A National Post article (Aug. 12, 2003 A4) reports that a prisoner who had been given a federal marijuana exemption can't get his pot while serving time. Incidentally, he is in Springhill Pen for marijuana-related crimes. But Michael Patriguin, the prisoner affected, is no ordinary guy. He was a candidate in the last N.S. election. He ran as a marijuna actvist. He lost. Too singular an issue I guess. Or perhaps it is okay for the government to grow it--and maybe even dispense it and make money, but it becomes sinfully illegal if you grow and distribute it, yourself.
Now are a few ways of looking at this. First, there is the hypocrisy of denying him his legal dope, when it is common knowledge that our prisons are awash in illegal drugs--all worse than pot. Secondly, you have a provincial judge overturning a federal ruling. Bad form, I'd say. Thirdly, the Prisoner's Rights Committee should take the case to the Supreme Court. Cruel and unusal punishment could be their major thrust.
Another case -- coming to the Court Challenges Program in a courthouse near you, I predict.
It seems that there is no over-arching historical view given to our students. Each province has designed its own curriculum. Kids in grade six in one province might be learning about the ancient world, while kids in New Brunswick are learning about their timber barons. Then, inevitably, the Quebecois are learning, yet again, about their particular regional history.
My interest was drawn by this article, entitled Learning Curves: Only a Lucky Few Learn the Wider past of Canada. (The National Post, Aug, 11 2003) Sarah Schmidt lays out the need for a more cohesive history curriculum in Canada. Quebec is excluded. As she puts it: "Then in Quebec, there never was any interest. They were so self-protective. They just wanted to tell their own story." I might have used another adjective for "self-protective, such as "self-absorbed", but we get the drift.
As though that were not enough of a barrier, we get the musings of Peter Seixas, a honcho at some Center for the Study of Historical Consciousness at UBC (Where else?), who has decided that, "There is no common historical perspective...now we have contested notions of significance." The article ends with a "children attending a history camp that tells 165 distinct stories about 165 distinct Canadian communities."
And we wonder that here is no real glue holding together our national identity! A further claim was made by Professor Seixas, "We are at a very different point nationally and culturally. Once upon a time we could point to the significant people, those who needed to be studied, but as a result of cultural changes..."
It is as though we start to discount the historical data that has occurred over four centuries in favour of some touchie-feely multicult story. It is not that our immigrant contribution should be smothered, but simply it should be understood that they arrived at the end of our evolving national saga. Their story should not begin our narrative, rather it should embroider its final stages -- at least up to this point.
I watched a CBC afternoon Newsworld Report yesterday. Some chirpy, but hewn from brimstone, female is showing us the Mr. Happy Face Canadian soldiers in Kabul. The video shot shows the Canadian in "Shoot me dead" green clothing, while his German soldier buddy is dressed in desert camouflage. The Canadian officer is explaining that they chose to stand out because they had--ta-da! ta-da!--come as peace keepers. (Can you believe this?) The voice-over from the CBC reporter is rising in awe at such a sentiment. One hopes that if these brave men sustain a loss, it will be Lt. Politically Correct. God, I am begining to think that the Canadian army has its sub-corp of Stalinesque Political Minders. With CBC as their mouthpiece, it goes without saying.
Robert Fulford, a wise, urbane scholar wrote a review of Reading Lolita in Tehran. (National Post, B1, Aug. 12, 2003) The author is Azar Nafisi, an Iranian woman, who had taught literature in a Tehran university. She retired in disgust at how censored her lectures were becoming. The mullahs wanted one version of a novel to emerge--their version.
Nafisi recounts how she had been been a leftist rebel during her college years in the States. The Shah was a despot and America was his backer, she had shouted through her bullhorn. Then in 1979 the Shah was deposed and a theocracy was born that made his rule seem amost benign. She discovered this upon her return to Iran. What fledgling rights women had gained under the Shah disappeared overnight. Now women were to be flogged for not wearing their veils properly. Coloured shoelaces were taboo, as was eating ice cream in public. Hundreds of new religious rules prohibited and controlled everything from dress to music. She also saw that the mullahs were in favour of girls marrying at the age of nine. Any show of moral ambiguity in her university lectures was labelled subversion.
Fulford sums up with this, "We sympathize with her tyrannized students, grimace at the insane edicts of God-maddened clergymen, gasp at the ingenious ways that humans find to make each other miserable. Nafisi leaves her readers aghast at the thought that all this is done in the name of God. Yet her book lifts the spirit and warms the imagination."
I will be looking for this book in my library. I have an American acquaintance who lived in Tehran during the Shah's era--and who helped American wives of Iranian husbands escape Iran for the US, singularly dangerous missions--as well as an Iranian friend here. Their narratives of life in Iran differ significantly.
. . . . As a minister himself, primarily overseeing Ontario's law-enforcement system, Mad Dog [Runciman] has had a bone clenched in his jaw. Mr. Runciman admires police officers and he has been diligent in protecting and promoting their interests. That's fair enough but this week he took that pro-police zeal a step further by getting involved in the enduring tension between Toronto police and some of the city's black residents.
On his way into the week's cabinet meeting, the Public Safety and Security Minister was asked about a remark a day earlier by Toronto police chief Julian Fantino that black leaders spent too much time bashing the police and not enough time trying to turn young, black men away from violence.
Mr. Runciman could have refused to comment or he could have buried reporters in heaps of platitudes. Instead, he got out his shovel and dug himself a huge hole by suggesting that some blacks had a vested interest in seeing that tension with the police continues because it was a source of their livelihood.
Predictably, the minister's comments were derided by blacks. The gentle Lincoln Alexander, a former lieutenant-governor who is an unofficial leader of Toronto's 300,000 blacks, suggested Mr. Runciman had done "irreparable harm."
What if it is true? Is it not possible any more to speak your mind without checking which sensitive group you're going to offend?
[. . . .]
And the feeling that Mr. Runciman didn't just blurt out his remarks is strengthened by support he has received from Ernie Eves. . . . has continued to defend Mr. Runciman, . . . . And perhaps the minister and Mr. Fantino are correct in saying that some blacks aren't interested in working with the law-enforcement officials.
The writer recommends "Bringing back school counsellors and restoring community access to gyms would be a good start." I say, as usual it is blame anything but the source of the violence -- violent thugs.
[. . . .]
The inescapable conclusion is that this is a dog-whistle issue. The Tories are sending a signal that only their hard-core supporters can hear: "Come home," it says. "No more of that kinder, gentler stuff. It's back to basics."
It's a dangerous, subtextual message that is reinforced by, for example, including Tory policy proposals on immigration in the section of the election platform document that deals with crime. Indeed, Mr. Eves was back at this yesterday, arguing that Ontario must have its own immigration system because the federal government is letting in criminals rather than honest, hard-working applicants.
It may play well in parts of Ontario that don't have to deal with the challenges that Toronto faces -- mostly with goodwill -- in accepting 100,000 immigrants annually. . . .
My Commentary:
***100,000 immigrants to Toronto each year? Why? Is Toronto underpopulated? ***
Its own immigration system for Ontario? An idea whose time has come for each province. If it is good enough for Quebec, it's good enough for the lesser breeds. Bang on! And the courage of Fantino and Runciman is a delight in politically correct Canada. As I've said before, it's time to call it the way you see it -- and end the lies of political correctness.
The best solution may be a multiplicity of laws, says Islamic leader MOHAMED ELMASRY, to accommodate each group
[. . . .]
. . .courts cannot function in a vacuum without regard to many considerations that are extra-legal in character, including moral and political values held by society. What happens when those values are divided?
Take homosexuality, first of all. Homosexual acts are considered immoral according to the teachings of most world religions. This does not mean that homosexuality is not practised.
[. . . .]
Now, take multiple marriages. Today, in Canada, it is illegal for three consenting adults, a man and two women, to be husband and wives. They can be husband, wife and mistress.
They also can be part of a legal contract -- in effect, a husband and two wives.
But the law cannot allow a man to marry his mistress if he has a wife, even if his faith allows it, as does Islam. Why not? Perhaps because the issue has not yet been politicized.
So what is to be done when, in a liberal democracy, morals of different groups collide? Must it always come down to politicization? It seems to me the best way out is a multiplicity of laws, to accommodate each group.
[. . . .]
"Marriage, for civil purposes, is the lawful union of two persons to the exclusion of all others," the new definition says. In other words, it allows same-sex marriages, but excludes marriage between more than two persons.
The legislation, however, affirms religious freedom by recognizing the right of all religions to marry or refuse to marry same-sex couples according to the principles of their faith.
Will multiple marriage soon be argued on these grounds?
[. . . .]
Would the solution then be using a new made-in-Canada word for same-sex marriage?
Mohamed Elmasry, a professor of computer engineering at the University of Waterloo, is national president of the Canadian Islamic Congress.
My Commentary:
***But the law cannot allow a man to marry his mistress if he has a wife, even if his faith allows it, as does Islam. Why not? Perhaps because the issue has not yet been politicized. . . . Will multiple marriage soon be argued on these grounds? ***
The slippery slope again. Coming to a court near you -- a multicultural challenge to marriage as exclusively encompassing ONE man and ONE woman. After all, one of the world's great religions thinks it is perfectly acceptable. I suppose it would make the housework burden easier. Come to think of it, ladies, what do you think? The fourth wife gets to minister to the husband's every whim; the third gets to to do the housework while the first and second wives can play kalaha*, visit the Hyde Park condo and go shopping in London. Maybe Islam could bring in a special dispensation for a fifth wife to look after the brood. Wouldn't life in Canada be heaven, then, gals?
News Junkie Canada
Note: Bold and italics are mine.
*The spelling is phonetic; I could not find it in a dictionary.
Treatment of company is called shocking - internal e-mail advised 'sink the suckers'
OTTAWA - A Superior Court of Ontario Justice has ordered the federal government to pay more than $70-million to a now-defunct Ontario company and two investors after ruling that scheming and lying Canadian bureaucrats virtually destroyed the firm while defrauding the U.S. government.
Amertek Inc., once a maker of fire rescue truck bodies, and its backers were unsuspecting victims of "shocking behaviour on the part of federal civil servants, behaviour that would cause the reasonably informed person to lose confidence in a Crown corporation and a department of the federal government," Mr. Justice John O'Driscoll wrote in a searing 198-page decision handed down in Toronto last week.
The "shocking behaviour" included the sending of an e-mail by a bureaucrat describing the company as "suckers" who should be pushed into bankruptcy.
The judge ordered the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), a federal Crown corporation, and the Attorney-General of Canada to pay US$26.5-million plus interest and other damages from 1985 to Amertek Inc. (the remains of which are now known as Shu-Pak Equipment of Guelph, Ont.) and two investors, Dr. Victor Mele and the estate of the late Dr. William Forder. The total, according to a formula in the court judgment, adds up to more than $70-million.
[. . . .]
Note: That was a Superior Court of Ontario Justice speaking of the Canadian Commercial Corporation (CCC), a federal Crown corporation, and the Attorney-General of Canada. Aren't Crown corporations acting at arm's length from the government which has the effect, in actuality, of allowing it to operate with a lack of transparency in its dealings? If a government needs a conduit for government largesse, there's nothing like a Crown corp! The people of Canada cannot check what is going on as much as it is supposed to be able to do with a government department. Of course, access to information denials are another method of hiding what government wants hidden. You know who is going to be paying Ameritek and its principals this hunk of cash, don't you? The taxpayers of Canada, naturally.
The Amertek case is the latest in a series of criminal and civil cases in which alleged or proven misconduct by federal bureaucrats has been exposed in what Canadian Alliance MP John Williams calls an "ethical malaise" sweeping the public service.
The incidents have included alleged bribery of Immigration judges and a Health Canada bureaucrat, embezzlement by a Public Works accountant and allegations by helicopter manufacturers that the Liberal government has rigged the bidding for its new Maritime helicopter to favour a French consortium.
The Amertek story began in 1984, when the Canadian and U.S. governments awarded contracts to Quebec-based Walter Trucks Inc. to build fire and crash rescue trucks for Transport Canada and the U.S. Army. The deal was part of a federal regional development strategy.
Note that the government was involved here in granting a development contract -- and where did it go? Why, to a Quebec firm, of course. Think about JC and the helicopter contracts that he cancelled with the result that the military are still using the ancient and dangerous Sea Kings. Of course, JC did absolutely HAVE to buy, not one, but TWO Challenger jets from Quebec-based Bombardier. Hasn't one member of JCs family married into the Bombardier family? But, again, I digress.
Performance of the U.S. military deal was guaranteed by the CCC . . . .
A few weeks after getting the U.S. Army deal for 362 fire trucks over five years, Walter Trucks went bankrupt, leaving the CCC with almost $20-million in penalties owing to the U.S. Army because it had negligently failed to ensure its Canadian contractor could deliver the trucks on time and according to specifications.
Senior CCC officials persuaded Amertek to take over the contract -- without checking on Amertek's own finances or technical ability to do the job and misleading the company about serious flaws it knew about with Walter's low-cost bid.
[. . . .]
"This was a Crown corporation withholding material information and telling lies to a supplier, known by CCC to be a novice that trusted its government to be acting in its best interests," Judge O'Driscoll added.
Canadians pay for this Crown corporation and the salaries of its principals who withheld material information and told lies. Are you getting it folks? Let's teach them that Canadians have had enough and just aren't going to take it any more. Time to turf the b******s out!
Amertek went out of business in 1993 after incurring significant losses on its big U.S. Army truck contracts. . . .
Dennis Mills, a Toronto Liberal MP, subsequently pressured the government to review the CCC officials' conduct in the case. Public Works hired auditors at Deloitte Touche to conduct "an objective, independent and comprehensive review."
Instead, Judge O'Driscoll found, the government hired auditors who had done considerable prior work for the CCC. Worse, their report was reviewed by the president of CCC, Douglas Patriquin, at every stage of the process and of its editing.
Mr. Taylor and Mr. Collins, the lawyers for Amertek, argued the Deloitte Touche review, which cleared CCC officials of any improper conduct, was "a farce" and "a whitewash" done to curry favour with CCC for future business.
It's rather like polls commissioned by government -- which just happen to find exactly the results the government wants, isn't it? Or choosing the rightjudge -- or any of innumerable ways of giving the appearance of probity -- but carrying on in its usual corrupt way, getting the result it wants. ***
"I agree with those submissions," Judge O'Driscoll wrote.
The 25,000 pages of evidence submitted to the court established that the CCC and other government officials engaged in a long course of deception and wrongdoing toward Amertek and the U.S. government, he added.
After Amertek launched its legal action to recover money lost after it was misled about potential profits on the truck contract, CCC and federal officials involved even began what the judge called a campaign to drive Amertek out of business by forcing it into bankruptcy twice.
One piece of evidence was particularly shocking. It involved an e-mail written by Paul E. McKenna, a senior CCC official, who was discussing bankruptcy court proceedings involving Amertek, which was making a proposal to its creditors to restructure and repay a portion of its last few debts.
"Voting against the proposal as it stands, will see Amertek Inc. being deemed to have made an assignment in bankruptcy," Mr. McKenna wrote.
"As I see it here, this is our chance to sink the suckers in bankruptcy. They are out on the plank. Let's keep them walking," Mr. McKenna added in his e-mail to CCC in-house legal counsel and other senior CCC executives.
Maybe it is also time to rethink the Civil Service. With the Liberals governing for most of the last forty years, the Civil Service bureaucracy is stacked with them. Any non-Liberal government hasn't got a hope even if it does get elected. There will be too many Liberal-appointed civil servants undermining it. Of course, it is difficult to prove -- but do you doubt it?
Remember away back when -- when government workers regularly lost their cushy jobs when there was a change of government -- before the PSAC and the assurance of keeping one's civil service position despite government change? Those good old days are beginning to look better. At least there was a civil service clean-out. Let's reconsider not just a change of government but a concomitant change of bureaucrats. Start with a clean slate and maybe thus get rid of some of the corruption that will still be there in employees like these even if the federal Liberals are turfed out.
***Of course, these remarks do not apply to any hard-working, honest civil servants.
