Phil Fontaine, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations;

“Any action that elevates the status of one segment of Canadian society over another is completely wrong.”

The mind boggles.

On Oct. 24, Rolf Penner appeared before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food to testify against the Canadian Wheat Board monopoly.

I’d like to start by saying that I’m here not only as the agricultural policy research fellow for the Frontier Centre but, more importantly, as a farmer from southern Manitoba who’s running 1,700 acres of land and whose primary source of income is that farm.
[…]
Right now we are in the middle of a really major rally going on in the wheat markets. We’re at the highest levels today that we’ve seen in 30 years. We can’t take advantage of it and it’s incredibly frustrating. The little bit that we can price out, we can’t deliver, which means we can’t get paid for it.
Instead, if we need cash, and most farmers do in the fall in order to pay their bills, we are forced to sell our other crops at prices that right now are lower than where I expect them to be later this year. In some cases, it’s below the cost of production. If we were free to sell our wheat, we could hold on to these crops until those prices improved and actually make money on everything.
Equally frustrating in all this is that, if this current rally were occurring in any other crop, I could right now start selling next year’s production at a guaranteed profit. But I can’t. The primary reason is not the Wheat Board; it’s the Wheat Board monopoly.
[…]
In its current form, the Canadian Wheat Board sits like a wet blanket over the entire prairie economy—starting at the plant breeders, through the farm gates, on to our rural communities, into our cities, and right on out through our ports. This dampening effect is widespread, pervasive, and very tangible. It’s high time that we give this wet blanket a well-deserved airing out.
[…]
But there is the question of civil liberties. When is it appropriate for the state to allow one group to vote away the civil liberties of another group? There should be no such thing in a free and democratic society as the right to vote away civil liberties. We’re not talking about electing a government here, and we’re not talking about finding out who likes strawberry ice cream better than chocolate. In this case, if strawberry wins, not only are you not allowed to buy chocolate, but if we catch you with chocolate ice cream, you’re going to jail.
What this is all about is finally giving western farmers the freedom to run their businesses in the way they think is best – not how the government thinks is best, and certainly not how their neighbours think it should be run. Western Canadian farmers should be able to enjoy the same rights, freedoms, and civil liberties as the farmers in the rest of Canada do. It is not right, in this day and age, that they are still forced to sit in the back of the bus.

Be sure to read the whole thing – it’s a thoughtful and clearly explained argument.
But wait – there’s more!

Hon. Wayne Easter (MP, Malpeque): Thank you, Mr. Chair. My questions will be to Mr. Penner, who seems to live in quite a dream world, but in any event –
Mr. Rolf Penner: I make my living in that dream world, Mr. Easter.
Hon. Wayne Easter: I do, too.

Set aside the fact that Wayne Easter’s farm is located in PEI – a jurisdiction outside that controlled by the Wheat Board. Consider this: he has served as a Member of Parliament since 1993. During that time, he has also served as a minister and parliamentary secretary. The table below is based on this source – Indemnities, Salaries and Allowances, Members of the House of Commons – 1867 to Date. It is not presented as an accurate accounting of Mr.Easter’s compensation for service in Parliament, but to provide a general idea of his “off farm income” over that period of time. (For simplicity’s sake, I don’t include the $12,000 “additional expense allowance” that was provided from 1993 – 2000, his pension, or the additional salaries he earned as a committee chair.)

I venture there are more than a few western wheat farmers who would trade their “dream world” for that of Wayne Easter’s.
Update – More this mp3 file was forwarded by a reader who advises “Check out the last 9 minutes”.

Turkey? *

Nope.

Carleton University To become “Pro-life Free Zone” (via email);

The Carleton University Student Association Council will vote on a motion to amend the discrimination section of the CUSA Constitution to make it a “pro-choice” (ie, pro-abortion) body. The amendment would make it impossible for ANY group that is not “pro-choice” (ie, pro-abortion) to obtain club status or funding. They will have a special process to identify which groups are “anti-choice”.

And onward march the forces of intellectual conformity.
There are contact numbers in the extended entry.

Continue reading →

From the city of Malmö, via Gates of Vienna. 40% of the city’s population is immigrant ;

“The number of cases involving rough violence against individuals on public property has risen sharply since the beginning of the ’90s, when I started my work in Malmö. The perpetrators of robbery and bodily harm on public property are almost always immigrant youngsters. This is well-documented, but the authorities responsible prefer not to report it. It would be against the country’s integration propaganda, so they prefer to remain silent.
“The fact that also the number of rapes in Malmö has grown sharply is related to the fact that 40% of Malmö’s inhabitants have a different ethnic background, and where the men’s power over the women is total. Their view of women is so totally alien to us Swedish men, and they continue to live according to their culture without regard to the fact that they are in a different country with different laws. Unfortunately, this attitude is being reinforced by Swedish authorities and courts who show regard for the suspect’s culture when making decisions.”
This police officer confirms also the negative reception which police and emergency services encounter in Malmö’s immigrant suburbs.
“Many immigrants have not the slightest respect for Swedish cops. You’re often treated like a trashman. Immigrants have so far only met representatives of the immigration and social services. They have been treated very friendly and seen all their demands met.
“Certain routine matters, such as a driving license check with an immigrant in Rosengård, get easily out of hand and develop into a major incident, where all patrol cars must intervene to re-establish order. Thanks to cellphones, many ‘supporters’ gather when we intervene in Rosengård. If we stop a car for a routine check, the entire clan shows up to work against the police.

Stanley Kurtz;

Will same-sex marriage open the door to still more radical redefinitions of the family? The argument against a “slippery slope” has largely come down to the claim that there is no constituency for family radicalism. Logically and culturally, the notion that “love makes a family” opens the door to an infinite variety of family forms, polygamy and polyamory included. Yet consider the massive cultural and political effort that’s been required to bring civil unions to several states, and formal same-sex marriage to Massachusetts. Now imagine how much more effort it would take to finally secure same-sex marriage in the nation as a whole. How could a few college professors and radical family activists hope to equal that “mainstream” effort?
So goes the argument against a family-structure-slippery-slope. Yet the argument is flawed. As I showed in “The Confession,” and “The Confession II,” the core constituency for a radical deconstruction of marriage (polygamy and polyamory included) will be largely the same activist community that is pushing for same-sex marriage right now. After all, until a moment ago, same-sex marriage was itself considered a radical idea pushed by a bunch of college professors and marginal activists. That was before gay marriage was taken up as a cause by weighty mainstream institutions like The New York Times.
Well, The New York Times has once again placed itself on the cutting edge of family radicalism, with a Sunday magazine cover piece on the three- and four- person extended families created when gay men donate sperm to lesbian couples. (See “Gay Donor or Gay Dad?”) These families are at the center of the radical agenda put forward this past summer in the “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage” manifesto. (For more, see my “Confession” articles, linked above.) It will be next to impossible to recognize such families without also opening up the way for heterosexual polygamy and polyamory, which is exactly why all of these family forms, and more, are on the menu put forward by the “Beyond Same-Sex Marriage” manifesto.

Just as skeptics are beginning to note that the troublesome “global warming” mantra is being quietly replaced by the more meteorologically inclusive “climate change” – along comes a new catch phrase. Remember where you heard it first.

But the meeting has delayed until next year a decision on who should run funds to help poor countries adapt to climate change.
“Rich countries should have achieved more at this conference and made more firm commitments to combat climate injustice,” said Sharon Looremeta of environmental group Practical Action.

Climate “injustice”.
To my friends concerned with the legitimate environmental debate: that’s code that even you should be able recognize.
“Justice” is an construct of human social interactions. No scientist with a sliver of intellectual self-respect would be caught dead using the word in that context – it suggests that a natural climate unmolested by mankind’s activity would be more considerate in how it applies its effects to human populations.
When someone promotes concepts like “climate injustice” they’re not talking about the environment. They’re talking about your money and mine, and how to get their hands on as much of it as possible.
Remember: socialism isn’t a political ideology – it’s a pyramid scheme.
The rich get richer, and the poor end up in unmarked graves and re-education camps.
“Environmentalism” was hijacked by the hard left at least a decade ago, and some of us are starting to wonder what it’s going to take for you to figure that out. And the Kyoto Protocol? Just more UN-brokered “politics of envy” in hemp and Birkenstock disguise.
Related.

Wal-Mart – favourite whipping boy of every left wing politician. Until they need a PlayStation.

From Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Ark., company spokesman David Tovar said the person who called left a voicemail at the Raleigh store and identified himself as an Edwards staff member. When the manager returned the call, the staff member again identified himself as working for Edwards, and Wal-Mart said it confirmed that with Edwards’ office.
The retailer’s news release accused Edwards of not wanting to wait his turn.
“While the rest of America’s working families are waiting patiently in line, Senator Edwards wants to cut to the front,” the Wal-Mart statement said.
The PlayStation 3 console is set to go on sale Friday.
Edwards, the Democrats’ vice presidential candidate in 2004, spoke Wednesday to supporters of union-backed WakeUpWalMart.com on a conference call launching the group’s holiday season campaign to pressure Wal-Mart for better labor standards.
In the call, he repeated a story about his son Jack disapproving of a classmate buying sneakers at Wal-Mart. “If a 6-year-old can figure it out, America can definitely figure this out,” Edwards said.

Heh.
h/t

Deutsche Welle;

The plan was a simple one, demanding more criminal energy than brainpower: First, manufacture plastic bottles cheaply in eastern Europe and slap a fake bar code on them. Then trek the bottles into Germany, where they fetch 25 euro cents (31 US cents) apiece.
Easier then printing money? Almost. In Germany, empties can be brought to grocery or beverage stores, where they are slipped through modern machines that read the bar code, compute the value of the returns, and spit out a receipt for payment, to be picked up at the nearest cash register.
Three hardworking thieves decided to try doing just such large-scale recycling for a living in September. They brought 150,000 ersatz grape soda bottles, made for a few cents each in Lithuania, to the eastern German state of Schleswig-Holstein and started trying to cash in.

Brussels Journal;

Obviously, there is a flaw in the entire system – even the word “deposit” is misleading. Usually, a deposit is paid for something of value, i.e. an item that the owner would like to have returned. However, the item in question is a non-refundable bottle that cannot be reused. The incentive for criminals stems from the very low production costs – much less than one half of the deposit amount. What typically happens in such a well-intentioned state action is: more instead of fewer bottles are produced; non-refundable bottles are transported across long distances; creative forms of crime are invented.
This is reminiscent of a practice in India, where the government offers a premium for killing venomous snakes if the head of the dead snake is handed in to the authorities. What happened? You guessed it – venomous snake farms.

Yeah, yeah – I know. My friends in the legal community will argue that the process of appointment, however flawed, is still superior to the excesses that occur in the US system in which those who sit on the bench must pander to the lowest common denominator among an electorate uneducated in the nuance of the blah blah blah blah blah.
Enough.
The Gated Community community has had their chance.

The 25-year-old woman was released after Justice Gerald Jewers gave her a sentence equal to the approximately two years she had already spent in pretrial custody. Her 39-year-old common-law husband was given another seven years behind bars.
CTV Winnipeg’s Kelly Dehn reported that the two victim’s families reacted in shock to the sentences.
“One woman was crying as she was walking out of the courtroom, saying that (the wife) was Manitoba’s answer to Karla Homolka,” Dehn reported. “She says she could not believe what she was hearing in that courtroom.”
The couple sexually assaulted young girls they lured into their home. The wife was convicted of three charges of sexual assault and forcible confinement, while her husband was convicted of eight charges, including kidnapping and sexual assault.
In handing down the sentences, Justice Jewers argued the couple had not had any serious prior convictions. Jewers also said not all of the counts could be proven to his satisfaction.

Mike On Crime has more.

Police have called this one of the worst cases they’ve ever seen.
Ladouceur and Traverse created a welcoming environment for neighbourhood youths by offering alcohol and marijuana for several years beginning in 1999, court was told.
They even went after family.
A 12-year-old relative told court how she was held as a “sex slave” by the couple for several months.
On at least two occasions, the girl said she was given pills and alcohol and tied to a bed and raped by Ladouceur while Traverse looked on.
Police later found disturbing evidence to support her story, including a small baggie containing 85 plastic ties stuffed in between the basement ceiling tiles and heating duct and two vials of blue and orange pills in the kitchen. The teen testified that Ladouceur threatened to get members of a Winnipeg street gang and the Hells Angels after her family if she didn’t comply with his sadistic demands.

We must find a mechanism to fire some of these unaccountable twits. “Judicial independence” is no excuse for incompetence.
And while on the subject of unaccountable twits – check out this wagon circling editorial attacking Justice Minister Vic Toews for “tinkering” with “a legal system that has served us well“.
Unbelievable.
Update – from Bruce, in the comments;

And the worst of all are the nine elitist, unelected, red-velvet-and-ermined-robed former flower children that constitute the SCC.
Perhaps their finest hour *sarcasm on* was during the Milgaard enquiry, where at least some of the judge’s were hearing evidence in a court room for the very first time. On a Friday afternoon, after hearing from a particularly dubious witness, the then-chief justice ordered that he given a polygraph (lie detector) test, with the results to be heard on the following Monday.
Those of us then in the law enforcement commmunity experienced a collective dropping of jaws, realizing that those on the highest court in the land were apparently the only parties in the criminal justice sytem who didn’t know that polygraph evidence was not admissable in court in Canada. The obvious embarrassment on the faces of some of the judges on the following Monday was palpable.
Small wonder that one of the most circulated jokes among police and prosecutors after a number of the Charter decisions emanating from the SCC in the late 80s was as follows:
Q: What do you call a lawyer in Canada who knows virtually nothing about criminal law and procedures?
A: A justice of the Supreme Court of Canada.

Dogs Bark …. Sky: Blue … Water Runs Downhill…

Be It Proposed: All Criminologists be sentenced to 10 years in prison.

“What we need to target on is the use of handguns, especially by gangs,” [Justice Minister Vic Toews] said. “That is what C-10 is really focused on. The areas of increase in gun crime is specifically the use of handguns by gangs.”
However, criminologist Neil Boyd argued against Toews’ prescription.
“We can talk about punishment but we have to recognize that these are young men willing to use handguns on their opponents,” he said.
“They are not in the least deterred by whether they’re going to have four or eight years or a life in prison.”

To test the hypothesis: “That, while incarcerated, the statistical likelihood that an offender will commit a second crime involving the use of a handgun approaches zero”.

The President of Michigan University is taking a stand, one day after the state’s voters approved Proposal 2, a Constitutional amendment banning affirmative action programs.

Opponents worried that if the constitutional amendment passed in Michigan, the battle over affirmative action programs would spread to other states and roll back progress made toward equality for minorities and women. […]
But supporters said affirmative action was unfairly keeping some people from getting jobs and university admissions because minorities were being given an edge. The ballot drive was led by Jennifer Gratz, a white student from suburban Detroit who says she was turned away from the University of Michigan in 1995. She says if she had been black, American Indian or Hispanic, she would have been admitted.

President Mary Sue Coleman vows to devote her efforts to finding a way around the ban. In a statement that has a promising second career as a college drinking game, the word “diversity” appears 21 times;

I will not stand by while the very heart and soul of this great university is threatened.
We are Michigan and we are diversity.
I am joined on these steps by the executive officers and deans of our university. We are united on this. You have my word as president that we will fight for what we believe in, and that is holding open the doors of this university to all people.
Today, I have directed our General Counsel to consider every legal option available to us.
In the short term, we will seek confirmation from the courts to complete this year’s admissions cycle under our current guidelines. We believe we have the right, indeed the obligation, to complete this process using our existing policies. It would be unfair and wrong for us to review students’ applications using two sets of criteria, and we will ask the courts to affirm that we may finish this process using the policies we currently have in place.
This is our first step, but only our first step.
[…]
Of course the University of Michigan will comply with the laws of the state.
At the same time, I guarantee my complete and unyielding commitment to increasing diversity at our institution.
Let me say that again: I am fully and completely committed to building diversity at Michigan, and I will do whatever it takes.
I will need your help. As individuals and as a University, we absolutely must continue to think creatively about how to elevate Michigan’s role as a national model for diversity in higher education.

The words “merit”, “achievement”, and “academic standards” do not make an appearance.

A must read by Beryl Wajsman – “A funny thing happened on the way from the rally”;

Openly flustered and upset she then abruptly terminated the interview and accused me of pre-judging her. She quickly disconnected her tape recorder from the microphone and stuffed them both into her purse while reaching for her umbrella that I had been holding over her. In a hurry to cross the street, she turned from me but I persisted in reminding her of one thing. The fact that she – a journalist – a member of a profession that should prize individualism and independence, could not accept that people can act without regard to any collectivity was part of a disease destroying our society. So much has been surrendered to statocratic collectivist consensus that even freedom of thought, action and assembly are suspect. And, sadly, the age-old spectres of the “Jew” as outsider, of the “Jewish conspiracy”, still rear its ugly head.

It’s the demeaning use of pie charts that has the inner feminist in me screaming “You misogynist bastard!”

Winnipeg Sun;

A looming court battle over Manitoba’s anti-smoking law will hinge on whether the province must treat white bar owners the same as their aboriginal counterparts, an issue that could have implications across the country.
The section of the law that exempted aboriginal reserves from the smoking ban was struck down in August by Justice Albert Clearwater of Court of Queen’s Bench, who ruled it violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The Manitoba government is trying to appeal the decision by arguing, in part, that the charter guarantee was not designed to provide a level playing field for white males.

Damian Penny – “The members of CUPW are acting like, well, fundamentalists.”

Rattling over the 10 miles of gravel road north of the Port of Oungre/Fortuna euphamistically identified as “Hwy 35”, it occurred to me that the Americans are spending a lot of money on fence construction when the more efficient solution might be to hire Lorne Calvert to run the state of Texas.
After all, this is the government that is successfully digging a moat around Saskatchewan, one pothole at a time.
By way of comparison: provincial highway construction in Saskatchewan. (Taken at 4:55 pm on a Wednesday afternoon. Note absence of highway workers)…


And photos of state highway construction in North Dakota, taken the following day…


You can see the problem here.
If they had the foresight to replace the pavement north of the US-Mexico border with the type of road construction we have in Saskatchewan, there’d be no need for a border fence. Illegals would be quickly convinced they were crossing from one third world country into another, and they’d just turn around on their own.

Bumped. Scroll down for updates.
“It’s the season of The Thing That Wouldn’t Die.”

And this year, the Court Challenges Program is playing the part of Jason…
Last month, the Conservative government announced the end of the infamous Court Challenges Program, through which special interest groups, using our tax dollars, launched stunt lawsuits pushing their agendas. Gay “marriage” was the most notorious result. Knowing they could never get their way via the ballot box, activists used the Court Challenges Program to bypass democracy.
Unelected, unaccountable Supreme Court Justices and publicly funded radicals — not the most desirable combination…

It’s a blogburst! Robbing Peter, Robbing Paul DNR Go Gentle into that Good Night Do Not Resuscitate Court Of SHHHH!! Hey Activist – Get A Job. Ding Dong, The Witch Is Dead! Today comes word that the grand-daddy of all self-interest groups, the Canadian Bar Association, is calling for the restoration of the program. Write your MP and tell them to keep this monster dead – or heads will roll!

And more …..
“Too Freekin Obvious”
Taxpayer funded advocacy – more background on the CCP
Unemployed Lawyers?
“It is a tale told by an idiot…”
A tax funded not-for-profit – nice gig!
Dawn of the Dead.

More from Steve Janke, including this;

Ottawa is spending millions to push gay rights and ”stringent” feminist views of equality by funding legal cases, says a political scientist who has studied the court challenges program.
The money is supposed to go towards ”important court cases that advance language and equality rights guaranteed under Canada’s Constitution.”
But Ian Brodie of the University of Western Ontario says the court challenges program has made up its mind which groups will get the cash.
”They’re heavily funding the one side,” he said Thursday. ”It happens to be the gay-rights side, the pro-pornography side, the feminist side and the abortion issue.”
Since 1999 the program has adopted a policy of absolute confidentiality, refusing to provide any information on the cases or groups it funds.
Brodie analysed the program prior to 1992 by obtaining records that were available under access to information laws. His study is being published in the June issue of the Canadian Journal of Political Science.

Janke rightly points out that the Harper government deserves kudos for “reject[ing] the temptation to use that tool for themselves.”

Mark Peters confesses;

Now, unfortunately it appears that our son is a victim of domestic violence at the hand of both his mother and me. This evening we will have to turn ourselves in at the nearest RCMP station and make our children wards of the state lest we commit any more violence against their fragile bodies and minds. After all, the 21st century world government has determined that parenting is illegal.