Marriage creates and binds families, and families create society.

Social decisions are collective, by definition. So too is the meaning of words. Words mean what most people take them to mean.

[. . . .]

If minorities want a public concession, they should ask the public's permission.

In a 1999 case to which nobody paid much attention (Law versus Canada), the Supreme Court ruled that a person's minority rights are violated if he or she feels marginalized, ignored and devalued. [italics mine]

In other words, the majority is to be tyrannized by the hurt feelings of minorities -- or at least of those minorities whose behaviour the courts choose to protect from criticism.

Judgments like Law vs. Canada are so arbitrary, fuzzy and open-ended you begin to suspect that these judges are not just out of control, you wonder if they live on the same planet as the rest of us.

Opposition MPs accused the federal government yesterday of pressuring the RCMP to shut down an investigation into allegations of corruption and organized crime infiltration at the Canadian High Commission in Hong Kong.

Reading from a scathing report by the RCMP's External Review Committee detailing how investigators were repeatedly called off the case, the Canadian Alliance put the blame on the Liberals.

"This is a very serious allegation of Liberal political interference," said Kevin Sorenson, senior critic for the Department of the Solicitor-General. "Why is a federal department interfering and influencing an RCMP investigation?"

Wayne Easter, the Solicitor-General, denied the RCMP was pressured and declined to comment further, saying he did not want to interfere in disciplinary procedures involving a Mountie fired for blowing the whistle on the embassy scandal.

As revealed in yesterday's National Post, a government committee that reports to Mr. Easter has concluded the RCMP failed to properly investigate allegations that staff at the Hong Kong embassy were taking bribes to help Asian triad members emigrate to Canada.

Nota Bene:

***Pressure was brought on him to hush these revelations up -- by both the top RCMP brass and the High Commissioner.***

***When Read pressed on, he was recalled. When no official would follow up on his proof, he went public with the information. For this embarassment to the RCMP force he was forced to quit, but he kept up his battle through the media. Now he has been exonerated by a review panel, who looked into his allegations.***

Census figures show the necessity of a steady influx of new Canadians. Our birth rate is falling and our population is aging. Without a large supply of foreign-trained workers, this country will face skill shortages. Employers will go begging for people to fill vacant jobs.

Easing the rules for immigrants, as Coderre is belatedly doing, should help lure the trained workers this country needs. They're not all members of the wealthy business class, but the people who will toil at unglamorous jobs to build a better life.

Faced with a flood of multi-million dollar lawsuits, the federal government yesterday agreed to re-evaluate thousands of potential immigrants who applied for visas under old rules but were not assessed before tougher standards came into place.

The surprise about-face is expected to bring an end to a controversy that began in February, when a judge ruled that federal bureaucrats misled Parliament about severe backlogs in the immigration system.

[. . . .]

"Misrepresenting Parliament, wrongly failing 100,000 applicants and bilking them of their processing fees is not the way to run the immigration department."

Mr. Coderre also revealed yesterday that all potential immigrants will have an easier time getting into the country. [Why? Don’t we take enough now?]

[. . . .]

While most observers welcomed the lower standards, some expressed concern that the new plan was unveiled in an effort to overshadow the legal troubles the government is trying to overcome.

Those troubles began in December, 2001, when the government announced its new Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, which included a different points system to assess skilled workers applying for entry into Canada.

[. . . .]

But in a Federal Court ruling this year, Mr. Justice Michael Kelen said the department supplied "significantly incorrect numbers" to the parliamentary committee, and when bureaucrats realized the backlog actually affected between 80,000 and 120,000 people, they "did not inform Parliament of this error."

In the process, he said, the government pocketed $125-million while ignoring "the outstanding applicants as if there was no looming deadline."

The judge ordered all 102 prospective immigrants who filed the claim to be immediately appraised under the old criteria.

An appeals court upheld the ruling, and over the past four months, thousands of other would-be immigrants joined a series of class-action lawsuits.

In June, the plaintiffs obtained an injunction prohibiting the government from rejecting any claimants caught in the backlog until the case was decided.

That was the final straw, Mr. Coderre said yesterday.

MONTREAL (Reuters) - Canadian military police have seized close to 1,000 marijuana plants that were brazenly growing on an artillery range, an army spokesman said on Friday.

The plants, whose street value is estimated at C$1 million ($740,000), were found on the National Defense base at Nicolet, Quebec, used for artillery tests.

The base is a 45-square-kilometer (17-square-mile) compound complete with 2.5-meter (8-foot) fences, barbed wire and "danger, keep out" signs.

"It's very safe for us, but it could be a very dangerous place for a passerby," Capt. Steve Lebel said.

CALGARY - Gregg Crackel drank some alcohol, drove into the back of a stalled paving truck in Calgary and, ultimately, walked away with $600,000.

On Friday, Justice Donald MacLeod ruled that Crackel was entitled to damages because the truck driver and owner had been negligent.

The defendants were cited for failing to use cones, or triangles, and for not leaving the truck's four-way flashers on.

Ottawa — Governor-General Adrienne Clarkson defended a proposed state visit abroad that could cost $1-million and has invited parliamentarians to investigate the way she spends taxpayer money.

"We know we spend public money," Ms. Clarkson told CBC Newsworld during a series of interviews yesterday. "No problem if they want to look at how we do it."

She was reacting to calls from MPs on a parliamentary committee that oversees the public purse for a probe into her office's estimated $19-million budget.

The estimated $1-million price tag for her three-week state visit, which departs next week for Russia, Finland and Iceland with 59 Canadians, has incensed some MPs on the parliamentary committee on government operations and estimates.

[. . . .]

But she said she would not appear before the committee because she is "above politics."

"I am above politics," she told Newsworld. "And I don't mean to be above politics, I am above politics."

[. . . .]

Early yesterday, committee member and Canadian Alliance MP Ken Epp said the Governor-General must be held to account. "We're looking at the Governor-General in terms of unfettered unaccountable spending," . . .

[. . . .]

[NDP MP Pat Martin] said the budget has been increased to about $19-million from $11-million — an increase of more than 60 per cent — since Ms. Clarkson took the job. "There's an absolute zero tolerance among Canadians right now that even hints at excess," Mr. Martin said.

[. . . .]

The Governor-General's office has said its officials wouldn't explain the trips to Iceland, Finland and Russia because they are state visits taken at the request of the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade and financed by the department.

Canadian National Railway Co. has removed the word "Canadian" from everyday company use, prompting NDP house leader Bill Blaikie to charge that a national institution is trying to separate itself from its history.

The Montreal-based railway — which wants to be known only as "CN" — says the move has nothing to do with the word "Canadian," it is just part of a new corporate branding strategy to help customers identify the company. (The Globe refers to the company as CN on second reference.)

Mr. Blaikie brought an internal CN memo to attention during Question Period Friday, saying the employees have been prohibited from using any language with the word "Canadian" in it.

"You can say CN, but you can't say Canadian National," Mr. Blaikie said in the House. "You can't say Canadian National Railway. I wonder if the minister of transportation would undertake to look in to this."

TORONTO (Reuters) - An 18-year-old Kosovo woman has traveled to Canada in hopes of stopping an asylum request by one of the men accused in the massacre of her mother, two brothers and 11 other family members.

Saranda Bogojevci, the oldest of five children, was shot when a Serbian death squad killed 14 members of her extended family in an ethnic cleansing operation in Podujevo, 22 miles (35 km) north of Pristina, the Kosovo capital, in 1999.

[. . . .]

In 2002 two men, Sasa Cvjetan, 28 and Dejan Demirovic, 29, were indicted in the southern Serb town of Prokuplje and charged with murdering Saranda Bogojevci's family. Their trial was to be the first war crimes trial to address atrocities of Serbian forces in Kosovo. [Cvjetan went to trial.]

[. . . .]

The other accused, Dejan Demirovic, evaded arrest, and entered Canada illegally. He is seeking asylum in Canada.

Demirovic was arrested in Windsor, Ontario, in January, charged with illegal entry, and released on bail five months later. In September in Toronto, his Refugee Board hearing was postponed to January 2004, dealing another blow to Bogojevci.
She had come to Toronto to confront him and urge the Canadian government to deny him asylum. She never had the chance.

"I want to know why the Canadian government failed to sent Demirovic to Serbia, to face the justice", said Bogojevci, who speaks Albanian and English but still has to learn the language of Canadian bureaucracy.

"I cannot believe that Canada can let somebody like Demirovic walk freely."

While Parliament is presuming to ban speech it doesn't like, maybe it should also consider making it a criminal offence to call people "homophobes" if they disagree with the direction their legislators are taking. Fair's fair, after all.

In a 141-110 vote this week, Parliament gave its assent to adding the term "sexual orientation" to Section 318(4) of the Criminal Code, making gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transexuals, and whomever else this vague term may refer to, among the identifiable groups protected from hate propaganda. If affirmed by the Senate, those found guilty of this offence will face as much as five years behind bars.

[. . . .]

Section 319 is also wrong-headed. Subsection 1, makes it a crime to publicly incite hatred where it is likely to lead to a breach of the peace. That is reasonable: The state should prosecute those who use hateful speech to incite others to riot, kill, assault or otherwise harm another person or group. But subsection 2 makes it a crime just to speak ill of another. It makes criminals of "every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, wilfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group."

In the case of sexual orientation, this is an invitation to run roughshod over religious freedom.

Robinson argues that won't happen because there is a "religious belief" exemption in the Criminal Code and protection of religious rights in the charter. But that didn't help Hugh Owens, a Saskatchewan resident who ran an ad in a local newspaper with references to scripture (Leviticus 18:22, Leviticus 20:13, Romans 1:26-27, 1 Corinthians 6:9-10), alongside an image of two male figures holding hands, with a red circle and slash on top of them.

His case went to the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission and then its Court of Queen's Bench. In December, Justice J. Barclay upheld the decision against Owens, and said, "When the use of the circle and the slash is combined with passages of the Bible, it exposes homosexuals to detestation, vilification and disgrace."

Were this case to be tried today with the weight of the Criminal Code behind it, instead of facing a $1,500 fine, Owens might be doing time.

Our society holds dear the separation of church and state so that the state-imposed doctrine of tolerance will not be used to harass those who hold beliefs that rest on a higher authority.

Experience suggests the courts cannot be trusted to interpret the addition of sexual orientation to this section of the Criminal Code with the moderation that Parliament intends. Before the courts are given licence to destroy the churches and imprison its preachers, Parliament must revisit this decision. Parliamentarians should pare down the criminal law to eliminate the special status for certain identifiable groups, and limit the criminal sanction strictly to those who incite others to violence.

No one should live in fear of attack by an angry mob. A mob driven by hate is a great threat to public security. However, a mob driven by political correctness is an even greater threat to personal liberty.