Let's Take A Step Backward

We're standing on a teacup, because there's no
river ice in July.

Sometimes, when you step back to look at the big picture, you don't understand what you see. I'm looking for people to help explain it all to me, since  I now stand dumbfounded.

I live in a country where we've maxed out the credit card. I think. It's hard to tell - I'm a mostly-trained accountant, a skilled financial mathematics expert, and an amateur economist, and, as one person put it "damn good at tearing through vague language" - but the government's official page on the budget and the nation's financial statement is opaque for all intents and purposes. I can't figure out how much money we are spending on what things, and it's not for lack of trying, or lack of understanding. The information is being kept deliberately obscure.

But, let's take a look at what we do know. We do know that Employment Insurance, for which all Canadian workers pay, and which is intended to protect us against layoffs, is being reduced. We know that our soldiers are coming home, but not until next year - I guess the treasure needed to keep them in the most dangerous parts of Afghanistan is less than one might guess. I know I hear more often about cuts to programs than new initiatives - no more Midwife's Council in New Brunswick, huge reductions in research facilities. Tax cuts inevitably favour business - cuts to taxes on manufacturing equipment, that sort of thing.

Now, my basic understanding of recessionary economics is that recessions stem from a sudden understanding of the scarcity of money - suddenly nobody wants to spend it, especially spending speculative money that exists only in the form of debt to banks or credit institutions. It seems to me the last thing the government wants to do is stop spending money, putting their heel on the throat of the Canadian underclasses while allowing a few commercial outfits to spend more freely. Improving the economic situation would be signalled by a return to the free flow of goods.

If the government cannot safeguard the people, what is the point of having one? What is the point of having manufacturing if the workers are too poor to buy the goods? What is the point, in fact, of any of it?

A government may function because the people give it a legitimacy - either explicitly, through their support, or implicitly, by compliance. We, as Canadians, need to adjust our perceptions of what we consider legitimate. We, who work to make the rich rich, and the state great, must demand our fair share.

The Self-Destruction of the Conservative Party

They certainly make a hash of things

As a general rule I try to write about Canadian politics when I can.  Since I spend a rather inordinate amount of poli-blogging time talking about American (and, increasingly, British) politics, forcing myself to think about the less-scandalous politics closer to home usually involves abstract musings on electoral math.

Lately, though, it hasn't been much of a challenge - a series of municipal, provincial, and federal miscalculations have injected plenty of "salt" into the usually bland repast of Canadian politics.

As a primer, since a goodly portion of my reader-base is actually American (a function of my net-presence on other media, more than anything else, I am sure), I should explain a truism of Canadian politics. As a general rule, any government we have will be at least one shade further to the social and economic right than actually reflects the view of the people. To a certain extent, this can be traced with problems in "getting out the vote", but the primary problem is that we have one right wing party, and many centre-left and fully-left parties. I know from experience that finding the right centre-left party to reflect my ideals is hard, especially since even the right-wing party plays hard toward the centre in an election year. The practical effect of this is that liberal and centrist votes get split among two major parties and a few minor parties, while the right-wing vote is consolidated in a single party.

The last few rounds of elections at federal, provincial, and municipal levels has done a pretty good job of pinning that idea down from hypothesis to Theory.

At the Federal level, we took a minority government headed by the CPC and Prime Minister Stephen Harper and turned it into a CPC majority with the same head. We've lived under CPC rule my entire adult life and for most of my time in high school, now. The senate (which is not elected, but stuffed with political appointees) has been filled with its own more-or-less-permanent conservative majority, meaning that anything the opposition manages to do by banding together (or future Liberal or New Democrat majorities) in the next handful of decades can be blocked by a senate Canadians by and large can't do a whole lot about. Unlike Governors General, who are unelected but at least have the good sense not to intervene in politics despite their role, the senate pocket-vetos things all the time.

Lots of people, particularly people raised in my generation, who went through public school with a fairly heavy steeping in our nation's political structure, have been lobbying for an elected or abolished senate - a generalized movement called Senate Reform. Personally, I couldn't tell you enough about the merits of bicameral democracy to tell you why we should keep the senate, so I'm not totally comfortable yet with the idea of saying we should abolish it wholesale. This lobbying has taken on a new fervour lately with the explosive rise of two senators in particular into page-top headlines for the last few weeks.

Firstly, we have Senator Patrick Brazeau, who is an independent after having been forced out of the Conservative Caucus. Why did he fall out of favour? In addition to being up on charges regarding sexual assault - a pretty serious crime in its own right and certainly the greater concern when dealing with his specific case - he's been embroiled in a senate living expenses controversy.

Since Senators have to spend a rather large amount of time in the capitol to conduct the business for which they are paid, they often live far away from their hometowns and nominal districts - having a district is pretty meaningless when you aren't answerable to the people who live in it - and they're able to claim their residences there as their primary residence. So long as they meet some fairly lax criteria, if these Primary Residences qualify, the senator may then claim his living expenses in Ottawa for reimbursement-in-full.

Brazeau joins Senator Mike Duffy, both in being exiled from the CPC for having his hands in the controversy, and for having been ordered by an independent audit of senate finances to repay $90,000 in living expenses.

Which he did with a cheque written to him by the Chief of Staff for the Prime Minister's Office, who had to resign in the exploding scandal. And this is just the political reality at the federal level. Have you heard about the video going around that purports Toronto Mayor Rob Ford is on film smoking crack cocaine? How about how sophmoric Ford and his brother's responses to the issue have been?

Just because they pitched precisely the same hissyfit I would have doesn't mean they're pure - it means they're just as unfit for political office as I am.

Defensor Fide

Shown: Genuine Enthusiasm

This past week has been a particularly crazy one for any of a number of reasons, but the one I wish to discuss revolves around politics. Canadian politics, as a matter of fact - not that world politics hasn't been just as crazy, and I'll try to get a few words in edgewise about that. The difficult part is deciding where I should begin.

Do I want to start with the current resignation of the Prime Minister's chief of staff over allegations that the same inappropriately funded a senator's repayment of expense claims - claims that senator was ordered to repay after an external audit revealed the claims were made wrongly, or, should I start with the rather unfortunate lack of a resignation of a key national mayor, who was already ousted once in this term for ethics violations, only to be re-installed at the order of a higher court, who is now being accused of having been caught on film  smoking crack cocaine?

It grows increasingly easy to understand why my generation undeniably, consistently, and and growing-implacably shows up as the least-registered, least-participating demographic in our national body politic. There are no young MPs or MLAs, and few enough young voters. This is treated as an endemic problem of the system, and frankly, the frustration is getting a little understandable.

We have a multi-party system. There's really only one major party with a right-of-centre policy, and that's the Conservative Party of Canada, whereas there's two major left-of-centre parties, no centre parties, and a wide-array of what are, frankly, spoiler parties.

So the social-right, the target audience for the CPC, feels no conflicts over whom to vote for, whereas anyone leaning toward the centre or the left has to choose between the lesser of "who cares?". And for my generation, it really is a matter of "Who Cares?"

Young voters in this country are impossibly outnumbered by the old - that's not necessarily a problem, for me, except that the old is also disproportionately right-wing, while my generation is, by and large, disproportionately left. So the few of us who do bother to get up and vote on election day get drowned out by social-conservative, frankly reactionary, voices, wind up with the CPC's hand-picked yes-men for our representatives, and genuinely feel disenfranchised.

When those yes-men become the senators embroiled in fiscal misappropriation scandals, the senators suspended on charges of sexual assault - senators we can't vote for or replace, except on the hope that they retire and a more favourable parliament is created.....

You start to understand why it becomes hard to bother picking between the lesser of who cares.

I don't expect my demographic to start showing a commanding presence on the political battlefield any time soon. Even if the election were called tomorrow, it would still be hard to get people motivated to vote, because, frankly, we've all stopped caring. After all, there's going to be corrupt politicians for as long as politics and money remain linked.

Without comprehensive changes to who we elect and how they are elected, this country is doomed to see less and less participation in our democratic processes.

Charity, Morality, and Welfare

Shown: Not Goofing Off on the Clock
Working for a Living

 I live in one of the richer American republics (actually, it's a constitutional monarchy, but it functions as a republic would in everything but name). As it happens I'm actually not pro-republic, I'm pro-democracy, but my rantings and ravings about electoral math are both, by now, well-known, and overdone.

However, living in one of the richer American states, I live in a country with a disproportionate amount of pseudo-socialistic thought, and at some point way before I was born, Welfare became a thing.

Now, I should begin by saying that up here Canada we have a variety of different welfare programs, not all of which are welfare, and all of which need to be considered on their own merits and not the merits of their esteemed confreres. For the purposes of this discussion, it's enough to know that there's basically Welfare, Disability, and Employment Insurance. I'm going to try to talk briefly about all of them, but I also have to get some obligatory disclosure out of the way first, so that you can spot my confirmation bias and point it out to me. Remember, dissenting opinions feed developing intelligence.

I'm a Christian. What particular denomination you attached to that statement is ultimately meaningless because I don't recognize denominational boundaries as legitimate for any purpose other than sociology. My developing understanding of Christian morality comes from direct reading of the bible and also pursuit of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.I consider mine a faith of charity in all senses of the word. Looking out for the less fortunate is probably the most noble thing a person can do, whatever the context.

Shown: How I cook when I'm working-poor.

Let's talk, though, about our welfare programs. We'll start with the one actually called Welfare. This is a program that anyone who is not presently employed may collect from, if they meet certain, rather low criteria, and can produce paperwork reliably to prove they are actively looking for work. Welfare is funded from the general taxation revenue in my country, which means that anyone who pays any tax of any kind pays for welfare, though obviously not proportionally.

Welfare is not available to anyone who's working over a certain wage, either, and the line for the welfare cutoff is well below the poverty line. What's more, provisions are made in the welfare system for certain conditions, like being a single parent, or having children. Additional children mean additional money is paid out by the system to help keep you afloat. It's a way for the state to enforce charitable ideals upon even the most bitter-hearted of us.

I used to like welfare. Now I know I live in an area with a lot of claimants. I know enough about how the business world works to recognize that many claimants, who come to my area looking to get their "I applied here" paperwork signed, have no interest in getting an interview. They're failing first impressions deliberately, and doing it in a way that is painfully honest. The system is gamed, with parents who live together but are unmarried listing separate addresses and one or the other collecting single parent benefits while the other collects an ordinary welfare cheque.

The people who abuse this program spoil it for everyone else. It gets to the point where refusing to be on welfare becomes a matter of pride for people who have a genuine need of it, and where people who are otherwise charitable want the program abolished on principle.

Shown: How I eat when unemployed.

Employment Insurance is even better on principle. This is a system everyone who works pays into. It's deducted from your pay on top of your taxes, and then it's matched-and-then-some by your employer. It's intended as an insurance policy against loss of work due to layoffs. If you quit, or were fired for cause, you're not entitled. If you don't have a certain number of hours logged, you're not entitled. And the payouts only last for so long, no matter how hard you're looking for work. But hey, it's something, and I have no problem paying for it.

I often complain about it, of course. I've been unable to draw upon it when I really needed it in the past, wuch as two months, recently, where I was unable to find work. This was before I decided to go back to college for my second bite at the post-secondary-education apple, so there was no savings to draw on, and precious little work to find. I hadn't been fired for cause. The business I worked for was doing poorly, and the owner basically decided to drop all staff that wasn't family. I was laid off.

I still couldn't claim it, because too long of a period had elapsed between that job and the previous, which had been a summer practicum I was released from at the end of the summer work term. Such things don't count for EI claims so I was no better than the person who gets fired for throwing a knife down the line during a heated argument with a holier-than-thou server during a breakfast service where everything that can go wrong did.

Well, let's be honest, I really am no better than that, but you would think a program you pay for - directly - would actually pay out. Particularly where other seasonal workers can, or at least, could (there's reform in the tubes) draw on EI benefits during their off season.

So I'm against Welfare and on the Fence about Ei. This is the part where I look like a crypto-fascist and argue against disability, right? Wrong. Disability payments serve a legitimate purpose. People have a right to the necessities of life in this country. Those who are unable to work to earn those necessities should have an expectation for the government to provide for them within reason, because there is simply no other alternative.

These positions aren't going to be very popular. If I ever ran for office with any of the parties that I actually liked, or indeed ever ran for any office of any kind in the area I live in now, all it would take to sink my career would be for someone to dig up this post or another like it. But it needs to be said, becauser enforced charity is no charity at all.  Instead of encouraging people to work less, we should be helping them find ways to work more. I've known plenty of people on any of these programs who made more money than I did while working, being paid, in essense, to sit around all day and be online, railing against the unfairness of a political system that forces people to work, fails to raise the assistance payments to the level they think is necessary, or else-wise simply play their favourite facebook, pogo, or miniclip games.

The legitimate users of these programs deserve every penny they get, and the illegitimate ones deserve to work off every penny they stole.

Transgender Identity

Warning: This post deals matter-of-factly with matters regarding sex, sexual intercourse, and human anatomy. If you are immature with regards to these matters, consult your parents before continuing.

On Wednesday, a private member's bill had its third reading in the House of Commons and passed the house with an 12-vote margin - and the votes of 18 Conservatives including four cabinet ministers. The prime minister, quite naturally, opposed it, along with most the rest of his party. The bill, C-279, is An Act to Amend the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Criminal Code, with regard to the issue of Gender Identity. The full text is available through the link.

Christian, Buddhist, or somewhere in between, I think we can all agree that the greatest part about living in Canada is that our nation has a constitution that defends the right to free expression of religion. That means, among other things, that there's no real reason to go into any sort of religious dialogue when discussing human rights. The right to religion is already protected and nothing the government does can change your religious identity. For that reason, I'm going to avoid wading hip-deep into the theological implications of transgender politics and stick to the political side of things.

The English-Speaking world has conflated Sex and Gender for hundreds and hundreds of years. I happen to know that my employers don't distinguish between the difference and get very annoyed when you do. This is something that's so easy to understand, all you need is a concept of the mind and the body being separate - you need to have been alive for about a year, in other words.

Sex, strictly speaking, refers to the biological male-or-female-ness of an organism - the possession of the appropriate genetalia to perform the functions of the sexual act as is proper for that gender. In mammalian animal species, such as Humans, Cisgendered males have penises which are used to inject semen into the vagina, cisgendered females have vaginas with which to collect semen and wombs with which to bring forth offspring.

Gender is more psychological, and sociological studies suggest it's not the intuitive binary male-or-female we have come to expect. In an overwhelming majority of cases, those with male sexual organs exhibit gender identity closer to the masculine end of the spectrum and those with female sexual identity tend toward the feminine end of the spectrum. This is why the two terms are conflated, and it's also why we have terms like "butch", "sissy", "fruity", and so forth to describe individuals who stray too close to the middle, or opposite end, of the spectrum. It's also why terms like that are derogatory - humanity's social structure has, for hundreds of thousands of years, essentially reinforced the idea that homogeneity is good. Regardless of where you sit on the spectrum, if you think of your gender as being your sex, you're "cisgendered" and properly-aligned, and feel no need to change anything.

The root of the issue involved in trans identity comes in this way - some men and women tend so far toward the opposite ends of the gender spectrum that they identify as being a part of that end, regardless of their sexual identity. This is known as being Transgendered, and this is why some medical instutions began to develop increasingly sophisticated sex change operations - though undergoing such surgery is not always desired and, indeed, not a pre-requisite for being transgender. If you're curious as to the actual mechanics of being transgendered, ask a transgendered person you know, or use The Google.

In practice, this bill changes very little. Printed out in full and in both languages it is six pages long, with quite a bit of that being wasted white paper. All it does is establish legal definitions of the problem of gender identity, and establish both cisgendered and transgendered individuals as protected classes against discrimination and hate crimes.

It doesn't make it easier or harder to chemically or surgically transition from one sex to the next;
It doesn't spontaneously allow alterations to even civil marriage codes;
It doesn't infringe upon your right to religious freedom, regardless of how you feel your religion has informed your opinions on transgender identity.

The bill is up for its second reading before the Senate today. This would be a good time to establish a connection of some sort with your Senator and ask them to support Bill C-279.

Americanization of Canadian Politics II: Our Increasingly Violent Culture

I have been said to personify one of these from time
to time.

If people knew me by my frustrations alone, they'd probably think of me as a violent person. A teenage decade of losing pretty much every physical fight I've been in, however, has taught me that psychological warfare has much more of a place than any sort of physical conflict.

When it comes to political issues that surround violence, I'm hopelessly liberal - in favour of restricting civilian access to firearms, broadly in favour of legalizing even some of the harder drugs I would personally never touch, anti-death...

Frankly, I never really thought I was sitting all that far outside the margin until I read this thread on the NationStates Forum. While I wasn't surprised by some of the comments considering the vast majority of the players on this site are American, I became surprised pretty quickly once certain players I know to be Canadian got involved.

With "debate" (or what passes for it on the internet) raging on the issue of abolishing the death penalty, a surprising number of otherwise very representative Canadians came out in favour of keeping the practice (or, I suppose, in our case, bringing it back - we abolished it in 1976 and the last executions were actually in 1962), often rather vocally.

What was telling, however, was that these particular Canadians kept citing various prison statistics - from the United States - and calling it "our broken prisons".

Either five or six of the people I know on the internet to be Canadian all spontaneously moved to the States, or, once again, a lack of competitive flare on the part of Canadian broadcasters means we're getting drowned out in favour of CNN and FOX. For the record, and as an aside, on four occasions of the last fifty that I've gone to a restaurant that happened to have a tv tuned to a news channel - commonly McDonalds - it's been tuned to CNN. D'oh.

This is actually one of many things I'm always surprised to hear people get up in arms. I honest to god had one older woman (who frankly should have known better!) complaining about the recent abolition of the penny and invoke President Obama in the proceedings, who is not my president and had nothing to do with setting fiscal or monetary policy in Canada. No discussion of the traditional hot-button issues from America is complete without at least one person in the group somehow invoking the American state of affairs, with such hits as:

Yeah, but when the Supreme Court passed Roe v. Wade they pretty much made it impossible to get an abortion in this country.

(Honestly, I can't even begin to tell you what's wrong with that sentence.)

We're all supposed to have health insurance through provincial medicare - why is this clown making us buy health insurance?

That's the other guys!

There's no need to ban guns - just made safety training comprehensive and compulsory and restrict the more ridiculous weapons.

Get this: We already do. Civilians can pretty much only own long arms (and certain, very restricted classes of handgun), and only after earning certification in firearms safety through accredited, government-run instructors.

I can't believe (such and such a state) legalized (pot or gay marriage, player's choice) - What are they doing to this country?

This is another one of those statements I hear way to often. First of all, if it happened in another state, it didn't happen in Canada (I'll teach you the meaning of the word state in countries other than America presently), and what's more, neither of those things is bad. Say what you want about the morality of the issue, but neither Catholic Doctrine nor a strict solo-scriptura reading of the bible makes the use of recreational drugs a sin per-se. Abuse is Gluttony, sure, and I'm pretty sure I saw a passage that makes violating "just laws" (of course, the definition of "just" is open to fairly wide interpretation, because this is the kind of thing where you'd want as much ambiguity as possible) a sin, but in areas where it's legal to smoke and you keep your smoking within the "healthy" limits of most people's drinking and tobacco habits, it's pretty much fair game from a moral standpoint. I'm pretty sure I've said before that you can't really justify a prohibition on Marijuana and the creation of a criminal class if you're going to let people drink alcohol and smoke tobacco. Say what you want about the morality of Gay Marriage - a properly secular government cannot legislate morality, and Gay Marriage is not a public safety issue.

Disapproving Pink-Tailed Chalceus, anyone?

The underlying problem with all this, particularly changing attitudes with younger Canadians toward executions and guns, stems, I believe, from an influx of American media. While I've never been on the ball with the whole "videogames/movies/music cause violence" argument, I certainly get how people make the connection, and I can certainly see such things predisposing a frustrated culture toward the acts often depicted. After all, even non-gamers usually play way more Call of Duty (at least, the recent ones) than is probably necessary or completely healthy. This is coming from a guy who plays some pretty violent games himself, from time to time, though for the most part, lately, killing blocky zombies in Minecraft is about as violent as it gets for me.

If we idolize vengence, of course we come to want the death penalty. We need to learn the distinction between Justice and Vengeance (as a species, on the whole).

The Fascinating State of the Minimum Wage

A Full Military Funeral, with Honours

At 26 hours weekly, I am tied with one other employee for the most-often-present non-supervisory employee at my job. I work hard in those 26 hours to try and find a 27th or a 28th.

Last year, between two similar jobs and a capital gain I made about $25,000, which is actually quite a bit more than what is considered to be impoverished  However, the circumstances of that capital gain won't repeat themselves and next year, with all other things being current and no provincial increase in the minimum wage, I can reasonably expect to make, give or take, $11,000, which is all of about 500 dollars above the line at which the federal government can tax my income.

Hahahahaha!

Either way, the government /does/ tax your income whether you receive a return at the end of the year or not, so I operate under the assumption I am taxed. In practice, that pulls in at around 18% of the paycheque off the top, leaving me with 82% of what I earned to work with. If it's easier to wrap your head around, I get .82 on the dollar for all living expenses.

However, with very small exceptions, pretty much everything that I buy is taxed at 13%, partly provincially and partly federally. That means I functionally get .71 on the dollar. If I make $11,000 this current year, as I can reasonably expect to do working a single job, I actually only have just a little under $8,000 to work with.

In practice, this number is actually even lower, because the income tax deduction is not the only deduction taken off the paycheque. We also pay into two federal programs - the Canada Pension Plan, and Employment Insurance. The former I don't have much of an opinion on, but the latter...

$1500 of interconnected spare parts

Well, that's a digression and I'll have to get into at a later time, but we'll suffice it to say that it's easier to make a home owner's insurance claim in which the police say you robbed your own house than it is to make an EI claim.

At any rate, taking those two programs out turns my annual net to something closer to $7300 dollars.

I don't have many responsibilities. I have rent, some groceries, and my phone. My rent includes internet service and power, the other groceries, and water. My pets, such as they are, represent very little expense to me now that I have the equipment. So far this year, not including the equipment itself, I've spent about $40 and, barring a crisis, I can reasonably expect not to spend any more.

My rent is $500 a month paid bi-weekly to make the money-management easier - taken out over the course of a year that's $6000, and about what I was paying for rent and utilities last year. My phone's another $75/month so we can call that $900. I have some small credit card debt that if I could magically clear overnight would cost me, say $800, but with the compounding interest, that's going to look more like $900.

Woops, now we're over budget at $7800 and I haven't even fed myself yet...

Now, bare in mind that I get away with such nonsense because I live extraordinarily cheaply. I don't have car payments and pay perhaps less than $40 a month in transportation fees, when I pay them at all - in the summer I can travel pretty much anywhere I need to except in special circumstances without paying a cent. I don't have a child. I barely drink, barely smoke, and my annual expenses on both accounts are probably a couple hundred dollars. I eat out when I can but I don't when I can't. I give good gifts when I can recall an occasion (or rather, that's a habit I'm trying to form).

I can build a hearty lunch for $1.80.

My expenses are minimal. And I cannot live on a minimum-wage job.

Granted, I could, if such a thing as a full-time, minimum wage job existed. But Canada's quiet recession is shrinking working hours since wages can't be shrunk. Employees are expensive, let me tell you, and the response of businesses with shrinking margins are to minimize costs - in practice, the only expenses you ever really control are your labour costs, and so..

26 hours is actually quite a long work week for someone on the minimum wage around here.

I can get a second job, but they don't exist either - not the kind needed. I need either something that will let me only work on the two days a week I have off, or work daytime hours doing just about anything else. Having my old teavana job back would actuall be ideal if I thought that company had a future in the local market, but it'sjust a little two Hollywood for our Santa Monica tastes.

Day jobs, full time or not, usually go to favoured, older workers who have been with the company for a good long time.

What's more, there is a plentiful supply of above-minimum-wage full time jobs that, while tolerable, are much less fun than what I'm doing now, and don't pay enough extra to make it worth my while. Part time, maybe, but that job doesn't exist.

Of course, raising the minimum wage would just shrink hours again. What we need is some sort of comprehensive, right-to-work sort of a thing. I don't know what that looks like yet, but I'm working on it.

History Lessons

"You're involving yourself in centuries-old conflicts without sufficient regard for history."
-Lord John Marbury of Aaron Sorkin's The West Wing

Canada has a rich and varied history that it shares quite well with its renegade older brother to the south. It takes only a cursory examination of our politics to realize there are really only five factions in the country, in terms of people.

• "Old Clan" whites with history in Britain, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, etc;
• "Ancien Famille" whites with history in France;
• "Wang ming guo wai zhe" Chinese-Canadians whose family lines came over during the expansion of the railways;
• "De Novo" immigrants in their third, fourth, or fifth generations;
• "First Nations" aboriginals who have been on this continent for longer than anyone else.

A look at current-running tensions felt in the first and second groups to everyone else (including each other, and often in mutual ways) can usually be summed up as simple xenophobia or racism, with only a cursory examination, but in truth, the matter runs far deeper. Things were not always at peace between the British and French colonies, and in fact the only reason why Quebec is a part of Canada at all was that it was under British rule basically from the end of the 18th century onwards - by the time of confederation in 1867, Britain had ruled over the Province of Quebec for nearly a century and defended it against revolutionary forces in the American Revolutionary War. The resentment is still felt in the Quebecois desire to have as much freedom and independence as possible in both real and cultural terms, and the insistence in many English communities that the Quebecois should embrace the same bilingualism that they must.

To be fair, I live in the only formally bilingual province in Canada (historical note: most of the province used to be the French colony of Acadia), and speak very little functional French - something I'm hoping to rectify.

The animosity felt between the Quebecois and the Anglophone community is largely of a deep-rooted, resignation-type feeling, with no good reason for it other than "that's what we've always done". It is still nothing, however, compared to the relationship between Old Clan and Ancien Famille whites and the First Nations.

Our history with the First Nations is no better than the history to the south - the current situation was preceded by centuries of war, ranging from skirmishes over land, to outright conquering and through on to full-on genocide. The image we have in our minds of the First Nations being far-flung, primitive, and sparsely-populated tribes is somewhat belied by modern archaeological understanding of the situation. While they might not have build such wonders as Tiahuanaco or Machu Pichu, the First Nations of North America are generally thought to be on a par, technologically speaking, with the Aztecs, Mayans, Toltecs, and other aboriginal peoples of the South American continent.

To be fair, much of the early slaughter was unavoidable - in spite of relatively peaceable and open first-contact, the First Nations simply could not resist our European pathogens. Whoops.

But it's the memory of that conquering and pillaging that moves on. We displaced huge populations onto reserves, and backed the people into treaties while we imposed upon them our culture and belief systems. Even to this day, many First Nations don't have formalized treaties with Canada, meaning we're either there as a de facto occupying force, or our maps are wrong. Reservations appear not unlike third-world countries, lacking proper infrastructure, and as I reported a year or so ago, even proper housing.

There's a genuine class- and race-war not terribly far in the offing if the current trends in rising tensions continue. We cannot ignore so rich a piece of history for long. History is like a time-bomb - if you don't study it and diffuse it, it's going to blow up in your face.

Thank God for Small Favours

Today, I'm especially thankful that my initial interest in law and policy did not flourish to the point where I immediately pursued a career in either field. The Supreme Court of Canada heard arguments today in a case involving a man named Hassan Rasouli, an Irainian-Canadian who had an operation for a brain tumour. As a result of the surgery, he suffered an infection that caused catastrophic damage to his brain tissue - enough to render him in a vegetative state. After long months, he has recovered to the point of minimal consciousness.

The case considers the sticky issue of who makes the ultimate decision in removing life support for those in clinical brain-death: the doctors or the family. The case has remarkable complexity, such that I can only barely wrap my head around the questions being asked by it, let alone hope to answer them in a manner consistent with the law of the land and the obligations of the state.

For the one thing, there's the obvious question about whether or not it is ever right to withdraw life-support unless a person specifically requests it - in fact, I know a few people who would say that even requests by the patient for the removal of life support should be ignored. I find that those people in particular have a bad understanding of how life support works. To go further,is this even the right "test case" for the issue itself? Where Mr. Rasouli is experiencing slow improvement in his condition, many vegetative patients do not. What about them? Suppose it is mandated that the will of the family substitutes for the will of the patient in these cases - who will pay costs associated with long-term life support?

The issue for me, I think, is wrapped up in something more fundamental than ethics, what constitutes brain death, or whether the withdrawal of care should be left to family or the professionals. It's a question, really, with how we define death.

Now, there are a number of really easy ways to decide someone is dead. If their heart is no longer beating and they are not drawing a breath, they're dead. Fortunately, many people who are "dead" in this way can be recovered, often with brain damage associated with hypoxia (the loss of oxygen flow to the sensitive tissues of the human brain), but sometimes without, even hours afterword (this is particularly true in cases where death could be most closely linked to hypothermia - almost as if the tissues are preserved by the lower temperature). Obviously then, having your heart stop beating is not a good metric for death.

Now, from what we know of the human condition through rational observation and testing, the brain is the seat of the human consciousness. We can argue till the cows come home about how that works (personally, I believe that a soul is responsible for personality and decisions - the part of us that passes on - which interacts with the more mechanical brain), but the fact of the matter remains that without the brain in proper working order, the mind simply doesn't work properly. For this reason, most clinicians now use the idea of brain death - an absence of electrical activity in the brain - to define final death. While we can restart the heart.... we can't usually restart a brain once it's actually come to a stop.

But this is too simplistic. Even in a vegetative state where no response to any stimulus comes from the patient, often there is brain activity remaining. This person is dead to the world - nearly literally - yet clinically "alive".

I hope to God I'd never have to make this particular decision for anyone. I certainly hope I'd never find myself in Mr. Rasouli's position. This sort of thing I have actual nightmares about. Loss of proper brain function terrifies me on a level that almost nothing else can compare to.

I almost never do this, but please pray for the family in this case, for the patient, for the doctors, and for the Justices who must now decide it. May they all find peace in this decision, and may the decision reflect what is best for the world.

You couldn't pay me enough money to be the one to decide it... or even to be one of the nine who do.

The Americanization of Canadian Politics II: RCMP, Border Services to Allow Torture

I don't have a small child to frown at you, so you're going to have to settle for me looking unimpressed (to put it tacitly).

I've been working in the kitchen all morning, trying to get it ready for a long week of what I suspect will be low-cycle mentality, and I've finally taken a break scant hours before I have to go to work. I don't like the day-to-day feeling of banality that comes from only having the news of the mall to talk about, so today I flicked open the CBC page and had a little look.

Banner Headline: RCMP, border agents can use torture-tainted information.

Now, being a social liberal and having always leaned just slightly to the left of Christ Himself when it comes to how people should and shouldn't be treated by the governments they empower, a standing displeasure with the direction my country has been heading in has more or less been the norm for about... a decade or so. I wish I was kidding, but I'm not.

Still, it's a common practice to sensationalize your headlines to raise eyebrows and get people to read the article, and being the perfect little sheep I am, I have. I'll even admit to having done the same to my headline.

Directives issued about a year ago to the RCMP and the Border Service have recently been released to the press under various information requests. These directives make it clear that in exceptional circumstances (which are never properly defined), either agency may make use of information from all available sources - including foreign agencies, even if they suspect said information is derived from torture. This is some fuzzy logic away from being the same as the American practice of Extraordinary Rendition, a practice that I'll not seems not to have decelerated under the sitting President. 

In either event, it is simply an allowance of torture. While I'm not suggesting that we start fighting wars to end torture (I think that would be a job for some kind of UN standing army, not Canadian peacekeepers), it's absurd to believe that these foreign agencies would simply be feeding us their torture-gathered information for no reason. Somewhere, hidden in the accounting, to be sure, there's going to be economic or political consideration to these people. And that's why we're the enablers, which is why I get to use the phrase "Allow Torture".

I was disappointed when I started taking law and world issues courses in high school, and when I started paying attention to the news, because that was precisely when I started to learn that America, our dear neighbour to the south, has been denying her dream for years. That's when I started learning about Guantanamo and Abu Graib. I learned the real reasons behind Canadian involvement in the NATO invasion of Afghanistan - how we were holding the most dangerous neighbourhoods with some of the weakest equipment. I was extremely proud - as proud as a 14 year old could have been - when I found out we wouldn't be going to Iraq. It wasn't our fight.

To find out we're adopting this policy... this Jack Bauer, "where's the bomb!", enhanced interrogation policy... whether on our own soil or through well-paid foreign hands, is actually the last straw. I am a Canadian. I stand for the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and I think that it should apply globally rather than nationally. I served two training tours as a Royal Canadian Army Cadet and I've considered, on and off again, making a career of military service. My true patriot land may still be free, but it is no longer glorious. This cannot, shall not stand.

Tell everyone you know about this. Tell everyone you know that his honour, the Public Safety Minister Vic Toews, is killing Canada.

The Radical Notion of Dissent

Creative Commons Image

A recent article by the CBC brought my attention to the fact that both CSIS and the RCMP have put it into writing that "environmental radicalism" is on the rise, without sufficient detail into what constitutes a radical.

Radicalism is a strong word, and it implies a number of things that are antithetical to the environmental cause, and to a proper sense of morality at large.

For the most part, I've been uninvolved in the latest environmental snafu's to make waves in the Canadian Media, because I've been focusing (in that regard) on my two pet projects: a sustainable alternative housing proposal for the provincial legislature, and shelling out the framework to be able to talk about Nuclear Power (and a possible proposal for the legislature in that regard as well). Some of these projects have taken years because the relevant data is industry-limited and difficult for the general public to get access to. But that's not the point.

The environmental issues Canada is facing are nothing new, even if the locations are. We've known Hydrofracking was questionable technology for years, but we employ it anyway. We've known oil pipelines have risks that border on criminal liability, but we construct them anyway.

I don't believe you have to be a radical to dissent on those points.

This all reminds me of the occupy movement, which might have been one of the most overblown protests of all time. Millions of people worldwide, stopping in their tracks and skipping shifts in order to protest corporate corruption, but able to present no tenable solution or do much more than air their grievances and lose their minds when they're removed from public property in month three of the protest.

I recall a friend of mine involved in the local occupy who was furious that he was arrested for spraypainting some graffiti on the park steps in front of two police officers. As far as I know, he still considers that to have been protected speech under the Charter. He's wrong of course, but that's not going to stop him, nor is it the point.

This generation seems to have a pretty low bar for what's considered radical. Sabotage, now that's radical. Not that I'm calling for sabotage.

This trick, of labelling opposing views as "radical", is nothing new, though the extent to which it's being deployed lately in my neck of the woods is. Seems to me like ever since the conservative party took the PMO, anything that involves a change (apart from "staying the course") is labelled as radical. We must do better, and we can do better, and we will do better.

It's one of the great things about this country; every four years we get to overthrow the government.

Auditing Assisted Suicide

Even though this originally came up a few weeks ago when the Supreme Court of British Columbia ruled that  the status-quo prohibition of Physician-Assisted Suicide was in violation of the Constitution Act (in not one but two sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms). Unfortunately for you, perhaps, I chose to stay out of the matter. The date that the ruling was handed down was surprisingly close to my recent birthday, the stress of work was mounting, and wading into a topic as controversial here as abortion is in the United States wasn't high on my priority list. Fortunately, now that I'm back up to my fighting weight, I've been given a second shot because the Vancouver Sun is now reporting that Ottawa will appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Better part of half a decade ago, now, I took my first formal course in Canadian Law, through my high school. The teacher was lively, and often deliberately induced class debate, particularly on issues related to the Charter specifically or to the Constitution in general. One of those issues was assisted suicide, specifically the case of Sue Rodriquez, pictured left, who won a battle in her lifetime to earn the right (it would seem temporarily) to end her life with the help of her doctor.

Now, the exact specifics of her case elude me at the moment, but I remember arguing rather vociferously that she should be allowed to do so. I used s. 7 as the cornerstone of my argument, which reads:

7. Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of the person and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.

As I recall, my argument chiefly revolved around the idea of life and liberty. I argued that the only way you can have a right to do something was also to have the right to refuse it, otherwise your "right" was more of a mandate and in that case the Charter wasn't as useful a document as one would hope.

Times have changed a bit since then, however. For one thing, I no longer feel the need to come down on the liberal side of every issue on-spec. I've also learned to separate my issues and prioritize them.  In much the same way as governments in a federal system divide powers along federal, provincial, and municipal lines, I divide my opinions on law and morality. They aren't the same, but for wishing making it so. As I've written before, what is just is not always legal, what is legal is not always moral, and morality, no matter how objective we insist on it being, is subjective, and you need look no further than any argument on any moral point ever to see that.

The Catholic Church teaches that assisted suicide (what it refers to erroneously as Euthenasia in the Catechism) is morally unacceptable on the basis of  an equation to murder that is not-well cited, and before you try to point out that it DOES have some form of scriptural support, that citation simply isn't made available in the supposedly "complete and updated" version of the catechism I was given by my sponsor when I was baptised late last year.

Now, I could wrap myself up in my usual arguments: as a Heisenburg Christian (that is to say, uncategorised), I don't necessarily consider the Catechism to be binding to everyone. I could also give the "assisted suicide =/= murder" speech, on the basis of consent. I'm getting quite good at those arguments. The problem is, I can't put real conviction behind either argument. Believe it or not, at the age of 22, I don't have a solid opinion on every subject in every field any more. I miss and regret the teenage years of absolute certitude because I miss the feeling that I know everything, a feeling which went out the window at the moment I realized I didn't.

Now, am I saying assisted suicide is therefore moral? No - I just finished saying I don't have a coherent position on that particular subject. The deeper question is whether or not a ban on purely moral grounds is constitutional. As I've mentioned in previous posts on abortion, I don't believe that my morality should be allowed to set public policy guidelines. Some morality requires going above-and-beyond the call of the law - ask anyone who keeps kosher or halal, chooses to be a vegan, or chooses to dress or act in a certain way on the basis of their religious beliefs. If this was a question of politics, there would be some merit to putting my shoulder behind a party that would respect my moral views on the matter.

This isn't a question of politics, either, but the constitution. There's nothing to do now but pray, I suppose, for the mental clarity and wisdom of the Justices of the SCC. Whether you're for or against assisted suicide, I'm sure you agree that these are attributes the ultimate legal authority in this country would need in spades.

A Rare Frown at a Cardinal

There is a bill before the Ontario Legislature today called the "Accepting Schools Act". While it isn't a national issue and I try to stay within my own province, the bill came to my attention today when a buddy of mine sent me a link about protests of the bill on the Legislature grounds. Among the leaders of the protests are Thomas Cardinal Collins, Cardinal Archbishop for Toronto. His grievance? The bill would allow students at all schools receiving funds from the Province of Ontario to form clubs similar to what is known as the Gay Straight Alliance - a group built on finding common ground between heterosexuals and their homosexual friends.

The main problem is that public schools are governmental entities. Not allowing groups such as the GSA to form chapters in their schools would be a violation of their Section Two rights. There's a concern that this would also affect catholic private schools, since many do in fact receive provincial funding.

Here's my take: your religious freedoms (under Section Two) as an institution don't trump the rights of your students. If you want to take provincial funding, you must be willing to accept that there is an extent to which the government has to cover their liability. Charter Rights only apply to protecting you from government action. If His Eminence would prefer not to allow his students to form these groups, he is more than welcome to refuse the provincial funding.

What's more, the Gay Straight Alliance is being misrepresented as an organization that promotes homosexuality. While there's a way to make that argument, it's intellectually dishonest. The state goals of the GSA is to promote tolerance of all sexualities. That is to say, as an anti-bullying group, their aim is to prevent harassment. It is an exercise in politeness, a value I rarely get to harp about given how rough-around-the-edges I usually am. We can ask the students to change the name if you like, but there's nothing any thinking catholic (or any other Christian, for that matter) should find objectionable in their aims.

I admit that I stand well to the left of the Church on just about everything. Let's take as read that homosexuality is immoral... so is bullying. We can't pick and choose our favourite evils. If a group wants to cut down bullying, let them cut down ALL of it.

Politics vs. Issues

As a general rule, I try not to let politics affect my voting decisions. As anyone in my class is now probably painfully aware, there's a massive difference between the right choice to make and the popular choice. So I try not to let individual politicians sway my thinking too far, and focus on individual issues.

Sometimes, though, there comes a moment when a politician is too willing to lie to you or too stupid to know he is, as Prime Minister Stephen Harper recently learned the hard way. During debates in Parliment over extending the Afghan mission, he accused NDP leadership of being "pacifistic" (as if that were somehow a bad thing) and said that the NDP leadership was against acting against Hilter's Nazi Germany in 1939.

The New Democratic Party was founded in 1961. You missed the mark by more than two decades. Congratulations, sir. You just made it impossible for me to vote for the Conservative party with you at the head. Which was a shame, because when it comes to Arctic Sovereignty, I was actually starting to favour your party.

Subsidies: The Governmental Weapon of Change

The polymer bank notes introduced in 2011 (for the $50)
and this month (for the $50). The remaining denominations
will be updated by late next year. Bank of Canada Photo.

I'm a bit of a numismatics freak. I like the concept of currency, the way we secure it, and the way it's evaluated. There's some really fun statistical math to be done there, and since I don't have an excuse to do engineering or physics problems as part of my school work, I tend to focus on mathematics. So you can understand my interest in the new polymer banknotes the Bank of Canada is issuing over the next year or so.

However, what I actually came in here to write about is the use of subsidies by governments on all three levels to influence industrial development, research, and essentially anything else they want done or changed. Subsidies are a sort of a double-edged sword, as we shall see.

Say "No" to Political Parties

I hear from a number of my fellow Canadians that, surely, ours is the freer of the two when compared to the United States of America. How could one argue otherwise, when they have only two parties to choose from, and we have so many? Surely, nobody could disagree that adding choice to the democratic process increases the freedom felt by those who are ruled by the results of the vote, and you need look for no further confirmation  than that which is found in the disdain with which we discuss countries with single-party elections. The more parties, the better.

I disagree. I think there should be fewer political parties, not more. A lot fewer, actually.

A political party is, for all intents and purposes, a coalition of persons who share political ideologies and use their combined headcount to their advantage by applying the principles of majority rule in order to attain positions of power. In that regard, a political party must garner popular support among the electorate, which is done by campaigning on a party platform. As a general truism, a member of the electorate may expect one NDP candidate to be replaceable by another, politically-identical candidate - republican for republican, liberal for liberal, so on and so forth.

A party must, therefore, rely on this platform in order to garner votes. It is possible, even, to compensate for gross flaws in ideology by adopting popular positions. For example, the Republican Party in the States has, as a factor of its positions on marriage and so forth, a distinct anti-homosexuality bias, however understated. Yet support in the LGBT community for the Republican Party persists, due to the party having popular positions on other issues such as defence. This is true in one way or another of almost all political parties, and is a natural function of another truism: no two people will ever find themselves in total agreement on every matter.

What you end up with is the acceptance of bad/unformed/unpopular ideas on the shoulder of ideas that are, or at least seem, more robust, more elegant, and more accurate.

This is why I suggest the abolition of political parties.  While it would be further ideal to replace representative democracies with pure democracies on the strength of modern telecommunication, that is an issue for an entirely different diatribe. Simply decentralize candidate selection and voting. Let communities decide, on the strength of a person's individual merits and ideas, who would best represent them in the political arena.

Quebec Religious Ethics Classes Constitutional: Supreme Court of Canada

Students in Quebec public schools take courses in Religions and Ethics that include study of numerous world religions. A couple challenged the law, claiming that the class infringed on their religious rights with regards to their children, which they wanted to use to restrict their child's own religious freedom to whatever their household faith was. The Supreme Court ruled against on Friday, saying that the course did not pose an impairment to the right to freedom of religion.

In writing the descision, Chief Justice McLachlin wrote:

Although the sincerity of a person’s belief that a religious practice must be observed is relevant to whether the person’s right to freedom of religion is at issue, an infringement of this right cannot be established without objective proof of an interference with the observance of that practice.  It is not enough for a person to say that his or her rights have been infringed.  The person must prove the infringement on a balance of probabilities. ...    L and J have not proven that the ERC Program infringed their freedom of religion, or consequently, that the school board’s refusal to exempt their children from the ERC course violated their constitutional right.  They have also shown no error that would justify setting aside the trial judge’s conclusion that the school board’s decision was not made at the dictate of a third party. Decision Text at Lexum.org

Essentially, the argument was that exposure to new/different religions did not constitute a restriction on religious freedom. One of the appellants offered the CBC a statement.

"My son is in fourth grade and he already asks questions about his own religion and I find it sad that it's happening at such a young age," said S.L., the mother who can only be identified by her initials, because of a publication ban. CBC.ca

 Personally, I don't grant her premise. Questioning your religion is the only way to increase your understanding of that religion, and, more importantly, to build your own spirituality. Doing something "because that's the way it's done" is not a valid motivation. For faith to be sincere, it must be hard-won, through experience and analysis. If I am not mistaken, a child at the fourth grade is old enough for confirmation and first eucharist. I believe we call that the age of reason, do we not?

Frankly, I think just about everyone on earth would benefit from exposure to new and different faiths. I'm sure others will disagree.

Analysis: NDP Leadership Candidates

Those of you among our frequent readership who are Canadian probably already know about the New Democratic Party. The NDP is Canada's official opposition party in the 41st Parliament, and their former leader, Jack Layton, died of cancer last year. The process of replacing their party leader has dragged on for months, but at least it has finally been whittled down to a manageable number of candidates.

The role of the official opposition is important, and leadership of that party equally so. While I'm not a member of the New Democratic Party, and therefore don't get a vote on their leadership, I still thought it would be helpful to provide a reasonably brief overview of the candidates for the position, so that the rest of you have an idea who to vote, hope, pray, or otherwise pull for.

Conservatives: Warrantless Internet Wiretaps "Necessary"

Vic Towes, Conservative MP for Provencher, and the Minister of Public Safety, says that we need a law allowing the police to track our internet usage without a warrant, saying that, without this legislation "child pornographers and organized crime will be allowed to flourish".

As the CBC points out, the only mention of children or child predators is in the title. They also point out some of the effects of the bill (copy-pasted here for clarity/minimal distortion):

• Require telecommunications and internet providers to give subscriber data to police, national security agencies and the Competition Bureau without a warrant, including names, phone numbers and IP addresses.
• Force internet providers and other makers of technology to provide a "back door" to make communications accessible to police.
• Allow police to get warrants to obtain information transmitted over the internet and data related to its transmission, including locations of individuals and transactions.
• Allow courts to compel other parties to preserve electronic evidence.

Child Pornography is a heinous crime, sure, and organized crime has been a problem since there were laws to break. Ignoring the clear invasion of privacy this bill represents (the Competition Bureau? really?), this bill demonstrates a clear misunderstanding of how internet traffic works. Services like Tor would make it so that a user's browsing habits are revealed only if all of the proxies are on the same ISP, and I happen to know that Tor uses servers in multiple countries to do their proxy-hopping.

No need for this bill has been clearly demonstrated, nor do I think the Conservatives are ever likely to do so. I'm going to let this sink in for my readers for a few hours, while I work on my analysis of the NDP leadership candidates. For those of you playing the home game from abroad, don't be tempted to think that your fiscal conservativism will ally you with the Conservative Party. They aren't. Nor are they socially conservative. They're plain, militant reactionary.

Importing Issues: Abortion Debate Comes to Canada

A Conservative Party MP from Kitchener, Ontario, Mr. Stephen Woodworth, has called for a committee to be empanelled, in order to decide on the rather modern question of when, during gestation or afterwards, human life begins, citing dissatisfaction with our current legal definition, imported via our British roots, of life beginning at birth. Not surprisingly, and against statements from the Prime Minister's Office telling us that the situation is otherwise, most reporters and commentators are seeing this as the first step toward reopening legal debate on Abortion, and, less surprisingly, Mister Woodworth plays for the vehemently pro-life team, being a devout Catholic and all (he formerly served on a Catholic private school's Board of Directors). Canada, of course, removed all legal barriers to abortion in 1988, though the practice is still regulated by the Canadian Medical Association, whose position is that the law does not need reform.

My commentary is below the jump.