am very relieved and happy
about the outcome," said Tore Sinding Bekkedal, who survived the Utoya
shooting.
"I believe he is mad, but it is
political madness and not psychiatric madness," Bekkedal said. "He is
a pathetic and sad little person."
Per Anders Langerod, another
shooting survivor, said he would like to visit Breivik in prison "and yell
at him for 15 minutes."
"I don't want to hurt him
because I have a problem with violence, now more than ever," Langerod
said. "But I want to yell at him. I want to explain to him what kind of
egomaniac mass murderer he is and how he has affected so many people so
terribly."
Wearing a dark suit and sporting a
thin beard, Breivik smirked as he walked into the courtroom to hear his
sentence, and raised a clenched-fist salute.
Breivik confessed to the attacks
during the trial, describing in gruesome detail how he detonated a car bomb at
the government headquarters in
Eight people were killed and more
than 200 injured by the explosion. Sixty-nine people, most of them teenagers,
were killed in the shooting spree on Utoya island. The youngest victim was 14.
In testimony that stunned relatives
of his victims, Breivik said he was acting in defence of
Breivik's lawyers say he is already
at work writing sequels to the 1,500-page manifesto he released on the Internet
before the attacks.
Breivik most likely will be sent
back to Ila Prison, where he has been held in pretrial detention. He has access
to a computer there but no Internet connection. He can communicate with the
outside world through mail, which is checked by prison staff.
32
Fighting the flu
New
regulations require B.C. health care workers to get shots or cover up when
treating patients
By Tara Carman and Manori
Ravindran
Health care workers in B.C. will be
the first in the country required to either get influenza vaccinations or wear
masks when treating patients.
The regulations, to be introduced
this year, were announced on Thursday by provincial health officer Dr. Perry
Kendall. They are designed to improve the low rate of vaccinations among health
care workers and reduce the risk of infections among the most vulnerable people
in the province.
According to
"That's way lower than we'd
like to see and it's actually been dropping over the years," he said.
Hospital Employees' Union spokesman
Mike Old said the union supports improving the vaccination rates among staff,
but would prefer to keep vaccinations voluntary.
The B.C. Nurses'
Micheal Vonn of the B.C. Civil
Liberties Association said the advocacy group will be studying the issue
"very intently."
"In particular we would be
interested in finding out what the scientific evidence is that the government
is relying on to make the claims that it makes. This is a highly contested
medical field and the claims are bold and very general," she said,
referring specifically to the claim that such a measure will save lives.
"A million questions arise as
to what we are getting for what we are losing. It's a very draconian step to
mandate a medical intervention and in order to justify that, the benefits have
to be crystal clear and [of] a very high standard."
The new regulations were backed by
the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.
"Patients should not have to
worry that they could get sick from their care provider," said Dr. Bonnie
Henry, director of communicable disease prevention at the BCCDC. "Getting
vaccinated is the best way to protect patients, as well as health care workers
themselves and their families."
Similar policies have been
introduced at some facilities in the
In 2004,
"We have an older population in
our facility and they are the ones that are most likely to have full efficacy
from [staff] getting vaccinated, so we wanted to protect our vulnerable
patients," she said.
Hagar noted that in 2005 – the first
year her team implemented the policy – five employees left the hospital due to
the mandatory vaccination and two were terminated for non-compliance. In recent
years, however, vaccination rates among hospital employees have increased to
99.5 per cent from 54 per cent.
Although the effect of the high
vaccination rates on transmissions to patients has not been evaluated, Hagar said
the hospital has observed a decrease in employee sick leave during peak
influenza season.
There are no U.S. states that
require influenza vaccines for all public health care workers, according to a
database maintained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, though
some require employees to provide a writ-ten declaration of having refused the
vaccine.
A press release issued Thursday by
B.C.'s Ministry of Health declared that
However, Susan McQuade of the New
York Committee for Occupational Health and Safety, said in an interview
Thursday that an order requiring the shots- issued as an emergency measure in
response to the H1N1 outbreak in 2009 – was rescinded a couple of weeks after
it went into effect.
That happened after health care
workers balked at the prospect of the shots and lawsuits were filed, said
McQuade, whose group was among those opposing the measure.
"There was tremendous pushback
from a lot of the workers in saying that you cannot be forcing me to get a
vaccine."
Programs to educate health care
workers about the importance of getting the flu shot and make it easily
accessible have been successful at increasing vaccination rates in the
Health officials in B.C. have always
encouraged workers to get vaccinated, but too few people have followed that
advice,
"It's always been a bit of a
puzzle. Some people believe they're healthy and they don't get influenza, some
believe the vaccine will give you influenza, which is a myth. There is no way
the vaccine can give you influenza."
He also said masks can be very
effective in reducing the spread of the flu. Masks covering people's mouths
pre-vent the transmission of droplets. The HEU's Old, however, said such a
method could get expensive, considering half of health employees are not
getting vaccinated.
In a good year with a vaccine that
matches well with the dominant influenza strain, protection in adults can reach
up to 80 per cent. In a bad year, that figure drops to about 40 per cent.
"It's not perfect, but it's
better than no protection at all,"
33
Do you really want a guy like Paul Ryan for VP?
From Deanne
Well, early last Saturday morning we
learned that Congressman Paul Ryan, Republican from
What are we to think of this
selection? He's not a graduate of
One morning when Paul Ryan was sixteen years old he went in to wake his father
up and found him dead of a heart attack. He didn't write two books about that
experience. Instead, he assumed the role of adult at an early age, never having
the luxury to pursue youthful drug use and the art of socialist revolution.
Instead, Paul Ryan and his mother took his grandmother, suffering from
Alzheimer's, into the household and served as the primary care provider for his
grandma. His grandma wasn't the Vice President of the Bank of Hawaii so she
could offer
nothing in return, except the element of "need".
Once Paul Ryan got his BA in Economics from Miami University of Ohio he was
hired as a staff economist in Wisconsin Senator Kastin's office. The job must have
not paid well because young Ryan moonlighted as a waiter and fitness trainer.
No one offered him a "token honor" position at the
When a still young Paul Ryan returned to
After getting elected to Congress Paul Ryan didn't triumphantly march into
Paul Ryan then married and took his bride back to
For those who can't make those public functions, Paul Ryan bought an old bread
truck, converted it into a "mobile constituent office" and drives
around to meet with those who need his help and attention.
No, I don't know if we can vote for a guy like this. He doesn't have a regal
pedigree; he's Irish for goodness sake! No one awarded him a Nobel Peace Prize
two months after getting elected. No one threw flowers or got "chills down
their leg" as a he took his seat in Congress.
What is most despicable about Paul Ryan is that he has had the nerve to write
the House Budget for three years in a row. He is brazen and heartless in
advocating in that budget for a $5 trillion dollar reduction in federal
spending over the next
ten years! The House passed his budget three years in a row and three years in
a row the Democratically controlled Senate has let it die in the upper house,
without ever proposing a budget of their own. What is wrong with this guy? If
Congress were to cut $5 trillion dollars from the budget where would the
President get the money to give $500 million dollars to a bankrupt Solyndra? Or
$200 million dollars for bankrupt Energy 1? Or $11 billion dollars to illegal
aliens filing INIT, non-resident tax returns to claim $11 billion big ones in
child tax credits, even for their children living in
I don't know. Paul Ryan seems heartless to me. He keeps wanting to cut
government waste, he keeps wanting to put a halt to those big GSA conventions
in Vegas and, worse, he keeps trying to make people look at that $16.7 trillion
dollar deficit! The guy's no fun at all!
Who wants a numbers cruncher? Who wants someone spoiling the party by showing
folks the bill and demanding fiscal responsibility!
Well, I guess I do.
34
Show me the money
National Post – August
23, 2012
By Father Raymond J. De
Souza
President Barack Obama was in town yesterday.
The Sisters knew it at the crack of dawn.
I was offering daily Mass at a
convent on the
“Obama must be coming today,” one of
the sisters said. “They usually put those up when he is coming.”
It’s routine enough, I expected,
that the U.S. President would have to visit
Whatever else might be said about
the Obama presidency, he has left no pocket untouched in the search for
campaign cash. As fundraiser-in-chief, Obama has exacerbated the already
lamentable centrality of fundraising in American politics.
The Sisters recognized the
barricades because they are up with ever greater frequency. Last night was
Obama’s 39th fundraiser in
Obama is setting new records for
presidential time devoted to fundraising. He has held more than 200 re-election
fundraisers since launching his re-election bid in April 2011. In contrast,
George W. Bush held 86 fundraisers in his entire first term.
Why does Obama spend so much time
fundraising? He evidently feels he has to, and the evidence is compelling.
Despite apportioning an enormous chunk of presidential time to raising cash,
Obama’s campaign is behind Mitt Romney’s. The Romney campaign had some
$186-million on hand at the end of July, whereas Obama had only $124-million.
Obama’s campaign is also outgunned
by the so-called “super PACs” – groups that stand nominally apart from the
campaign but which can spend money in ways that support the campaign. The
Center for Responsive Politics estimates that conservative super PACs have
already spent some $220-million in this election cycle, while liberal super
PACs have only spent a quarter of that, some $55-million.
American politicians have lamented
for generations the pressures of fundraising, even as they keep running ever
faster on the cash treadmill. Recent developments have changed the fundraising
environment.
George W. Bush demonstrated that it
was possible to privately raise far more cash than the amounts provided through
public funding. Obama followed his lead, and consequently there are no
effective limits on presidential campaign spending. With no limit on spending,
there is no end to fundraising.
Online fundraising made it possible
to raise large sums from tens of thousands of small donors. That should have
been salutary, with fundraising becoming more democratic and participatory,
reflective of public opinion rather than monied interests. Obama’s record haul
of nearly $750 million for his 2008 campaign was praised in large part for
including online small donors.
But the vast amounts raised online
only increased the desire of wealthy interests to maintain their positions of
influence. With a Supreme Court ruling striking down contribution and spending
limits on corporations and unions, the super PAC was born – agents that can
take millions from individuals and use them for activities ancillary to, but
not run by, the candidates’ campaigns.
Money is the mother’s milk of
politics, but its effects are not entirely benign. Money is for buying things,
and those who give a lot of money to candidates are buying something – prestige
and goodwill, perhaps, but more likely access and influence.
Money cannot be entirely banished
from politics, and one shouldn’t wish it anyway. The ability to raise money is
a reasonable facsimile of popular support, and the freedom to spend one’s money
on politics is a democratic right. Yet it is a matter of degree, and the
immoderate pursuit of funding is corrosive. I would like to think that the
president, having lost his umpteenth evening to fundraising here last night,
would agree.
35
Pauline Marois’ assault on democratic values
National Post – August
23, 2012
Editorial
Given the close scrutiny that
surrounded the recent
During the
So why has there been comparatively
little uproar over Ms. Marois? It is as if Canadians in the rest of the country
have become so accustomed to watching
This week, for instance, Ms. Marois
revived a 2007 proposal that would bar non-French speakers from holding public
office in
Indeed, the idea is so outrageous
that on Wednesday, the PQ was forced to backtrack – putting out a statement to
the effect that anyone already residing in
And yet, this doesn’t even rank as
the worst idea Ms. Marois has put forward this month. Her proposed “Charter of
Secularism” would prevent public-sector workers from brandishing “conspicuous
religious signs.” But the rule doesn’t even pretend to be non-discriminatory:
Crosses and crucifixes – like the big one that hangs in
Not all of Ms. Marois’ ideas are
creepy and discriminatory. Some are merely terrible. For instance, her plan to
bar non-Anglophone-raised students from attending English junior colleges
(CEGEPs) has raised the ire of thousands of students, most of them francophone.
And for good reason: Many of these students rely on anglo colleges to perfect
the English skills they will need in the working world. These are the same
student voters whom Ms. Marois has been courting with her cynical toadying to
the protest leaders who reject Jean Charest’s (sensible) tuition increases.
In a desperate bid to play to that
constituency, Ms. Marois is telling university students not to pay their
tuition fees. The decision came after the party discovered on Tuesday that
Concordia, McGill and UQAM already have sent students a tuition bill, including
the annual $254 increase planned by Mr. Charest’s budget, payable by Aug. 31.
The PQ’s spokesperson on the matter of post-secondary education, Marie Malavoy,
told Le Soleil: “If I were a student, I would not pay my bill before the
election.”
Fortunately, many voters seem to
have had enough of Ms. Marois’ extremism: A new National Post poll suggests
that the Liberals have overtaken the PQ in total voter support. One hopes this
trend is sustained:
36
Sabotaging
National Post – August
22, 2012
Editorial
Parti Québécois leader Pauline
Marois is walking a tricky path in her campaign to become
But this balancing act is hard to
sustain. Educated young people in
The prime example lies with Ms.
Marois’ recently announced policy of blocking most of the province’s
Francophones (and allophones) from attending two-year junior colleges (CEGEPs)
whose language of instruction is English – a step that would extend the
province’s intrusive and discriminatory language laws into the domain of higher
education. French youth – many of whom traditionally have used English CEGEPs
to perfect their language skills before applying to universities or entering
the workforce – have been among the policy’s biggest critics.
“I am proud to have done my studies
in English at
Her Facebook page, which may be
found at http://on.fb.me/NeP9iJ, has 44,000 “likes.” There are also more than
5,000 comments, including many thoughtful insights, such as this one from a
young educator named Andrea Di Tomaso: “I am the product of a bilingual
marriage – Anglo father and Francophone mother. I am also an English teacher in
a French private school. My position? Languages are keys that open doors, the
more keys, the more opportunities. I value both cultures and think its a pity
the PQ have adopted such a defensive and aggressive approach to linguistic
heritage.”
The PQ justifies this policy, as
with so many others, on the basis that the French language is in crisis in
On Sept. 4,
It is one thing to respect the
French language and take reasonable measures to protect its survival – measures
that former
37
Right to Life request causes flap in B.C. city
National Post – August
22, 2012
By Jake Edmiston
The flagpole outside
But when city council faced a
request from a local antiabortion group for a turn, the city axed the program.
When reports surfaced last week of
the Kelowna Right to Life Society's bid to fly its flag during an awareness
week in September, Councillor Luke Stack watched the letters of complaint pile
up.
"This had been bothering me for
some time," said Mr. Stack, who proposed the removal of the courtesy flag
program at Monday's city council meeting – an attempt to "put an end to
controversies."
The council unanimously backed the
motion.
"The whole exercise seems
somewhat inappropriate for city hall," he said Tuesday. "It just
seems to excite some members of the city but it also angers others. City Hall
should be a place where we're unifying people, not trying to establish camps on
different political spectrums."
Councillors also took issue with the
fact that the provincial flag had to be taken down to make space for the courtesy
flag.
Following the decision Monday, the
Right to Life Society released a statement questioning why Pride Week was
permitted a spot on the pole.
"I had hoped they would have
treated us the way they treated other groups, and allowed our flag to fly before
they abolished the project," said the society's executive director Marlon
Bartram in an interview.
The policy will not allow any
submission that "promotes a point of view or organization of a political,
ethical or religious nature." If approved, groups are forbidden to give
the impression that they are endorsed by city hall.
Right to Life's proposed flag used
the slogan, "From Conception to Natural Death" paired with a
"Pro-Life" label and a photo depicting the progressing stages of life
from infancy to old age.
The
"The Pride flag conveys a message.
It's possible to do so without wording," said Mr. Bartram. "There's a
lot of people in the country who support the idea that marriage is the union of
one man and one woman. So I wouldn't say that these festivities ... are
something shared by everybody."
In an email, city staff said "A
flag that represents the Kelowna Right to Life organization is acceptable, but
it cannot contain words that promote a political, religious or ethical point of
view."
So Mr. Bartram submitted a second
proposal – the same flag with only the slogan removed. Communications
supervisor Tom Wilson was in the process of reviewing the group's second
proposal when Monday's city council decided to cut the program.
"[City council] was a little
embarrassed over the media coverage and wanted to put this behind them – that's
what I got from sitting in on the discussion," Mr. Wilson said.
"They felt it was detracting
from the serious business. They needed to move on."
The council will work to detail a
policy in the coming weeks that would only allow courtesy flags to be flown in
special circumstances, such as when a diplomat or head of state visits
The decision also ruffled organizers
of the local pride week who will no longer see their flag at city hall.
"My first reaction to it is
disappointment," said Wilbur Turner, co-chair of Okanagan Pride. "At
the same point I empathize with the councillors, because I believe they were
kind of put in a tough position."
38
News agency wanted notes for
National Post – August
22, 2012
By Kathryn Blaze Carlson
Mark Bourrie had just finished
listening to the Dalai Lama speak at the Ottawa Civic Centre with his wife and
daughter when he says his cellphone rang: It was his boss – the
On its face, the request was not an
odd one. Mr. Bourrie, an award-winning Canadian journalist and author, had for
two years worked as a full-time freelancer for the news agency and had covered
the Dalai Lama’s speech at a convention the day before.
But by this point a series of what
he called “odd” requests by bureau chief Dacheng Zhang had Mr. Bourrie
concerned the news agency was gathering intelligence on Chinese dissidents and
sending information back to
What then, did Xinhua want with Mr.
Bourrie’s coverage?
“They tried to get me … to write a
report for the Chinese government on the Dalai Lama using my press credentials
as a way of getting access I wouldn’t otherwise have,” Mr. Bourrie, a long-time
freelancer who has written for several major Canadian newspapers, said in an
interview with the National Post. He alleges there are individuals within
Xinhua who are acting as spies, seeking to “monitor [practitioners of the
spiritual movement] Falun Gong, the Dalai Lama and any other critics of the
Chinese government in
An email to Mr. Zhang was not
acknowledged by deadline on Tuesday. The National Post also tried to reach him
at Xinhua’s
Mr. Bourrie recounts his two years
working for Xinhua in the upcoming issue of Ottawa Magazine, which comes out
Thursday, where he offers the first real glimpse into an organization that has
long raised eyebrows in the intelligence community for its close ties to the
governing Chinese Communist Party.
Last fall, the state-run agency came
under intense scrutiny when news broke that Conservative MP and parliamentary
secretary Bob Dechert had exchanged flirtatious emails with Xinhua’s
Charles Burton, a
“The function of the Xinhua news
agency is to gather information for the regime,” he said. “I think some of them
are spies under the cover of being reporters for the Xinhua news agency.”
Julie Carmichael, a spokesperson for
Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, said in an email she “cannot comment on
matters related to national security” and that “all credible threats are
investigated by the appropriate authorities.”
Xinhua’s Chinese presence in
Mr. Bourrie said “90%” of his assignments
were “normal” and that all of his own work was “legit,” but he also said there
were warning bells along the way. The first sounded in June 2010, when he was
asked to determine not only the identities of those who protested Chinese
president Hu Jintao’s arrival at the G20 Summit in
“‘Canadian reporters don’t do that,’
I explained,” Mr. Bourrie writes in his upcoming Ottawa Magazine exposé. “The
subject was quickly dropped, and I went back to my regular work for the agency,
writing about Bank of Canada announcements, new crime and immigration laws,
Royal visits, and quirky news.”
But later he said he started
receiving “weird” requests, including an assignment to determine how
Mr. Bourrie noticed that while he
had covered Falun Gong press conferences and events on Parliament Hill, those
stories, as far as he could tell, were not published online. He said he is now
under the impression the information was sent to
Mr. Bourrie cut all ties with Xinhua
on April 28, 2012, the day of the Dalai Lama’s press conference, and
immediately notified the parliamentary Press Gallery of his concerns.
“At today’s news conference, you
informed me the material that I was to send you would be forwarded to the
Chinese government,” Mr. Bourrie wrote in an email to Mr. Zhang, which was also
copied to the Canadian Parliamentary Press Gallery chief, Terry Guillon.
Mr. Zhang, who along with Ms. Shi is
listed as a press gallery member, responded saying “any message released at
news conference is news, and news is open to every one, including the
government.”
Mr. Bourrie says in his magazine
article that Xinhua swiftly replaced him with another accredited freelancer in
The president of the press gallery,
which grants the accreditation that gives journalists access to government
buildings, politicians and press conferences, said the executive is “aware of
the disagreement” between Mr. Bourrie and Xinhua.
“The Executive has asked both sides
to come and explain their views,” president Chris Rands said in an email. “We
are in a process at the moment and I cannot pre-judge any decision the
Executive may, or may not make” concerning Xinhua’s media accreditation.
39
Different shades of honour
National Post – August
22, 2012
By Jonathan Kay
Five years ago, Waqas Parvez
strangled his 16-year-old sister Aqsa to death in their
More than any other single crime,
the murder of Aqsa Parvez by her Pakistani Canadian Muslim family woke
Canadians up to the phenomenon of honour killings. In denouncing this
particularly "abhorrent motivation" for murder, the judge gave voice
to our understanding of honour killings as a pathology quite distinct from
ordinary domestic violence.
As Phyllis Chesler and Nathan Bloom
write in the Summer 2012 edition of the Middle East Quarterly, "honor
killing is the premeditated murder of a relative (usually a young woman) who
has allegedly impugned the honor of her family." Unlike other forms of
spousal or child abuse, honour killings invariably are conspiracies involving
multiple family members, often including the victim's own siblings, parents and
in-laws. As the authors note, the practice "tends to predominate in
societies where individual rights are circumscribed by communal solidarities,
patriarchal authority structures, and intolerant religious and tribal beliefs.
Under such conditions, control over marriage and reproduction is critical to
the socioeconomic status of kinship groups and the regulation of female
behavior is integral to perceptions of honor, known as maryada in many Indian
languages and as ghairat in Urdu and Pashto."
We tend to use the term "honour
killing" generically, to describe any murder conspiracy of this type. But
as Chesler and Bloom demonstrate in their MEQ article, honour killings actually
fall into several distinct and identifiable types. An understanding of the
typology is crucial for preventing them from becoming common in Western
immigrant communities.
Worldwide, most honour killings take
place in Muslim countries –
But look behind the absolute
numbers, and you find significant differences in murder motive – which Chesler
and Bloom were able to analyze by studying samples drawn from both countries.
In the case of Pakistani honour
killings, the researchers found, three motives prevailed: punishment for
"illicit relationships" (often involving a woman who elopes with a
mate of her own choosing); "contamination by association" (in which
family member are killed for the moral sins of their sister or daughter); and
"immoral character," in which the woman or girl (the average victim
age is 22) is punished for going unveiled, or otherwise flouting the standards
of dour piety expected of Muslim women in backwards societies.
This last category is particularly
dominant in Western-resident Pakistani-origin immigrant communities, where the
"immoral character" motive accounted for 65% of honour killings in
the authors' studied sample (with 97% of the murders being committed by the
woman's family, and 59% of the victims being tortured before death). On this
point, they speculate: "This may be because there are so many more
opportunities for 'immoral' assimilation/independence in the West, and young
Pakistani women living there may be pushing boundaries more forcefully. In that
regard, Aqsa Parvez is a tragically representative example.
In Indian honour killings, these
factors sometimes are present. But the dominant motivation is something
entirely different: caste.
Hindu religious law and tradition,
which still has a stubborn hold on parts of the country, prohibits marriage
between members of different castes, as well as with someone within the same
sub-caste. It is the violation of this obsolete code – not any generalized
accusation of "immoral" or "Western" behavior – that
motivated the majority of Indian honour killings in the sample studied by
Chesler and Bloom.
This difference in honour-killing
motivation is tied to a difference in the murder sanctioning decision-making
process. In
The difference in Indian/Pakistani
honour-killing motivations also leads to another striking statistical gap
between the two nations: "In 40% of the cases, Indian Hindus murdered men,
while Pakistani Muslims murdered men only 14% of the time in
From a policy-making perspective,
this analysis suggest that there is more hope in
The Indian government, which is
eager to burnish the country's growing bona fides as a progressive liberal
democracy, has unambiguously denounced honour killings, and is clearly keen to
crack down on the khap panchatays' stubborn grip on popular attitudes in
northern India. In
Political Islam also is a
complicating factor in
Moreover, the authors write in the
MEQ, "under Shari'a-based provisions of
From a strictly Western point of
view, the most interesting conclusion from the Chesler/Bloom study is this:
Pakistani immigrants to the West sometimes bring the seeds of a deadly honour
culture with them, while Indian immigrants typically do not.
That is because the belief that a
family's honour lives and dies with the perceived chastity and obedience of its
female members is deeply culturally ingrained in
Chesler and Bloom's work should be
required reading for Canadian police officers, social-service workers and
child-protection officers who work with
In other words, our goal is to
protect the next Aqsa Parvez.
40
Scathing audit reveals spiralling costs
CEO
to resign as finance minister troubled by Crown corporation's lavish culture of
spending
By Jonathan Fowlie
Number of ICBC 54 employees earning
more than $200,000
Number of management positions added
272 over the past five years
Amount paid in signing bonuses
$365,000 over five years
Highest signing bonus paid $40,000
Amount of perk allowances paid to
senior managers $15,500 to $18,500 per year
Jon Schubert will resign as CEO of
the Insurance Corp. of
The government audit determined the
number of people earning more than $200,000 at ICBC has grown 315 per cent in
just the last five years, mainly because of an explosion in the number of
executives.
Since 2007, the company has added
272 management positions, the audit found. In the same period, it reduced
unionized employees by 43 positions. "That is something – the combination
of more people and higher wages – that is both unacceptable and something that
is going to change, and change very quickly," Finance Minister Kevin
Falcon said Thursday as he released the audit.
Falcon said the lavish culture for
executives at ICBC is especially troubling, given that it came at a time of
widespread economic turmoil, and when government itself was significantly
reining in spending.
"In 2009, in government, as we
started realizing how serious the downturn was, management staffing in
government fell by seven per cent and total compensation was down by one per
cent," he said.
"At the same time, over that
same period from 2009-11, ICBC's management staffing actually increased by 23
per cent and their compensation increased by 15 per cent," he said, adding
this demonstrates ICBC was tone deaf to the fiscal realities that surrounded
it.
"It shows a real disconnect, in
my view, between what British Columbians and those around the world are really
feeling in the economy and what was taking place at ICBC."
The audit also found ICBC has over
five years handed out $365,000 in signing bonuses for its managers, has been
giving up to $18,500 in annual cash allowances to senior executives for perks,
and paid one executive $131,000 to move when hired, including about $4,500 per
month for temporary accommodation.
It said senior managers were getting
perks and bonuses even after being terminated. Instances included payments of
$17,000 for perks, a $57,000 bonus payment and a $110,000 non-competition
payment.
Recently appointed ICBC board chair
Paul Taylor said Thursday that Schubert has come to a mutual agreement with the
board to resign on Nov. 15, but will be paid his full salary for another seven
and a half months after that to serve as a consultant.
"He will provide advisory
services to the board and management until the end of June," said Taylor,
who could not say how often Schubert would be called on during that time.
"It will depend on need, but
his day-to-day duties end on November 15 and he'll be there to provide advisory
services as needed on insurance matters."
If Schubert had been terminated,
government regulations would have afforded him a severance of 14 to 16 months.
In 2011, he made $486,541 in total
compensation.
Schubert, who has been CEO since
November 2008, did not return a request for comment Thursday, but in a memo to
all staff confirmed his departure.
"This is a mutual decision
reached with the board. I am very proud and feel privileged to have served as
CEO of ICBC," Schubert wrote in the short memo.
"I am committed to working
toward an orderly transition to ensure that ICBC continues to fulfil its
man-date," he added.
"Literally, thousands of you
have supported me and for that, I'll always be grateful."
He said the company will eliminate
almost 200 positions over the next two years, the majority of which will be
management.
He said he intends the company to
return over-all operating costs to 2008 levels, which he said would save about
$50 million by the end of 2013.
"Implementing this report is a
top priority for the company and for our employees,"
"We are committed to doing what
is right for our customers and treating our employees fairly."
He said that as of this week, five
of the audit recommendations had been fully implemented, eight had been partly
implemented and the remaining 11 were in progress.
ICBC increased rates by about 2.1
per cent this year, meaning drivers have paid an average of about $27 more for
the year.
On Thursday, Falcon said that
despite the troubling findings on executive compensation, ICBC has kept rate
increases low for its consumers, averaging about 0.8 per cent each year over
the last 10 years.
"I am pleased that ICBC has
done a good job in keeping rates for drivers down overall," he said.
The audit found the number of
unionized employees at ICBC decreased over the last five years to 4,049 from
4,092, for a loss of 43 positions.
The 272-person increase in
management was bro-ken down as senior management rising to 69 from 49;
management rising to 692 from 537; and non-union technical and administrative
positions such as accountants and communications professionals rising to 366
from 269.
It said senior managers saw about a
70-per-cent compensation increase over five years, while unionized workers'
compensation increased by less than 10 per cent.
The audit detailed 24
recommendations, including a suggested reduction in management staffing, more
oversight of expenses and improved provincial oversight of the Crown
corporation.
Mable Elmore, New Democratic Party
critic for ICBC, said the problems identified at ICBC are similar to ones the
government has found at other public organizations, including BC Hydro and
Community Living BC.
"The Liberal government has
really mismanaged these corporations and these files. I think it's really
demonstrated incompetence," she said, adding there needs to be more
effective oversight.
"B.C. taxpayers, I think,
expect that Crown corporations are competently man-aged and show value for
money," she said.
"I don't think this is what
we're seeing under the Liberals."
A government review into BC Hydro
released last summer found staff levels at that organization had increased
excessively in the previous four years, and recommended 1,000 job cuts to a
total workforce of 6,000.
In an interview earlier this year,
Debbie Nagle, BC Hydro's senior vice-president and chief human resources
officer, said that by 2014, her Crown corporation expects to have reduced its
staffing by 700.
Falcon has promised similar reviews
of other Crowns.
Last month, Falcon also announced a
crackdown on lavish pay packages for executives across most commercial Crowns
in B.C., including an indefinite wage freeze for executives and a reining-in of
the perks they can receive.
The Canadian Office and Professional
Employees Union, which represents ICBC employees, said the audit "has
clearly reaffirmed what our union has long been saying about ICBC's unfair
compensation structure.
"The number of managers and
their salaries has skyrocketed while the number of positions providing services
to the public has decreased," COPE 378 vice-president Jeff Gillies said in
a written statement.
Gilles also questioned what
government planned to do with the savings.
"Drivers and unionized ICBC
employees providing services are the ones that have been left behind," he
said.
"We need to know that any money
saved by cost constraints won't be heading straight to government but will be
used to reduce rates for drivers and keep the unionized workforce at ICBC from
falling further behind."
41
Xenophobia lives on
National Post – August
16, 2012
By Tasha Kheiriddin
Racist or not? When it comes to the
First, Coalition Avenir Québec
leader François Legault lambasted young Quebecers for being interested in
living "the good life," unlike children in
Mr. Legault's comments bring to mind
similar views expressed in 2010 by then aspiring-Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who
remarked that "Asians work like dogs." Those observations were
understandably not well received by members of the Asian community in
But Mr. Legault stood by his
comments. He then tried tying them to economic issues, remarking that "we
can't continue to live above our means, have the highest debt, have the same
social programs, and an average income that is lower than others. At some point
we have to be realistic, it doesn't compute."
On that score, Mr. Legault is right:
His remarks pale in comparison,
however, to the xenophobic tone of those made by Parti Québécois ledaer Pauline
Marois, and worse yet, the mayor of
On Tuesday, Ms. Marois unveiled her
party's desire to implement a "Secular Charter" which would ban the
wearing of any religious symbols by government employees. With, as my colleague
Chris Selley tartly notes on these pages, one notable exception: Symbols of
Christian faith, such as the cross which hangs over the Speakers' Chair in the
National Assembly. In other words, a crucifix necklace, good: hijabs and
yarmulkes, bad.
The irony is that the
Then on Wednesday, Mr. Tremblay took
xenophobia one step further, when he launched a tirade against Djemila
Benhabib, the Parti Québécois candidate in Trois Rivières. On a popular radio
show, Mr. Tremblay let loose: "I am shocked that we, the softies, the
French Canadians, will be told how to behave, how to respect our culture by a
person who comes from
This, in response to the fact that
Ms. Benhabib, a respected writer and journalist, had previously called for the
banning of all religious symbols, including the aforementioned cross, from the
public sphere. The irony here is that Ms. Benhabib is known as an outspoken
critic of militant Islam, and many of its symbols, including the niqab, the full
face covering that many people find offensive not for religious reasons, but
because it prevents women from fully engaging in western society, where an
uncovered face is key to social interaction.
This lack of knowledge about Ms.
Benhabib only further highlights the ignorance of Mr. Tremblay's remarks. It
also highlights the fact that there are two
This divide has played a role in
Xenophobia is alive and well in
42
No sure answer for treatment of pedophiles
By Daphne Bramham
It's hard to feel sorry for Donald
Bakker, a sexual deviant and social pariah whose name, face, age, weight and
height have all been broadcast to warn the public that's he's at high risk to
re-offend.
Abbotsford police went a step
further a few weeks ago. It published a map outlining the neighbourhood where
Bakker is living.
The harm Bakker did to three young
women in
He served his full seven-year
sentence. Partly because of his refusal to participate in pro-grams aimed at
rehabilitating his deviancy, strict conditions were placed on his release in
June in
Bakker can't be anywhere near
children, use the Internet or be out after 11 p.m.
From
Even if Bakker had gone through the
prison programs aimed at reforming pedophiles and sexual deviants, he'd still
be dangerous. How dangerous is an open question.
While Public Safety Canada
emphatically states on its web-site that treatment is effective, research done
exclusively on pedophiles indicates something quite different.
Corrections
But that wasn't recidivism – a
re-occurrence of sexually offending. It's the percentage of all offenders – not
just pedophiles – who were arrested or convicted again after already serving
time for sexual offence.
According to a June 2010
It also notes that one challenge in
studying pedophilia is that experts estimate that only one in 20 cases of
child-sexual abuse is ever reported.
Among the scant research on
pedophiles is a 1982 study of 197 child molesters. Published in the
peer-reviewed Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, it found 42 per
cent of the 197 pedophiles studied were re-convicted for sexual crimes, violent
crimes or both. Of those, 10 per cent were re-convicted 10 to 31 years after
being released.
Another peer-reviewed study published
the same year in Crime & Delinquency found what it described as
"undetected recidivism." In interviews with researchers, incarcerated
rapists and child molesters, on average, admitted to two to five times more
sexual assaults than the number they were convicted of having committed.
Sexual predators are abhor-rent.
I've seen the faces and heard the stories of too many young Cambodians sold
into brothels as children. I've talked to far too many Canadian victims of
sexual assault.
Like the people of
It's too late to change Bakker's
sentence. It's too late to declare him a dangerous offender and keep him
indefinitely in prison.
Yet even if those were
possibilities, warehousing sex offenders for life in prison at a cost of nearly
$114,000 a year doesn't seem to be a good answer.
Demanding therapy for pedophiles or
men who refuse to participate is largely meaningless.
They've talked about setting up
special zones for them to live in – similar, I suppose, to penal colonies.
What
While effective in some ways,
research echoes what seems like an obvious assumption that, as social pariahs,
men like Bakker are more likely to re-offend if they can't find a place to live
or are being constantly hounded out of communities.
There's also mounting evidence that
without an international sex offenders registry and only a few countries (
Beyond shunning and shaming, there
are no comfortable answers to the question of what to do with these men.
But until we're willing to embrace
the uncomfortable ones, the rights of women and children will be circumscribed
and the onus placed on individuals and parents to protect them-selves and their
loved ones.
43
Identity theft victim's name tied to attempted murder
National Post – August
10, 2012
By Gordon Hoekstra
When
But when Yoos, a chess master, did
an Internet search and discovered the attempted murder suspect's name and age
exactly matched his own, he realized it wasn't funny.
After a further search turned up a
news photo of the suspect, whom Yoos recognized, he said he immediately knew
his identity had been stolen.
Yoos said he met the suspect
casually through friends about a decade ago but hasn't seen him since.
He said he was told the man also
gave his Social Security number, though he doesn't know how the suspect might
have obtained it.
Yoos, who is an American citizen,
said he's been living in
"Identity theft is upsetting
enough, but to have it tied to a serious violent crime is way more
disturbing," said Yoos, 43, who goes by the name Jack. "It's also a
terrible violation of a person's privacy. I don't like having my name splashed
across the world press," said Yoos, noting he is a private person.
The Manhattan District Attorney's
Office is looking into the false identity allegation, a person familiar with
the case said Wednesday, speaking on condition of anonymity because the person
wasn't authorized to discuss the matter publicly.
The suspect is being held without
bail on attempted murder and other charges related to a hammer attack of a
Spanish tourist last week.
The tourist, Hugo Alejandre of
Bystanders wrestled the hammer away,
and Alejandre was treated for a spinal fracture and deep cuts, said
prosecutors.
Yoos works in the finance sector and
has been regularly mentioned on chess sites that post Canadian tournament
results. He is a master chess player according to the World Chess Federation.
When Yoos finally linked up with the Manhattan District Attorney's Office, he
said he had already had electronic copies of his birth certificate, Social
Security card and passport ready to send. "Once I sent them that stuff,
[my identify is] not really in doubt," he said.
He praised the DA's office for
investigating, but maintains a simple Internet search would have identified the
real John C. Yoos.
At a court proceeding last week,
legal aid lawyer Alyssa Gamliel said the suspect in the hammer incident was
unemployed and had lived in
Gamliel said the suspect had only
one prior, minor brush with the law, involving an unpaid fine, in
44
Letting son meet genetic father too 'risky': judge
National Post – August 9,
2012
By Tom Blackwell
The potential risk of introducing a
The decision marks the first round
in a key test case of the uncertain law around exchanges of human sperm and
eggs, as increasing numbers of Canadian children are born by
"assisted" reproduction.
A full trial is scheduled for this
October to consider the man's demand for paternity rights – and add some
clarity to the tangled issue – but Rene deBlois had requested access to the boy
pending the final wrap-up of the case.
The two women had argued that 22-month-old
Tyler Lavigne, who has never met Mr. deBlois, might become confused and
insecure if he encountered the donor now, noted Justice Norman Karam of the
Ontario Superior Court in Cochrane, Ont.
"Despite the child's young age,
it is impossible to know what disclosure of [Mr. deBlois's] status as his
parent might mean," said the judge. "All circumstances considered,
the risk of there being an adverse effect to the child is too great to
ignore."
Justice Karam said he considered
imposing limitations on the access to deal with those concerns, but decided the
restrictions would be virtually impossible to enforce.
He said he also found "very
convincing" the couple's argument that by allowing access to the child
now, he could inadvertently affect the outcome of the trial, expected to be
closely watched by legal analysts, parent groups and others.
Selena Kazimierski and Nicole
Lavigne say the donor – a former high-school acquaintance of Ms. Lavigne – signed
an agreement that he would never contact the baby born in October, 2010, with
the help of his artificially inseminated sperm. They fear the family life they
have built for their son would be unduly disrupted if that changed.
The donor says he no longer honours
the deal, partly because Ms. Lavigne failed to follow through on her verbal
commitment to have a baby for him, too.
Legal experts say the case offers up
a relatively straightforward set of facts, allowing the court to directly
tackle a question overhanging many such arrangements.
Growing numbers of children are
being born in
When donations are obtained
anonymously from sperm banks, and in the few provinces with relevant laws,
parenthood is generally uncontested.
In situations where couples and
single people make arrangements with sperm donors they know, however – especially
in provinces that lack such legislation – the rights of the various parties
remain largely unresolved.
A smattering of mostly lower-court
rulings have addressed the question, but most of the cases have had
complicating factors, such as a past relationship between the donor and
recipient.
Lucia Mendonca, Mr. deBlois's
lawyer, could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
Ms. Lavigne voiced relief at the
ruling on interim access, saying it would have been too disruptive for everyone
to allow the genetic father and son to meet, when the trial might rule Mr.
deBlois has no paternity rights.
"It would – just cause pain on
all sides," she said. "It would be hard on him, if he got attached,
and now 'You're never going to see him again.' "
The decision correctly analyzed the
law – and applied pure common sense to the situation, said Michelle Flowerday,
the
"It is common sense to delay
creating a relationship between a child and a stranger unless there is a
guarantee that the relationship will continue," she said.
"There is no guarantee here. We
may well succeed at trial."
The judge also said that he would
not consider a legal motion by the couple to reverse an earlier decision, made
when the women were represented by a different lawyer, to essentially void the
sperm-donation contract. It is expected that issue will be considered at the
trial, due to start Oct. 21.
Justice Karam also rejected a
request by Mr. deBlois for an investigation by
45
‘Eat mor chikin’
By Robert Knight
Each day brings new evidence of the
left's hatred for Christians and other traditionalists, but the smear campaign
against Christian-owned Chick-fil-A sets a new low.
The Atlanta-based, 1,600-restaurant
chain, famous for its misspelling-prone cows that urge consumers to "eat
mor chikin," is under a full-scale fascistic assault, complete with
obscene celebrity tweets and government bullying.
Acting more like Benito Mussolini
than Paul Revere, Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino said he will block Chick-fil-A
from opening a restaurant in his city. Chicago Alderman Proco Joe Moreno said
he will stop Chick-fil-A from building its second
What has the dastardly company done?
Chick-fil-A's management, while not political, is an unapologetic defender of
traditional values. Like the Boy Scouts, the company has enraged liberals who
are at war with nature and nature's God.
This isn't the first time
Chick-fil-A has been singled out. In February 2011, homosexual activists
launched an unsuccessful boycott when they found out that the company donated
food to the Pennsylvania Family Institute's marriage retreat. Seriously, it
doesn't take much to tick them off.
The current hysteria began after Mr.
Cathy, son of the chain's founder, gave an interview that ran in the Baptist
Press on July 16. Mr. Cathy noted that Chick-fil-A's management is "based
on biblical principles, asking God and pleading with God to give us wisdom on
decisions we make about people and the programs and partnerships we have. And
He has blessed us." When asked about the company's positions in support of
marriage and family, Mr. Cathy went on to say, "Well, guilty as charged.
We are very much supportive of the family – the biblical definition of the
family unit."
This was too juicy to ignore. CNN
ran a July 19 religion blog post that read, "Chick-fil-A's marriage stance
causing a social storm." Casually striking a match while pouring the
gasoline, writer Brad Lendon wrote that "the comments of company President
Dan Cathy about gay marriage to Baptist Press on Monday have ignited a social
media wildfire."
It doesn't matter that Mr. Cathy
never brought up "gay marriage," as noted by the Weekly Standard's
Mark Hemingway. All Mr. Cathy did was defend the company's stance that families
are paramount and that the company supports the family unit "in its
biblical definition."
That's what marriage laws do, too – they
define the institution. It's no accident that the media routinely describe
marriage laws as "gay marriage bans," as if marriage didn't exist
until recently, when it was invented solely to vex homosexuals. You think I'm
joking? That's what openly homosexual U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker
essentially said in his bizarre ruling striking down
This madness has gone so far that
simply defending marriage is enough to get you banned in
Perhaps the American Civil Liberties
Union will step forward to represent Chick-fil-A. Perhaps the
Comic and Green Party favorite
Roseanne Barr joined the Chick-fil-A bashing on Wednesday, tweeting,
"anyone who eats [expletive]-Fil-A deserves to get the cancer that is sure
to come from eating antibiotic filled tortured chickens 4Christ."
As reported by the
On July 25, Washington Post
columnist Dana Milbank accused Mike Huckabee of pushing "obesity"
because Mr. Huckabee has called for people who honor "godly values"
to fight back by eating at Chick-fil-A on Aug. 1. Mr. Huckabee's "defense
of the fast-food restaurant will make Chick-fil-A a fat target in the culture
wars and will further divide Americans," Mr. Milbank asserted.
Right. Mr. Huckabee is the divisive
one for helping the mugging victim. The message here is if he were a good
American (like Mr. Milbank), he'd just stay silent (unlike Mr. Milbank).
Up in Boston, where consistency is
not necessarily a virtue, Mr. Menino didn't mind giving a taxpayer-subsidized
sweetheart land deal in 2002 to the Islamic Society of Boston, which has been
linked to terrorist groups. But on the Freedom Trail, where the American
Revolution began, Mr. Menino says Chick-fil-A "doesn't send the right
message to the country. We're a leader when it comes to social justice and
opportunities for all." Except for Christians, who are about as welcome in
Stand for natural marriage, and
you'll get the left's version of social justice: an iron fist in a lavender
glove. The endgame is to criminalize Christianity and replace it with a
state-approved false religion that retains enough trappings to fool the unwary.
No, perhaps not in a town where Al
Capone's spirit animates its politics. Psalm 12:8 says, "The wicked freely
strut about when what is vile is honored among men."
As for Mr. Cathy, "We intend to
stay the course," he said. "We know that it might not be popular with
everyone, but thank the Lord, we live in a country where we can share our
values and operate on biblical principles."
I know where I'm having breakfast,
lunch and dinner on Aug. 1 – do you?
46
Wife's
trial a way to provide drama in a system that has already found her guilty
By Jonathan Manthorpe
All cultures have stories of the
noble male hero who is brought down by his attachment to a dark-souled and
scheming woman.
In the past century and a half,
In the mid-20th century,
Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek was believed by many to have been corrupted by
the power and money lust of his wife Soong May-ling.
And Mao Zedong's wife Jiang Qing who
was taken to court with her "Gang of Four" after the Great Helmsman's
death in 1976 to account for the horrors of the Cultural Revolution.
But it is grossly unfair and unjust
to blame the wives of Mao and Chiang for the depredations of their husbands.
Both men were vile in their own
right, and to blame their Dragon Lady wives for the evils of their regimes is
merely an easy way to avoid accepting the obvious.
What the Communist party seems bent
on avoiding now is any serious political instability flowing from the Bo/Gu
affair as the top echelons pre-pare a transfer of power to a new generation of
leaders later this year and early in 2013.
Bo Xilai, the son of Bo Yibo who was
one of the senior revolutionary generals and Mao's close comrade in arms, has a
strong coterie of support in the upper reaches of the party and also in the
People's Liberation Army.
He is one of the most high profile
and charismatic "princeling" sons of the founders of Communist China.
Bo has forged an unusually public political career first as reforming mayor of
the northeastern city of
Bo, who according to insiders
believes that he and not Vice-President Xi Jinping should be taking over the
presidency and party leadership later this year, needs to be treated
cautiously.
Damage limitation is dictating at
the moment that the resolution of the
The much larger questions about Bo's
corruption and his evident use of extra-legal tactics in his anti-crime
campaign while governor of
There are no political leaders in
Gu and her personal assistant are
due to go to trial Thursday for the murder of Heywood, who had helped her move
hundreds of millions of dollars out of
The exact motive for the murder is
unclear, but when it was announced on July 26 that she would be charged, the
statement said: "The evidence [of her guilt] is irrefutable and
substantial."
The way the legal system works in
47
Suit fights for right to access private care
Long
waits in public health system akin to death sentence, doctor heading lawsuit
claims
By Pamela Fayerman
Four B.C. patients, including two
students, a cancer survivor and a terminally ill cancer patient, have joined
private clinic owner Dr. Brian Day in a lawsuit against the Medical Services
Commission, the Minister of Health Services and the attorney-general of B.C.
All the patients suffered while
enduring long waits in the public system, according to the case, which contends
they should have the right to seek expedited care in the private system.
"B.C. effectively imposes the
death penalty on patients through its policy of rationed care," Day said,
at a press conference Tuesday in the board-room of the Heenan Blaikie law firm,
which is representing him in the case. Day expects it will go all the way to
the Supreme Court of Canada and ultimately reshape the health care system.
"Those guilty of supporting or enforcing this legislation [preventing
access to private care] while propagating the myth that such laws are good,
should reflect on whether they are guilty of complicity in the causation of ...
deaths," Day said, noting a poll of doctors found one-quarter had patients
who died while waiting for care.
He also referred to a landmark 2005
Quebec case (Chaoulli) in which the Supreme Court of Canada stated: "The
evidence shows that delays in the public health care system are wide-spread and
patients die as a result of waiting lists for public health care."
None of the plaintiff patients
attended the news conference. Day pleaded with the 20 journalists present to
respect the plaintiffs' privacy by not dogging them at home. He said no one
twisted their arms to take part in the suit and they won't be expected to pay
any legal fees in the case.
All the plaintiffs sought care from
Day or his clinics when they faced long waits in the public system. In a few of
the cases, Day did not charge them. He said that was on compassionate grounds,
given their financial and health circumstances, not because he wanted to
include them in the case.
The Canadian Constitution
Foundation, a registered charity, is collecting donations for the litigation,
as it is for a similar case in
"Our purpose in the current
litigation is to ask that B.C. patients suffering on waiting lists have the
same protection under the laws of
In court documents filed Tues-day,
all of the plaintiffs, including Day, co-owner of the Cambie Surgery Centre and
the Specialist Referral Clinic, contend that the Canadian Charter of Rights and
Freedoms should give them the right to seek expedited care in the private
system, just as "preferred beneficiaries" can for medically
necessary, publicly insured services.
Preferred beneficiaries, as defined
by federal and provincial statutes, include injured workers who are WorkSafeBC
claimants, RCMP officers, federal prisoners and federal armed forces members.
The four patients in the case are:
● Chris Chiavatti, a
Chiavatti saw Day instead, in late
2009, and was diagnosed with a tear in his meniscus. Within weeks, he had
surgery at the Cambie clinic. The court documents note the irony that if
Chiavatti's teacher, rather than the student, had been injured in the physed
class, "the teacher would have been eligible for expedited treatment
because of his status as an injured worker, covered by [WorkSafeBC]."
● Mandy Martens, a 36-year-old
The private procedure confirmed
colon cancer and then she had a resection operation at
● Krystiana Corrado, a 17-year-old
elite soccer player who attends Vancouver's Notre Dame high school who was put
on a year-long waiting list for surgery after injuring her knee. Earlier this
year, she had reconstruction surgery with Day and now has a chance at a soccer
scholarship, the court documents state.
Day said thousands of plain-tiffs
could have joined the suit but four is a manageable number.
The health minister was unavailable
but Ryan Jabs, spokesman for the Ministry of Health, said: "Our hearts go
out to patients and their families when they are struggling with a medical
illness and need care, and we want to assure the public that our entire health
care system provides appropriate care as quickly as possible.
"In the vast majority of cases,
people receive excellent care in a timely fashion. When a physician determines
that a patient has an urgent clinical need, the patient does not wait for
surgery," Jabs said, noting about 514,000 operations were per-formed in
B.C. in 2010-11 and of those, 214,000 were wait-listed while the rest were done
on an urgent basis.
48
MLA expenses now open to public scrutiny
Changes
come after damning report by auditor general
By Jonathan Fowlie
British Columbia MLAs will begin
publicly disclosing all travel and other related expenses starting this fall, a
legislative committee announced late Tuesday afternoon as it promised a new era
of openness and transparency.
"This will dramatically change
things," said Shane Simpson, a New Democratic Party MLA and a member of
the six-MLA Legislative Assembly Management Committee.
Liberal Gordon Hogg said actions,
not words, will be crucial: "I believe that if we do follow through on the
things that we've laid out that we will be in a position of being able to
generate [public] confidence.
"I don't think we can talk
ourselves out of things we've behaved ourselves into," said Hogg, also a
member of the LAMC, which oversees operation of the legislature and its
finances.
Following a three-hour closed door
meeting at the legislature, members of the until-now secretive committee vowed
they will begin conducting most of their business in public.
"Future LAMC meetings will be
open and structured in a manner similar to a select standing committee.
Meetings will be recorded by Hansard and will only be in camera when
needed," said LAMC chair and Speaker Bill Barisoff.
"Meetings will be held
quarterly or at the call of the chair should more discussions be
required."
That move alone is significant, given
that LAMC has only held two very brief private meetings in the past year.
Tuesday's announcement follows a
damning report by Auditor-General John Doyle into legislative assembly
finances, which found significant deficiencies in how expenses have been tracked
and reported.
Doyle said the books were in such
bad shape he could not yet tell if any money had gone missing.
He said the legislature did not have
the necessary oversight procedures in place, and that LAMC "does not
appear to be actively involved in the legislative assembly's operational
activities."
Heading into Tuesday's meeting,
Barisoff vowed to fix every issue the report raised.
"It is embarrassing, but we're
certainly in the process of trying to address all the findings of the
auditor-general," said Barisoff, also a Liberal MLA.
Asked why it took a public shaming
to introduce public transparency to the committee, members did not have an
answer, but said they were glad to see the changes that have come as a result.
"It's a gift horse. I'm just grateful
it happened," said committee member and NDP house leader John Horgan.
"Why did it take a crisis? That
we can talk about in the history books. Today we're making progress as a group
and that's a positive thing."
On MLA expenses, Barisoff said
itemized claims will be posted online every three months staring this October.
"The expenses will be put
online ... and anybody wanting to look at that can look at the receipts,"
he said.
Barisoff said the first disclosure
will include expenses going back to this past April.
Until now, MLA expenses have been
disclosed at the end of each fiscal year, and have only been presented as a
total amount for each MLA.
Last fiscal year, MLAs charged more
than $1.7 million in travel expenses.
The committee said it will also look
to find ways MLAs can report the $119,000 they get to run their constituency
offices, an item that cannot be reported now because of privacy concerns.
"The concern, of course, is the
fact that individual members are individual contractors, so they don't fall
under the same rules as the legislative assembly," said Barisoff, adding
this means the wages of people employed by an MLA cannot be publicly disclosed.
Barisoff said the committee will
work with Doyle and the province's information and privacy commissioner to
deter-mine how more information can be disclosed.
Barisoff said the committee will
also contract two experts for a period of six months to "enhance financial
controls at the legislature."
He said the experts have yet to be
named, but one will be from the office of the auditor-general, and the other
from the office of the government's comptroller-general.
Barisoff said the legislature has
also created the position of executive financial officer.
These moves are all in addition to
an internal audit the consulting firm Deloitte has been doing of the
legislature since April.
The committee said it shared its
recommendations via conference call with Doyle before making them public.
Doyle was in
Committee members said they hope the
measures will help restore confidence with the public as well.
"One of the key issues around
public trust is the issue of transparency and accountability. The first steps
for us, and I believe in many ways the most important and compelling steps in
what we're doing is opening this process up, allowing a light to shine on the
process and from that I think people will see how the operation works,"
said Simpson.
"We clearly need to deal with
the accounting failures of the system and that work will be done in bringing in
this additional expertise."
Horgan said he thinks the new moves
will mean a significant culture shift for the once-secretive committee.
"I think as a group today we
did a positive thing for our-selves, for our colleagues and for future
MLAs," he said.
"We have taken, in my view,
enormous steps forward."
LAMC will hold its first public
meeting at the end of August.
MLA EXPENDITURES IN PERSPECTIVE
A comparison of three provinces
assembled by The Sun using publicly available information.
Average MLA travel (2011-12):
$20,412
Average capital city living
allowance per MLA (2011-12): $14,390
Average salary per MLA (2011-12,
including ministerial pay): $118,151
Average MLA travel (2010-11):
$23,658
Average capital city living
allowance per MLA (2010-11): $23,276
Average salary per MLA (2010-11, not
including benefits, but including ministerial pay): $118,073
Average MPP travel (2011-12):
$14,336
Average capital city living
allowance per MPP (2011-12): $10,732
Average salary per MPP (2011-12,
including ministerial pay): $138,680
Sources:
49
Time for leaders to sheath swords in pipeline palaver
Harper,
Clark and
By Barbara Yaffe
. First, B.C. is legitimate in
demanding greater fiscal benefit from what's widely viewed in the province as
an environmentally risky, politically unpopular project.
British Columbians feel bombarded
with requests for piping from
Aside from the business com-munity,
people here would be happy to see the Enbridge proposal – even with its associated
construction jobs – disappear. They, of course, fear oil spills that will be as
inevitable as rain, and don't trust oil companies to properly carry out
spill-response plans or grant adequate financial compensation when mishaps
occur.
They also don't want to see a legal
dogfight, which surely will ensue with B.C. aboriginal groups opposing the
project.
Further, many regard Enbridge's
choice of Kitimat as a port for oil exports as egregiously irresponsible when
Prince Rupert, while more costly, is obviously the sounder environmental
choice, positioned on the Pacific coast.
● Second, B.C. has a strong
bargaining position in the dispute, which accounts for Premier Clark's bold
statements last week at the premiers' conference.
Also,
Through permitting, B.C. could impose
all manner of operating fees and taxes.
● Which suggests Clark may be
misfiring in asking
That is,
This may not be easy, however, since
an Enbridge spokesman last week dismissed the current controversy as "a
government-to-government issue."
●
For that matter, what about other
B.C. products transiting
And might
In fact, it's only practical and
reasonable that goods and services be permitted to travel unfettered across
● Finally, the federal cabinet cannot
afford to line up behind
In the 2011 election, Conservatives
won 21 seats in B.C. to the New Democrats' 12.
Early-July polling by Ekos Research
reveals significant provincial support has since shifted to Tom Mulcair's
party, which is opposed to Northern Gateway. Conservative sup-port – 45 per
cent in B.C. in the 2011 vote – is now down to 28 per cent.
Moreover, it's in Harper's and
Redford's interest to find an early compromise with
The three political leaders,
individually, each have compelling reasons to scale back the rhetoric.
50
Better than the alternative
National Post – July 26,
2012
By Tasha Kheiriddin
Next week, Quebecers will most
likely be plunged into an election, the third in five years. Premier Jean
Charest will be seeking his fourth mandate. Does he deserve it? Based on the
last Leger Marketing poll, one third of Quebecers would answer yes, another third
would pass the torch to Pauline Marois’ Parti Québécois and the rest are split
between Francois Legault’s Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ), the provincial Green
Party and the socialist Québec Solidaire.
Rewind eight months, and both Mr.
Charest and Ms. Marois looked as though they were on their way out. Mr.
Legault’s yet unnamed party seemed poised to sweep the province, capitalizing
on public fatigue with both major parties. The Liberals stood accused of
corruption tied to the province’s construction industry, with Mr. Charest
fighting the holding of an inquiry into the matter. Meanwhile, Ms. Marois was
battling for her political life amid rumours that former Bloc Québécois leader
Gilles Duceppe was gunning for her job.
What changed? As they say in
politics: events, dear boy, events. In November 2011, Mr. Charest announced the
Charbonneau Commission to begin hearings into the corruption scandal. That same
month the CAQ attained party status and began to come under public scrutiny. By
February, its milquetoast platform and merger with the Action démocratique had
started driving down support. At the same time, Mr. Duceppe rethought his
ambitions and Ms. Marois survived to fight another day, earning the sobriquet
“the concrete lady.”
And then, on March 22, 2012, the
main event:
Despite the havoc they wreaked, both
major parties should thank the students, for their antics provided more than a
distraction: They created a paradigm shift in public discourse. The discussion
quickly broadened beyond initial demands for a reversal of planned tuition
hikes to a full-scale questioning of the role of the state in
The result is that in this election,
rather than a stark choice between federalism and separatism, voters will be
asked to choose between two visions of
There is another important
difference between the two main parties, which Mr. Charest correctly identified
after the recent announcement that former student leader Leo Bureau Blouin will
run for the PQ. It’s their positions on respect for democracy and the rule of
law. While Mr. Blouin was a moderate compared to some of his colleagues, it
remains true that the student movement represented the triumph of mob rule.
Only one third of all students supported it. The demonstrators ignored court
injunctions sought by their fellow students to compel classes to continue. They
terrorized fellow students in their classrooms, blocked access to class, planted
smoke bombs in metro stations and shut down bridges and roads. And they
justified it by saying that they were on the side of “democracy.”
That’s not democracy – it’s anarchy.
The student movement was no “Arab Spring”, as its leaders would have Quebecers
believe. Unlike their Middle Eastern counterparts,
Mr. Charest was right to stand firm
in the face of the protestors. But is taking this position enough to merit
another term in office? Very few leaders win four terms even when their record
is good, and Mr. Charest’s record, on many levels, is not.
By these measures, Mr. Charest does
not deserve to be re-elected. But unfortunately, the PQ would be worse. Not
because, as the Premier claims, Ms. Marois’ agenda is to hold another
referendum on separation. But because on fundamental issues – respect for law,
order and the voter – the PQ has made its bed with those who would overturn
those institutions, and create a new Leviathan in the process.
51
By Jock Finlayson
This summer marks the third
anniversary of the economic recovery that began following the 2008 global
financial crisis and recession that descended upon much of the world in its
wake. By any measure it has been a subdued economic rebound, particularly for
many of the “advanced” countries that belong to the Organization for Economic
Cooperation and Development (OECD).
Although a few OECD countries,
including
A little more than halfway through
2012, the signs point to both a faltering global economy and a deteriorating
near-term picture in
In the eurozone – consisting of 17
European nations that have adopted a single currency and central bank – GDP
growth is close to zero, reflecting positive but low growth in the “northern”
members like
A glance at the daily headlines
shows the eurozone mired in a serious economic crisis that features
ever-widening performance gaps between “core” and “peripheral” members,
inadequately capitalized banks, a general drying up of credit, and sky-high
government borrowing costs for countries like
Turning to the
Recently, the
At the heart of this wealth shock
was a steep fall in housing prices across much of the country. Today, almost
one-quarter of American homeowners with mortgages find themselves with
“negative equity” in what, for most, is their single most important asset.
What about the emerging markets,
whose brisk growth arguably has been the main factor keeping the world economy
afloat since 2007?
Unfortunately, many of these
economies are also losing momentum. Growth is slowing in
All in all, it’s now prudent to
scale back the outlook for
In today’s world,
52
Winning a war by any means necessary
National Post – July 21,
2012
By Conrad Black
The assassination on Wednesday of
the Syrian defence and deputy defence ministers (the latter of whom was
President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law) and a senior general, raises
interesting questions, and not just about the life expectancy of the blood-stained
Assad regime.
The rules of thumb in insurrections
are that if the regime won’t fire live ammunition at the insurrectionists, and
isn’t a democratically chosen government, it is in serious trouble; if it does
give the order to fire and the order is not followed, it is doomed; and if it
gives such an order and it is followed and the insurrection continues, the
regime will not last indefinitely, as conscript forces won’t shoot on their own
people for long.
The Shah of Iran and
As I have written here (and
elsewhere) before, the only morally consistent way to treat recidivist
terrorist states such as
As the steady escalation of
terrorist outrages prior to the infamous attacks on the
The authors of Wednesday’s
The point is not that the coalition
of Syrian rebels who’ve risen up against the Assad regime is a completely
desirable group; it obviously includes some terroristic fanatics, and these
jihadists may even be preeminent in some places. The point is that the West
should be assisting the opposition in
The Iranian-sponsored (according to
Benjamin Netayahu) attack on Israeli tourists in Bulgaria this week, killing
seven and injuring 30, is another indication, added to so many, of the need for
the application of counter-force to Iran. For some still unknowable reason,
rational
The Obama administration has
inflicted some inconvenience on
Margaret Thatcher famously said, in
refusing to join sanctions against
At the risk of seeming to flirt with
a notion of the redemptive powers of assassination, and suicide-bombing in
particular – and I repeat my disapproval in principle of both murder (but not
in self-defence) and suicide – if Count von Stauffenberg, who placed the bomb
in his brief case beside Hitler in the Nazi leader’s headquarters at Rastenberg
on July 20, 1944, had not left the building to save himself, but had stayed and
moved his brief case when Hitler moved, the death camps and the rest of the
Nazi murder apparatus would almost certainly have consumed the lives of at
least 1.5 million fewer innocents (including Anne Frank and Dietrich
Bonhoffer); the war in Europe would have ended at least eight months earlier,
saving another million or so lives, and Stauffenberg would have died only one
day before he did, and less unpleasantly than, as he did, before a firing
squad. He would have spared many hundreds of Hitler’s victims among his alleged
fellow-plotters, including Field Marshal Irwin Rommel and Admiral Wilhelm
Canaris and the scores of brave Germans dragged through “Raving Roland”
Freisler’s infamous People’s Court and strangled with piano wire, gruesome
spectacles which were recorded on film for the Fuehrer’s personal delectation.
This was the
When it comes to terrorism, it is
the motive, even more than the act, that is wicked. Most of us in relatively
free countries are placatory and seek peace; but if we are pacifists, we will
be endlessly assaulted and ultimately enslaved. This is why the West must
assist the Syrian opposition and prevent a militarily nuclear
53
Court’s awful ruling taxes our patients
By Robert Knight
When is a tax not a tax? Answer:
When you're busy pushing a major expansion of government like Obamacare. The
tax that is not a tax becomes a "penalty" or a "shared
responsibility payment" in the text of the bill. In campaign lingo, it becomes
an "investment."
That's what the Democrats told us
when they rammed Obamacare down
As soon as it hit the courts,
however, the tax that is not a tax morphed back into a tax as Mr. Obama's
attorneys justified it through Congress' Article I power to tax and spend. The
White House, which lambasted opponents for calling the mandate a tax, argued in
court that the mandate's enforcement under "Assessment" and
"Collection" are right out of the code for the Internal Revenue
Service, which will collect the tax, er, penalty, er, uh, tax. Yeah, that's it.
Keep in mind that the individual
mandate is only one of 20 new or higher taxes Obamacare imposes on American
families. Without the mandate, all parties agreed, Obamacare and those tax
increases would go down. People would avoid buying insurance until they get
sick, and the system would collapse.
Thursday's jaw-dropping 193-page
decision, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., sounds good at first
but ends like a bad novel. By a 5-4 margin, the court upheld the largest tax
increase in American history and a massive power grab imposed through trickery,
lies, smears, bribes and class warfare. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid even
managed to step on Christmas. Of course, none of this is germane to whether the
bill is constitutional. I just like reminding people of how it went down.
The ruling did curb the reach of the
commerce clause, the phrase that has empowered several generations of
power-hungry liberals, and that part must taste like sour milk in their
otherwise delicious smoothie. In his opinion, Justice Roberts wrote:
"Construing the Commerce Clause to permit Congress to regulate individuals
precisely becausethey are doing nothing would open a new and potentially vast
domain to congressional authority. Congress already possesses expansive power
to regulate what people do. Upholding the Affordable Care Act under the
Commerce Clause would give Congress the same license to regulate what people do
not do."
Citing research that suggests
obesity is responsible for 10 percent of health care costs, or about $147
billion annually, the court warned about Congress' temptation to regulate,
saying, "Under the government's theory, Congress could address the diet
problem by ordering everyone to buy vegetables." Michelle, put down that
phone.
Even the court, at least at this
juncture, decided that would be a bit much: As Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in
his dissent, joined by Justices Samuel Anthony Alito Jr., Anthony M. Kennedy
and Clarence Thomas: "If Congress can reach out and command even those
furthest removed from an interstate market to participate in the market, then
the Commerce Clause becomes a font of unlimited power, or in Hamilton's words,
'the hideous monster whose devouring jaws ... spare neither sex nor age, nor
high nor low, nor sacred nor profane.' "
Justice Roberts' take isn't as
colorful, but it does the job: "The Commerce Clause is not a general
license to regulate an individual from cradle to grave."
That's great, but who needs the
commerce clause when you can justify the same thing via Congress' power to
"lay and collect taxes?" The ruling provides an expansive view of the
power to tax: "Suppose Congress enacted a statute providing that every
taxpayer who owns a house without energy-efficient windows must pay $50 to the
IRS. ... No one would doubt that this law imposed a tax, and was within
Congress' power to tax."
Really? We can be forced to buy a
type of window – or else? No wonder the court thinks it's OK to tax someone
just for breathing and not buying health insurance.
The ruling, as bad as it is, does
whack the federal government's ability to punish naughty states that don't take
more Medicaid candy from the nice men in the parked van with D.C. plates. The
feds can dole out Medicaid money with strings, but "[w]hat Congress is not
free to do is to penalize states that choose not to participate in that new
program by taking away their existing Medicaid funding."
Most important, the court's shocking
decision sets up a scenario similar to the one that produced the Tea Party-GOP
tsunami in 2010. Some observers credit Justice Roberts with Machiavellian
intent, saying he has guaranteed Mitt Romney's election. Others say the chief
justice's ruling, combined with the immigration decision against most of
Arizona's law, is proof that he has "gone Washington" and is worrying
about what's said at cocktail parties, like many previously conservative GOP
appointees before him whose names I won't mention (Justices Kennedy, Sandra Day
O'Connor, David H. Souter, John Paul Stevens and Earl Warren).
I hope Justice Roberts is sounder
than that, even if this decision rots. His opinion might simply reflect his
conservative bent that big issues need to be decided at the ballot box, not in
the courts. Indeed, Justice Roberts wrote: "Members of this court are
vested with the authority to interpret the law; we possess neither the
expertise nor the prerogative to make policy judgments. Those decisions are
entrusted to our nation's elected leaders, who can be thrown out of office if
the people disagree with them. It is not our job to protect the people from the
consequences of their political choices."
No, the court won't save us. We must
get involved in November's election as if our children's and grandchildren's
future hangs in the balance.
That's not too taxing for
freedom-loving Americans, is it?
54
Will the last American please turn off the light when he leaves
GrassTopsUSA
Exclusive Commentary
By Don Feder
In 1939,
Now playing, “Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter,” which presents the Great
Emancipator as a cross between Professor Van Helsing and the Amazing Spiderman.
Four things happened last week – the week before our country’s 236th birthday –
that illustrate
One – Chief Justice John
Roberts betrayed the Constitution and
The decision in NFIB v. Sebelius didn't kill the Constitution, but
further enabled a government which couldn’t have been imagined even 50 years
ago. When a case comes before them, most federal judges first decide on the
outcome they want, then rationalize it based on a highly imaginative reading of
the Constitution, the Magna Carta or the Code of Hammurabi.
Two – In an interview with NPR, Marine Commandant Gen. James Amos (the
only service chief who publicly opposed repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell) said
if a homosexual Marine wanted to bring his “partner” to a Marine Corps ball,
“I’m fine with it.” From the Halls of Montezuma to the shores of LGBT?
August will mark the 70th anniversary of the Marines landing on
Three – Attorney General Eric Holder became the first sitting member of a
president’s cabinet to be held in contempt of Congress, for trying to cover up
Fast and Furious, the operation where the BATF provided 2,500 guns to Mexican
drug cartels to prove that we need tighter gun control. The guns were used to
commit 200 murders in
Holder’s stonewalling is what you’d expect from the most lawless administration
in our history. The president refuses to defend the Defense of Marriage Act
(violating his duty to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed”). He
created a blanket amnesty for up to one million illegal aliens, something that
just months ago he said he didn’t have the power to do. He refuses to defend
our borders, then sues states for doing the job he won’t do. This year, he and
Holder have launched an all-out-offensive against states that are trying to
prevent election fraud with voter ID laws.
Obama rules by executive order, scorns our Judeo-Christian heritage, panders to
Islam, is responsible for the three biggest deficits in our history (the only
deficits in excess of $1 trillion), has had an increase in unemployment on his
watch (despite massive stimulus spending), and pushes collectivism at every
opportunity – and he’s running from 1 to 5 points ahead of Romney in almost
every poll. In a sane nation, his standing in the polls would be even with the
candidate of the Socialist Workers Party, which, in a way, he is.
Four – The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) urged its
local offices to have parties to encourage more people to sign up for food
stamps. (“Throw a great party. Host a special event where people mix and
mingle!”) SNAP is also spending $2.5 million for radio ads, to encourage more
dependency.
Food stamp spending has doubled under Obama, who nevertheless is haunted by the
fear that somewhere in this fair land, someone who qualifies for the program
isn’t enrolled. In the 1970s, one in 50 Americans was getting food stamps.
Today, it’s one in 7 – 46.4 million. Welfare spending is the health of the
Democrat Party.
Eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow our economy will collapse. As of June 30,
the National Debt was $15.78 trillion, $5 trillion of that added by the man who
solemnly promised nothing but balanced budgets, as a candidate. From 2007 to
2010, the nation’s GDP grew by 4.26%, while the National Debt exploded by 61%.
The Debt is growing by $2 million a minute. Each year, the federal workforce
alone costs approximately $447 billion – and Obama thinks the public sector is
starving.
The dole also rises. In 1980, not that long ago by human reckoning, transfer
payments accounted for 11.7% of all income in the
Moral bankruptcy always precedes fiscal bankruptcy.
In the Land of the Free, children are being killed in utero at the rate of two
or three a minute – 1.2 million a year. Since Roe v. Wade, more than 55
million Americans have died before they were born – summarily executed in the
name of choice. A woman can choose to have her unborn child killed, but soon
won’t be able to buy popcorn at the movies in
As of 2009, 41% of children born in the
Each year, Americans spend $12 billion on Internet pornography and 19 million
new cases of sexually transmitted diseases are reported. There are 12.8 million
Americans who are classified as regular drug users, while 36 million have tried
cocaine.
Based on his 30-year study of the life cycles of civilizations – including
In “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire,” Gibbon identified five reasons why
the glory that was
1. The rapid increase of divorce
which weakened the family, the foundation of society
2. A tax burden which crushed the middle class to pay for free food for the
plebs and “entertainment” to keep them docile – or bread and circuses (One
emperor imported grain from
3. The pursuit of pleasure as life’s highest ambition. Increasingly violent
gladiatorial contests.
4. Legions assigned to vague missions. Barbarians at the gates, who were
eventually incorporated into the empire and then overthrew it.
5. The decline of religion – ceremonies without substance. Religion that
surrendered its role of guiding the nation’s destiny.
Historian Will Durant, author of the
11-volume “Story of Civilization,” essentially agreed with both Toynbee and
Gibbon. “A great nation is not conquered from without until it has destroyed
itself within. The essential causes of
We’ve got it all, and then some – almost 1 in 2 marriages ending in divorce
(add the devaluation of marriage by the legalization of ersatz unions), the
highest effective corporate tax rate in the world, dulling our senses with
mindless entertainment (60-inch plasma TVs, iphones, “American Idol,” “Dancing
With The Stars”), the ideology that animates the barbarians at our gates
honored as the “religion of peace,” and traditional religion on skids.
According to the Francis Schaeffer Institute, every year in
Milestones in our cultural death-march include the 1963 school-prayer
decision, Roe v. Wade, our growing energy dependence, the abandonment of
our allies (from the Shah to Mubarak), a very selective War on Terrorism (some
get drones, others get subsides), raw carnality on display on cable television,
in the movies and on the Internet, public schools and higher education that
imperil our national existence, purging religion from our public life, news
media that indoctrinate, porous borders, and exchanging self-government for
rule by emperors in black robes.
Given how far gone we are, is there any reason to keep fighting?
At the dedication of a cemetery at the Civil War’s bloodiest battlefield,
Do we want all of our war dead – from Bunker Hill to
If so, then, as Mr. Lincoln prophesied, the American idea of one nation, under
God, with liberty and justice for all surely will “perish from this earth,” and
humanity will enter a Dark Age more savage and terrifying than the one which
followed the fall of
55
Jason Kenney couldn’t ‘kill compassion’ if he tried
National Post – July 17,
2012
By Marni Soupcoff
When a young protestor was thrown
out of a Conservative party barbecue over the weekend for interrupting a speech
by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney, I expected complaints. Charges of police
brutality, or censorship, or closed-mindedness. Instead, the protestor in
question, 17-year-old Bashir Mohamed, has been quite cheerful about the whole
affair.
“The police were very nice,” he said
not long after being released from police custody with no charges. “They just
wanted to figure out what was going on. I have nothing against the police.”
Mohamed did fall while being pulled
out of the event, but he says he was not hurt. (He was still able to shout out
“Jason Kenney is killing compassion with his health care cuts!” in the
process.) In fact, the only thing the teenager, who says he was born in a
Kenyan refugee camp, is now requesting for is a 10-minunte, one-on-one debate
with Kenney about the government’s cuts to health care for refugees.
Mohammed gets bonus points for not
inventing lame police brutality claims, or heading straight to a human rights
commission to whine about being silenced by the man. He has quite a lot of
nerve, however, to suggest that rudely shouting at Kenney during a talk
qualifies him above all other critics for face time with the minister.
Besides, it seems unlikely Mohammed
could add much to the debate. Because arguments against the cuts – that they
will harm the most vulnerable people in society, that they will cost the
government more in health-care costs in the long run – have been made quite
vociferously since the changes to the Interim Federal Health Program (IFHP)
were first announced. Mohammed could call Kenney cruel and inhumane. But he
wouldn’t be the first to do so. There’s already a “We’re Ashamed of Jason
Kenney” petition available online for the signing.
Anyway, we already know what Jason
Kenney would say in such a 10-minute battle, too. All refugees are still
entitled to the same level of health care as Canadian citizens, which is to say
all necessary medical treatment is covered. The cuts only apply to
supplementary coverage for things like dental and vision care and medication – things
the rest of us pay for out of our own pockets – and even then, the cuts only
apply to some asylum claimants. Bogus claimants will be deterred. The federal
government will save $100-million over five years. And given the government’s
other changes to the refugee claim process, provincial governments should save
even more money, since false claimants will spend less time in the country.
And so on and so forth. The
interesting thing is that the debate seems to focus on how big a deal it is if
refugee claimants can’t access dental care or medication. But why do we assume
that ending government coverage of these things inevitably dooms refugees to go
without them? Isn’t that an underestimation of both the claimants’ resilience
and our society’s level of caring?
First the resilience: Legitimate
refugee seekers come from terrible situations and arrive with few resources or
contacts in a new country. Landing a job in
There is help available for
claimants searching for work, in any case, from charitable organizations – everything
from the Red Cross to Catholic outreach ministries to provincial
not-for-profits – which brings us to Canada’s level of caring.
Despite what Bashir Mohamed may think, Jason Kenney could not kill compassion
in
Far from banishing refugee claimants
to inevitable misery, Jason Kenney is reminding us of what living in a
compassionate country really means.
56
Supreme Court backs guilt by association
Ruling
supports police fight against crime gangs
By Peggy Curran
Should you happen to get caught
delivering cocaine for the mob, here's a tip. Playing dumb is not a strong
defence.
If the people you are dealing with
walk like the Mafia and sound like the Hells Angels, the Supreme Court of
Canada said Friday you shouldn't be surprised to find you've been cited under a
law that outlaws association with a criminal organization to commit a crime – even
if you aren't a card-carrying member of the gang.
That's good news for police, who in
recent years have relied on large-scale raids, under-cover moles, wiretapping
and elite squads to crack the whip on gangsterism.
The ruling appears to open the way
for police to close in on street gangs, cybercrime and other types of criminal
activity that depend on structure, leadership and planning.
Section 467.13 of the Criminal Code,
the guilt-by-association clause, had been challenged as vague and
unconstitutional.
But Friday, in a 7-0 ruling, the
country's highest court said it was designed to tackle the specific problems
posed by motorcycle gangs, drug cartels and crime families.
"Organized criminal entities
thrive and expand their reach by developing specializations and dividing labour
accordingly; fostering trust and loyalty within the organization; sharing
customers, financial resources and insider knowledge; and in some
circum-stances, developing a reputation for violence," wrote Justice
Morris Fish. "A group that operates with even a minimal degree of
organization over a period of time is bound to capitalize on these advantages
and acquire a level of sophistication and expertise that poses an enhanced
threat to the surrounding community."
The case dates to 2006, when a
Venneri was convicted on eight
counts for his role in sup-plying Dauphin, the drug king-pin, a man the court
identifies simply as D.
His lawyer appealed, and argued
Venneri was not a member of the drug-trafficking ring headed by D, but had been
called upon as a backup.
In restoring a charge of involvement
with organized crime, the Supreme Court rejected Venneri's quibbling about what
"in association with" means.
"There is ample evidence that V
knew that D was operating a large drug-trafficking organization – or made
himself wilfully blind to that," Fish wrote, citing evidence showing
Venneri had bought cocaine from Dauphin in the past and later became "an
important pillar" of his supply network.
The Supreme Court decision is
intended to clear some of the ambiguities arising from the murky question of
what constitutes a criminal organization.
Fish argues the justice sys-tem
needs to stay flexible when dealing with the underworld. The court cautioned
against law enforcement officials using Section 467.13 too loosely.
"Structure and continuity are
still important features that differentiate criminal organizations from other
groups of offenders that sometimes act in concert," Fish wrote.
There are plenty of old-fashioned
offences to handle criminal conspiracies that don't qualify as gangland
activity, he said.
Fish said the law must not be
interpreted so rigidly that it only covers "the stereotypical model of
organized crime – that is, to the highly sophisticated, hierarchical and
monopolistic model."
"Some criminal entities that do
not fit the conventional paradigm of organized crime may nonetheless, on
account of their cohesiveness and endurance, pose the type of heightened threat
contemplated by the legislative scheme."
57
S&M Mountie won't be asked to quit
But
Bond disappointed by officer's actions
By Lori Culbert
Justice Minister Shirley Bond is
disappointed and unhappy about the actions of a Coquitlam police officer who
posted online sexual images of him-self domineering women, but stopped short of
demanding the corporal resign.
"I am clearly unhappy about the
kind of message this incident sends to the public. It's important that British
Columbians have confidence in the men and women who serve in our communities
every day as police officers," Bond said in a statement Thursday.
"We expect more from our police
and I am disappointed in this particular situation."
The
Bond noted Brown has been placed on
administrative duties and said she could not comment further until a review of
the RCMP's handling of the case is completed by an outside police agency.
Coquitlam Mayor Richard Stewart did
not return several messages Thursday asking for comment on whether he has any
concerns about Brown working in his city.
Hilla Kerner, who works at Vancouver
Rape Relief and Women's Shelter, said she and her colleagues were out-raged by
the thought of a police officer engaging in sexualized images that portray
women in a demeaning way.
"It is absurd to think that his
personal, private behaviour has nothing to do with his professional role as a
police officer," she said.
Kerner added it is stories like this
one that have made some women hesitate to report sexual assaults to police.
"We do not trust this man, and
the agency he is part of, to protect women from male violence," she said.
But
"While it may be emotionally
questionable to onlookers, in fact, ethically speaking, there is nothing wrong
here. We have a tendency to equate people with their professional standing and
that is unfair," Kluge said.
"One should never confuse an
emotional reaction with what is ethically appropriate."
"It is possible to have an
interest in S&M photos, for example, and not necessarily have an aversive
[unpleasant] personality in your personal life or any other aspect of your
life," Paulhus said. "In particular, the S&M community seems to
be a group of people who are normal in every respect, except for their interest
in sadistic and/or masochistic activities."
Paulhus allowed such research might
be surprising to some, but said the results shouldn't be applied any
differently to Brown because he is a police officer. "Other than for
public relations purposes – it is going to look pretty bad because of the
association of any kind of unusual sexual behaviour."
That is of little comfort to Lilliane
Beaudoin, whose sister Dianne Rock was one of the 26 women Coquitlam pig farmer
Robert (Willy) Pickton was accused of killing. Beaudoin accused Brown, who
played a small role in the Pickton investigation, of discriminating against
women in the photos.
"To me, he broke the oath he
took when he became a police officer. I think it is disgusting and he should be
reprimanded and should lose his job," Beaudoin said.
A now-retired
Dickson also took umbrage with
Brown's comment to The Sun that there were no victims in his photos.
"As [a] former police officer
still working with the women in the Downtown Eastside, I found it extremely
offensive that the officer would suggest there was no victim," Dickson
said in an email to The Sun.
Maureen McGrath, a nurse who hosts
CKNW's Sunday Night Sex Show, said many people are into consensual bondage and
submissive/masochistic sex acts. "Photographing these scenes is [however],
unnecessary and disgusting, and to post them even worse," she said.
McGrath added it is disturbing
behaviour by a police officer: "the very person one would look to help us
in this kind of crisis."
58
Survival tips for the next generation to get started in
life
By Stephen Hume
I too was once a teenager faced with
the scary, exhilarating, daunting prospect of leaving home for a first
full-time job in a distant city.
My late mother sat me down and
matter-of-factly advised on survival tactics.
They have served me well.
As a new generation of teenagers
prepares to depart home for the world of work, bills, taxes and other
distractions, I thought I'd share them.
Top of the list for useful tips was
her ironclad rule for bank accounts. There's only one – more money comes in
than goes out, no matter what. For a young person, running in the red is like
trying to swim in the tar pits – there's only one direction, down, and on a
small income, once in, it's almost impossible to crawl out.
Furthermore, pay yourself first.
Always divert a small fixed amount right off the top of every paycheque into a
savings account and forget you ever had it. It's there for that day of disaster
you never foresaw.
There's no free money. Educate
yourself about interest rates. Credit cards are convenient, but the rates are
not. Until you figure out how to manage credit, restrict purchases on plastic
to what you know you can pay before the grace period ends. Be ruthless about
this.
Don't mistake what you want for what
you need. There's a vast industry out there dedicated to persuading you to want
what you don't need and to need what you don't want. Don't be that sucker the
hucksters hope will be born every minute. Learn the power of "No!"
Especially said to yourself.
Start a file, even in a shoebox.
File all your receipts, debit slips, paid bills, cheque stubs and bank
statements, even if you just open the lid and toss them in. The day you get
your first rude notice that a bill hasn't been paid when it has, or that your
warranty has expired when it hasn't, you'll thank that shoebox. Ditto for
income tax; remember, tax collectors don't care whether you live or die, just
that you pay – and if you don't pay promptly, you'll wish you had died.
Used is useful. Today's fashion is
tomorrow's trash for some with disposable income. But anyone with imagination
can dress with flair from the consignment and thrift racks. You can furnish an
apartment with what less discerning consumers think unfashionable. And the
difference in performance between last year's laptop and next month's model is
almost imperceptible; why pay a premium for what you won't notice?
Friends are made, not born. You have
to make an effort to find them and when you do, you have to invest in nurturing
the friendship – which, please remember, is not all about you, but about them.
Sound friends will bless you in ways
you can't imagine, not least by good-naturedly telling you when you're being a
jerk or foolish.
Sound friends will bless you in ways
you can't imagine, not least by good-naturedly telling you when you're being a
jerk or foolish.
Speaking of friends, my mother
advised, there will come a day when you meet somebody for whom you wish to
prepare a meal, not hockey snacks. Here is the menu she bequeathed. It is
simple, cheap, elegant, can be whipped up on the spur of the moment and works
for dinner, lunch or breakfast.
The perfect salad: one bunch of
fresh spinach, stalks removed; toss with a bit olive oil and balsamic vinegar;
toss it again with walnut halves and bits of creamy blue cheese.
The perfect omelette: all you need
are eggs, a small piece of brie cheese (you can substitute just about any
cheese but grate it if it's a hard one) and steamed fresh asparagus (canned
works, too), or some fresh spin-ach leaves, sliced black olives, chopped
tomato, sliced avocado or whatever takes your fancy.
Use two to three eggs per omelette,
depending on appetite; whisk frothy with a table-spoon of water; pour into a
hot, greased or non-stick fry pan over medium heat and when eggs just begin to
set, lay thin slices of brie or grated cheese topped with asparagus – or
whatever – on half the omelette; when firm enough, fold the naked side over the
dressed with a spatula and slide onto a serving plate. Garnish with a sprig of
parsley and alternating rounds of red and green peppers.
The perfect romantic dessert:
separated egg yolks – two per serving; sugar – one tablespoon for each yolk;
sherry – two table-spoons for each yolk (supermarket cooking Marsala works just
fine); a cup of whipping cream and a pint of fresh strawberries (or
blackberries, blueberries or whatever).
Slice the strawberries, toss them in
some sugar to coat and set aside. Whip the cream until stiff and set aside.
Vigorously whisk together egg yolks, sugar and sherry until frothy and yellow.
Heat the egg mixture in a double boiler or a steel mixing bowl above – but not
touching – simmering water. Whisk the sauce until it is thick and frothy. Fold
it gently into the whipped cream with a spatula. Spoon this warm over the
berries. Or put your berries into some cups, top with the sauce and put it in
the fridge to chill. Either way, it will be a hit.
For a beverage, just sparkling apple
juice or orange juice with a buzz of ginger ale.
Finally, for the neophyte's kitchen,
two little cookbooks (find them used): Frugal Feasts by Mary Spilsbury Ross
provides more than a hundred inexpensive, easy recipes for single-serving
meals; and The Book of Ramen by Ron Konzak provides scores of surprisingly
tasty recipes using instant Asian noodles and other simple ingredients from the
cupboard.
So there you go, sound finances,
fine friends and good cheap food. What else does anyone need to get started in
life?
59
Doctors lag behind public on assisted suicide
Many
physicians are uncomfortable with the idea of assisted suicide and the idea
they would be involved
By Sharon Kirkey
A majority of Canadians are in
favour of legalizing medically assisted suicide, but the doctors expected to
help carry out this most difficult decision aren't so sure whether they want to
be involved.
Earlier this month, a B.C. court
struck down
The issue is fraught with emotion
and controversy – so much that many doctors declined interviews for this story.
Some said they still haven't sorted out their own views; for others, the issue
is just too controversial to touch.
Doctors are divided because the
concept of euthanasia, administering a lethal injection of barbiturates, with
or without muscle relaxants, with the sole, specific intent to end a life, or
doctor-assisted suicide, where the doctor provides a lethal prescription and
the patient uses the drugs to kill himself, "is not part of our formation,
it's not part of the values that make up medical practice," says Dr. Ken
Flegel, an internal medicine doctor in Montreal and a senior associate editor
of the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
In the United Kingdom, when 1,001
doctors were asked whether they would personally want the option of a medically
assisted death if they were terminally ill and suffering unbearably, 33 per
cent said yes; 34 per cent said no. The remainder were either unsure or chose
not to answer.
To some degree, doctors say,
physician-assisted dying is already happening. It can sometimes take ever-increasing
amounts of morphine to control terminal pain; morphine at high doses depresses
breathing.
Some doctors believe a change in law
is all but coming given the social movement toward greater patient autonomy and
choice. It's about control, says Dr. Peter Kirk, director of the division of
palliative care at the
"If you're the kind of person
who's been an independent person – who's done everything for themselves, and
wanted to do everything for themselves – and then you become this person who
has to have their bottom wiped and their mouth cleaned and helped with their
feeding ... I think we would all fear that a bit."
But there's an
"uncomfortableness," he says, with giving someone the power to end
another person's life when they say they want it to end.
"That worries me a little bit,
the kind of slippery slope."
Most patients, he says, choose the
opposite, telling him: I want every day you can give me.
"Personally, I have nothing
against physician-assisted suicide or even euthanasia, but don't ask me to do
it. Because my role is that, if I see a patient suffering, I will do everything
in my power to relieve that suffering."
The Canadian Medical Association,
which opposes euthanasia and medically assisted suicide, says equal access to
palliative care for all Canadians is needed before any changes in the law can
be considered. The best palliative care requires an "exquisite
attentiveness" to physical, psychological and spiritual issues, says Dr.
Harvey Max Chochinov, Canada Research Chair in Palliative Care and a
distinguished professor in the department of psychiatry at the
In
Chochinov said the issue is how
having assisted-suicide as an option "would affect how we practise
medicine and how society approaches those who are vulnerable and those whose
lives are drawing to a close."
Doctors "who feel less adept
at, and are less exposed to, care for the dying" are more likely to
endorse "death-hastening options," he said, and that hopelessness – whether
it lives in the patient or the doctor – "can be infectious."
60
Much of English
Half
of people outside la belle province don't feel separation would affect them
By Mark Kennedy
Half of Canadians living outside
The nationwide survey on Canadian
values commissioned by Postmedia News and Global TV suggests the national
landscape has changed, with a general election possible in
Whereas Canadians once watched to
see if the Parti Quebecois – which advocates separatism – would emerge as an
election winner, the trend out-side the province is that people simply don't
care.
"Over the years, it's just one
of those things where you get threatened so many times," Ipsos Reid
president Darrell Bricker said in an interview Thursday. "I think people
have sort of walked away from this debate and the country has moved in a new
direction."
The poll found high levels of
support for bilingualism, at 61 per cent, and 59 per cent believe any senior
official in the federal government should be fluent in English and French.
Bricker said the survey shows many
Canadians no longer feel threatened by the thought of
Albertans (56 per cent) are the most
likely to say Quebec separation is no big deal, followed by British Columbians
(51 per cent) and Ontarians (50 per cent). Quebeckers themselves do think it's
important – an overwhelming 92 per cent said it's a big deal. But that doesn't
necessarily mean support for separatism is strong.
The pollster says there doesn't
appear to be strong support for sovereignty in
Those findings within
However, they are much different
from the razor-thin margin in the 1995
In recent days, the federal
government has been preparing for the possibility that national unity and
But Bricker said it's important to
consider that much has changed to shift public opinion about
"
The figures come from two Ipsos Reid
polls carried out June 11-18 and June 20-25. The first involved 1,101 Canadians
and had a margin error of 3.0 percentage points for national results. The
second involved 1,009 Canadians and had a national margin of error of 3.1
percentage points.
61
Proud of the oil sands
National Post – June 28,
2012
By Father Raymond J. De
Souza
As Thomas Mulcair can attest, it is
rather easier to speak about the oil sands than it is to actually get up here
and see what is going on.
Three years ago, upon the occasion
of the merger of oil sands pioneer Suncor with Petro-Canada, this column
examined some of the ethical questions posed by oil sands development. The
argument then was just emerging about "ethical oil," namely that
The argument is actually stronger
than comparative politics, with "democratic" oil trumping
"tyrannical" oil. Only some 25% of the world's oil reserves are
developed by private companies; the vast majority are state enterprises. Of
that quarter of global reserves, half are in the oil sands. The oil sands are a
minority phenomenon in the oil business – development by private companies
subject to the rule of law, accountable to public shareholders, and disciplined
by market forces. Those displeased with the oil sands can lobby Suncor and the
other companies operating here, they can shape the public policy environment,
they can even invest and become shareholders, something rather easier to do in
Indeed, the oil sands exist in a
public environment shaped largely by their adversaries. Being toured around for
the day by the folks at Suncor, I had to remind myself that energy production
was the whole point of the endeavour. Aside from the actual extraction plant,
where the liquefied black gold oozes forth, all the talk is about the environment,
aboriginal relations and community involvement. It's almost as if an enormous
social development project – recreation centres, health clinics, mobile
dentistry units, school funding, investment in aboriginal enterprises,
immigration assistance, translation services – was the main task, with a
lucrative sideline in energy production to fund it all.
Without irony, our earnest guide
spoke glowingly of the vast bus network employed by the various companies to
get thousands of workers to the sites, proudly boasting of the reduced
emissions the bus fleet achieves.
Environmentalists ought to be
pleased that the proudest boast of the oil sands is not their oil production
but their environmental reclamation projects, and that new technology that may
obviate the need for tailings ponds altogether.
Like all first-time visitors to the
oil sands, I was struck by the scale of the projects. Some are apparently
scandalized by this, but the sheer human ingenuity behind the engineering is
surely inspiring. From a scientific and technological standpoint, there is much
to take pride in, a global success story developed right here in
Many objections arise from a lack of
comparative sensibility. The gigantic shovels and trucks do create mining pits
of vast size, but the utter vastness of
It is true that an open pit mine is
not a lovely thing, but then energy generation is rarely aesthetically
pleasing. It is not obvious that a large mine, destined to be reclaimed, is any
worse than the flooded land upstream of a hydroelectric dam, or the enormous
towers of a nuclear reactor. Or to make the point more generally, how is a mine
in a remote part of
The oil sands, like any major
industrial project, are not without tradeoffs. Yet I have never been to any
operation where more attention was paid to mitigating effects than to the
principal enterprise. I understand why the oil sands are defensive, which is
rather the proper response when being attacked. But there should also be pride
in the massive entrepreneurial, technical, and human achievement of harvesting
the earth's bounty. That pride belongs naturally enough to Albertans, but
Canadians as a whole should share in it too.
62
Turning union dues to don'ts
National Post – June 28,
2012
By Andrew Coyne
Recently, one of
The work is performed by members of
the Maintenance and Construction Skilled Trades Council, with whom the TDSB is
required to contract for virtually all such projects. But even outside
contractors, where they are permitted, must kick in a portion of their wages in
"dues" to the Trades Council, much as the TDSB's in-house
construction workers must.
The Trades Council's president,
Jimmy Hazel, is unapologetic. Asked by the newspaper about the electrical
outlet, which took four hours but for which the board was billed 76, Mr. Hazel
replied, "we don't need to f---ing prove anything to anybody about
costs."
No, indeed. This is perhaps an
extreme example, but it illustrates a more general principle. Unions are unique
among private organizations in Canada in that they have been assigned what
amounts to the power to ta to collect dues, via the usual paycheque deductions,
not only from their own members, but also those who exercise their legal right
not to join the union, who are nevertheless required to pay the same dues as if
they had – an arrangement known in Canada as "the Rand formula."
Of course, this applies only within
the minority of Canadian workplaces that are union shops: just 16% of private
sector workers now belong to unions, a figure that has declined over the years
as output and employment shifted to non-unionized firms and sectors. But in the
public sector, where membership is still north of 70%, unions have the power not
only to tax their members, but thanks to the state's monopoly in the provision
of many public services, the taxpayers as well. So Mr. Hazel is right: He
really doesn't need to f---ing prove anything to anybody.
So ingrained is this status – the
Rand formula has been with us for more than 60 years – that it is little short
of astonishing to see a major political party in Canada proposing to challenge
it head on. Yet that is what the Ontario Progressive Conservative party has
just done. The party's white paper on "Flexible Labour Markets"
proposes a raft of reforms to the province's labour laws that would, taken
together, give
Amid a number of measures – outside
supervision of certification votes, a leaner mandate for the Ontario Labour
Relations Board, the right to opt out of the provincial workers compensation
system in favour of private insurance – two stand out. The party would abolish
the closed shop in public tendering, opening the bidding to all contractors,
union and non-union alike. More radically still, it would abolish the
In the main, these are long overdue
reforms. Whether or not the
Still, there's no arguing this would
do much to undercut the power of unions, which will be deeply upsetting to
those of the conviction that unions are all that stand between the population
and penury: notwithstanding that unions today are a disproportionately
white-collar, upper-educated, public-sector phenomenon. The contrary view, as
in the 23 U.S. states with "right-to-work" laws (to which, the paper
notes, more than five million Americans have migrated in the last decade), as
in Australia, New Zealand and some European countries, holds that prosperity is
not ultimately based on coercion, but on productivity. While unions can command
a premium over market wages (about 8%, according to Canadian research), that is
generally sustainable only where competition is constrained – to the cost of
consumers and/or taxpayers.
In any case, monopoly is not an
option for
It is particularly gratifying seeing
PC leader Tim Hudak pick up this mantle. Under his leadership the party ran a
dispiriting, cynical campaign in the last election, avoiding substantive
differences with the governing Liberals in favour of a string of populist gimmicks
– and squandering a double-digit lead. That disaster has clearly taught him,
and them, a lesson. Since the election the party's message has been notably
sober-minded and constructive.
It is as if they mean to make a case
to the public for why they should be elected, rather than the other guys
defeated. In
LABOUR OVERHAUL
"The world has changed, and our
economy has changed with it," Tory leader Tim Hudak said. Among the
suggested changes:
- Provincial rules should be changed
to block the mandatory paycheque deductions of union dues, and give workers the
option of not joining a union in workplaces with collective agreements
- Unions should be forced to release
information on their finances and what they spend money on
- Workplace insurance, currently
exclusively provided by the Workplace Safety Insurance Board for some
industries, should be opened up to competition from the private sector
- End the practice of "closed
tendering" for government contracts
63
National Post – June 27,
2012
By John Ivison
The Conservatives talk constantly
about ensuring taxpayers get value for money. But the reality is the
politicians don't control the spending process as tightly as they like to think
they do. The bureaucracy is the real power in the land – and its interests are often
best served by growing the size of government.
Take this example of bureaucratic
empire building: The federal government allocates funding for office
accommodation according to a formula equivalent to 13% of total salary costs.
As a result, any increase in salary costs also increases funding for office
accommodation.
Think about that for a moment. If
total wages for public servants go up – and they have risen from $25.5-billion
in 2007 to $31.1-billion last year – then Ottawa increases spending on accommodation
by a commensurate amount, even if there is no need for more space.
And there isn't – the government
already has millions of square metres of unused space and will have millions
more once it completes new properties, reduces headcount and increases density
in its existing buildings. The feds are in the process of building six new
office towers in the
The Public Works department manages
seven million square metres of property, more than half of which is in the
National Capital Region. Sixteen buildings in the region have unoccupied space
of 50% or more.
"That's the stupidest thing
I've ever heard," said one veteran private sector real estate expert, when
he heard about the funding formula. "Does a company like TD automatically
pay 3% more for office space, if salary costs go up 3%? Categorically,
no."
The existence of the 13% formula is
probably news to most members of the government. It certainly surprised Doug
Finley, the Conservative senator who unearthed the information at a Senate
finance committee hearing into the supplementary estimates.
The news went unreported – maybe
because so few reporters cover the Senate these days; maybe because no one
could quite believe what they were hearing.
Last November, Senator Finley asked
Bill Matthews of Treasury Board's expenditure management sector why Public
Works was getting an extra $38-million. He was told it was because of the
funding formula. "It's a kind of proxy for inflation," said Mr.
Matthews.
When Mr. Matthews returned to the
Senate committee with a colleague last March to defend an additional
$54-million in request spending by Public Works, Senator Finley again badgered
him on the formula. "Who determines what the percentage will be? Has it
ever decreased?" he asked.
It has always been 13%, he was told.
And, no review has been carried out in recent memory.
It's almost beyond satire – a system
where no one can effect change but everyone can stop it. A number was picked,
apparently arbitrarily, at some point in a past so distant that no one can
recall why it was chosen. It continues to dictate increased spending on office
space on a seemingly inexorable trajectory, regardless of need.
The elimination of 19,000 public
service jobs will reduce
Hard on the heels of the F35
debacle, the office space funding formula ruse offers another example of where
the real authority lies in government – with a system designed to outlast the
itinerant politicians who wield the illusion of power.
64
Ecstasy trade in B.C. has deadly consequences
Health
officers urge policy reform to cut out dealers who often substitute other drugs
By Tamsyn Burgmann
Glowsticks, fuzzy pants and DJ
Johnny Fiasco were the recipe for a
But after a Canada-wide RCMP bust
cleared out stockpiles of ecstasy one August weekend in 1997, the 19-year-old
dealer lost his usual source.
So he scooped up 200 pills from some
guy in the back of a car, having no clue they were the hallucinogen PCP cut
with horse tranquillizer.
“We ended up with a party full of
sick kids,” said the 34-year-old, who now lives in
Similar misadventure have occurred
countless times in the ensuing years, the latest a rash of 16 deaths across
Western Canada in nine months from an ecstasy batch laced with PMMA, a chemical
not previously seen here.
Several top public health officials
are now proposing a rethink of illegal-drug policies they say exacerbates a
global problem involving ecstasy, one that even the White House says is made in
But the suggestion for dialogue
about a careful, science-based crafting of new health-oriented regulations
comes at the same time the federal government has taken the opposite course
with its omnibus crime bill.
In mid-March, the class of drugs
that includes the substance MDMA – considered the pure and original form of
ecstasy – was bumped up to a Schedule I drug under Bill C-10, giving it
heightened status alongside heroin and cocaine.
The boost has the health officers
and other advocates of change warning the tough-on-crime approach will not curb
street ecstasy’s use or its associated dangers, but instead will further play
into the hands of organized crime
They want a public conversation
around combating it.
“We need to involve multiple
viewpoints,”
Responsible for deaths
Police say street ecstasy is killing
an average of 20 British Columbians each year.
“This is a very emotive,
controversial topic for a lot of people,” he said. “Do I see a consensus coming
out of it in the short run? No ... But I still think that it would be a
conversation that’s worth having from an evidence-based perspective.”
One “hypothetical” way users could
obtain ecstasy, he said, would be through licensed, government-regulated
stores. Under such a scheme, the drug would still be illegal to minors, and
consumers might be permitted to only buy a certain amount each week or month.
Promotional advertising would not occur.
He likened the scenario to the way
booze was sold to him in
“When I wanted to buy liquor, I went
into a government-run store, there was a list of products on the wall. I went
to a man who was behind the counter, he wore a brown overall,”
Kendall has co-authored an open paper
urging an evidence-based reevaluation of federal illegal-drug policies with the
provincial health officers of
He and the host of doctors argue
that implementing public health-oriented regulations would decrease usage
rates, as has occurred in
That would vastly reduce sales to
minors, they contend, and prevent deaths because even if teens did use, they
would more likely be getting a cleaner product.
New approach
“It means getting away from
ideologically based approaches,” said Dr. Robert Strang,
Since last July, 10 people in
Arrests of two alleged small-time
traffickers were made in February, though as recently as early May, RCMP in
Penticton were warning the toxic batch had surfaced there.
RCMP have targeted the domestic
ecstasy inventory by raiding synthetic production houses and by cracking down
on the supply channels of the chemicals that go into it. Investigators say
those strategies have made some dents.
The police line is firm: no amount
of ecstasy is safe.
The federal Conservatives’
rescheduling of amphetamines such as MDMA generally means dealers now face
one-year mandatory minimum sentences, producers face two years and harsher
punishment will be meted out in instances of possession for trafficking or
exporting.
Unlike a decade ago, pills on the
street are much cheaper, Smartie-like tablets of pressed powder stamped with
decals like the Olympic rings.
B.C., the province stirring the pot
on drug policy reform, also happens to be
The United Nations, the White House,
the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency and the RCMP have fingered the province as a
global manufacturing hub, where mainly Chinese gangs cook up the substance for
wholesale distribution across international borders.
The gangs source the precursor
chemicals – like MDP2P which comes from the sassafras plant – from connections
in
It says that ecstasy tablets are no
longer just MDMA, but rather a “cocktail of chemicals,” as Canadian organized
crime groups “demonstrate a willingness to utilize whichever chemicals are
readily available to them.”
Pills that mimic MDMA, resembling
candy or children’s vitamins and seized around
The
He said it’s only within the past
four years or so that
“They set up labs in British
Columbia, they got in the tools and the dies and the formula and the expertise,
so that they didn’t have to import any longer, they just made it there,” he
said.
Four million ecstasy tablets were
seized at the Canada-U.S. border in 2010, up from two million in 2006, said D.
E. A special agent Jeffrey Scott in
He doesn’t believe its regulation
will reduce gang activity.
“If you take one substance away from
them it’s not likely that they’re suddenly going to go run McDonald’s or go
open a retail store,” he said. “They’re just going to shift to another illicit
substance.”
Those intimately familiar with the
drug, dubbed “Dr. Death” in some circles, say they wouldn’t touch the stuff
today.
“For me, MDMA is white. It’s not
purple, it’s not pink, it’s not blue. It’s fluffy, it smells like delicious
licorice,” said Kevin, who began capping the powder on his dining room table
himself after the party poisoning incident, but has long since stopped.
“But you don’t find that any more.
It’s just a bunch of crap that some dude in his basement, who owns a print
shop, is scraping into pills – pressing them and then selling them for 50 cents
apiece.”
He believes crushing the drug’s
illicit aura would benefit society.
“You can ask any drug dealer,” he
said.
“They will tell you that if they
have a good product – and a bad product that’s cheaper – 85 to 90 per cent of
their clients, they’re going to spend the extra money for the product that’s
going to be clean.”
65
Mobile immigrants test Canadian court’s reach
in divorce
National Post – June 25,
2012
By Adrian Humphreys
A high-stakes divorce between a
wealthy businessman and his wife – who immigrated from
The acrimonious marital split has
already brought accusations of parental child abduction, scuttled an initial
public offering on the Hong Kong stock exchange, drawn evidence of $165.5
million in tax havens overseas and revealed the couple’s $3-million Toronto
home has been only occasionally occupied.
And now, the family’s on-again,
off-again residency in
Similarly, the children have been
shuttled back and forth between
After declining to intercede
further, Judge Jarvis’ ruling is now under appeal with the hope of new and
clearer rules on when a court can act.
“It will be very helpful for the
Court of Appeal to decide on tests of residency in cases such as this,” said
Andrew Rogerson, a
“We have a multicultural country
where people have come from virtually everywhere in the world and it makes the
issue confronting the judges of Ontario more internationalized than would
happen in a country that didn’t have such a mosaic.
“It is indicative that
This family’s problems first came to
court in April when the wife, Hong Wang, 39, sought an
She feared her husband, who had been
successful in real estate, would move money beyond her reach in any divorce
settlement.
She won that round.
“My order was sweeping and was quickly
followed by an order of the High Court of Justice in the
But much is still left to decide.
Born and married in
The mother and children became
Canadian citizens but because of the husband’s travels, he lost his permanent
residency status. In 2010, they were reunited in
“[He] told me that the marriage was
definitely over and he would not give me any money to go away now, but would
later give me two condos in
She complained the amount was only
about 2% of their assets.
She returned to
Judge Jarvis said Ms. Wang’s
affidavit “was artfully composed” to make it seem she qualified.
“It is clear to me that Ms. Wang was
not ordinarily resident in
But as Judge Jarvis was deliberating
last month, Mr. Lin reported the children had gone missing without a trace in
She had moved them back to
“Ms. Wang complained about the food,
rudeness of the people and had the temerity to testify that many Chinese found
money to be their most important motivator,” Judge Jarvis said.
Mr. Lin’s lawyer argued the children
had been wrongfully taken and ask they be sent back to
Judge Jarvis questioned how much
real power he had in the case. He declined to order the children back to
“This case highlights the fairly
recent trend of wealthy Chinese nationals who obtain permanent residency in
“The question of divorces and
custody battles with international and immigration implications will continue
to be of increasing importance given the diversity of our immigrant population,
their ability to travel frequently and their continuing ties to their countries
of origin,” he said.
“It is not surprising that these
fights become more legally complex and with much more money at stake.”
66
Bill would expand minister's power over deportations
By Stephanie Levitz
New legislation introduced Wednesday
by the Conservative government gives greater powers to the immigration and
public safety ministers to determine who gets to come and stay in
It's the latest in a series of
changes that have given the immigration minister in particular far more
individual say over immigration matters.
The proposed law, called the Faster
Removal of Foreign Criminals Act, seeks to cut off avenues for convicted
criminals to appeal their deportation. Now, anyone who is not a Canadian
citizen and is sentenced to less than two years in prison can appeal the
automatic deportation order that comes along with a jail term.
But the proposal would see that
right cut off for sentences of greater than six months, even for permanent
residents who have been in
"I'm more concerned about the
rights of law-abiding Canadians who have been victimized by foreign criminals
who have delayed their deportation, than I am about the rights of foreign
national citizens who committed serious crimes in
The government argues that convicted
criminals abuse the existing appeal system to avoid deportation and, in the
meantime, remain in
Kenney said many immigrants
convicted of crimes avoid deportation because they are sentenced to less than
two years in prison.
According to Statistics Canada, 86
per cent of prison sentences in 2010-11 were for six months or less. Officials
with the immigration department say there are more than 2,700 deportation
orders currently being appealed, with the average file taking 15 months to
process.
The proposed legislation also makes
it more difficult for those convicted of crimes abroad - and their families -
to get into
It also removes the right to appeal
on humanitarian or compassionate grounds for people refused entry to
Those turned away do have the right
to appeal directly to the minister of public safety, but the new law would only
require the minister to take only national security and public safety factors
into account, not humanitarian concerns.
Another provision would allow the
minister of public safety to overturn a ruling of inadmissibility "on his
or her own initiative."
The department said this would, for
example, allow the minister to admit heads of state into
Officials were quick to clarify this
wouldn't mean war criminals.
Meanwhile, the immigration minister
would be given the power to deny someone entry into
Since 2008, Kenney has quietly been
amassing more control over immigration, beginning with the use of a device
called a "ministerial instruction" that revamped the skilled worker
program in a bid to eradicate a major backlog of applications.
In the government's refugee reform
bill, before the Senate, the minister is given singular power to draw up a list
of safe countries from which those claiming refugee status would receive
greater scrutiny.
67
B.C. judge strikes down law banning assisted suicide in
Plaintiff
suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease calls ruling a 'blessing' for seriously and
incurably ill
By Neal Hall
A B.C. judge ruled Friday to strike
down the law that makes physician-assisted death illegal in
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Lynn
Smith ruled that the current law violates the constitutional rights of the
three plaintiffs who led the landmark legal challenge, launched by the B.C.
Civil Liberties Association.
"They succeed because the
provisions unjustifiably infringe the equality rights of Gloria Taylor and the
rights to life, liberty and security of the person of Lee Carter and Hollis
Johnson," the judge concluded in a 395-page written judgment released
Friday.
While declaring the law against
euthanasia invalid, the judge suspended that declaration for one year to allow
Parliament to determine what requirements are needed to make the law comply
with
"During that period of
suspension, a constitutional exemption will permit Ms. Taylor the option of
physician-assisted death under a number of conditions," Smith ruled.
The judge set out the conditions in
her ruling: Taylor, who is terminally ill, must provide written consent, her
attending physician must attest that she is terminally ill and near death with
no hope of recovery, and the physician and a consulting psychiatrist must
attest that Taylor is mentally competent.
Once those conditions are met,
The judge found that
"palliative care cannot relieve all suffering" and accepted that
legal end-of-life practices allow doctors to withhold life-sustaining treatment
and administer palliative sedation to the point of hastening death.
"There are respected
practitioners who would support legal change," Smith wrote.
"They state that providing
physician-assisted death in defined cases, with safeguards, would be consistent
with their ethical views," she added.
The judge acknowledged public
opinion is divided on the issue. "The most commonly expressed reason for
maintaining a distinction between cur-rent accepted end-of-life practices and
physician-assisted death is that any system of safeguards will not adequately
protect the vulnerable," Smith wrote.
"The evidence shows that risks
exist, but they can be largely avoided through care-fully designed,
well-monitored safeguards," the judge ruled.
The case is expected to be appealed
by the federal or B.C. governments, which opposed striking down the law.
Their position was that very good
medical care is available for the dying, including palliative sedation to
reduce end-of-life pain for patients suffering terminal illnesses such as
cancer, ALS and Huntington's disease.
"We hope the government will
not appeal," Joe Arvay, the constitutional lawyer rep-resenting the
plaintiffs, said Friday.
He said his client, Taylor, cried
with relief when she heard the judge had ruled in her favour.
"This decision allows me to
approach my death the same way I tried to live my life – with dignity,
independence and grace."
The judge fast-tracked the case so
Making physician-assisted death
illegal puts it in the back alley, similar to abortion before it was legalized,
Arvay told the court.
BC Civil Liberties Association
lawyer Grace Pastine told reporters, "This case is a major victory for
individual rights at the end of life."
Pastine said the ruling is a major
step forward in the protection of human rights in
"This is a case about real
people with serious illnesses who through this law can find some measure of
peace and comfort knowing they have a choice," she said.
"The court has recognized that
the government has no place at the bedside of seriously ill Canadians who have
made firm and considered decisions about the amount of suffering to endure at
the end of life and the level of care they will or will not receive in their
final days."
The other plaintiffs in the case
included
They sought to have the court
declare Section 241 (b) of the Criminal Code unconstitutional because it
violates sections 7 and 15 of
The Farewell foundation for the
Right to Die was granted intervener status and sup-ported the plaintiffs'
position.
One of the interveners opposed to
striking down the law was the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition of B.C.
"We're disappointed but not
surprised at the radical nature of the decision today," Dr. Will Johnston,
the coalition's coordinator, said outside court.
"We think this judgment decided
to minimize and to disregard the evidence of harm in other jurisdictions where
assisted-suicide and euthanasia has been practised," he said.
"And we are extremely concerned
about the situation of elder abuse, which is a major issue in
"I think this will be a disaster
for Canadians, who expect themselves to be protected by the law,"
"To suggest that we can have
one foot on the gas and one foot on the brake I think is unrealistic. It's not
accurate to say that we can draw a bright line between competent people, who
have only physical illness and are close to death, and depressed people."
The case was the most comprehensive
challenge of the law since Sue Rodriguez lost her case 19 years ago in the
Supreme Court of Canada. Rodriguez also had ALS.
Most of the case decided Fri-day was
determined through the affidavits of 71 witnesses, but the court heard the
testimony only of a handful of medical experts.
Three
The few Western countries that allow
it are the Nether-lands,
The full 395-page judgment is online
at: http: //bit.ly/
READERS RESPOND
Vancouversun.com readers respond to
Friday's right-to-die ruling
‧Finally we are
one step closer to having the rights that should be ours. I wish my mom, who
died from ALS in 2005, had the choice to end her life on her terms. She
suffered greatly.
‧This really is
insanity! Once again we have a fundamental political issue decided by the
personal political whims of an individual judge. We no longer have any kind of
democratic system in this country. Elections are fundamentally a fraud because
elected politicians no longer have the ability to decide anything.
‧The groups and
individuals opposed to a dignified death always cite evidence of harm and elder
abuse as part of their opposition to individually agreed, doctor-assisted
chosen death. However they never pro-vide any actual vetted evidence of this
abuse and harm. I have never seen any evidence of abuse of doctor-assisted
death in
‧This is not
something that a judge should be deciding but rather Parliament. The present
law has already been declared constitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada so
it is a matter for Parliament to change. I am in favour of assisted suicide but
only if the appropriate legal safeguards are in place and are not amenable to a
judge-made law.
‧This ruling is
indeed good news for countless people suffering from terminal illnesses and
being forced to linger on with their suffering. Life is precious, but forcing
people to endure horrible deaths with-out dignity is wrong. As an individual I
should be able to decide how much I am willing to endure, and should be able to
seek qualified medical assistance to deal with my suffering. ... At present I
have no devastating illnesses, but when I do I want the right to take
considered action. Both of my parents suffered unnecessarily with their demises
and expressed the wish to move on, antiquated laws at that time did not allow
them to do so and removed dignity from their last days.
68
Little to celebrate on Tax Freedom Day
Watermark
arrives later this year, thanks to increased EI premiums and higher health
levies
By Milagros Palacios
& Charles Lammam
If you've ever tried to calculate
all the taxes you pay in a year to all levels of government, you've probably
given up somewhere along the way. While most of us can easily decipher how much
income tax we pay – it's right there on our tax returns – it's a lot more
difficult to gauge how much we pay in not-so-obvious taxes.
For Canadian families to reasonably
estimate their total tax bill they'd have to add up a dizzying array of taxes,
including visible ones like income taxes, sales taxes, social security taxes,
and property taxes as well as hidden ones like profit taxes, gas taxes, alcohol
taxes – and the list goes on.
This is no easy task. That's why the
Fraser Institute calculates Tax Freedom Day every year. Tax Freedom Day is an
easy-to-understand measure of the total tax burden imposed on Canadian families
by federal, provincial, and local governments.
If Canadians were required to pay
all taxes up front, they would have to give governments each and every dollar
they earned before Tax Freedom Day.
In 2012, we estimate that the average
Canadian family consisting of two or more people will earn $94,258 and pay a
total tax bill of $41,627 or 44.2 per cent of income.
This results in Tax Freedom Day
falling on June 11. From then on, Canadians start working for themselves and
their families rather than the government. While that alone is reason to
celebrate, you may want to keep the champagne on ice because the good news ends
there.
Tax Freedom Day arrives one day
later than last year. And there are two main reasons for the delay.
First, several Canadian governments
have increased taxes, from increased Employment Insurance premiums at the
federal level, to a higher provincial sales tax in Quebec, to increased health
taxes in British Columbia and a new tax on high earners in Ontario. Indeed, these
and many other tax increases underscore a worrying trend across the country.
Second, Canada's economy is still
recovering from the recession and as incomes continue to increase, a family's
tax burden increases to a greater extent because of Canada's progressive tax
system, which imposes higher taxes as Canadians earn more money. For instance,
the top fifth of income earners face an average total tax burden amounting to
54 per cent of income while the bottom fifth face an average burden of 18 per
cent.
Don't pop the cork just yet; there's
more bad news.
The federal and almost all
provincial governments are running deficits this year. (
It is important to remember that
budget deficits incurred by
By kicking today's debt down the
road, governments are passing on the burden of repayment to young Canadian
families.
It is ultimately up to Canadian
families to decide whether June 11 is an acceptable Tax Freedom Day.
But therein lies the value of the
calculation; it gives families important information to help make that
assessment.
On that note, happy Tax Freedom Day,
although maybe "happy" isn't the right word.
68
PM promotes 'Canadian approach' to economics
By Mark Kennedy
As uncertainty builds about the
fragility of the global economy, Prime Minister
Harper made the comments Monday in a
bluntly worded speech at an international conference in
He urged other governments to avoid
the politically motivated "false choice" of assuming they have only
one option to rescue their faltering economies: "austerity or
prosperity."
"The Canadian approach is what
the world needs," said Harper. "An approach that includes both fiscal
discipline and other growth measures."
The speech came at a key time in
world affairs – as European leaders attempt to stem the economic meltdown on
that continent, and leaders from the G20 prepare to meet in
Moreover, it occurred as the
Conservative government came under fire in the House of Commons for joining the
Finance Minister Jim Flaherty blamed
European countries for running deficits and failing to promote economic growth.
"Because of that, they are in
the difficult situation, the crisis they are in today," said Flaherty.
"We in
Harper focused on how Europe needs
to get its debt problems under control and also consider
"As Canadians, neither are we
able nor do we desire to impose our views on the world," said Harper.
"But
In recent months, a historic and
often tense political debate has played out among senior European leaders.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pressured debt-ridden countries on the
continent to aggressively cut their costs as part of an austerity program to
restore confidence in the markets.
Meanwhile, newly elected French
president Francois Hollande has resisted those calls, having been elected on an
anti-austerity platform that included controversial spending promises.
Several months ago, Harper's emphasis
was on the need for austerity, but recently he has adjusted his tone, insisting
governments can do two things: cut costs through austerity drives, while
promoting policies to create economic growth.
"This will be
NDP leader Thomas Mulcair said the
Tories are making a mistake that will harm
"Our fate is intimately
connected to what happens in
69
Memo to small investors: steer clear of Wall Street's IPO
machine
By William D. Cohan
You know that the hand-wringing over
the 32-per-cent drop in the value of Facebook's Inc.'s stock since its May 17
IPO has reached a new level of disproportion when ABC's Good Morning America
weighs in with the idea that maybe Mark Zuckerberg should have abandoned his
honeymoon and returned to Silicon Valley to somehow make things better for the
gullible investors who got singed.
Lots of reasons have been posited
for the Facebook IPO "debacle" – as the news media like to describe
it – including that perhaps Zuckerberg, the company's founder and chief
executive officer, and his management team failed to disclose declining
quarterly advertising revenue in a timely way. Or that Nasdaq OMX Group Inc.
failed to process initial purchase and sale orders properly on IPO day. Or that
some underwriters passed "quiet guidance" to big, institutional
investors about Facebook's financial prospects but not to smaller investors. Or
that technical "trading glitches" caused the problem. Or that Morgan
Stanley, Facebook's lead underwriter, botched the whole IPO process.
Burned investors will grasp at
anything – except their own role in fuel-ling Wall Street's Facebook IPO hype
machine – in an effort to recoup some of the billions of dollars they have lost
as the stock continues to slide. On May 23, the plaintiffs' bar got into the
act by filing three separate share-holder lawsuits accusing Facebook's
management, board and underwriters of failing to provide material information
about the company's second-quarter financial performance to small investors
during the road show, while providing the same information to some
institutional investors. This, the suits claim, caused the small investors to
lose more than $2.5 billion after Facebook's IPO.
The New York Times managed to find
Robert Diepersloot, a dairy farmer in Madera, Calif., who said the Facebook IPO
"confirmed all the fears and suspicions" that led him and his wife to
take all of their savings – in the tens of thousands of dollars – out of the
stock market and invest it, instead, in real estate. (Good luck with that, Mr.
Diepersloot.) "We just pulled out completely," he told the paper.
"We've lost trust in the whole scenario."
Okay, once and for all: When will
small investors finally get the message that investing in IPOs is a fool's game
and that yet again they served as mere grist for Wall Street's IPO selling
machine? The current IPO market, controlled by Wall Street's cartel of five or
six leading firms, exists only to benefit three groups of constituents.
Foremost are the Wall Street banks
themselves, which reap hundreds of millions in fees from the IPOs, whether the
resulting stock price goes up or down. Either way, Wall Street makes money.
The second group consists of Wall
Street's big institutional trading partners – the ones that provide banks with
huge fees every day of the week, whether or not there is an IPO to be hyped and
priced. For obvious reasons, Wall Street wants to keep these big investors
happy. That is why they are sometimes given (inside) information about a
company that small investors are not given – as has been alleged in the
Facebook shareholder lawsuits.
IPOs are priced to put money in
these big shareholders' pockets, either by under pricing the company in the
first place so that it "pops" when it begins trading, allowing the
institutional shareholders to flip the stock quickly after it rises in early
trading, or by giving them information that will allow them to get out fast
while smaller investors are getting in.
Third on the list of priorities is
the company being taken public. The Wall Street underwriters strive to get just
enough value in the IPO to keep the company's management and early investors
happy, while also leaving enough on the table so institutional investors get
their "pop." Wall Street wants its IPO clients to stick around for
the longer term, so additional fees can be generated from future secondary
offerings, as well as future debt offerings, mergers and wealth management
services. Wall Street is engaged in a delicate balancing act between its fee
interests and those of its institutional trading partners and its
corporate-finance clients.
You'll notice, of course, that small
investors don't make the list of important constituents. Their concerns are
nearly irrelevant to the Wall Street cartel, despite the marketing dollars that
big firms often invest in attracting small investors to their brokerage
businesses. Not that banks hate small investors – they generate fees (through
churning those brokerage accounts) and they provide liquidity to the market,
for example, in the form of misplaced demand for IPOs. But Wall Street sees
little point in keeping them informed or helping them make wise decisions.
That Facebook's IPO would be a
product of the Wall Street hype machine was obvious from the beginning. For at
least the past 18 months – starting perhaps with the January 2011 investment by
Goldman Sachs Group Inc. into the company that valued it at $50 billion – Facebook
has been awarded one ridiculous valuation milestone after another.
It's easy to blame Wall Street for
all this hype, and it's easy to blame Face-book's management for whipping up
the valuation frenzy. It's also easy to blame Nasdaq for botching the orders or
Morgan Stanley for mismanaging the process.
The truth is that if small investors
simply remembered they are nowhere to be found on the list of important
constituents for an IPO such as Face-book's, and simply stayed away, the
traditional Wall Street IPO machinery would break down. Is that a les-son that
can be finally learned, once and for all?
70
Individual pastors in the state
church will, however, not be obliged to marry homosexual couples if they feel
it goes against their personal beliefs, according to the bill.
Danish Minister for Ecclesiastical
Affairs Manu Sareen, who initiated Thursday's legislation, said she was
thrilled it had passed.
"This is equality between
couples of the same gender and couples of different genders. A major step
for-ward," she told reporters following the vote.
The only party to vote against the
bill as a whole was the populist Danish People's Party, which maintained that
marriage in Christian terms was between a man and a woman, and that the church
should not be forced to make a religious marriage ceremony available for
homosexual couples.
The Christian Democratic Party,
which is no longer in parliament, meanwhile announced Thursday it aimed to
initiate a class-action suit against the new law, which is set to go into
effect on June 15, saying it was an infringement on the right to free religious
belief and was thus unconstitutional.
Per Oerum Joergensen, a former
member of parliament for the Christian Democrats, told the Politiken daily he
had seen a recent poll showing "that some 440,000 members of the church
were considering renouncing their membership because of all this."
"They will be able to join the
suit against the state," he said.
Around 80 per cent of Danes, or
around 4.5 million people, are members of the state church.
71
New gay marriage law faces challenge
Weddings
delayed as group collects 200,000 signatures to force referendum
By Mike Bake
Preserve Marriage Washington
submitted the signatures just a day before the state was to begin allowing
same-sex marriages. Officials will review the signatures over the next week to
determine if proposed Referendum 74 will qualify for a public vote, though the
numbers suggest the measure will make the ballot easily.
"The current definition of
marriage works and has worked," said the group's chair, Joseph Backholm.
The law, passed by the legislature
and signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire earlier this year, would make
National groups have already
promised time and money to fight the law, including the
Gay marriage supporters, expecting
that the referendum would qualify, have already been raising money to protect
the law. Zach Silk, campaign manager for Washington United for Marriage,
expects both sides to raise millions of dollars.
"It's fair to say it's going to
be an extremely expensive race."
The issue has implications on
ballots across the nation.
President Barack Obama recently
declared his support for gay marriage. In
A poll by
Perry Gordon lives in
"Would you want somebody to
tell you that the only recognized marriage should be between a man and a man or
a woman and a woman? How would you feel about that?" said Gordon, who is
gay and would like to get married at some point in the future.
Backholm raised the spectre of
polygamy and marriage within families while making his case against gay
marriage. He said the law would redefine marriage as it's been known for
generations and suggested a possible slippery slope to other types of marriage.
Gay marriage is legal in
72
Despite a record for brutal violence, killer gets a break
Judge
makes dangerous offender designation
By Ian Mulgrew
A just-completed dangerous offender
hearing in
Nearly four years to process a man
who pleaded guilty after he was caught at the scene and on camera stomping a
man to death over a bag of potato chips?
There was an agreed statement of
facts – chronic offender Matthew Scott Pelkey, now 29, savagely beat
42-year-old San-jay Ablak to death in the middle of a downtown street at about
2: 20 a.m. on Dec. 8, 2008.
A passing police car stopped and
Pelkey was arrested for drunkenness as he staggered away.
Everyone agreed, too, that normally
the appropriate range for manslaughter under such circumstances is eight to 10
years.
For a violent alcoholic with a
record as long as your arm, however – including a 2004 aggravated assault, a
2007 aggravated assault and an assault causing bodily harm that occurred only
days before Ablak's fatal stomping – more was required.
As well, Pelkey had been convicted
of numerous offences arising from breaching bail or conditional sentence orders
– usually by repeatedly ignoring bans on consuming alcohol.
With his history, the Crown rightly
moved to have him declared a dangerous offender. And no one argued, not even
his lawyer, that Pelkey did not meet the statutory criteria.
Hearing no argument on that issue
from Pelkey's lawyer, B.C. Supreme Court Justice Malcolm Macaulay made the
declaration.
"There is no evidence
here," he noted, "of Pelkey as an adult ever functioning in society
without having consumed alcohol to the point of intoxication and disinhibited
violent conduct. To the extent that alcohol treatment has been available to
Pelkey in the past when he was not in custody, he has never carried through
with it."
From 2003, when he was 20, until
this incident when he was 25, Pelkey spent most of his time in prison – roughly
four and a half years, by the justice's reckoning.
He was as violent behind bars as on
the street.
Yet when the dangerous offender
hearing wrapped up last week, Macaulay did not throw the book at Pelkey.
Based on his time in pre-trial
custody, the 10-year sentence he was given amounts to seven years and four
months. He is eligible for release after serving one-third, statutory release
after two-thirds.
The judge also placed him on a
10-year supervision order.
I think most ordinary people would
be puzzled why such a break went to a man described by a psychiatrist as being
at a high risk to reoffend.
An indeterminate sentence, by
comparison, which was the option, is like a life sentence.
The parole board has full discretion
on the eligibility for release – commencing after four years in custody,
calculated from the date of arrest for day parole and after seven years for
full parole.
If released, the offender remains on
parole for life to protect the public.
The board reviews any refusal of
parole every two years to determine if the risk has changed.
That would appear to have been
called for here.
But Macaulay explained that Supreme
Court of Canada directions on sentencing aboriginal offenders compelled him to
consider "systemic factors" that may have come into play.
Reared on the Tsawout First Nation
reserve near Victoria, Pelkey was of first nations descent and "the output
of the history of colonialism, displacement and residential schools -" The
judge said that those who believe this approach gives first nations "a
race-based discount" on sentencing are wrong and should read the high
court's reasoning in two rulings, R. v. Gladue (1999) and R. v. Ipeelee (2010).
In his opinion, Macaulay added,
Pelkey was ready to turn his life around and deserved another chance.
Too bad the evidence to support that
optimism seems threadbare.
73
Freedom of worship or freedom of religion?
The wrong answer spells doom...
Christian Governance –
June 4, 2012
By Tim Bloedow
Some time before his death, Chuck
Colson started to regularly warn about the cunning transformation in
The following article explains the
distinction very well. It's a lengthy article, and we only include an excerpt
below. It is highly recommended reading for Christians who want to understand
the thinking behind the increasing marginalization of Christianity in
Unfortunately, the problem we face
is not "out there". Different Christian traditions come down in
different places on the key theological issues at play in this question. For
Christians who support the Humanist goal of eliminating Christendom, the
logical eventuality is the complete marginalization of Christianity into a
tolerated corner – if that – for private worship. Because there is no such
thing as neutrality, Christianity will be replaced by something else, likely Humanism
or Islam.
The notion of a sustainable neutral
pluralism exists only in the academic constructs of creative theoreticians.
Even EFC (Evangelical Fellowship of Canada) lead Bruce Clemenger, in his latest
Faith Today column, “How Broad is Your Gospel?”, emphatically stated that there
is no such thing as neutrality: "... those of us who affirm the Lordship
of Christ can get caught up in the debilitating myth of neutrality".
It's probably not the first time
he's said that, but I don't read every one of his columns. He did say that it
was a newer understanding for him in that it wasn't part of his thought process
when in university – but that was a while ago. His challenge to the broader
Evangelical church was to join him in recognizing that there is no such thing
as neutrality; that Christian truth should be brought to bear on every area of
life.
Mr. Clemenger and Christian Governance
would come down at different places on numerous issues when it comes to our
attempts to apply Biblical truth to life, but simply recognizing that there is
no such thing as neutrality is huge for the modern Church because most
Evangelicals still don't believe this, having been schooled in various theories
of common sense, common ground, natural law and pluralism, which are predicated
on one notion or another of moral and epistemological neutrality.
There is no neutrality, therefore
the abandonment of Christendom will be met by a replacement. Today it is an
increasingly intolerant, post-modern Humanism. It is marginalizing Christians
by redefining freedom of religion to limit it to freedom of worship, and
banning Christian thinking from law and public policy. As long as Christians
continue to embrace the notion of neutrality, the only outcome will be
increased marginalization. If Christians, on the other hand, rediscover the
vision of Christendom with its explicitly Christian vision for culture and
civilization, for the family, law, education, the civil government, journalism
and architecture, etc., then Christianity will rise again because no other
vision or worldview can withstand a genuine Christian vision for life and
godliness.
74
Canadian crackdown
June 5, 2012
By Michael Coren
A considered and empathetic
opposition to same-sex marriage has nothing to do with phobia or hatred, but
that doesn’t stop Christians, conservatives, and anybody else who doesn’t take
the fashionable line from being condemned as Neanderthals and bigots. This is a
lesson that Canadians have learned from painful experience.
Same-sex marriage became law in
Although precise figures about gay
marriages in
In 2011, for example, a well-known
television anchor on a major sports show was fired just hours after he tweeted
his support for “the traditional and TRUE meaning of marriage.” He had merely
been defending a hockey player’s agent who was receiving numerous death threats
and other abuse for refusing to support a pro-gay-marriage campaign. The case
is still under appeal, in human-rights commissions and, potentially, the
courts.
The Roman Catholic bishop of
In the neighboring
But no. Even though the gay couple
had had their marriage, they decided to make an official complaint and demand
that the commissioner be reprimanded and punished. The provincial government
argued that, as a servant of the state, he had a duty to conduct state policy,
but that any civilized public entity could accept that such a fundamentally
radical change in marriage policy was likely to cause division, and that as
long as alternative and reasonable arrangements could be made and nobody was
inconvenienced, they would not discipline their employee for declining to marry
same-sex couples. Anybody hired after 2004 would have to agree to conduct such
marriages, they continued, but to insist on universal approval so soon after
the change would lead to a large number of dismissals, often of people who had
given decades of public service. This seemed an intelligent and balanced
compromise. Yet the provincial courts disagreed, and commissioners with
theological objections are now facing the loss of their jobs, with the
situation replicated in other provinces and also at the federal level.
So far, churches have been allowed
to refuse to consecrate same-sex marriages, but a campaign has begun to remove
tax-free status from religious institutions that make this choice. When asked
about how this would undermine charitable efforts in behalf of the poor and
homeless undertaken by numerous Christian churches, one of the leaders of
Equality for Gays and Lesbians Everywhere, a Canadian gay-rights advocacy
group, replied: “We’ll only take away charitable status from the buildings
where the priests live and where the people pray.”
As colossally ignorant and
threatening as this sounds, it is also downright disingenuous. Four years ago,
a Christian organization in
In small-town
As I write, two Canadian provinces
are considering legislation that would likely prevent educators even in private
denominational schools from teaching that they disapprove of same-sex marriage,
and a senior government minister in
The Canadian litany of pain,
firings, and social and political polarization and extremism is extraordinary
and lamentable, and we haven’t even begun to experience the mid- and long-term
results of this mammoth social experiment. I seldom say it, but for goodness’
sake learn something from
75
Is this the New Norm?
By Jim Hnatiuk, Leader of
the Christian Heritage Party
Imagine going to work as you do
every day – “same old, same old.” Then you open your mail. Your
day is thrown into a tailspin when you open a parcel and receive a
human foot.
Or perhaps you take a leisurely
shopping expedition – and suddenly
shots ring out. You and those around you are thrown into a frenzied panic,
fleeing for your lives while those weaker and slower are knocked down and
trampled in the stampede.
In the last week, the world’s
attention turned to
For the first hundred years, most
Canadians shared a worldview that was the very foundation on which our country
was built: our Christian heritage. Characteristics of this heritage were
equality of opportunity such as the world has not seen under any other
worldview; respect for the rights of others – the natural outgrowth of the
biblical mandate to love one’s neighbour, freedom to believe and speak according
to conscience; and the freedom of movement and association without restriction.
This shared worldview produced a
common understanding that our fellow citizens should be treated with respect,
and that those who violated this principle would be disciplined, either by
their own family or by the justice system, depending on the severity of the
violation.
Today, things are different! The
government emasculates the family, usurps the family’s responsibilities, and
then deals ineffectively with the family’s role.
Trying to regulate the lives and
behaviour of 35 million citizens – all with their own challenges, frustrations,
disappointments, and desires – (in a broken justice system) has become an
impossible task. When governments abandon the moral underpinnings that once
allowed the people both freedom and personal responsibility, they are
inevitably tempted to use the power granted them to extend their domain, rather
than to protect their citizens. The responsible use of the authority of the
state requires restraints that are determined by someone greater than the state
or the individual.
This is the secret strength of the
CHP policies and platform. They are based on unchanging principles that uphold
the dignity of humankind submitted to the guidance of a loving God. Christian
Heritage Party policies are based on what is determined from above, not the
selfish and often foolish policies adopted by desperate societies. Our policies
recognize that there are at least four spheres of government: self-government
(the first and most important), family government, church government (that
voluntary submission to a shared system of beliefs and ethical practices), and
civil government in its various forms (municipal, provincial and federal).
When an individual fails to govern
himself (i.e., when self-control fails) – as happened with the perpetrators of
the above crimes, and in many other socially maladapted people; when family
control fails to curb or prevent violent antisocial behaviour as it obviously
failed with the perpetrators of the above crimes; when people have not placed
themselves under a moral authority such as the church;then the civil
government must step in to protect its citizens and to establish non-negotiable
standards of behaviour.
At that point, excuses must not be
allowed to derail justice.
All citizens must be held
accountable for their actions. Attempting to moderate the demands of justice in
response to “extenuating circumstances” (such as a criminal who has come from a
dysfunctional family) is not what society needs. A gentle rap on the knuckles
can never be an appropriate response to violent crime. Violent offenders must
be dealt with in a manner that protects society. The role of government is not
to protect offenders from the consequences of their actions by providing an
excuse for their behaviour. The role of government is to mete out justice to
those who have offended the standards set by society.
“Why?” is a valid question when
analyzing the conditions that precede violence but an attempt to understand
cannot be considered an adequate response. Rather, “Never again!” must be the
response and the commitment of civil governments; and that commitment must be
backed by consistent action!
A person who has killed and
dismembered his fellow man, needs to feel the unified and uncompromising
response of a society that is horrified by such uncivilized behaviour and will
not accept it. The government must fulfill the responsibility it
bears for meting out a justice that says “never again.”
The person who made the decision to
shoot a “gang rival,” wounding bystanders in the process, the person who caused
a terrified crowd to stampede and trample one another in their flight, that
person must feel the full force of a society that is horrified by such
behaviour and will not condone it for any reason.
Let the cry for justice go up from
Canadians! We cannot tolerate lawless behaviour. We owe it to all law-abiding
citizens – and the generations yet to come – to enforce the rule of law and to
establish unchanging standards of behaviour. Canadian victims should not be
further victimized by a legal system that – in misguided compassion – shows
more concern about a perpetrator’s troubled past than his victim’s heartache
and loss.
CHP Canada will firmly enforce the
just provisions of law to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. Your
family and mine must be protected from lawless and violent offenders. Peace,
order, and security for all citizens can only be maintained when the rule of
law is based on unchanging moral principles, and when it is enforced without
bias or feeble excuse.
Those who think they are above the
law must be taught to respect the rights of others. If they have not formed a
habit of self control, if their parents have not taught them self control, if
they have submitted to no moral guidance beyond the selfish desires of their
own hearts, then they must learn it at the courts of criminal justice.
The types of crimes we have seen in
the last week must not be allowed to become the “new norm.” They must be
treated as blights upon
76
'Lay litigants' add to delays in B.C. courts
Study
finds as many as 80 per cent of people going solo in the legal system
By Kim Nursall and Neal
Hall
As many as 80 per cent of people
involved in civil or family legal cases choose to represent themselves in B.C.
courts, leading to more problems and delays for an already back-logged justice
system.
The high percentages were discovered
by
The number of self-represented
litigants found in the study came as a surprise to B.C. Supreme Court Chief
Justice Robert Bauman.
"The numbers are much higher
than we would have expected," he said in an inter-view Monday. "We
would have said 20 to 25 per cent. We thought 20 to 25 per cent were matters of
concern."
Bauman said the courts do not see
"lay litigants" as a problem clogging the courts, but rather as an
unfortunate result of the poor economy, which has resulted in cuts to legal
aid.
"They have every right to be
there," Bauman said of self-representing litigants.
But he conceded some people do get
"lost at sea" when trying to navigate the legal system, which he
acknowledged can be complicated for the average person.
"They take longer than a lawyer
would."
While some self-litigants have a
negative experience in court, Bauman said rudeness from judges is not
appropriate.
"In fairness, these situations
become very frustrating for all involved," he added.
But people are intelligent and are
using online services such as Click Law (www.clicklaw.bc.ca) to learn about the
legal system before coming to court, Bauman said.
Study author Macfarlane said the
numbers are troubling because the system is not designed for litigation by
non-lawyers.
"Obviously it's a problem ...
if there are a large number of people using the system who either don't know
how to use it, or have unrealistically high expectations of what they're going
to be able to do," she said in an interview Monday.
"There's a big gap between what
the public imagines they can get by going to court, and what the courts can
actually offer them."
Macfarlane's concerns echo the
conclusion of a 2011 report by the B.C. Public Commission on Legal Aid which
warned that more self-representing litigants would cause further delays in B.C.
courts.
The report found individuals who
self-litigate are generally unable to navigate the pre-trial process.
Consequently, cases are forced to go to trial as opposed to being settled
faster and less expensively out of court.
Macfarlane said the majority – 75
per cent – of those who choose to self-represent are lower-income individuals
who do not qualify for legal aid but cannot afford a lawyer. The remainder are
largely individuals who are able to pay for counsel, but feel a lawyer is a
waste of money.
Both groups, Macfarlane said,
consistently express the same frustrations navigating the court process,
including not being taken seriously by the judge and not being provided with
help in filling out forms.
Helen Smythe, 52, said her
experience self-litigating was horrible.
"It had to be the most
humiliating thing that I've ever been through in my life," said the
Smythe – who estimated her family
income is approximately $100,000 a year – used a lawyer during the first part
of her divorce proceedings but decided to self-represent because she got
"absolutely nothing" for the "huge amount of money" she was
paying.
She ended up abandoning the court
process out of frustration and convinced her ex-husband to go to mediation to
resolve their dispute.
"The judge wasn't really
interested in hearing from some-body who is self-represented, and he shouted at
me and his whole manner was really offensive," she said. Nonetheless,
Smythe said she would self-represent again.
Vancouverite Grimm Culhane described
an entirely different experience in court.
Culhane, 46, said he lost his legal
aid lawyer due to time constraints during a battle with his ex-girlfriend over
child support payments. He said he chose to go it alone because he had
"nothing else to lose."
"The judge did actually show me
courtesy and respect as someone who is not a lawyer," he said, although
the lawyer for his ex-girlfriend did not take him seriously, he added.
Culhane said he was able to
successfully argue for a reduction in the child support payments he is required
to pay, and said he'd self-represent again if he found himself facing another
court battle.
"I found it very stressful. The
learning curve was very high ... but I would go through all of that again for
sure," he said, adding that he doesn't have a "hefty" lawyer
bill while his ex-girlfriend does.
77
Anti-bully measures unveiled
Premier
announces $2-million, 10-point strategy to keep kids safe
By Dirk Meissner
British Columbian students who feel
they are being bullied will soon be able to report the behaviour anonymously on
a new smartphone app being introduced by the provincial government.
Teachers are also being asked to
dedicate one professional development day per year to deal with bullying as
part of a strategy aimed at reducing the corrosive behaviour, going beyond laws
to punish offenders.
On Friday B.C. Premier Christy Clark
announced a $2-million, 10-point strategy to combat bullying and ensure every
child feels safe, accepted and respected.
She said the fight against bullying
needs more focus than laws that punish the offending behaviour because laws
can't weed out the root causes of bullying.
The ERASE program – Expect Respect
and a Safe Education – goes beyond proposed amended anti-bullying laws in
"We are moving well past that
and building in education and training tools for folks in schools and resources
for parents to make sure they can deal with it to try and raise the pro-file of
it across the province," said Clark in Surrey where she announced her
strategy.
Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty has
said he's pre-paring to amend that province's Accepting School Act to prohibit
Catholic schools from vetoing student gay clubs.
"My advice to
Clark said her strategy, which is
set to be introduced in B.C. schools next September, will lead the country in
addressing bullying, with a five-year training program for teachers and
community workers that helps identify and address the problem.
The plan also includes dedicated
safe-school coordinators in every school district, stronger codes of conduct
for schools and provincial guidelines for threat assessments.
"What educators need are the
tools to be able to deal with conflicts in an appropriate way,"
"They need tools to recognize
when bullying is happening and administrators need to know that creating a
positive school culture is part of their everyday jobs."
Statistics reveal about one in 10
children have bullied others and as many as 25 per cent of children in Grades 4
to 6 have been bullied.
A 2004 study published in the
medical Journal of Pediatrics found that about one in seven Canadian children
aged 11 to 16 are victims of bullying.
78
Equalization makes ‘have-nots’, more dependent, not less
The
55-year-old redistribution scheme may be constitutionally entrenched; but
governments are not without options heading toward new agreement in 2014
The Taxpayer – Spring
2012
By Lorne Gunter
Here’s the one thing taxpayers need
to keep in mind as Ottawa and the provinces negotiate a new transfer and
equalization agreement to replace the current 10-year pact that will expire in
2012: Since the program began in 1957, every province but one has grown so much
stronger economically that now only Prince Edward Island would still qualify
for equalization under the original formula for calculating which are the
“have” provinces and which the “have-nots.” But because federal governments of
all stripes have sought to win the favour of voters in the smaller provinces
and Quebec, the definition of which provinces qualify for a share of the $16
billion Ottawa annually doles out has been expanded and expanded and expanded
again so often that six of 10 provinces – PEI, Nova Scotia, New Brunswick,
Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba – qualify.
If the purpose of equalization –
like all welfare whether individual, corporate or government-to-government – is
to help poorer recipients until they can make themselves fiscally independent,
then the program has been a colossal flop. In the past 55 years, more than $300
billion has been paid out in equalization. Yet despite all that time and all
that money, there has been a net gain of just two “have” provinces. Whereas in
1957 there were two – Ontario and B.C. – today there are just four – B.C.,
Alberta, Saskatchewan and Newfoundland and Labrador.
Here is another important fact about
equalization:
What all of this cash has done is
make the recipient provinces more dependent on
The first equalization payments were
created to convince
The payouts, however, largely put an
end to
It’s a problem that continues to
this day. Quebec sits atop vast shale-gas deposits but it can afford the luxury
of not tapping them in the name of environmental concern because it knows
Canadian taxpayers are good for $8 billion or more annually above and beyond
the billions Ottawa sends Quebec (and every other province) in transfers for
health, education and welfare.
“Here is another important fact
about equalization:
When then-Prime Minister
Equalization distorts the fiscal and
economic decisions made by poorer provinces and, if anything, deepens and
prolongs their have-not status.
Equalization’s costly tab and challenging the status quo
Not surprisingly, a recent study by
the Mowat Centre for Policy Innovation at the
The stated objective of equalization
is to enable have-not provinces to provide the same level of public services as
the “have” provinces at roughly comparable levels of taxation. But most of the
have-nots have substantially lower costs of living than the “haves,” so
providing services there costs less.
This makes the system even more
distorted. For instance, while
The bad news on equalization is that
it is entrenched in the Constitution. Barring an amendment, we have to have an
equalization system. But the good news is the amounts and formulas are not set
in stone. Equalization doesn’t have to be over-rich and apply to far too many
provinces. Nothing put political cowardice stands in the way of proper
over-haul of this outdated, distorting program before the 2012 deadline to put
a new agreement in place.
79
Loophole used to pay Basi-Virk defence should be closed
Editorial
Almost a year and a half after
picking up a $6-million legal bill for two public servants who pleaded guilty
to corruption charges, the provincial government has finally clarified the
legal basis for the transaction.
What’s clear from the explanation is
that the foul odour that has been attached to the deal from when it was first
announced after Dave Basi and Bob Virk agreed to plead guilty will not be going
away any time soon.
The mystery has always been how two
deputy ministers were able to approve a deal involving so much public money on
their own. Previously, the authority cited for the decision taken by the then
deputy minister of finance, Graham Whitmarsh, and then deputy attorney-general
David Loukidelis, was the Finance Administration Act. But it contains a section
that limits to $100,000 the ability of civil servants to cancel a debt owed to
the government without a cabinet order.
According to the explanation given
to Sun columnist Vaughn Palmer over the weekend, that section didn’t apply
because the debt did not exist yet at the time the decision was taken, even
though the decision anticipated that it would be. As a result, the public
servants could let their political masters off the hook by taking
responsibility for a politically toxic deal.
Health Minister Mike de Jong, who
was then attorney-general, was able to say he didn’t make the decision but only
approved it after it was made.
The legal bills were being paid as
an undertaking under a policy that required them to be repaid if Basi and Virk
were found guilty. The decision that let them off the hook was an amendment to
that undertaking that said the bills would be paid regardless of the outcome of
the trial. The decision had no dollar amount attached, even though the
consequences were known at the time.
That paved the way for Basi and Virk
to plead guilty without having the additional consequence of paying back the $6
million they had racked up in legal bills.
British Columbians have rightly been
scandalized by the deal, which gave two convicted criminals a break that they
in no way deserved. The government has defended the agreement as a means of
saving taxpayers a much larger bill by ending a case that had no end in sight.
But as we have argued before, the
only reason Basi and Virk were able to spend so much on their defence is that
they had a blank cheque from taxpayers in the form of a policy that was
originally intended to protect civil servants from lawsuits but was later
extended to criminal charges.
As their bills mounted, so did the
motivation to leave no stone unturned in their defence. Hence the deal to end
the trial, since pleading guilty without it would have been financially
ruinous.
Now we know that the government used
what was in effect a technicality to craft a deal that allowed both politicians
and the court to say that it wasn’t part of a plea bargain, even though the
guilty plea would not have been achieved without it.
That may have been within the law, but
it doesn’t pass the smell test. No public servant should be able to commit $6
million without political approval, especially not in a questionable deal.
80
Faithful & fed up
National Post – May 5,
2012
Michael Coren is growing
increasingly impatient. He sees the world around him becoming dangerously
intolerant of Christianity. In the just-released Heresy: The Lies They Spread
About Christianity, his 14th book, he writes that Christianity has become the
most abused faith on Earth. "I believe the evidence is overwhelming ...
that Christianity is the main, central, most common, and most thoroughly and
purposefully marginalized, obscured, and publicly and privately misrepresented
belief system in the final decades of the twentieth century and the opening years
of the twenty-first century." He rails that the same intellectual class
that so quickly condemns anything Christian will do cartwheels to explain away
Islamic terrorism. National Post religion reporter Charles Lewis spoke to Mr.
Coren in his
Q You start off in Heresy with the
statement that Christianity has become the "most thoroughly and purposely
marginalized belief system in the world." Certainly Christians are under
physical threat in much of the Middle East and
A There's a radical difference in
the life of a Christian in the Islamic world and the life of a Christian in the
West. And any North American Christian who says we're being persecuted should
really hold on a minute. This is not the same as the Coptic Christians being in
physical danger in
Q So how do you see things here in
A Christians are marginalized,
they're mocked, they're told their views don't belong, they're told to keep
their views out of the public square and keep their religion at home. And where
it can be quite sinister is at universities where Christian students are told
that their ideas are stupid. I've even seen it with my children who are in
university. Somehow Christianity is not a valid area of thought any longer.
You can bring your socialism, your
feminism, your homosexuality, your anti-Zionism into the class but if you bring
your Christianity that's not to be taken seriously.
Q But there is a lot about
Christianity that can seem unreal: the Virgin Birth, the Resurrection of Jesus.
Is it any surprise that people sometimes have trouble taking it seriously?
A Christians are mocked for
believing in the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection but really what they are
mocked for is the moral consequences of their beliefs: that life begins at
conception and ends at natural death, that abortion is wrong, that promiscuity
is wrong. We live in a culture where no one wants to hear the word
"no."
Q There is a tone of exacerbation in
your book. Are you getting fed up with have to defend your faith?
A When you get it from intelligent
people it's particularly irritating, because they will give other ideologies
and other religions a great deal of room to try to understand. When it comes to
Christianity they seem to assume that any sense of fairness or sympathy should
be thrown out the window. They will say things that are blatantly stupid and
that's irritating.
Q Like what?
A To say Hitler once said he was a
Christian so he must have been a Christian and Nazism came out of Christianity.
Nazism was the antithesis of Christianity. The idea that because a tiny number
of Catholic priests acted in an appalling manner should jaundice everything
said by the Roman Catholic Church is also so illogical. You might as well say
that no comment by a Canadian should ever be taken seriously because there are
some serial killers in
Q In the book you say how angry you
are that Anders Breivik, the Norwegian mass murderer, is constantly referred to
as a Christian. Yet before it was known who the perpetrator was most people
assumed it was a Muslim. If it's okay to label one criminal with his religion,
why not the other?
A When the Norwegian massacre took
place I said the chances are that this is a Muslim attack. I said that because
there had been an attack in
Q But who is to say that these
Muslim terrorists are devout Muslims and that the Christians are not devout?
A Muslims read the Koran just before
they attack and declare what they're doing is in the name of Allah. The Koran
supports violent acts. And I'm afraid many ordinary Muslims rejoice in these
attacks. But no where in the New Testament does Jesus justify violence. Jesus
never led armies and was not a warlord. The few Christians who do these
terrible things do it despite their Christian faith. Those Muslims who commit
acts of terrorism do it because of their faith. Brevik hadn't been in a church
in 17 years. There is just no evidence for Christian terrorism today.
Q But I'm sure a lot of ordinary
Muslims would disagree with you, especially those living in
A I did a radio show and a Muslim
called and said, "Well I believe it's wrong to attack Christianity and I
think you would find most every Muslim in the world would agree with me."
And I said: "Sir, I cannot listen to this. I've held a Bible soaked in the
blood of Nigerian Christians slaughtered by Muslim fanatics. I've held the
bullets fired from the guns of Muslim fanatics attacking Christians in a
Q Do Christians in
A First of all, forget mainstream
Protestants (Anglican,
Q What about Catholics? In
A I think certainly Roman Catholics
and evangelicals should have stood up more to Bill 13. We are being told our
view on homosexuality is somehow wrong.
Q Could the Catholic Church leaders
be afraid of being labeled homophobic?
A They're going to be called
homophobic whatever they do. I think the Catholic Church has spent too much
time worrying about the reaction it might get rather than reacting itself.
Q Let's talk about homosexuality a
bit more. The Catholic Church teaches that homosexual acts represents
"grave depravity" and "homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered
– and under no circumstances can they be approved." It also says gay
people should be loved and respected. You say you have gay friends.
Wouldn't most gay people be insulted
by being told their behaviour is "intrinsically disordered?"
A If someone calls me a homophobe
because I believe marriage is between one man and one woman, then I would
rejoice in that. But frankly, with gay friends, I try to avoid the subject.
They know I am opposed to gay marriage and they also know I'm fond of them as
people and would defend them against personal attack. But let me be clear,
anyone who hates gay people is a moral criminal.
Q But a gay person might still ask,
how can you be my friend when you think what I do is "intrinsically
disordered."
A First, I would never use the same
language as the Catholic Church. It sounds too clinical. A young gay woman once
asked me if God loved her. I told her, "We all face challenges. You are
loved as a person but you are more than your sexuality. We're all sinners and
we're all struggling. I just can't affirm homosexual behaviour."
Q I was surprised you devoted a
chapter to Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. It seemed odd to me you would choose
something that is now fairly old and forgotten. Even Opus Dei, who were
portrayed as assassins, no longer seem to care.
A Well, it has influenced millions
of people. They've been led by the book to read other books that oppose
Christianity. Brown quotes real people and he makes a lot of it seem like
non-fiction. I thought it was worth taking on again. I wanted to make sure that
what is in The Da Vinci Code is just not true.
Q In Heresy you say one of the myths
is that Christians are obsessed with abortion. But in the chapter on abortion
you too seem obsessed with it. Can you explain what you were getting at?
A Christians, I believe, react so
strongly to abortion, so intensely because they're part of an institution given
by God – so they feel it more when the most vulnerable are destroyed. And they
feel it more intensely than other people. I guess we are obsessed because it is
such a tragedy. And if we dare to mention it, the world tells us to be quiet.
81
Whither the labour movement
National Post – May 3,
2012
By Tasha Kheiriddin
It’s hard to blame the May Day
protesters: Receiving 4,000 pink slips from Ottawa the day before would make
anyone don a “
On the same day, in
Meanwhile, PSAC is asking its
members for an additional $2.84 per month in dues to pad its “political action
fund,” to fight the Conservatives’ trimming of the federal payroll, and keep
the perqs for their union warriors. Most of the money will be used to sustain
the pension plan for 340 people who work for PSAC, which is facing a
$30-million deficit by 2015.
Mind you, not all members approve of
this idea: As public servant Katherine Nowalkoski put it, “To even suggest a
levy or any sort of increase in dues is completely outrageous … I believe PSAC
has lost touch with its membership as well as reality.”
The federal government likely is
betting on more people feeling that way, especially non-unionized workers. In
tough economic times, it’s hard to feel a lot of solidarity with our more
organized brothers and sisters.
This isn’t the early 1900s: Most
unionized workers are not toiling in collapsing coal mines, or living in leaky
company housing, or suffering any more than non-unionized workers are. Yet
union jobs command an estimated 7.7% premium, even after controlling for
employee and workplace characteristics. According to Statistics Canada, in 2010
the average unionized full-time worker pulled in $26.71 per hour, vs. $22.71
for his or her non-union counterparts.
For whom do most of those unionized
workers toil? Answer: the state, a.k.a. you and me.
Sixteen percent of private-sector
workers were unionized in 2010, compared to 71% of public-sector workers. Their
higher wages are thus being subsidized by taxpayers earning lower wages for the
same types of jobs. The labour movement’s answer would likely be that all
workers should organize and get better pay. But artificially inflating wages
beyond what the market commands, simply by exerting union pressure, means
employers would be able to afford fewer employees; and more unemployment is the
last thing the public wants.
The federal government thus feels
comfortable in taking a pickaxe to the bureaucracy, not only to meet its
deficit-reduction targets, but also to make good on its promise of a more
efficient government.
In fairness, the Tories grew the
size of government during the first few years of their minority mandates,
continuing a trend that started in 2000. According to the Privy Council Office,
after the cuts under Jean Chrétien in the 1990s, federal public spending and
the size of government bureaucracy exploded. Between 2000 and 2008, real
program spending shot up 32%, the civil service expanded by 25%, while
population increased by less than 10%. So a retrenchment was overdue.
Unions need to be careful how they
engage in this battle. While they have a political champion in the NDP
opposition, and can play to fears of service cuts, they have to be realistic in
their expectations. Comments such as “I do not want to work until I’m 67,”
voiced by one Will Parker, 20, as he marched this week with his parents at the
PSAC demonstration, only make you shake your head. In the real world, Will,
people are already working longer and harder.
Unless you want
82
Asinine proposal: free college for all
May 3, 2012
By Lee Duigon
Last week
Some went farther than that.
Forgiving the debt – that is, sticking the taxpayers with another trillion
dollars in deficit spending – is not enough, they said. What the country really
needs is “free universal college education,” paid for by the government – that
is, sucked out of the American people’s paychecks.
Free, eh? Do you think the
professors will take pay cuts? And on top of it, we’d have to create yet
another mammoth, money-burning bureaucracy to administrate our folly.
At the same time, I heard on my
local radio station a public service announcement from some entity called the
County Transportation Authority, exhorting us all to “ride our bicycles to
work” instead of driving cars.
Our glorious leaders wish to consign
us to perpetual childhood.
I call your attention to a scientific paper by a British researcher, Bruce Charlton.
Charlton observed in 2007 that “adults in modernizing liberal democracies
increasingly retain many of the attitudes and behaviors traditionally
associated with youth.” In other words, they don’t grow up. He theorized “that
the major cause of PN [Psychological Neoteny – a slowing of maturity] in
modernizing societies is the prolonged duration of formal education.”
Charlton thought this might not be
so terrible, “because people need to be somewhat child-like in their psychology
in order to keep learning, developing and adapting to the rapid and
accelerating pace of change.” Meanwhile, they don’t work, marry, or raise
children.
As we cannot help seeing from the
escapades of the Occupy This-or-That movement, prolonged formal education also
lumbers its recipients with some other “youthful” traits that are not so
desirable – petulance, wishful thinking, excessive credulity, self-absorption,
an inability to distinguish wisdom from sophomoric jaw-flapping, creative
thought from pretentious twaddle, or coherent ideas from neo-marxist drivel;
and, above all, a monumental sense of entitlement.
But what do you call someone who
sits in school all day and rides a bicycle instead of a car?
A child!
Our freedom-eating ruling class has
good reasons for wanting everyone to go to college.
It keeps them out of the job market.
Ignorant, child-like people who can
only travel as far as they can pedal a bicycle are much easier to control than
adults who own cars.
College students are the easiest
people in the world to manipulate. All you have to do is tell them how smart
you think they are, and you can make them do or believe anything you want. Sock
puppets put up more resistance than college students.
Because they are so easy to
manipulate, and because they have not acquired a grown-up understanding of the
world and how it works, college students are the ideal voting base. Stroke
their immature egos, serve them up a smorgasbord of empty promises that anyone
but a college kid could see through, and they’ll fawn on you and wag their
tails and bark enthusiastically as you take away their freedom and destroy
prosperity.
Remember when college used to be
where scholars went? Not anymore! Because so few individuals have the desire or
the ability to be scholars, herding vast throngs of them into college will
require the creation of many degree programs that are totally meaningless.
Already we have multitudes of students wasting four, five, or six years of
their lives to get degrees in women’s studies, queer studies, urban folklore
studies, environmental justice, the erotic literature of the Hittite Empire,
and what-not. Our illustrious Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, has even suggested
that the schools – all the schools, in fact: not just the colleges – teach
“techniques of protest.” How eager will employers be to hire immature
individuals with degrees in protesting?
When, if ever, these hordes of
students graduate, the only possible employment for them will be as professors
and teachers of their inane and futile subjects. Or they can always embark on
careers as day laborers or convenience-store clerks – if those jobs are still
around by the time they finish getting educated.
They will also be superbly qualified
to be helpless pawns in our ruling class’s lunatic schemes to save the planet
by “developing down.” That’s weasel-speak for plunging the Western nations into
But what do we care? Once you have
universal “free” college, universal “free” grad school won’t be far behind. And
if we’re still writing term papers and listening to lectures when we’re old and
grey, and it’s getting harder and harder to pedal off to college every day, we
probably won’t even notice we’ve been played for suckers all our lives.
83
Don’t negotiate with violent students
National Post – April 27,
2012
Editorial
Late on Wednesday night, the latest
in a long series of student protests turned violent in downtown
On Monday, the government agreed to
meet with student groups that would commit to a 48-hour “truce,” meaning
refrain from disruptive or violent protests. After a protest announced by the
student union CLASSE turned violent on Tuesday, the
After vandalism was reported, police
ordered the crowd to disperse. The real violence began soon after, with windows
smashed, fires set and rocks hurled at police. There were eight reported
injuries, including four suffered by police officers. As of press time, 85
arrests have been made.
Violence in the streets is never
acceptable in a society as fair and equitable as
In 2017, after the fee hike is
enacted,
Seemingly blind to the comparatively
easy ride they have thus far enjoyed, some of the student protesters – especially
some who belong to CLASSE – have ludicrously begun to drape themselves in the
noble rhetoric of the oppressed. Some protesters, quoted by local
Oh, please. In the countries swept
up in the recent Arab Spring, protesters took to the streets in the name of
fundamental freedoms, not the right to somewhat cheaper tuition. And when those
protesters hurled bricks at the security forces, they received bullets and
mortar shells in return. That Quebec’s students feel their situations are at
all comparable to the youth of the Middle East, who lacked basic rights and
endured unemployment rates that in some places approached 50%, says far more
about their disconnect from reality than it does about the rightness of their
cause.
Of course, as is always the case,
the violence is being driven by a small, radical fringe, using the anonymity of
an otherwise peaceful mob to wreak havoc. Both
Until and unless that happens, we
encourage the
And in the meantime, order must be
maintained. Violence should be met by a firm police response. Those found
breaking the law should be punished to the fullest extent possible. Anything
less will signal that violence is an acceptable option in Canadian public life,
and add further to the absurd sense of entitlement that
84
Handing a bunker-buster to separatists
National Post – April 25,
2012
By Barbara Kay
In February, Justin Trudeau shocked
Canadians when he told a Radio Canada interviewer that if the Canadian
government put any constraints on abortion or repealed gay marriage,
"maybe I would think about wanting to make
The only explanation his defenders
could scrape together for this diamond studded gift to the ever shrinking base
of
What excuse, then, can anyone offer
Michael Ignatieff for Monday's monumental gaffe? During a BBC Scotland
broadcast of an interview about
Unlike his infamous, impulsive
observation about Israel's actions in Lebanon during the 2006 war being
"war crimes" (an objectively unsupported opinion he was forced to
retract and apologize for later), Ignatieff's stance in this case seems to
arise from intellectual conviction. Both
Maybe that is true and maybe it
isn't. Logic doesn't mean very much in politics, and (as
How many years did Ignatieff spend
in active politics? How many times has he seen a mushroom cloud of media mania
erupting from a firecracker-sized remark?
And given the answers to these
questions, how obtuse can an intellectual of his calibre be not to know the
difference between a professor's private hypothesizing to 40 students in a
classroom, and a former politician's bruiting his implicit blessing of Quebec
independence to the entire world via a foreign journalist?
Because "blessing" is
exactly how it will be interpreted by the ideological jackals of the separatist
movement. Michael Ignatieff, former leader of the party of Pierre Elliott
Trudeau, contender for the leadership of
Oh, of course he backtracked later
in the interview to say, "it is my fervent hope that separatists are
defeated," but that rings a little hollow from someone who has just handed
those same separatists a metaphorical bunker buster.
As an anglo Quebecer, I am simply
flabbergasted by Ignatieff's facile comparison of
Ethnic nationalism is not always
unhealthy. When an ethnic group is actively persecuted within a larger, hostile
body, seeking an independent political status as a means of securing its own
safety and freedom to self-actualize is justified. I can't speak to the roots
of Scottish ultranationalism; that's not my bailiwick. But I can speak to the
roots of ultra-nationalism in
All that stands between us
85
Chastened
Danielle Smith says Wildrose
By Karen Kleiss &
Keith Gerein
Premier Alison Redford said Tuesday
her Progressive Conservative government won an unexpected majority government
by appealing to a broad array of
Polls in the past week all had the
PCs and Wildrose neck-and-neck, with some giving Wildrose the edge. When it was
over Monday night, the Conservatives took about 44 per cent of the vote and 61
of 87 seats, compared with 34 per cent for the Wildrose, which won 17 seats.
The Liberals and NDP each got less than 10 per cent of the vote.
"Last year, the Progressive
Conservative party had a leadership campaign,"
"I don't intend to spend the
next four years explaining and differentiating on an ideological basis what
that means."
She will face Smith and her 16
Wildrose colleagues who will become
Smith said Tuesday a chastened
Wildrose will revisit some of its more controversial policies that seem to have
driven undecided voters to the Tories late in the campaign.
"We have some soul-searching to
do as a party," she said Tuesday after a defeat that saw Wildrose almost
shut out of the province's major cities and northern
"Our members have now seen that
some of our policies were rejected by Albertans, quite frankly," she said
in an interview. "We will be revisiting some of those."
Asked which policies in particular,
Smith mentioned the "Alberta Agenda" items that call for the province
to establish its own pension plan and to replace the RCMP with a provincial
police. Such ideas were touted by a group of conservative thinkers in a famous
letter written a decade ago that called for
Smith also mentioned her party
members' endorsement of conscience rights, which would allow a marriage commissioner
to refuse to perform a same-sex marriage or a Catholic doc-tor to decline
writing a prescription for birth control.
"There may also be a stronger
statement to make about climate change and our policy around greenhouse gas
emissions," she said.
Smith said she expects such policies
will be on the agenda when Wildrose holds its annual general meeting this fall.
Smith said she intends to press
"The government still has the
same problem today as they had yester-day," she said. "They don't
have a realistic budget and now they have all these new spending promises to
keep. Frankly, I don't see any way that Premier Redford can balance the
budget."
86
Christian prayer rankles volunteer
National Post – April 23,
2012
By Betty Ann Adam
Ashu Solo, a member of the city's
cultural diversity and race relations committee, was among the guests at the
dinner last Wednesday, where Councillor Randy Donauer said a blessing over the
meal in which he mentioned Jesus and ended with "Amen."
"It made me feel like a
second-class citizen. It makes you feel excluded," said Mr. Solo, who is
an atheist. "It's ironic that I've now become a victim of religious
bigotry and discrimination at this banquet that was supposed to be an
appreciation banquet for the service of volunteers like me."
The inclusion of a Christian prayer
at a municipal government event violates the separation of religion and
government, Mr. Solo wrote in a lengthy email to Mayor Don Atchison, which he later
distributed to council.
Mr. Solo also takes issue with a
prayer that "clearly gives primacy to one religion over all other
religions" at a municipal event paid for with
"This is not a Christian
country or a Christian city. It is a secular, multicultural country and
secular, multicultural city with people from numerous religions as well as
spiritual people, agnostics and atheists," Mr. Solo said.
Municipal officials should not use
their offices to "perform religious bigotry, as this is," or "to
impose their own religious beliefs on others."
Mr. Atchison said he was caught
off-guard by the complaint because many of the events he attends include a
prayer before meals.
"I've never given it any
thought at all," he said, adding he was sorry to hear Mr. Solo felt
excluded.
He suggested in the future, the
dinner could feature prayers from different religions on a rotating basis.
There could even be a dinner with no prayer at all for atheists, he said.
Mr. Solo said that would not work because
there are thousands of religions.
He wants an apology from the Mayor
and a promise there won't be any more prayers at City of
87
Culture Guard charges School Board with promoting hatred
VANCOUVER, April 18, 2012
(CultureGuard) – Culture Guard has filed a human rights complaint against the
Vancouver School Board, charging that the VSB has used and promoted in its
meetings, policies and its schools, the use of hateful, defamatory and
demeaning terminology and has facilitated and endorsed the “Out In Schools”
program, a program that is designed to promote hatred and contempt for
identifiable groups, contrary to the BC Human Rights Code.
The offensive terms specified
include (but are not limited to) terms like “homophobe”, “homophobic” and
“homophobia”.
“Such terms are designed to promote
hatred and contempt, they are used to isolate, marginalize, and belittle
individuals and groups that hold opinions at variance to those of the sex
activists within the education establishment,” Culture Guard president Kari Simpson
stated. “They have no legitimate use; they give the appearance of medical or
psychological terminology, but they don’t appear in recognized medical or
psychological dictionaries. They are simply slurs invented for hateful
propaganda purposes.”
The Culture Guard complaint asks the
B.C. Human Rights Tribunal to instruct the VSB to immediately cease the use of
materials and policies “that project, advise, counsel and/or indoctrinate
students, staff or the broader community, in any manner, that the terms ‘homophobe’,
‘homophobia’, ‘homophobic’, etc. are acceptable.” It also seeks an official
apology from the VSB to “all individuals and groups harmed, belittled, demeaned
and/or otherwise adversely affected by the Vancouver School Board’s failure to
respect all individuals and groups, by cultivating hatred, ignorance and
contempt for their opinions, religious beliefs and/or cultural practices as
they pertain to issues directly related to biologically and economically
harmful sexual practices and the requirement of students and staff to
‘celebrate’ the aforementioned practices.”
Ms. Simpson is acting on behalf of
Chinese Christians but anticipates a number of other groups and individuals
will be added if the Vancouver School Board fails to remedy the situation.
88
As a former Madam and woman who was prostituted, I know why
prostitution must be made illegal
By Tania Flolleau
First, it cruelly subjugates
vulnerable migrant women into the dreadful
darkness of sex-slavery. Migrant trafficking is an estimated $32 billion
business, annually exceeding the sales of Google, Starbucks and Nike combined.
Prostitution in
Another reason why prostitution
should be illegal in
A further reason to make
prostitution illegal is that it utterly destroys the mental and even physical
integrity of the prostituted woman. Approximately 80% of women entering into
prostitution have been victims of rape. Prostituted persons, however, are
literally raped multiple times daily, as much as 8 to 10 times per day. They
are the most raped class of women in human history. One study found that
prostituted women exhibited many of the same characteristics as soldiers
returning traumatized from war. More than 75% of prostitutes surveyed in the
study met the criteria for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The average
number of prostitutes suffering PTSD from sex slavery was seen to be 14% higher
than the average number of soldiers suffering PTSD after returning from intense
combat on the front lines.
As a forward-moving nation, we
Canadians should make prostitution illegal. We should not, however, make the
laws as tough for women caught prostituting as we should for the pimps, Johns,
and recruiters, since most women caught in prostitution did not choose that
lifestyle nor can they easily escape from it. Where there is a demand, there
will always be a supply. To reduce the demand for the prostitutes, we need to
throw the book at the Johns, recruiters and the pimps. Making stiff laws for
the Johns, recruiters and pimps will greatly lower the number of prostitutes.
The recent ruling in
Some people think that legalizing
brothels will make the prostituted women safer and allow them to lead better
lives. This is far from the truth. Many of the women working in brothels have
already been abused by human trafficking, enslavement to pimps, or by being
controlled by criminal organizations through fear and oppression.
Whether brothels are legal or not, a
prostituted woman will always be the one who loses out in the end. The vast
majority of prostituted women that work in brothels eventually end up working
on the street. This happens once the signs of a woman’s sex slavery start to
show on the outside of her body. She become too worn out and haggard-looking to
appeal to the Johns that frequent the brothels. Not being able to keep up with
the younger sexier recruits, she is eventually cast out on the street like
garbage. Many brothel managers will throw out a prostitute when her drug
addiction becomes too much for her to handle. Legalizing brothels does nothing
for the problems faced by street prostitutes as virtually no brothels will hire
drug addicted street walkers. Research shows that less than 3% of prostituted
women ever get out of the sex industry.
A staggering two-thirds of children
born to prostituted women end up imitating their mother’s lifestyle or entering
into a life of crime. For the sake of protecting children alone, brothels and
prostitution should be made illegal.
Approximately 80% of all prostitutes
murdered are killed by their Johns, pimps, or through the abuse of drugs. Most
prostitute homicides are never resolved and the Johns and pimps are never
brought to justice.
By legalizing brothels, we are only
enabling a serious social problem to fester and grow worse for our future
generations and entire nation. Making brothels legal will only act as an
incentive for women who are lured by the prospect of easy money. The number of women
entering the so-called ‘sex trade’ will climb higher every day. Once they enter
the trade, it become almost impossible to exit. The prostituted woman becomes
addicted to the fast money, the comfort provided by the pimp, and to the drugs.
The younger ones who lack education hardly stand a chance of ever getting out.
I know this first hand as an ex-prostitute who works tirelessly to rescue these
poor abused women from their dire situations.
In a 1998 report of prostituted
persons across five countries, 92% of women said they wanted to escape
prostitution immediately if they had the resources. Women who sell themselves
are often coerced, forced or drugged into it—sometimes even at gunpoint. They
feel they have no other skills or abilities to succeed in life. The thought of
trying to escape is often not a reality when fears of being caught and killed
or severely beaten start to kick in. Many times the exploited and demoralized
women simply lack the self confidence or education to think and act for themselves.
Many of these girls that come on
working visas, and then are forced into sex slavery, can’t go to the police for
help for fear that their families will be murdered back home. It is very hard
to escape the industry, since most girls have no sense of purpose other than
what they do. They are ashamed. Without resources or knowing where to go, these
women become society’s lost women.
We live in a country where women are
very important. Many women are honourable doctors, chief executives, lawyers
and judges. Legalizing brothels and calling prostitution a ‘trade’ has done
nothing to elevate the status of women in this country. It has only demeaned
them and turned them into expendable chattel that can be bought and sold.
In reality, prostitution is not a
trade. It is a criminal enterprise. We need to keep our young women in school
and encourage and empower them to strive towards good careers instead of taking
the fast, easy approach of prostitution whereby they become uneducated and
spiral down in a dehumanizing pattern that can only end in their ultimate
desolation. Sadly, most women are liberated from the slavery of prostitution
through death.
The diseases that are spread through
prostitution are vast. Although the law will make the prostituted women undergo
testing for diseases, this will only keep the Johns safe, not the prostitutes.
Our Pharmacare system, which is also government run, stands to make a large
profit from the medications used by prostitutes that become ill from their
sex-slavery as they develop drug habits, succumb to AIDS, STDs, depression, or
other mental illnesses. Legalizing prostitution only fosters the growth of sex
slavery rather than doing anything to eliminate it.
Shame on you Justice Susan Himel and
your entire court of appeal. You are the real criminals for authorizing the
sexual slavery of women and children who are at many times forced into their
abject situation of misery and suffering through no fault of their own.
We don’t need laws permitting
brothels. We need laws that instill the fear of long jail sentences and stiff
penalties into the pimps and brothel owners who are making dirty money off of
vulnerable women and children. Many brothels lure unsuspecting women through
advertisements such as: “Female owned and operated. Earn up to $2000.00 daily.
Fun friendly, safe environment”. This is how I got lured into it. It is all a
lie that conceals the horror of the trade in human flesh for sexual
exploitation.
Let us not forget that prostitution
includes young girls and boys being sold for sex to pedophiles, something that
we rarely hear in the mainstream media.
In conclusion, it is a tragedy for
any young girl or women to enter into the hell of prostitution. They become our
nation’s lost women. They become victims of a dark and sinister sex
enslavement. Their life is one of agony and horror. Jail-time and social
humiliation is too little of a punishment for those who engage in or perpetrate
the crime against women that is now to be legally sanctioned in brothels by
Justice Susan Himel.
What we need is more organizations
to help women exit prostitution. As a society, we need to drastically focus on
prevention. We need serious legal deterrents for the Johns and pimps. We need
to raise awareness on the effects prostitution has on society. We need to get
into the high schools and colleges to do preventative work with our nation’s
children before it is too late.
The women of our country are worth
it. Our young girls are worth it. The future of our nation – which now stands
at a cross road – is worth it. Legalized Brothels and prostitution cannot be an
option.
89
Margaret Thatcher’s problem with the Charter
National Post – April 17,
2012
By Frédéric Bastien
Thirty years ago, on a warm spring
day in April, the Constitution Act, 1982, was officially proclaimed and the
Charter of Rights came into being. There was a grandiose ceremony on Parliament
Hill, overshadowed only by the absence of René Lévesque and by a thunderstorm
mixed with hail that struck in the middle of the festivities.
There was another notable absence,
though. Margaret Thatcher, the British prime minister, had declined Pierre
Trudeau’s invitation. She’d supported his patriation package all along, despite
the initial strong provincial opposition and the reluctance of many
parliamentarians in
Thatcher’s reaction was
representative of the sense of uneasiness that existed at the time in British
political circles. While ministers, MPs and peers wanted
Trudeau’s strongest argument in
favour of including a Charter in a repatriated constitution was that Canadians
would regain their freedoms. How would this be achieved? By virtue of the fact
that judges would now be able to interpret the general provisions of the
Charter and, in the name of fundamental rights, strike down statutes enacted by
the people’s elected representatives.
Margaret Thatcher believed that this
approach was wrong. In one of her first speeches as prime minister, she
explained that her government was determined “to return to one of the first
principles which have traditionally governed our political life … the
paramountcy of parliament for the protection of fundamental rights.” By that,
the Iron Lady meant two things. First, rights are not absolute in a democracy.
For example, a man cannot yell fire in a crowded theatre in the absence of a
blaze and then justify his action in the name of freedom of speech. There is
always a limit to individual rights. Thatcher thought it essential that elected
politicians should have the power to draw the line, not judges. Second, she was
convinced that parliamentarians were better at defining and protecting rights
through vigorous debates, arguments and counter-arguments, while letting the
people decide, at election time, which party is the best defender of their
liberties.
This is the system that existed in
Hence Thatcher correctly foresaw
that the Charter would fail to improve respect for human rights in
Ford’s predictions were well
received in
The Charter was supposed to give us
a new sense of nationhood and pride. Instead, it added a whole range of new
divisive issues to the ones that already existed.
90
Application to exclude $5 million in pot dismissed
Judge
denies attempt to have evidence set aside because police dog bit accused during
raid
By Neal Hall
A judge has dismissed an application
to exclude $4.8-million worth of pot seized by police from a huge grow
operation near Kelowna because one of the accused was bitten by a police dog
when its handler failed to properly restrain the animal.
The dog bite was cited as one of a
number of violations of the rights of the accused, Kiet Tu Ly, that should have
resulted in the evidence being thrown out, according to his lawyer.
Ly was one of three people arrested
and charged with cultivating marijuana and possession for the purpose of
trafficking after police raided a rural property and seized 5,102 marijuana
plants from 15 greenhouses on Sept. 3, 2008.
The crop was a few weeks away from
being harvested at the 39-acre property at 8405 Highway 33, located 30
kilometres outside
The trial judge was told that at
maturity, each plant would have produced about seven ounces of bud marijuana.
The entire crop would have produced
about 2,200 pounds of pot valued at about $4.8 million, if sold by the pound at
prevailing 2008 prices.
The greenhouses were initially
spotted by police from a helicopter as it flew over the property, prompting an
investigation.
The court was told that shortly
after Ly was arrested at the scene, he was sitting quietly on the ground when
the police dog, Bak, who was on a leash, suddenly and without warning lunged at
Ly and bit him on the calf.
Ly's lawyer, Neil Cobb, added that
while the police executed the search warrant, a second police dog bit another
accused, Siu Shing Wong, who suffered puncture wounds on the face and head.
The Crown, Clarke Burnett, said Ly's
bite was an "unfortunate accident" involving not much more than
momentary contact between the dog and the accused.
Cobb argued, "that a prone,
hand-cuffed and defenceless individual who had complied meticulously with every
police direction to that point in time was subjected to an unprovoked and
prolonged attack which, according to the best available evidence was both
terrifying and extremely painful."
B.C. Supreme Court Justice Geoffrey
Barrow concluded the dog bite was unintentional and the injuries were not
serious. The judge concluded that admitting the evidence from the search would
not "bring the reputation for the administration of justice into
disrepute."
He dismissed the defence application
to bar its admission based on the dog bite and the other cited breaches of Ly's
rights.
The ruling came at the end of a voir
dire at the trial of Ly and co-accused Cheuk Bun Lee.
The trial continues June 1 in
At the start of the trial last year,
Wong, the third accused, pleaded guilty and was sentenced last October to 18
months in jail.
The full judgment is online at:
http: //bit.ly/Hv7kZQ
91
Lets' get this straight;
What
should be moment of celebration is marred by scars 'not ready to be healed'
By Andrew Coyne
Thirty years later they are still at
it: the grievance nursers, the unity warners, the federalism renewers and the
statesman solvers and the whole shambling constitutional industry, still
rolling, still meeting, still funded. Still.
There are people approaching their
fifties who were not old enough to vote when the Queen signed the Constitution
Act 1982 into law, snipping the last legislative strings tying the Constitution
of Canada to the Parliament of Britain, entrenching a homegrown process of
amendment within it, adding a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and much else.
After several decades of failed
attempts, this ought to have been a moment for great national celebration – as
it should be now, on its 30th anniversary. But that is to reckon without this
country's capacity for pointless politicization, sterile debates and perpetual
indignation. And so the only people who will be marking the occasion, aside from
a little gathering of Liberals in Toronto, will be the ones most convinced the
country suffered some terrible calamity with patriation that they alone can put
right: the constitutional industry, again.
Polling data presented to a
three-day conference in
As always, the remedy is more powers
for
The former
Let's just hold it right there.
There is no sense, none whatever, in which
Even the provincial government,
while it has never "signed" the 1982 Constitution – as if that were a
requirement – has never hesitated to avail itself of the same document's
protections, whether arguing from its premises in court or invoking the
not-withstanding clause. The only reason it has refused to formally endorse it
is because it has not wished to lose a useful point of leverage over the rest
of the country. And the only reason it has enjoyed such leverage is because of
the readiness of the rest of
But it wasn't done without
But weren't those Quebec Liberal MPs
massively rejected at the next federal election? Yes: in common with Liberals
across the land. We'd just come through a vicious recession, and after 21 years
of nearly unbroken Liberal rule, the country was heartily sick of them. Or if
patriation was such a gift to the separatist movement, how is it that support
for separation sank to such lows in the years afterward? How did the Parti
Quebecois come itself to be so massively rejected in 1985?
If the intervening decades were
tumultuous, it had nothing to do with any reduction in
It gave powers to the provinces – over
resources, for example, to say nothing of the amending formula – while imposing
several obligations on the federal government of particular interest to
The only respect in which the powers
of the provinces were diminished was via the introduction of the Charter of
Rights – though even here all provinces had access to the notwithstanding
clause, while
It was, rather, the very efforts of
the constitutional industry to close this supposed wound that condemned us to
so many years of constitutional torment, beginning in 1986 with the long
process of constitutional negotiations that led to the
And yet, all these years later, they
are still at it. Still.
92
Users free to bake cannabis cookies
Court
strikes down section of law that restricts use to dried form only
By Louise Dickson
People authorized to use medical
marijuana can now bake it in brownies and spread it on toast, the B.C. Supreme
Court ruled Friday.
Justice Robert Johnston concluded
that the section in Health
"The remedy for this breach is
to remove the word 'dried' where it appears in the Marijuana Medical Access
Regulations and I so order," said
The decision comes out of a
constitutional challenge by Owen Smith, the head baker for the Cannabis Buyers'
Club of Canada.
Smith, 29, was charged on Dec. 3,
2009, with possession for the purpose of trafficking and unlawful pos-session
of marijuana, two years after an apartment manager complained to police about a
strong, offensive smell wafting through the building.
Police obtained a search warrant for
the apartment and discovered substantial quantities of cannabis-infused olive
oil and grapeseed oil and pot cookies, destined for sale through the club.
At the time he was charged, he was
producing oils and topical and edible cannabis-based products for the club.
Smith's trial began in January with
a voir dire – a trial within a trial – on a charter application challenging the
restrictions in the MMAR which allow authorized users to possess medical
marijuana in dried form only.
Defence lawyer Kirk Tousaw argued
the laws were unconstitutional and arbitrary and did not further the
government's interests in protecting the health and safety of the public.
Instead, the regulations predominantly forced critically and chronically ill
Canadians to smoke medical marijuana, which is potentially harmful.
"Even an authorized person,
under Health
During the trial, patient witnesses
testified they wanted the opportunity to drink tea infused with cannabis, or
eat pot cookies or apply topical oils infused with cannabis. These other modes
of ingestion are more effective and less harmful than smoking or vaporizing
dried marijuana, said Tousaw.
Non-dried options, however, are
available already through some distributors of medical marijuana in
The British Columbia Compassion Club
Society lists a daily menu of its products available for medical users.
While the bulk of these items are
intended to be smoked – either dried marijuana or hashish – the club also had a
section of "non-smokables" on Friday, which included cookies, brownies,
muffins, lollipops and pesto.
Tousaw also sought a judicial stay
of proceedings for Smith.
In previous cases, the government has
appealed adverse rulings, he said.
Outside court, Owen Smith said he
felt a flutter in his heart at the word "unconstitutional."
"I'm really proud of all the
work we've done so far. Lots of patients and members of the club have been very
supportive. We're going to keep going and do just as good a job in the next
round in front of a jury," said Smith.
It's hard to think a jury would deny
others a safer form of medicating, he said.
Ted Smith, the proprietor of the
Cannabis Buyers' Club of Canada, said he wasn't surprised by the decision.
"I had a firm belief in the law
being wrong," he said.
Smith, who is no relation to the
accused, said he's not intimidated by the prospect of a jury trial.
"I'm confident no jury in this
country will convict Owen for making cookies and skin products. It will give us
another opportunity to change public opinion.
93
An attack on red ink, not on teachers
National Post – April 13,
2012
Editorial
The Elementary Teachers' Federation
of Ontario (ETFO) is annoyed with Premier Dalton McGuinty. In last month's
provincial budget, Mr. McGuinty's government announced that it was freezing the
wages of teachers (and everyone else who works for the province). They aren't
breaking any existing contracts, as that's a whole other can of worms, but have
declared they will not award any raises when contracts come up for
renegotiation. For the teachers, that means August.
The unions obviously aren't happy,
but most of them are at the table with the province. An exception is ETFO,
whose representatives walked out of talks after only an hour. They have stated
that they intend to bypass provincial negotiators, and will deal only with
local school boards. This won't necessarily be of much use: The school boards
can spend only the money the province gives them, as they don't raise their own
funds and don't maintain reserves. But ETFO clearly wants the province to know
how miffed they are, and refusing to negotiate with the province is one way of
doing that.
Oh, and in case that wasn't clear
enough, ETFO president Sam Hammond has also declared the wage freeze to be
"an attack on women." Uh, OK.
It's worth noting that, technically,
ETFO has the right to bypass the province, and negotiate directly with school
boards. The province itself has indirectly acknowledged this by indicating that
this week's provincial-level talks with the EFTO were voluntary. But the unions
have sat down with the province before, including as recently as 2005 and 2008.
On both occasions, Dalton McGuinty, the self-styled "Education Premier,"
was happy to agree to generous wage and benefit packages for his beloved
teachers. All in the name of "labour peace."
Indeed, labour peace is clearly at
the heart of the matter. Mr. Hammond, speaking to reporters in
That, likewise, is within ETFO's
rights. Their contract expires on Aug. 31, and they'll be in a legal position
to strike.
But as with the teacher's option to
negotiate directly with local school boards, this wouldn't necessarily matter
much in practical terms. In unusually blunt language,
It's understandable that Mr. Hammond
doesn't much like his options. The province has played hardball from the
outset. No wonder he feels the need to ramp up the rhetoric to try and put the
government into an awkward situation.
"Our membership is mostly
women," he told reporters. "The government proposal is an attack on
women, an attack on unions and an attack on public-sector workers."
The last two are arguable. The first
one? Not so much. In fact, it's downright odd: Does Mr. Hammond fear that the
female teachers who deal with rambunctious students and hostile parents on a
daily basis must be protected from that notoriously woman-hating Minister of
Education, (Ms.) Laurel Broten, and the kindly Mr. McGuinty, better known as
Premier Dad?
Mr. Hammond's rhetoric is offputting
– particularly to the men who teach in
Teachers perform a hugely important
social function. And
This is not an attack on women. It's
an attack on red ink.
94
National Post – April 13,
2012
By Brendan Steven
With cries of bloquons la
hausse, a small army of
Student activists have orchestrated
a series of strike actions in opposition to the tuition increase. The name of
the game has been hyperbole: accusations that Charest seeks to implement
“American-style” privatized education, and claims that accessibility for
low-income students will be ravaged by the changes.
The province’s 2011-2012 budget
frames the university-financing crisis in stark terms. Post-secondary education
in this province was underfunded by $650-million dollars in 2010, up from
$373-million in 2002. Less money is spent on operations in university budgets
than in any other province in the country. Collectively, Quebec’s universities
accumulated a deficit of $483-million in 2009.
In response to this crisis, the
Charest government has proposed a financing plan to inject provincial
universities with $850-million in new revenue by 2015-2016. As part of this new
plan, students are being asked to pay a fair share of their own education. They
certainly don’t pay their fair share now. In 2008-2009, a paltry 12.7% of total
university revenues came from tuition fees. Even after the supposedly apocalyptic
increases starting this year, that number will increase only to 16.9%. By the
time that five-year period ends,
And therein lies the unfairness of
the current policy: Students, many of whom come from high-income families, are
paying only 13¢ on the dollar for the service they are consuming. More than 60%
of current revenue, meanwhile, comes from government sources. Canadian and
Quebec provincial taxpayers, the majority of whom have never attended
university and will never send their own kids to university, are being asked to
cough up to pay a very expensive bill.
Strike activists have argued that
despite the imbalance of payment, low tuition is an important part of
Statistics show that the children of
low-income families are less likely to attend university than their
counterparts from richer families. This reality, no doubt, negatively affects
income mobility. But is
The answer is a resounding no. A
Statistics Canada study in 2007 by Marc Frenette attempted to answer the
question of why such a large gap exists in university attendance based on
income levels. Parental influence, high-school quality and other social factors
accounted for a whopping 84% of the difference.
What about financial constraints?
That accounted for a measly 12% of the difference. If the student movement is
truly concerned about improving access to university for low-income families,
an already minuscule tuition fee is the least of their problems.
There is simply no observed
correlation in
This is not to say that higher
tuition leads to higher accessibility. Certainly, the Frontier Centre’s
researchers note that tuition can be so high it becomes a genuine barrier to
access.
It is a favourite pastime of the
In countries where students pay some
portion of the cost of their own education, the money follows the customer.
Universities can rely on a predictable baseline of revenue – which permits them
to embark on long-term projects, such as building infrastructure. Where no
tuition exists, universities live on the whim of government for their
financing. Education mandarins in
Despite promised tuition increases,
the
The proposed changes to
95
Positive spin on mixed economic data
Editorial
Spring has brought optimism to
In a survey by the Bank of Canada,
58 per cent of firms said sales will increase at a greater rate than in the
previous 12 months, 55 per cent said they plan to add staff and 46 per cent
said they intend to make purchases of machines and equipment.
It's the most bullish outlook in two
years and a sharp contrast with the previous quarterly survey, which was the
worst in the three years.
The abrupt change from negative to
positive suggests a growing belief that the recession is truly behind us and
the recovery, however modest, is real and sustainable. And there appears to be
some statistical support for their bullishness. For instance, the Canadian
economy churned out 82,300 jobs in March, the biggest one-month gain in three
years and far beyond analysts' forecasts of 10,500 jobs. As a result, the
national unemployment rate fell to 7.2 per cent from 7.4 per cent. While the
jobs report was not as encouraging for
The unemployment rate in B.C., 7.0
per cent, is still below the national average.
Meanwhile, the economy has been
chugging along and the gross domestic product was 2.2 per cent higher at the
end of the fourth quarter of 2011 than at the end of the same quarter in 2010.
Retail sales were up 4.7 per cent in January over the same month in 2011,
although the 0.5 per cent jump in January from December was due entirely to
increased car sales.
The Bank of Canada surmises that
with improved expectations for economic growth in the
The survey also indicated businesses
see future inflation within the Bank of Canada's target range of one to three
per cent, albeit at the higher end, and that credit pressures will ease.
Against all this good cheer,
unfortunately, we have the real world.
There are concerns about an economic
slowdown in
If the
Neither should we read too much into
last week's jobs report. "One very good report is not yet enough to
reverse the flattening trend in Canadian jobs," said Scotia Capital
economist Derek Holt.
Add to this the high level of
Canadian household debt, mainly in mort-gages, and a softening real estate
market.
Here in B.C., small and medium size
business owners are more subdued than in the rest of
Given this good news/bad news
backdrop, if Canadian business can keep its spirits up, invest more, create new
jobs and boost sales, their optimism may become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We
hope so.
96
The colour of conformity
On
the ‘Day of Pink’, nothing says ‘celebrate diversity’ like forcing everyone to
dress exactly the same
National Post – April 11,
2012
By Mark Steyn
You go away for 10 minutes, and come
back to find there’s a new acronym in town. “Duelling Queen’s Park Protests
Planned Over GSAs,” reports Xtra. “OECTA Comes Out In Favour Of GSAs,”
reports The Catholic Register. “Obama Blames Bush For GSA Scandal,” reports Fox
News.
Honestly. Is there anything that
isn’t Bush’s fault? No, wait. That last one turns out to be an American GSA –
the Government Services Administration, the government agency that picks out
the office furniture for the other government agencies and is currently under
fire for flying itself to Vegas and throwing itself a lavish party with clowns
(professional clowns, not just government bureaucrats) and a fortune teller,
who curiously enough failed to foretell that the head of the agency would shortly
thereafter lose her job. By contrast,
“Accepting?” One would regard the
very name of this bill as an exquisite parody of the way statist strong-arming
masquerades as limp-wristed passivity were it not for the fact that the
province’s Catholic schools, reluctant to accept government-mandated GSAs, are
proposing instead that they should be called “Respecting Differences” groups.
Good grief, this is the best a bigoted theocrat can come up with?
Bullying is as old as the
schoolhouse. Dr Thomas Arnold, one of the great reforming headmasters of 19th
century England, is captured in the most famous novel ever written about
bullying, Tom Brown’s Schooldays in what, by all accounts, is an accurate
summation of his approach to the matter: “‘You see, I do not know anything of
the case officially, and if I take any notice of it at all, I must publicly
expel the boy. I don’t wish to do that, for I think there is some good in him.
There’s nothing for it but a good sound thrashing.’ He paused to shake hands
with the master … ‘Remember,’ added the Doctor, emphasizing the words, ‘a good
sound thrashing before the whole house.’ ”
These days, a Thrashing Schools Act
mandating Thrashing Out Differences groups across the province would be the
biggest windfall for Chief Commissar Barbara Hall and her
So it’s just like every other bloody
boring day in the
Meanwhile, Cable 14 in Hamilton,
Ont., has been Tweeting up a storm: “National Day of Pink/Anti-Bullying Day is
tomorrow. What will you be wearing?” Er, I don’t think I have a lot of choice
on that front, do I? “For schools holding Anti-Bullying events in April, you
still have time to order shirts at a discount.”
That’s great news! Nothing says
“celebrate diversity” like forcing everyone to dress exactly the same, like a
bunch of Maoists who threw their workers’ garb in the washer but forgot to take
the red flag out. If you’re thinking, “Hang on. Day of Pink? Didn’t we just
have that?” No, that was Pink Shirt Day, the last Wednesday in February. This
is Day of Pink, second Wednesday in April. Like the King streetcar, there’ll be
another one along in a minute, enthusiastically sponsored by Scotiabank, Royal
Bank, ViaRail and all the other corporate bigwigs.
If you’re thinking, “Hang on. Pink awareness-raising?
Isn’t that something to do with breast cancer?” No, that’s pink ribbons.
Unfortunately, all the hues for awareness-raising ribbons are taken: not just
white for bone cancer and yellow for adenosarcoma, but also (my current
favourite) periwinkle for acid reflux. We need to raise awareness of how all
the awareness-raising ribbons have been taken, so anti-bullying groups have
been obliged to move on from ribbons to shirts.
If this sounds vaguely familiar, it
is. P.G. Wodehouse, The Code Of The Woosters(1938): “Don’t you ever read
the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the Saviours of Britain,
a Fascist organization better known as the Black Shorts …”
“By the way, when you say ‘shorts’,
you mean ‘shirts’, of course.”
“No. By the time Spode formed his
association, there were no shirts left. He and his adherents wear black
shorts.”
“Footer bags, you mean?”
Pink Shorts Day is the second
Wednesday in October in the
Yes, there have been a small number
of bullied teens driven to suicide, and these particular deaths are tragedies
for the families involved that blow a great big hole in their lives that can
never be repaired. But they are not a cause for wrongheaded public policy. Hard
cases make bad law, and hard cases hijacked by social engineers, backed by
state bureaucracies and bankrolled by dimwit boardroom patsies make bad law on
a catastrophic scale.
According to the Toronto District
School Board’s own survey, the most common type of bullying is for “body image”
– the reason given by 27% of high school students, 38% of Grades 7 and 8, and
yea, back through the generations. Yet there are no proposals for mandatory
Fat-Svelte Alliances, or Homely-Smokin’ Alliances. The second biggest reason in
What about if you’re the last non-sexualized
tween schoolgirl in
Why, of course! GSAs are officially
welcoming of gays, straights, and even those freaky weirdy types who aren’t yet
into sexual identity but could use a helpful nudge in the right direction.
“Advisors Say GSA Also For Straight Students,” as the headline to a poignant
story in yesterday’s edition of the
From a lack of gay bake sales and
gay car washes, the GSA has now advanced to a lack of gays. “The students just
stopped coming,” said Mrs McCrum, the new Spanish teacher who took over the GSA
at the start of this school year. This is the homophobic reality of our
education system: a school gay group that has everything it needs except gays.
Mrs Yackanin is reported by the
And now the model that has proved so
successful at
When you shrink from punishing the
bullies (as our schools do), when you pursue phantom enemies (as our “human
rights” nomenklatura do), when you use the victims as a pretext for ideological
advancement (as the Ontario government is doing), all that’s left is the
creepy, soft totalitarian, collectivized, state-enforced, glassy-eyed
homogeneity of “uniting to celebrate diversity” (in Peggy Nash’s words). So
Canada will have GSAs from Niagara to Nunavut; and for the lonely and unsocial,
the lumpy and awkward, real bullying will proceed undisturbed in the shadows;
and ideologically-compliant faux-bullying will explode, as a generation of
children is conscripted into a youth corps of eternal victimhood, alert to
every slight, however footling. In
“Awareness-raising”? I think we need
to raise awareness that, unless you’ve got the T-shirt concession, all these
Pink Days are worthless crap that do nothing for the problem they claim to be
addressing. If you’ve chanced to see me in person, you’ll know I often wear a
pink shirt (I may even wear one on stage in
97
Cost cutting begins at home
National Post – April 10,
2012
Editorial
One of the great benefits of budgets
to governments is the ability to bury the unpleasant under mounds of excess
information. So much news comes out of most budgets that it takes considerable
time to digest it all properly. So people may have noted in passing that last
month's federal budget glossed lightly over the issue of MP pensions and
compensation. But then it was on to other things.
Pensions have become a major issue
across the country. While just about everyone hopes to ease into retirement at
some point in life, financing that dream has become increasingly difficult. The
question of how to pay for life in old age affects most of the population – except
for politicians. Governments across the land have become increasingly
vociferous in their alleged determination to cut costs by reining in the pay
and benefits enjoyed by public servants – except themselves.
But federal members of Parliament
still get a free ride. Finance Minister Jim Flaherty shows no fear of a
confrontation with union leaders or provincial counterparts. Upsetting his
fellow MPs is evidently a more fearsome task. Mr. Flaherty told Global News in
a post-budget interview that he's still working on plans for MPs, and there
will be changes in due course.
"We have to have some more
consultations, discussions about the age, but we're moving the age for public
servants up and the intention is to do the same for Members of
Parliament." (Emphasis ours.) Mr. Flaherty continued: "We have to be
consistent if we ask that public service to go in a certain direction that we
go in the same direction as well."
Spot the difference. The government
was brave enough to raise the eligibility age for Old Age Security from 65 to
67 over an extended period. It had no trouble summoning the nerve to increase
the retirement age for civil servants and reveal plans to make them pay more
for their pensions. But when it comes to MPs, much more care and caution is
required. There need to be "more consultations." Concern has to be
shown for MP expectations, and their ability to adjust.
Why all the delicacy? Why the wait?
What makes the career expectations and family concerns of MPs so much more
critical than those of every other Canadian? Mr. Flaherty's pledge that he'll
get around to this stuff next year sometime – if other issues don't intrude,
presumably – is hardly reassuring. Delay is a tool politicians often deploy
when they're hoping to avoid action. Mr. Flaherty notes that getting MPs to pay
50% toward their own (rich, guaranteed) pensions (collectible at age 55 and
after just six years in office) is "a lot of money." He's correct on
that, as many teachers will know, since they're already contributing at that
level. MPs make much more than teachers – $157,000 plus perks for MPs, versus
about $90,000 for teachers in
One canard in this discussion has
been the extra $100,000 added on a prime minister's pension at age 65. The
Liberals sought to make hay on this, not realizing it was their own revered
Lester Pearson who introduced the provision, and Pierre Trudeau who lowered the
qualifying age from 70 to 65. Pearson may have needed the money; Trudeau
certainly didn't, nor did later Liberal leaders John Turner or Jean Chrétien,
both of whom made a tidy pile while not in office, or shipping magnate
But the prime minister, whatever
party he or she may be from, is an exception. Other MPs have no excuse for
continuing to feed at the trough while demanding the rest of Canadians tighten
their belts. And Mr. Flaherty has no excuse for making it possible.
98
Terrace nurse loses licence, found incompetent and
unprofessional
She
failed to administer medications correctly, college says
By Pamela Fayerman
An incompetent nurse who was fired
from a B.C. hospital after putting patients' lives at risk has had her licence
revoked by the
The college suspended Juliet Walsh's
licence on an interim basis in December 2009. In April 2010, she was found by a
disciplinary committee to be incompetent and unprofessional.
Walsh worked at
Among other things, she was found
guilty of:
˙ Failing to notify a doctor and
allowed a patient to go home, even though the patient had no detectable blood
pressure and a heart rate of only 30 beats per minute. Instead of accepting
responsibility, she faulted the blood pressure equipment.
˙ Giving incorrect amounts of
medications in intravenous (IV) drip bags in a 2007 case, resulting in an insufficient
dose for the patient.
˙ Incorrectly programming an
anti-cancer drug IV pump at 800 cc/hour rather than 600 cc/hour.
˙ Failing to release a clamp on an IV
pump, resulting in a cancer patient not getting the chemotherapy drug.
˙ Using improper methods for blood
transfusions.
˙ Lacking awareness of protocols
regarding chemotherapy drug administration.
˙ Giving a post-operative gall-bladder
removal patient a dose of an anti-nausea drug that was wrong and ineffective.
The Walsh case had the distinction
of being the first quasi-judicial, public disciplinary hearing of its kind in
13 years and the first since the CRNBC was formed in 2005. The previous
licensing/regulatory body was the Registered Nurses Association of B.C.
Nurses facing complaints usually enter
into consensual com-plaint resolution proceedings that lead to remedial
actions, a process that may spare them disclosure of their name as well as
details of their conduct.
In the past month, for example,
several nurses have signed off on consent agreements following professional
conduct investigations.
99
An important weekend – even for non-believers
National Post – April 7,
2012
By Robert Fulford
When the lunar calendar and
Christian tradition align so that Passover and Easter arrive among us on the
same weekend, even unbelievers find their thoughts turning to religion.
I'm a one-time Anglican with some
Catholic and Jewish connections, but in anything to do with government and the
law I'm a militant secularist. The proudly politicized Christianity of Rick
Santorum, for instance, fills me with distaste, even a trace of fear.
On the other hand, in matters of the
imagination I find many aspects of religion highly sympathetic and nourishing.
In my own life the presence of religion has been so important that it feels
essential. I can't imagine doing without the many riches, verbal and visual as
well as moral, that the Judeo-Christian tradition has directly and indirectly
put before me.
That's why I've not been tempted to
enlist in the growing ranks of atheists. They seem to me dense, narrow and
unserious.
In recent years, atheism has ceased
to be the heresy that dares not speak its name and has turned into something
like a fashion. In books by Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and the late
Christopher Hitchens, among others, atheism has been shouting its name with an
arrogant vehemence, apparently as compensation for the many centuries when it
was silenced. It's even embraced the worst intellectual characteristic of many
religions: the belief that it alone embodies the truth.
What comes through is not a critique
of religion but a condemnation, as if the history of religion consisted
exclusively of one hateful crime after another. What Northrop Frye called the
"appalling historical record of Christianity" should never be
forgotten. But it is only a part of history, for the most part the result of
priest-authorized prejudices now largely abandoned.
As a non-believer, I appreciate both
Judaism and Christianity more now than I did 50 years ago. Decades of reading
and thinking have taught me the virtues of the Bible.
That magnificent anthology of
narratives and arguments directs our civilization like a DNA sequence, shaping
the structure of our feelings and our imagination. It provides verbal energy
and cultural contexts, usable by believers and unbelievers alike. The challenge
of Christianity continues to act as a force for moral seriousness.
The Bible's influence is so diffused
that today it profoundly affects people who may never have studied even one of
its books. This is not always to the world's advantage; communism was, among
many other things, a Christian heresy.
We get from the Bible the original
versions of our most vital stories, the myths of creation and fall and
redemption. Examined carefully, it's a permanently useful account of human
relations.
We don't need to believe in God to
learn from the story of Cain and Abel or Joseph and his brothers. It's not
necessary to accept the Exodus version of the parting of the
The years also have taught me that
Christianity, in its Roman Catholic, Orthodox and Anglican forms, was for a
millennium or so the greatest patron of architecture and art. Under Christian
direction, the visual arts reached their highest level. It won't be approached
again until some benign democracy decides to devote a few centuries to a
similar project.
Whether we choose to ignore the
Judeo-Christian tradition or study and appreciate it, we nevertheless find
ourselves living within a version of it. What we often call the West was
organized within the framework of religious beliefs. The European nations of
today, and their offshoots in the
In the last two centuries, much of
religion's ancient power has been transferred to science. Since
But even as science pushes outward
toward an understanding of how the universe came to be, physicists reveal
amazing new questions along with new realities. Even the most brilliant science
should be understood as a continuation of the same impulse that caused early
humans to look at the stars and wonder about their meaning – an essentially
religious impulse, the contemplation of mystery.
100
When will the red-meat Tories rebel?
National Post – April 2,
2012
By Michael Den Tandt
Call it the great Budget headfake of
2012.
Signal that you're going to throw
the Hail Mary pass, an epochal transformation. Scare the daylights out of the
public-service unions. Rattle the opposition parties' cages, leading them to
rear up on their hind legs, shake their fists and promise a fight for the ages.
Then deliver a budget that, while it
does reiterate some previously announced, common-sense longer-term reforms in
immigration, resource development, research and old age security, and while it
does proffer some public-service layoffs, is not revolutionary at all. It's
rather humdrum. It's downright inoffensive.
Thus, the opposition leaders'
imprecations lose their sting. The media responds with a collective shrug. And
the mainly centrist, moderately conservative populace, especially in vote-rich
Policy-wise, Budget 2012 was a tepid
document. The only surprise therein, which wasn't much of a surprise at all,
was the slaying of the penny. That, too, was calculated to set just the right
tone: A feel-good human-interest headline guaranteed to displease no one, save
for a few crackpots and coin fetishists.
Politically, the document is already
proving to be a winner, to the extent that it shores up Mr. Harper's left
flank, which has grown vulnerable in recent months following a series of
controversial moves, such as the end of the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly and
the abolition of the gun registry, as well as the continuing robocalls scandal.
Mr. Harper needed to burnish his credentials as a moderate. Now he has.
But the budget raises another
question, which one suspects is already quietly being asked in Conservative
drawing rooms out west, and in rural
Remember that the Reform Party,
progenitor of the Conservative Party of Canada, arose as a Western-backed
populist rebellion against Brian Mulroney's Progressive Conservatives. The
Mulroney Conservatives were deemed to be in thrall to
In 2012 we have a Conservative
government that recognizes Quebec as a nation within Canada; has boosted
federal spending to levels far beyond those of the Liberal years, and will
maintain it at those levels despite the moderate cuts announced last week; and
is throwing money and resources into the reserve system (rather than abolishing
the Indian Act and starting over). This budget, like all six previous
Conservative budgets, is jam-packed with baubles targeting various groups. It
is no more conservative, philosophically, than Jean Chrétien's budgets in the
1990s were liberal. Indeed Harper is beginning to look a great deal like Mr.
Chrétien, policy-wise.
Until now, there have been few hints
of dissent to the Conservatives' right. Senior members of Alberta's Wildrose
Alliance, which now looks in a position to win the provincial election, get on
well with the federal Conservatives (far better, if truth be told, than do
Alison Redford's Alberta provincial Progressive Conservatives).
Tom Flanagan, a seminal conservative
thinker and former advisor to Mr. Harper, mused during the minority years that
"incremental" conservatism seemed to be a winning formula: Move the
country steadily rightwards, but without making any sudden moves.
On May 2, 2011, however, the game
changed. The Conservatives have carte blanche. If they don't dare reveal
themselves as true conservatives now, then when will they ever? That won't get
easier, presumably, as they get closer to re-election in 2015. The
social-conservative wing of their party was jettisoned years ago. If fiscal
conservatism goes too, then what's left?
Mr. Flanagan himself still sees no
threat to the Conservatives' right. "Things would have to get completely
out of control," he told me Friday, for that to happen.
But consider this: In the lead-up to
the budget, the overwhelming majority of the Tory caucus was pushing for
spending cuts greatly in excess of those announced last week. In the range of
$4-billion to $8 billion, these MPs were pushing for the full $8-billion. They
wound up with $5.2-billion.
The relative modesty of these cuts
means the Tories may not be able to campaign on a balanced budget in 2015. That
will depend on the rate of economic growth, and on interest rates. The budget
forecasts a small deficit that year, with a return to surplus in 2015-16.
Therefore, back to the question: At
what point do the most stalwart Conservatives and conservatives in
101
Compromise may not be pretty, but it's not bad
Political
parties' desire for ideological purity is a recipe for their defeat
By Barbara
Yaffe
What is the value of
political purity? Nada, zero, zilch, in my humble opinion.
Music and gold should
be pure. Politics works best as an alloy.
The Conservatives,
from the intellectual right and from within their own ranks, have weathered
charges that after six years in power they've sold the family farm. The
crystalline libertarian ideology of the Reform years – zero deficits, an end to
asymmetrical federalism, a radical curtailment of the welfare state, a return
to self-reliance – has been set aside in the pursuit of power.
The New Democrats,
from the left and often from within their own ranks, are weathering charges
that after less than a full year as the main Opposition party, they're about to
sell the family farm. The socialist ideology of the Broadbent years – punish
the rich and corporations through higher taxes, nurture the unions, bash the
Americans, bolster the welfare state – will at last be set aside, in the
pursuit of power. Compromise, leader-ship candidate Brian Topp argues, will be
the NDP's moral undoing.
And here we have the
Liberals, drifting in the purgatory of a suddenly crowded centre, shouting:
We're the true compromisers! The Liberals, watching the inexorable
disintegration of Canadian political ideologies to their left and to their
right, have been reduced to pleading: If you must choose a party that places
pragmatism over principle, choose us. We have a lot more practice at selling
out. In fact for us it's a virtue.
But few voters appear
to be listening, because all the parties now boast the same virtue, or virus,
depending on your point of view.
It is small wonder
that compromise, which is rarely beautiful in the abstract, raises hackles.
Judging from the mail I receive, many engaged politicos today have little
appetite for it. In my view, that is because the principal medium of modern
political engagement is the Internet – and the Inter-net perpetuates tribe.
Marshall McLuhan
anticipated this a generation ago. McLuhan predicted that, with the return of
the visual and the personal as primary means of communication – (because
pre-Gutenberg, most communication was oral and visual and personal, apart from
manuscripts hand-illuminated by monks) we'd see a return to tribal, totemic
forms of social organization. He was, of course, right. Prescient.
In the stark
simplicity of social media – "friend" or "unfriend,"
"groups," status updates and 140-character tweets – nuance is
increasingly difficult to effect. Indeed its only true home, any more, may be
the novel.
Increasingly, the
consumer – for a politician, the voter – actively rebels against nuance. It is
as though, in the vast ocean of information, the rigid polarity of predictable
opinion and category are somehow reassuring.
The corollary in
political organization is obvious. Partisans, be pure. Uphold your brand
without which you are nothing. Under no circumstances should the Liberals and
NDP merge, or the Conservatives shift leftward, or the NDP rightward, because
if they do, they'll no longer be who they've been. But here's the wrinkle with
that: In a democracy, on the ground, purity translates almost immediately into
failure and the loss of influence. (In a dictatorship it translates into
barbarism – witness the Khmer Rouge. But that's another column.)
Consider, for
example, the case of
Rather than be
defeated, the Harper government unveiled the multibillion-dollar infrastructure
budget that, something like the end-of-recession infrastructure spending rolled
out by the Chretien Liberals in 1994, set the populace at ease. That spending
had a material impact on thousands of large and small communities across
Was it dishonest,
because it came from Conservatives rather than Liberals, in whose intellectual
playbook that budget more rightly belonged? A purist would say yes. But it got
the Tories re-elected with a majority, so that they're now in a position to
implement a longer-term, smaller-government agenda. How, precisely, is that
bad, from any conservative or Conservative's point of view?
Even now, as the
Conservatives prepare to unveil major structural changes they believe will
rationalize how
How, precisely, is
that kind of com-promise bad?
102
Labour pains threaten health care
Uncertainty
for patients as anesthesiologists vow to withdraw services
By Pamela
Fayerman & Andrea Woo
The B.C. government
is facing stiff demands from more than 100,000 health care providers now
bargaining for better contracts in a climate of wage freezes and cost
containment.
Efforts to negotiate
a settlement with nearly 11,000 doctors, who were quiet when the government
released its budget last month, have failed. They have now agreed to
participate in phase two, a conciliation panel chaired by a retired judge.
The union
representing B.C. nurses has agreed to a zero wage increase but is demanding
the province hire more than 2,000 nurses to remedy what it calls a
"dangerous" staff shortage. Adding that many nurses would likely cost
the government hundreds of millions of dollars.
Anesthesiologists
have for months been in an ugly, public back-and-forth over money and staffing
levels. They are threatening to withdraw services for elective surgery on April
1 if they are not allowed a seat at the conciliation table.
The Health Sciences
Association, representing more than 17,000 workers, and the Hospital Employees'
The stormy labour
relations climate is creating uncertainty for patients and places big demands
on the government, which already spends $17-billion a year on health care.
Health Minister Mike
de Jong said he can't comment on negotiations with doctors, nurses and other
health care providers.
"I am not going
to negotiate through the media. But there is no question that we are in tight
fiscal circum-stances and parties have to acknowledge that net zero gains ...
are the government's position."
The president of the
B.C. Medical Association said the physicians have agreed to retain retired
Supreme Court of Canada judge Frank Iaccobucci to chair a conciliation panel
and have not given up on a settlement.
If that process does
not succeed, arbitration would be the last and final step, Dr. Nasir Jetha
added.
"We're trying to
reach a meeting of the minds," Jetha said, noting this is the first time
in several years that the BCMA has had to resort to conciliation.
Debra McPherson,
president of the B.C. Nurses'
"Our members are
not confident that they can deliver safe care any more to their clients,"
she said.
In long-term care,
one registered nurse is often responsible for more than 75 patients, she noted.
The shortage of nurses has led to "record high" levels of absenteeism
and injury among union members, she said.
McPherson described
the nurses' pleas as "heartbreaking."
"They tell me
that they go home from work crying, that they maybe have to sit in their car
for 15 minutes and cry before they can even drive off, that they feel
overwhelmed."
The union has not yet
calculated what the new positions might cost the employer, but McPherson said
it is incidental next to the potential cost of human life.
The Health Sciences
Association, whose members include diagnostic technicians, clinical
professionals such as respiratory therapists and rehabilitation workers, want
wages that closer reflect their education levels, said association president
Reid Johnson.
He noted his members
have the second highest level of post-secondary education next to doctors, on
average, and hefty workloads that often include being called in a few times a
night between regular shifts.
"That's driving
people out of the professions," he said. "They're going to go work in
a private imaging clinic, or a private lab somewhere, where they only have to
do days. That would be more expensive for British Columbians."
Health sciences professionals
in B.C. are paid $6-$10 less per hour than those in
But it is the
anesthesiologists who are grumbling the loudest.
On Tuesday, the BC
Anesthesiologists Society signalled it's still planning to withdraw services as
of April 1 if it is barred from participating in the conciliation process. The
BCMA insists it should be handling all the bargaining and accused the
anesthesiologists of renegade activity.
The anesthesiologists
are engaging in "a political and media campaign designed to embarrass the
government and compel it to enter into further negotiations on anesthesiology
compensation," said a BCMA briefing note.
The provincial
government agrees. "We negotiate with the BCMA and they negotiate on
behalf of the specialists," de Jong said.
The government has
filed a formal complaint against the leaders of the anesthesiologists' society
to the doctors' regulatory body, the
The complaint,
written by deputy health minister Graham Whitmarsh and obtained by The
Vancouver Sun, asks the college to "censure" Dr. Jeff Rains, Dr.
Roland Orfaly and other members of the BCAS executive.
Orfaly said he
doesn't know anything about the complaint.
In a statement issued
Tuesday, the college said it expects the parties will resolve the compensation
dispute through ethical and professional negotiations and "avoid using
access to care as an issue in a contract dispute.
"If a complaint
is filed against a physician regarding unethical practice, the college will
investigate the com-plaint according to its legal authority and due process.
The college is not able to comment on any ongoing investigation."
The health minister
said lodging the complaint was an unusual move on the government's part, taken
because of the unusual threat of job action by the specialists.
"I get that
people want more money and that anesthesiologists see their counterparts in
He accused the
anesthesiologists of being "unprofessional and unethical" for
threatening to withdraw services for all but urgent and non-urgent surgical
cases.
"Let's not kid
ourselves, this is a dispute over money and the anesthesiologists want to hold
patients hostage because of that," de Jong said.
The BCMA says it has
helped anesthesiologists get fee increases of 36.2 per cent over the past 10
years, com-pared to 22.3 per cent for all other doctors. It says that does not
include side deals of $15.6 million for obstetric anesthesia services across
the province and a $1.4-million "labour market adjustment" to help
with recruitment and retention over the past decade.
Between 2000 and
2010, the number of anesthesiologists in B.C. increased by just over 35 per
cent while overall growth in the profession was 23.5 per cent. There are about
475 anesthesiologists in the province.
Anesthesiologists
have accused the BCMA and government of being "irresponsible" for not
hiring more anesthesiologists to decrease surgical waiting times. The society
maintains vacancies in its field are next to impossible to fill because B.C.
pays such specialists far less than most other provinces. Orfaly said a poll of
members on how many were in favour of service withdrawals showed 80 per cent
who voted were in favour.
103
Tories use majority to pass crime omnibus bill
National Post – March 13,
2012
By Tobi
Cohen
The Conservatives
have used their majority to pass the so-called omnibus crime bill within the
first 100 sitting days of Parliament as promised, despite continued opposition
from Canada's largest provinces which vowed Monday not to sit back idly as the
measures come into force.
The deeply polarizing
Safe Streets and Communities Act, which passed by a vote of 154 to 129, effectively
will become law in a matter of hours, if not days, when the bill receives royal
assent. The Tories will mark their 100 day milestone on Friday.
"These are very
reasonable measures. They go after those who sexually exploit children, people
in the child pornography business and it goes after drug traffickers,"
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson said hours before the final vote.
"This will be
welcomed, particularly by victims, those involved with law enforcement and, as
we know, Canadians are supportive of what we are doing in this area."
While critics fear
the bill will have little impact on reducing crime and may even harden some
offenders, Nicholson offered little about how the success of the bill might be
measured.
"We have a
number of strategies," Nicholson said. "But, again, this sends the
message out to people (that) if you get involved with this kind of activity,
there will be consequences."
As per his promise to
the provinces, Nicholson said the implementation of the various aspects of
legislation will be "spaced out" over a period of time, though it
seemed to provide little comfort to his regional counterparts.
Ontario Community
Safety and Correctional Services Minister Madeleine Meilleur said in a
statement Monday that: "
"With the
opening of the two new state-of-the-art facilities . . . we have taken
appropriate steps to address
"We expect
She called on
The
"We would have
preferred Parliament accept the amendments put forward by the
The amendments were
brought forward by
While the province
supports a number of the provisions contained in C-10, he said the bill as a
whole "harms" the province's prevention and reintegration programs.
He said his
government would unveil Tuesday new measures to combat recidivism.
"As the attorney
general, it is my responsibility to apply criminal laws but it's also my
responsibility to safeguard the public and prevent recidivism," he said.
The final vote on
C-10 was to take place last week but the NDP employed a series of procedural
delaying tactics, including trying to adjourn the House of Commons, which saw
the vote pushed back to Monday.
Justice critic Jack
Harris made no apology for stalling the bill, which does far more than target
child sex offenders.
Had the Tories broken
the bill up into bite-sized pieces, Harris said the official Opposition would
have been happy to support elements related to mandatory minimums for child sex
offenders.
"They refused to
do that and, you know, the contentious parts of the bill are still there,"
he said. "We think it will lead to more punishment but not safer streets,
not a deterrence against criminals and in fact there will be more victims, more
crimes and less safety on our streets."
Comprised of nine
bills, many of which failed to pass in previous Parliaments when the
Conservatives had a minority, C-10 also cracks down on pot producers, young
offenders, Canadians imprisoned abroad who are seeking a transfer to a Canadian
institution and ex-cons seeking a pardon.
It also provides for
victims of terrorism who are seeking to sue the perpetrator and eliminates
house arrest for a number of different crimes, something
The government has
been coy about the overall cost to the provinces and has insisted the entire
Safe Streets and Communities Act will run the federal government $78.6 million
over five years.
104
Is there a conservative in the House?
National Post – March 10,
2012
By Andrew
Coyne
This is from some
remarks I'll be making this morning to the Manning Centre conference, a
gathering of conservatives, and Conservatives, in
I confess I'm not
particularly interested in defining conservatism. I do not see the point of
knowing whether a given idea is or is not conservative, or in asking how a
conservative would respond to X or Y. This strikes me as an odd way to think
about the world: to start with a box and try to make your views fit inside it.
What I believe in are
a set of principles having to do with the freedom of the individual, the
usefulness but not infallibility of markets, and the legitimate but limited
role of the state. There are, in brief, a few things we need government to do,
based on well-established criteria on which there is a high degree of expert
consensus. The task is simply to get government to stick to those things,
rather than waste scarce resources on things that could be done as well or
better by other means: that is, government should only do what only government
can do.
As I say, these ideas
are not novel, or controversial. Indeed, you would find support for them, to a
greater or lesser degree, across the political spectrum.
Nevertheless, there
was a party, once, that believed in these things, to a somewhat greater extent
than the other parties. That party called itself conservative, whether with a
small or a large C, so I suppose you could call the things it believed
conservatism. But you are no longer that party.
For example, that
party favoured balanced budgets. But you are not that party. In fact, you boast
of how your decision to add $150-billion to the national debt saved the
economy.
That party favoured
cutting or at least controlling spending, after the massive spree of the
Liberals' last years. But you are not that party. In fact, you boast of how you
have increased spending by 7% per year – $37-billion in one year!
That party favoured a
simpler, flatter tax system, that left people free to decide how to spend, save
or invest their money for themselves. But you are not that party. In fact, you
boast of the many gimmicks and gewgaws with which you have festooned the tax
code.
That party favoured
abolishing corporate welfare. But you are not that party. In fact you boast of
the handouts you make, often accompanied by ministers or indeed MPs bearing
outsized novelty cheques. In some cases, you even put the Conservative logo on
them.
That party favoured
privatization, deregulation, reform of public services. But you are not that
party. Employment insurance, Via Rail, Canada Post, the CBC: you have no plan
for reform of any them. Transportation and telecommunications remain as
protected and over-regulated as ever, while your support for supply management
in agriculture borders on the hysterical. You even boasted, through two
elections, of how much more intrusive and heavy-handed your environmental
policy was, compared to the marketoriented measures preferred by your
opponents. To be fair, you have not actually nationalized anything. Oh, except
the auto industry.
That party was for a
robust Parliament, with more powerful MPs, free of the party whip. Needless to
say you are not that party. That party was for a balanced federation of equal
provinces. But you are now the party of asymmetric federalism and nations
within nations.
That party was
against breaking election promises. That party was against patronage and
pork-barreling. And that party was against corruption and political dirty
tricks. I don't know whether you are still that party.
This isn't a question
of incrementalism, but of going in entirely the wrong direction. It isn't just
that you failed to do the things you should have. It is that you did things you
should not have. And, what is worse, you did them, not reluctantly or
shamefacedly, but enthusiastically. You didn't just sell out. You bought in.
I don't want to say
it's been all bad. You fought the last election on cutting corporate tax rates,
and have introduced or promised some other useful tax reforms. Your trade
policy is tremendously ambitious, and you have made some tentative, if largely
unsuccessful, efforts to untangle the mess the provinces have made of our own
domestic market.
And now, we are told,
we are about to see unveiled a "breathtaking" budget that will
finally begin the turn towards smaller government; that, having increased
spending by nearly $70-billion since taking office, you might cut as much as
$8-billion from it; that the conservatism you largely abandoned over the last
eight years can be reconstructed in the course of an afternoon.
Good luck with that.
You have spent your time in office educating people in what they should expect
from government in general, and your government in particular. You have
established the criteria by which they should judge you: as the party that
brings home the bacon. They might be forgiven some distress at finding their
bacon rations have suddenly been shortened. And they will be disinclined to
trust you as you begin to tell them some hard truths, since you have been so
little disposed to earn their trust until now.
Perhaps you will
succeed, nevertheless. You have your majority, after all. But consider that
even if you do, in 2016, after 10 years in power, you will still be spending
more, after inflation, adjusting for population growth, than the Liberals you
replaced.
So before you ask,
where is conservatism going, perhaps it would be better to ask: where has it
gone?
105
The human right to convenient parking
National Post – March 10,
2012
By Rex
Murphy
How does that great
warning go again? Oh, yes … “First, I couldn’t get a parking space for my Mazda
5 … And then the horror descended … parking on the street! That passage, of
course, taken from the great dystopian novel – A Day in the Life of the Ottawa
Commuter.
The Post’s
editorialists have weighed in on the Jobean tribulations of Patricia Howson of
There should be a
sign at the beginning of that laneway, I gather: “Lay off the clutch, all ye
who enter here” or whatever is the equivalent for a modern day automatic.
Well, all of us know
what a trauma it can be when one or more of your side-mirrors gets dinged. On
the scale of oppression and misery it’s even worse than a flailing,
about-to-fall-off wiper, and just short of an oil pan leak – milestones of
grief and torment both. So, as the Post’s editorial board detailed,
and columnist Matt Gurney ever so industriously expanded
upon, the much beset Ms. Howson went to the Ontario Human Rights Commission,
pleading – obviously – a diminishment of her human rights.
Ms. Howson is herself
a former investigator for the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario, so she brings
to this matter an expertise that only first-hand exposure to the nebulous
clouds of current human rights thinking can supply.
I struggle to keep
this matter in proportion. Granted, frustration about parking the family Mazda
5 is not perfectly parallel (if that word may be forgiven in this context) with
Cambodia under Pol Pot, Ukraine in the perfidious days of the sadist Stalin,
China under Mao or the Congo in those days of unspeakable horror when Leopold
of Belgium set the world to weeping by his cruelties and brutality.
The municipal
regulations of Ottawa are not even, in their various inflictions upon the
innocent commuter – as my colleague Gurney so worthily pointed out well before
me – strictly speaking, equivalent to the torments of contemporary Syria, with
its daily shootings, beatings, detentions and Lord knows what other outrages.
I struggle to keep
this matter in proportion. Granted, frustration about parking the family Mazda
5 is not perfectly parallel (if that word may be forgiven in this context) with
Cambodia under Pol Pot, Ukraine in the perfidious days of the sadist Stalin,
China under Mao or the Congo in those days of unspeakable horror when Leopold
of Belgium set the world to weeping by his cruelties and brutality.
The municipal
regulations of Ottawa are not even, in their various inflictions upon the
innocent commuter – as my colleague Gurney so worthily pointed out well before
me – strictly speaking, equivalent to the torments of contemporary Syria, with
its daily shootings, beatings, detentions and Lord knows what other outrages.
Canadians,
fortunately however, have a broader understanding of such matters. We begin
with the idea that here in
Here in
In
This latest reality-playlet
from
There is a cost to
this nonsense. The more ludicrous the claims being made under the human-rights
banner, the more the concept itself is stretched and mauled completely out of
shape, the more that the real elements of human rights are degraded or
forgotten. Human rights are not a sticky post on which you paste the latest
silly thing that annoys you.
Canadians have been
alerted to the mischiefs – and injustices – being played out in this field for
some time now. This latest illustration from
106
Abbott promises report cards after Bill 22 passes
By
Jonathan Fowlie
Teachers will be
obliged to send report cards to parents shortly after the government passes its
back-to-work legislation, Education Minister George Abbott said Thursday.
"What we will be
doing, effective with the passage of this bill, and effective with completion
of spring break, is to have the schools proceed as expeditiously as they can to
prepare report cards," Abbott told reporters Thursday.
He said he expects
the report cards will update parents on student progress for the entire school
year.
But B.C. Teachers'
Federation president Susan Lambert said the union has no plans to comply.
"Minister Abbott
is ignoring a commonly accepted labour relations principle: struck work is
simply not done," Lambert said in a written statement Thursday, referring
to the fact that as part of their job action, teachers have not filled out
report cards all year.
"Clearly a
requirement to make it up would render any strike ineffective," she
continued, adding many teachers have been communicating with parents via other
means.
"It is
unfortunate that Mr. Abbott is once again needlessly inflaming an already tense
situation. His comments show once again the disrespect this government has for
teachers and the work we do."
Responding to
Lambert's comments, Abbott said he was "surprised and disappointed."
"I think it's
really unfortunate and we will be examining all of our options," he said
late Thursday.
"We believe both
the law and the bill itself are firmly on our side.
"We believe
report cards are a responsibility," he added. "It is a part of the
work of teachers that they would produce report cards and we expect that they
will."
In other developments
Thursday, the BCTF said it will not take advantage of its legal right to strike
for one day next week, and will decide what to do next at its annual general
meeting to be held March 17-20.
Also Thursday, New
Democratic Party house leader John Horgan introduced an amendment to Bill 22
that has the potential to add several days to the debate.
The amendment – which
almost certainly won't pass as it would require a majority – seeks to delete
the bulk of the bill and replace it with a statement in support of an
independent mediator.
Before the amendment
was introduced, Abbott had said he hoped the bill would pass as early as the
end of next week.
Liberal house leader
Rich Coleman did not immediately respond to the amendment, but said before it
was introduced that he was willing to cancel the legislature's spring break the
week of March 19 if the bill had not passed by that point.
"The NDP have
tools, and if they want to drag it out, they can drag it out," he said.
"If they want to
continue, they may find themselves sitting during spring break."
107
Bringing soft totalitarianism into the classroom
National Post – March 8,
2012
By Father
Raymond J. De Souza
Who decides what
children get taught when it comes to moral and religious questions? Parents or
the state?
These questions are
being asked in
The Alberta HRC was
the kangaroo court exposed by Ezra Levant when he was prosecuted for more than
two years for publishing the Danish Muhammad cartoons, and which ordered a
Christian pastor in
The real courts
slapped the human rights commission senseless on that one, but not until the
accused had been comprehensively abused by the one-sided process. Freedom of
the press, freedom of religion, fundamental legal rights of due process – none
of these carry much weight at the human rights commissions. Sensible people
around the country are endeavouring to have their pernicious scope restricted.
Which led to an odd
protest at the legislature here on Monday by several hundred home-schooling
families, worried that the new Education Act's drafting would expose parents to
human rights prosecutions if determined activists didn't care for their
religious and moral teaching. The protest was odd because the education
minister showed up at the rally himself, saying that his proposed law would do
no such thing; and affirming the principle that the parents were advocating,
namely that the parents' right to teach their children should not be impeded by
the state's various bureaucratic arms.
But sweet words are
no match for a determined bureaucrat of ideological zeal.
In
It's a battle that
will only grow more intense in the years ahead. Education policy has for
several generations now been creeping into ever more sectors of civil life.
Having done such a bang-up job of teaching little Edith to read and write and
do algebra, the education bureaucracy is eager to ensure that she has proper
eating habits (first graders sent home shamefacedly when they bring brownies
rather than celery sticks for snack time) and the correct ideas about social
policy (high schools facilitate access to birth control but make bottled water
contraband).
And those parents who
do not wish to lazily hand over the formation of their children to the state?
They now have to fight to discharge the duties that are properly theirs, as
they did here in
108
A
Straight.com – March 5,
2012
By Ray
Ferris
In
When in care they
have the following rights. They have a right to continuity and stability of
care. Right? They have a right to be placed with relatives and to continuing
kinship contact. Right?
Young children have a
right to timely resolution of their cases. This means not being left long in
damaging limbo. Right? They have a right to privacy. Right?
They have a right to
the protection of the courts from unwarranted removal. Right? The ministry
director has the responsibility to prove his case. Right? Parents have a right
to protect their own children. Right?
Wrong on all counts
because in practice, they get none of these rights. The system simply cannot
deliver them. The Child Family and Community Services Act says that a temporary
order on children under five cannot exceed one year and can only be in three
monthly increments.
This protects against
the emotional damage known as attachment deficit disorder. The courts often
stretch this temporary care to years before any hearing of evidence. They just
relabel it as interim custody.
The indefinite limbo
of interim custody causes the same damage. At the first hearings, called
presentations, courts rubber-stamp approval of social workers' actions, because
there is no time to hear arguments. All the judges want to do is to clear the
list and not get seized (stuck) with a case.
Contested cases will
not be heard for over a year. Kids are often moved from home to home and
disclosure is withheld. (Protection of privacy you know.) Children have even been
moved from safe relative care to protect privacy. Nobody asks the kids if they
are grateful.
The truth is that
children's rights can often come into conflict with each other and judgement is
needed to strike a balance. That judgement is in the hands of those with power.
This means the ministry's regional directors, until a judge rules otherwise.
The paramount right
declared in the act is "the best interests of children". The big
problem with that is that the best interests are always a matter of opinion.
Only the opinion of those with power counts and that can be biased and
self-serving.
Family courts have
become as adversarial as criminal courts and just as expensive. Some parents
who got back their kids had to sell their homes in order to raise the legal
fees to do it.
Ask how this in the
best interests of the children and you will be told that cannot be discussed to
protect privacy. Or that the safety of the children must come first.
In a case recently
covered on CBC's Go Public segment and the fifth estate program,
three children were kept in limbo care for nearly four years before the parents
got them back. The children suffered multiple moves and all had anxiety
disorders.
That effort
bankrupted the parents and cost the taxpayer an estimated half-million dollars.
The act allows the judges to make protection hearings quite informal, so
sticking to the rigid, expensive processes is not necessary.
This informality only
seems to extend to the social workers and not to the parents. Social workers
are allowed to enter as evidence any piece of hearsay, gossip or conjecture.
The same leeway is not given to parents, who may not be allowed to say anything
at all.
It takes a certain
amount of collusion to be able to dodge all the important guidelines and time
lines of the act. Collusion between ministry employees, judges, and counsels
for both prosecution and defence. Obviously the adversarial process generates
much more income than a conciliatory process, so there is little incentive for
lawyers to speed things up.
One device is to
stack the court with far more witnesses than necessary. Parents are simply
outgunned by the legal financial clout. The end result is that child welfare
gets drowned in the culture of the courts.
109
VSB ‘censures’ out of context: accused
The B.C. Catholic Paper –
March 1, 2012
By Nathan
Rumohr
Trustees still under
fire for perceived 'homophobic' behaviour
Bedlam broke out at a
recent Vancouver School Board meeting when school trustees Ken Denike and
Sophia Woo, members of the Non Partisan Association (NPA), faced more questions
about speaking against same-sex attraction.
The two trustees were
censured in January for perceived gay fear-mongering. They were recorded at a
picnic last August warning a Christian group that Vision Vancouver was
considering forcing schools to teach same-sex-attraction issues.
The issue did not
make it onto the VSB's agenda, but the video "went viral" through
YouTube, and led to the two trustees being labelled as "homophobic."
According to Denike, the content of the video was taken out of context.
"One of the
sources (of the curriculum change) was (Vision candidate) Ryan Clayton's
Twitter," Denike told CKNW's Simi Sara during a Dec. 20 interview.
"We assumed that he had some understanding of what Vision's policies were
and changes that were to come."
Because of this, Woo
and Denike, who both support "anti-homophobia" policies passed by the
VSB in 2004, felt the need to warn voters of this before the civic elections
held last November.
Activist groups and
Vision/Cope trustees who attended the Feb. 7 meeting continued to question Woo
and Denike, insinuating they had taken an anti-gay stance. Denike responded:
"Wait a minute. No!"
As soon as the
trustee was about to defend himself, school board chairwoman Patti Bacchus quickly
intervened.
"We're not going
to debate here, this is question period from the public; it's not a time for
the trustees to question the public," she said.
"If a person
comes up, demeans your character, and then you can't ask a question? Come
on," responded Denike.
Bacchus then asked
Denike to "be in order."
"I agree with
the anti-homophobia policy," said Woo, who also spoke to CKNW's Simi Sara.
"The concern is about parents' choice. The issue is choice."
The VSB meeting also
focused on concerns raised by conservative groups over graphic images that
appeared on the VSB-funded website Outinschools.com.
The gay support
website, which runs nationally and is supported by major companies like TD Bank
Group and Coast Capital Savings, had run sexually suggestive ads on their
website. The ads were removed after complaints.
"You are
allowing sex activists under the guise of anti-bullying programs that have
nothing to do with stopping bullying, but everything to do with changing the
value system," an audience member said.
Bacchus defended the
VSB's support of the website.
"Out-in-schools
website was fully appropriate in 2004 when it was created, but later it
changed," Denike said.
110
Five-year sponsorship freeze aims to curb sham marriages
Kenney
hopes to end 'heartbreak' for Canadians duped by their immigrant spouses
By Tobi
Cohen
A crackdown on bogus
marriages of convenience falls short of addressing the real problem, critics
said Friday, shortly after Immigration Minister Jason Kenney announced the
regulatory change.
Starting immediately,
Kenney said spouses will have to wait five years from the day they are granted
permanent residence status before they can, in turn, sponsor a new partner.
The move is meant to
prevent people from fraudulently marrying Canadians for the purposes of
immigration only to leave them and then sponsor a new partner while their
Canadian spouse is still financially responsible for them for three years.
"I held town
hall meetings across the country to hear from victims of marriage fraud,"
said Kenney, who made the announcement in
NDP immigration
critic Don Davies, however, said the new rule fails to address those cases in
which Canadian citizens are complicit in these bogus marriages.
"Of all the
problems in the immigration system – we have a backlog of a million, wait[ing]
times are appalling, we have hundreds of thousands of families in this country
who are unable to sponsor their parents because there's a freeze – and Minister
Kenney thinks the most important thing to legislate on is the relatively small
number of people who are engaged in marriages of convenience. I don't think
that that's where the focus of immigration reform should be," he said.
"Where I would
put my focus is on prevention rather than the defeatist position of the
minister, which is simply to ramp up penalties after the problem has occurred
and after the pain has been caused."
Davies fears the
government will cut resources for overseas missions by five to 10 per cent as
part of austerity measures being taken by all departments in a bid to erase the
federal deficit by 2015.
The regulatory change
comes fewer than two years after the Conservatives promised to tackle marriage
fraud. In the fall of 2010, the government held online consultations to gather
public opinion and ideas on how to address the issue.
It also comes just
weeks after outspoken
Towell, a performance
artist who made national headlines when she donned a wedding gown, strapped a
red door to her back and marched on Parliament Hill to draw attention to the
issue of marriage fraud, welcomed the announcement but also raised concerns
about manpower shortages within the department.
The government, she
suggested, can pass all the laws and regulations it wants, but if there aren't
enough staff around to answer people's complaints and conduct investigations,
they're not a lot of good.
The measure officially
came into force on Friday and is just one of several actions the government is
considering.
Public consultations
will begin in the coming weeks on a proposed conditional permanent-residence
provision that would deter people in newer relationships from attempting to
gain quick entry to
It's not clear
exactly how many cases of marriage fraud occur every year in
111
Students back job action, need for smaller classes
By Mike Hager
About 500 high school
students crowded the steps of the
A line of students
snaked through the masses on the stairs as they waited their turn to tell the
crowd about their concerns, which centred around smaller class sizes (less than
30 students), more support staff for special-needs students, and an increase in
funding for extra-curricular activities.
"We really want
to say that students have a voice and we want to let the government know that
they should negotiate with the teachers, and that education needs more
money," said one of the rally's organizers, Windermere secondary school student
Cinzia Barucci, 16. "During school on Monday we thought we should do
something. We put the event on Facebook and it just grew really fast."
Most students skipped
their last period of class (which started at 1: 50 p.m.) to attend the rally,
but others came from as far away as Surrey to voice their anger at large class
sizes and lack of support for special-needs students.
"I believe that
our education has really been suffering," said Kaitlyn Fung, 16, a
Windermere student. "Nobody in our school has been able to go on field
trips because of the job action. Some of the special programs are get-ting less
and less funding."
Her special
leadership pro-gram has been much different this year, she said. With no money
for transportation, their trips and projects in the community have been cut
back.
Amett Vanderwall, 17,
attends Purpose Independent secondary school in
Just after 4 p.m.
about half the students marched to Premier Christy Clark's office at
The B.C. Teachers'
Federation announced Thursday the province's 41,000 teachers will strike for
three days, beginning Monday.
First graders urge Abbott to stop ‘bullying’ teachers
The Greater Victoria
school district is investigating an incident in which a teacher sent Education
Minister George Abbott a package of letters from her Grade 1 students, urging
him to stop bullying teachers.
The teacher's cover
letter says her Grade 1 students were celebrating Anti-Bullying Day on Feb. 29
and discussing strategies to deal with bullies. It was in that context, she
said, that her students also discussed Bill 22, the B.C. government's
legislation aimed at ending the teachers' labour dispute.
Abbott said he was
dismayed to see the letters on his desk.
Tara Ehrcke,
president of the Greater Victoria Teachers' Association, said the union regrets
the incident. She said the teacher acknowledges it was an error in judgment.
112
LifeSiteNews.com –
February 24, 2012
By The
Editors
February 24, 2012 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The great English
writer G.K. Chesterton once wrote: “The family is the test of freedom; because
the family is the only thing that the free man makes for himself and by
himself.”
But if what
Chesterton says is true, then
In the past week we
have witnessed the Supreme Court of Canada dismiss
the appeal of a Quebec family for permission to exempt their child
from that province’s controversial ethics
and religious culture course, which critics say is “relativistic,” and
teaches that all religious are equally valid. And we have heard a spokesperson
for the
These two
developments come amidst the ongoing
efforts of the Ontario government to impose their “equity” program,
“diversity” curriculum, and transparently ideological “anti-bullying” bill on
all schools – whether Catholic or public. Already the largest school board in
the province has said that parents will
not be permitted to exempt their children from parts of the curriculum
they deem unacceptable.
It is perhaps ironic
that this has happened at the same time that the Canadian Parliament voted
a second time to repeal the country’s much-ballyhooed Section 13 “Hate
Crimes” provision, which has been used to drag conservatives and Christians
through lengthy and expensive “human rights” proceedings for nothing more than
publicly speaking opinions that someone else deemed “offensive.”
But while the
Canadian Human Rights Commission may soon no longer be able to use Section 13
as the club to beat politically incorrect Christians into submission, or at the
very least into silence, the Canadian provinces are doing their very best
simply to make sure there won’t be any more such Christians in the first place.
Mandatory “diversity” education imposed on all schools, including home schools,
without parental right to opt out is the chosen method to achieve this goal.
But those who care
about freedom and democracy must call out and oppose this effort for what it is
– tyranny.
While even
conservative commentators are urging
caution in the interpretation of last week’s Supreme Court ruling,
which was narrow in scope and not the final word on the Quebec course, what is
certain is that the decision, whether intentionally or not, has already sent a
booming message across Canada: namely, that the authority to educate children
comes from the state, and not from parents. The decision leaves the distinct
impression that the state is no longer in loco (in the place
of) parentis, but is the parent, and holds the final say in
matters of education.
While the justices
demurred from deciding with finality whether the Quebec course violates the
parents’ ability to transmit their faith to their child, because there was
insufficient information about the course and its content entered into evidence
to make that decision, this reasoning ignores the central point: namely, that
it doesn’t matter whether the court thinks the course really harms
the parents’ ability to raise their child in the faith. The important thing is
that the parents think it does.
In saying that it
needs more proof that the course harms the parents’ rights in this way, the
court is implicitly saying that it doesn’t believe the parents, and might very
well know better than them. But it should be obvious that the parents, and not
the court, are in a far better position to say whether the course is hampering
their ability to educate their child according to their values: because it
is their child, and their values.
Given that
Let’s be perfectly
clear: parents are the first and primary educators of their children, not the
state. Period. This principle is the basis of a free and democratic society.
Wrest this authority from parents for any reason less grave than serious abuse
or neglect, and you have not simply paved the way for tyranny, but you already
have a tyranny. For without the right to educate our children as we choose
according to the values we choose, what do we have left? State-imposed
orthodoxy. Totalitarianism.
The only difference
between the totalitarianism of other regimes and the totalitarianism being
imposed by the Canadian provinces is that the Canadian breed of totalitarianism
is couched in the Orwellian doublespeak of “tolerance,” “multiculturalism,” and
“diversity.” But simply because the language is new and more soothing does not
make the reality any less frightening.
We who have witnessed
the slow but steady drumbeat of Canada’s soft tyranny know by now that
“tolerance” increasingly applies only to those who hold to the official
state-sanctioned opinions, or who remain silent; “multiculturalism” is only
deemed a virtue insofar as the cultures in question jettison any part of their
heritage that might be deemed “offensive”; while “diversity” is mainly a
celebration of superficial differences whilst demanding a deeper ideological
similitude.
If, as Chesterton
says, the family is the ultimate test of freedom, then homeschooling is the
ultimate expression of that freedom. For homeschooling is founded on the
radical notion that when it comes to the most important things in life – most
especially the raising and educating of children – it is the common man who is
to be trusted, and not the “expert” or the state. It is not coincidental that
this is the same principle that stands at the very root of democracy.
By explicitly
targeting homeschoolers, and/or by explicitly forbidding the right of parental
opt-out, the
Don’t let them do it.
113
Falcon prescribes tough medicine for uncertain times
Editorial
After years of
expansion, the provincial government is heading for a big squeeze if Premier
Christy Clark is able to follow the course laid down by her finance minister.
The first full budget
from Finance Minister Kevin Falcon lays out what will be seen as a grim
scenario by most ministries and the people and businesses that depend on their
services. Most ministries are being flatlined over the next three years. Even
health and education are being squeezed with rates of increases in their
budgets that won't keep up with inflation and increased demand for services.
Even so, the path
back to a balanced budget for next year is perilous. Falcon has adopted what he
hopes are prudent assumptions about economic growth – about 10 per cent below
the consensus of private forecasters – in estimating revenue and forecast
allowances and contingency funds on the spending side.
Falcon rightly claims
that Liberal governments have a good record of meeting fiscal targets, with
only one spectacular failure after the last provincial election. But in the
uncertain global economic climate and with volatile commodity prices, it won't
take much of an ill wind to blow away his hopes of a return to a balanced
budget after a string of deficits.
It will also take
political courage to stick to this budget, which Falcon is selling as a
necessary act of tough love at a time when other governments are being punished
for their failures to keep spending in line with revenues.
The debt crisis in
Falcon is even
extending his restraint demands for spending outside of the direct control of
government, with a call for administrative efficiencies from colleges and
universities, enforced by a budget that will be $50 million less in three years
than it is for the coming year.
These are
extraordinary demands and call for a level of restraint not seen in more than a
generation.
But these are also
extraordinary times. The economic recovery since the global recession has been
fragile at best. The underlying problems in the
The story today is
about successfully sticking to a balanced-budget plan; the stories that will be
dribbling out are the stories driven by the cuts to come. Falcon and
Maintaining
On balance, while
some of it will be hard to swallow, Falcon's budget is the right prescription
for the times.
But in this volatile
global economy, conditions can change very quickly. Moreover, the severe
restraints imposed may produce unintended consequences in some ministries.
Budgets are always a plan that over time can be changed. Even more than usual,
the direction set in this budget for years two and three should not be
considered as carved in stone. If conditions, change the government must be
prepared to change with them.
114
HST to drop on more new homes to help the shift back to the
PST
Transition
period could be chaotic for housing without changes, Falcon says
By
Jonathan Fowlie
The provincial
portion of the Harmonized Sales Tax is about to drop to two per cent on all new
homes sold for $850,000 or less, a move widely praised by those in the
beleaguered home building industry.
Announced by Finance
Minister Kevin Falcon on Friday, the move is meant to help smooth the
transition from the HST back to the old PST.
“The rules we are
announcing will ensure that purchasers and builders are treated equitably
throughout the transition period,” said Falcon, adding the new home sector is
one of the most complicated areas for the transition.
On Friday, Falcon
officially confirmed the province will return to the PST on April 1, 2013 – a
date he called the earliest moment that government could “responsibly”
accomplish the transition.
To help ease the
transition in the sale of new homes – where an overnight move from HST to PST
would have led to a dramatic change in prices – Falcon announced that on April
1 of this year, his government will significantly increase the threshold for
its HST rebate program.
The move means new
homes costing up to $850,000 will now be subject to only two per cent of the
provincial portion of the HST, as opposed to the full seven per cent.
Currently, only homes
up to $525,000 qualify for that rebate program.
Falcon said his government
is also introducing a similar rebate for new recreational homes that are
outside the Capital and Greater Vancouver regional districts.
Currently, there is
no HST rebate for new second and recreational homes of any price anywhere in
the province.
As of April 1, Falcon
said, new recreational and secondary homes outside those two regions will
qualify for the rebate if they are sold for $850,000 or less. The five per cent
federal portion of the HST charged on new homes will remain unchanged in the transition,
officials said, adding the federal HST/GST rebate programs will also not
change.
Falcon said he chose the $850,000 level because that captures about 90 per cent of the market, adding people who pay