…in the disturbingly disproportional incarceration rates of males;

37 The next question is the meaning to be attributed to the words “with particular attention to the circumstances of male offenders”. The phrase cannot be an instruction for judges to pay “more” attention when sentencing male offenders. It would be unreasonable to assume that Parliament intended sentencing judges to prefer certain categories of offenders over others. Neither can the phrase be merely an instruction to a sentencing judge to consider the circumstances of male offenders just as she or he would consider the circumstances of any other offender. There would be no point in adding a special reference to male offenders if this was the case. Rather, the logical meaning to be derived from the special reference to the circumstances of male offenders, juxtaposed as it is against a general direction to consider “the circumstances” for all offenders, is that sentencing judges should pay particular attention to the circumstances of male offenders because those circumstances are unique, and different from those of non-male offenders. The fact that the reference to male offenders is contained in s. 718.2(e), in particular, dealing with restraint in the use of imprisonment, suggests that there is something different about male offenders which may specifically make imprisonment a less appropriate or less useful sanction.

Well, not quite. That’s an exerpt from a Supreme Court of Canada ruling that I’ve amended slightly to make a point – by replacing the word “aboriginal” with “male”. For if one is to buy into the argument put forward to defend our two-tier Canadian justice system, surely affirmative action for male offenders is just around the corner.
Text of the original ruling is here. This convoluted bit of reasoning is worth a read, if only to challenge your logic centers.
What seems to been overlooked is that the majority of crimes commited by aboriginal offenders are against other aboriginals. As a result, the majority of aboriginal victims of crime receive “two-tier” justice as well. For example, the battered aboriginal spouse is more likely to see her abuser released back into the community than had the crime occured in a non-aboriginal relationship.
Star Phoenix news brief;

A former chief and two others from a Saskatchewan First Nation have been sentenced to two years of house arrest.
The men were convicted of pocketing about $1 million from the treaty land entitlement trust fund of the Saulteaux First Nation.
They also signed cheques for another $1.8 million�to friends and relatives in excess of their legitimate wages.
The Crown prosecutor had asked that the men serve three to five years in federal prison on their criminal breach of trust conviction.

Former chief Gabe Gopher, land entitlement trustee Archie Moccasin and band councillor Mervin Night have also been directed to repay a minor percentage of the “take” and put in a few hours of community service. (Moccasin defended his actions by pointing out he had only a grade 8 education.)
Isolated case? Hardly.
Then there is the on-going situation at First Nations University, where apart from the turmoil over faculty and administrative firings, a 32 member board comprised mostly of chiefs and other First Nations representatives will suck over $600K from the budget this year. ($300,000 of that for a forensic audit). Then, there’s the $100,000 “management fee” for the Saskatchewan Federation of Indian Nations.
By way comparison, the 12 member board of the U of S in Saskatoon operates at a $87,000 cost.
It is seldom that problems with First Nations crime and poverty are raised without bringing past injustices by the Canadian government to the table. Fair enough, but one would think that this history would lead to a more proactive attitude by both First Nations and the Canadian justice system in preventing and punishing current ones.
These days, the first ones to kick aside the interests of First Nations people on their way to the trough are their own leaders. So long the “wages of crime” amount to a $100K a year salary to sit around the house, that’s not likely to change.

The President of the Czech Republic V�clav Klaus has a blunt, and timely message for Europe, and by extension, for all western governments and those who elect them.

The question is what kind of ideas is favoured by the intellectuals. The question is whether the intellectuals are neutral in their choice of ideas with which they are ready to deal with. Hayek argued that they are not. They do not hold or try to spread all kinds of ideas. They have very clear and, in some respect, very understandable preferences for some of them. They prefer ideas, which give them jobs and income and which enhance their power and prestige.
They, therefore, look for ideas with specific characteristics. They look for ideas, which enhance the role of the state because the state is usually their main employer, sponsor or donator. That is not all. According to Hayek “the power of ideas grows in proportion to their generality, abstractness, and even vagueness”. Hence it is not surprising that the intellectuals are mostly interested in abstract, not directly implementable ideas. This is also the way of thinking, in which they have comparative advantage. They are not good at details. They do not have ambitions to solve a problem. They are not interested in dealing with the everyday’s affairs of common citizens. Hayek put it clearly: “the intellectual, by his whole disposition, is uninterested in technical details or practical difficulties.” He is interested in visions and utopias and because “socialist thought owes its appeal largely to its visionary character” (and I would add lack of realism and utopian nature), the intellectual tends to become a socialist.
In a similar way, Raymond Aron, in his famous essay “The Opium of Intellectuals”, analyzed not only the well-known difference between the revolutionary and reformist way of thinking but also – and this is more relevant in this context – the difference between “prosaic” and “poetry”. Whereas “the prosaic model of thinking lacks the grandeur of utopia” (Roger Kimball), the socialist approach is – in the words of Aron – based “on the poetry of the unknown, of the future, of the absolute”. As I understand it, this is exactly the realm of intellectuals. Some of us want to immediately add that “the poetry of the absolute is an inhuman poetry”.
[…]
Fifteen years after the collapse of communism I am afraid, more than at the beginning of its softer (or weaker) version, of social-democratism, which has become – under different names, e.g. the welfare state or the soziale Marktwirtschaft – the dominant model of the economic and social system of current Western civilization. It is based on big and patronizing government, on extensive regulating of human behavior, and on large-scale income redistribution.

In Canada, the “poets of soziale Trudeapia” are running amok.

Health Canada is calling for a change to the law that prevents peers and nurses in the city’s sanctioned safe injection site from helping people inject.
Health care workers can only supervise and offer medical assistance if a user hurts themselves and gets sick or overdoses.
If nurses help an addict shoot up, they could be charged with possession or trafficking.
“We need them to help,” said Ms. Tobin.
“And we need more places like the safe injection site. It’s so busy now, it’s being used all the time and people are sitting on the street, getting people who don’t know what they’re doing to inject them.”

In today’s modern, increasingly socialist democracies, nanny-state legislation (if it saves one life!) and cradle-to-grave “social safety nets” are the opiate of the middle class, while the politics of race and identity, envy, and “social justice” are the stock and trade of the economic underclass.
The net result is a society of entitlement that absolves the individual of personal responsibility and creates an illusion that consequences are made to be avoided. There is always “failure of society”, a previous generation, or corporate dynasty at whose feet the blame for personal failure lies, always someone else with more “ability to pay” to pick up the tab.
“They owe you” .
Consider a city built, unwisely, below sea level, protected by massive levies and powerful pumps provided by the state, maintained by the state, with all the apparent permanence of the state.
In the unthinkable event that those fail, experts and engineers plot strategies for worst case scenerios. They conduct disaster drills, with fake victims and fake blood. The state provides modern highways and mass transit, and communications systems and weather satellites.
Then, when the day comes that the unthinkable becomes possible, the planning and technology move into high gear. Government officials, with the assistance of private and public media, warn of a tremendous hurricane as it grows in strength. The images are available world wide as satellites track its path, and local TV records the destruction of those it has already battered.
Government officials and elected leaders urge the citizens to evacuate to save their lives. They warn of the scope of the impending storm and the potential of devastation. They mobilize and priorize. Hospital staff stay on duty to care for the sick and infirm. The doors to the largest facility available that may withstand the storm are opened in hopes that those who had no way of escaping, or somehow learned of them too late, can find refuge.
And tens of thousands ignore them and remain in their homes.
Many of them have cars parked in their driveways. Many who don’t are able-bodied and capable of walking. They ignore the warning and simply remain where they are, though they have children and elderly in their care.
With the storm passed, the waters rising faster than the heat, electricity failed and supplies running out, when the truth begins to dawn on the survivors – that the state is not all-powerful, that the mere human beings charged with coming to their aid,are, in fact, mere human beings who cannot come sweeping to their rescue like the cavalry over a Hollywood hill, that there are so many to rescue, because like they, so many have ignored the warnings – do they pool their resources?
Do they find strength in human dignity and sanctity of life? Do the strong come to the aid of the weak? Do they summon patience and resolve in the knowledge that help is on the way, if only they can find the courage to help themselves a little longer?
What is their response to this consequence that has befallen them, a consequence largely of their own making?
“You owe us” .
They take what others have failed to provide, those things required to sustain life – jewelry and television sets. And when taking isn’t enough (it never is), they devolve into predation and anarchy, abandon the weak, turn upon the innocent and each other – and all in a matter of days.
In former times entire nations found the strength to rise to the occasion, ordinary people understood that survival depended on their shared common decency and respect for their fellow citizen. That, by co-operating and persevering, they might create coping mechanisms through pooling skills and resources, and to be sure, the majority of those trapped in New Orleans will have done just that.
But, in former times, whole nations were not living in a time of entitlement, where all and any are provided for by an all-encompassing “social safety net”, funded by those faceless others with more, who have life easier, whom we have been trained to envy.
Those human failings, irresponsible and anti-social behaviors that once brought consequences in the community – shame, ostracization, and deserved personal deprivation – are today excused, assigned new and neutral nomenclature (all the better for medical diagnosis), prescribed “tolerance”, and if possible, assigned the politics of race or class, so that collective guilt may be mined to ensure that self-destructive behavior gains not only acceptance, but state funding.
The predatory violence and anarchy befalling New Orleans is not the result of a freak convergence of forces brought on by unnatural disaster.
It’s a warning.
(See also: American Spectator: Masques of Death)

Greg Staples has a translation from a reader on remarks that needs to get some legs in the western Canadian media. FAST.

…”I don’t think anyone can transform Quebec’s economy without government help,” stated Jean Lapierre. “I think the government will have to be extremely active.” Alberta’s prosperity could even be called upon, suggested the minister.”The federal government has the duty to be a real partner, especially since as a government we benefit from the West’s wealth,”he stressed.”So we have to redistribute the wealth. After all, the good fortune of the West could become a disaster for the East. That is why we need a pact that will allow us to even things out.”

This is the latest of a series of similar news stories and opinions published in the past few days.
If they keep this up, the Separation Party of Alberta will need to make twice daily runs to deposit the membership cheques.

Kay S. Hymowitz * in City Journal;

Read through the megazillion words on class, income mobility, and poverty in the recent New York Times series “Class Matters” and you still won’t grasp two of the most basic truths on the subject: 1. entrenched, multigenerational poverty is largely black; and 2. it is intricately intertwined with the collapse of the nuclear family in the inner city.
By now, these facts shouldn’t be hard to grasp. Almost 70 percent of black children are born to single mothers. Those mothers are far more likely than married mothers to be poor, even after a post-welfare-reform decline in child poverty. They are also more likely to pass that poverty on to their children. Sophisticates often try to dodge the implications of this bleak reality by shrugging that single motherhood is an inescapable fact of modern life, affecting everyone from the bobo Murphy Browns to the ghetto “baby mamas.” Not so; it is a largely low-income and disproportionately black phenomenon. The vast majority of higher-income women wait to have their children until they are married. The truth is that we are now a two-family nation, separate and unequal – one thriving and intact, and the other struggling, broken, and far too often African-American.
So why does the Times, like so many who rail against inequality, fall silent on the relation between poverty and single-parent families? To answer that question�and to continue the confrontation with facts that Americans still prefer not to mention in polite company�you have to go back exactly 40 years. That was when a resounding cry of outrage echoed throughout Washington and the civil rights movement in reaction to Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s Department of Labor report warning that the ghetto family was in disarray. Entitled “The Negro Family: The Case for National Action,” the prophetic report prompted civil rights leaders, academics, politicians, and pundits to make a momentous�and, as time has shown, tragically wrong�decision about how to frame the national discussion about poverty.
To go back to the political and social moment before the battle broke out over the Moynihan report is to return to a time before the country’s discussion of black poverty had hardened into fixed orthodoxies�before phrases like “blaming the victim,” “self-esteem,” “out-of- wedlock childbearing” (the term at the time was “illegitimacy”), and even “teen pregnancy” had become current. While solving the black poverty problem seemed an immense political challenge, as a conceptual matter it didn’t seem like rocket science. Most analysts assumed that once the nation removed discriminatory legal barriers and expanded employment opportunities, blacks would advance, just as poor immigrants had.
Conditions for testing that proposition looked good. Between the 1954 Brown decision and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, legal racism had been dismantled. And the economy was humming along; in the first five years of the sixties, the economy generated 7 million jobs.
Yet those most familiar with what was called “the Negro problem” were getting nervous. About half of all blacks had moved into the middle class by the mid-sixties, but now progress seemed to be stalling. The rise in black income relative to that of whites, steady throughout the fifties, was sputtering to a halt. More blacks were out of work in 1964 than in 1954. Most alarming, after rioting in Harlem and Paterson, New Jersey, in 1964, the problems of the northern ghettos suddenly seemed more intractable than those of the George Wallace South.

The essay provides an excellent overview of 40 years of the liberal, revisionist, feminist approach – and failure – towards solving the problem of poverty in the inner cities of America.

Other black pride inspired scholars looked at female-headed families and declared them authentically African and therefore a good thing. In a related vein, Carol Stack published “All Our Kin”, a 1974 HEW-funded study of families in a midwestern ghetto with many multigenerational female households. In an implicit criticism of American individualism, Stack depicted “The Flats,” as she dubbed her setting, as a vibrant and cooperative urban village, where mutual aid-including from sons, brothers, and uncles, who provided financial support and strong role models for children created “a tenacious, active, lifelong network.”
In fact, some scholars continued, maybe the nuclear family was really just a toxic white hang- up, anyway. No one asked what nuclear families did, or how they prepared children for a modern economy. The important point was simply that they were not black. “One must question the validity of the white middle-class lifestyle from its very foundation because it has already proven itself to be decadent and unworthy of emulation,” wrote Joyce Ladner (who later became the first female president of Howard University) in her 1972 book Tomorrow’s Tomorrow. Robert Hill of the Urban League, who published The Strengths of Black Families that same year, claimed to have uncovered science that proved Ladner’s point: “Research studies have revealed that many one-parent families are more intact or cohesive than many two-parent families: data on child abuse, battered wives and runaway children indicate higher rates among two-parent families in suburban areas than one-parent families in inner city communities.” That science, needless to say, was as reliable as a deadbeat dad.

That there are striking parallels in this essay with issues related to First Nations poverty in Canada goes without saying – high rates of illegitimacy, absentee fathers, the pervasive messaging that the so-called “extended” family can compensate for, or is even a superior structure to, the nuclear two-parent household.
Set aside time for it.
Via Jeff Goldstein who has additional comments on “identity politics”;

[R]ace-based affirmative action perpetuates the very problem it purports to be addressing by making color-and not all color, either (in California, for instance, Asians are excluded from “minority” status) politically operable, and so, predictably, socially foregrounded.
[…]
The failure to forthrightly address the social problems in this country out of fear that we might wound a particular identity group’s self-esteem is yet another argument for dismantling the kind of identity politics that create “group feelings” in the first place.� Which is not to say that group data, in a purely descriptive sense, shouldn’t be gathered and deployed; but rather to remind people that belonging to a particular descriptive category is a passive empirical data point and does not necessarily commit you to any kind of emotional or intellectual bond with said group.
Unfortunately, one who advocates for the dismantling of identity politics on the grounds that it acts as a foundation for an abundance of destructive social policy, is often met with charges of “racism” or “sexism” or “homophobia,” etc, from those who are able to use such faulty, anti-individualistic (and in that way, decidedly anti-American) essentialist impulses to gather and wield political power-something we see today when politicians pander to particular identity groups in order to shore up overwhelmingly large percentages of, say, “the Black vote” or the “women’s vote.”
The cycle is self-fulfilling, and it begins and extends from our fear of offending – as history continues to show us, even as we continue to ignore that history and reframe its lessons in newly evasive narrative maneuverings that do nothing but defer solutions and increase power to those in whose interests it is to keep the problems alive.

Federal Judge OKs Global Warming Lawsuit

A federal judge here said environmental groups and four U.S. cities can sue federal development agencies on allegations the overseas projects they financially back contribute to global warming.
The decision Tuesday by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White is the first to say that groups alleging global warming have a right to sue.
“This is the first decision in the country to say that climate change causes sufficient injury to give a plaintiff standing, to open the courthouse door,” said Ronald Shems, a Vermont attorney representing Friends of the Earth.
That group, in addition to Greenpeace and the cities of Boulder, Colo., Santa Monica, Oakland and Arcata, Calif., sued Overseas Private Investment Corp. and the Export-Import Bank of the United States. Those government agencies provide loans and insure billions of dollars of U.S. investors’ money for development projects overseas. Many of the projects are power plants that emit greenhouses gases that the groups allege cause global warming.

Given the projected $7 billion surplus for Alberta this year, can Jack Layton and David Suzuki be far behind?

This one could get interesting… ;

Sikh truck drivers will file a human rights complaint Thursday against a rule that requires them to wear hardhats instead of turbans.
They are fighting a requirement that prevents them from driving into CP Rail’s two Toronto terminals without protective headwear. CP Rail said it is enforcing the hardhat rule because of safety concerns.
Major Singh, one of 500 drivers challenging the rule, has worked at the rail terminals for seven years. “There have been no incidents of drivers being injured,” he said.
CP Rail suggested the men could remove one of the two parts of their six-metre long turbans. That would allow them to wear a hardhat.

I can’t enter the local Agrium potash mine property without a hat, boots and safety glasses, even if I plan to remain in my truck, and that’s as a private contractor. Have they been giving a pass to Sikh drivers at CP, or have the drivers recently decided to refuse a hardhat rule they’ve been observing for years? Anyone know?

Lost Budgie expands on a Toronto Star item titled “Mixed-Race Son Can’t Fish With Dad – Licences for Band Members Only”;

Unmentioned in the article is the reason why the band’s “mixed-race” children do not have Official Native Status.
For the Ontario Government, this is a no-win situation that won’t get any better. Canada’s Indian Act racial purity laws are colliding head-on with changing demographics as the number of Official Status Native Canadians dwindles due to mixed marriages and falling birth rates.
Meanwhile, the Canadian Bar Association recently put forward a politely watered-down motion supporting race-based appointments of Native Canadians to various benches, including to the Supreme Court of Canada. The motion didn’t define how racially pure Native Canadians should be to meet the criteria for any of these juicy appointments.
Perhaps the Canadian Bar Association can issue some clarification. Will 50% native bloodline do? How about 75%? How racially pure is pure enough?

Indeed. I can’t find an independant online source, but a few years ago I recall an interview (maybe on CBC?) that mentioned that virtually all North American Indians descend from European males when one traces up the father’s side of the “family tree”. If true, not entirely surprising, given our history.
That said, these “am so, are not” methods of Indian Act identification are so 1990’s. There’s no longer any need to drag out the geneological charts and family albums to prove “racial purity”. We have the technology!
Now, I await the inevitable head explosions from those staunch defenders of Canada’s Racial Segregation Industry as they condemn the existance of a test that would quite neatly sort the “real” Indians from the watered down pretenders.

Star Phoenix;

A Regina man who won a human rights decision against the city and a union local says he’s still waiting to receive a settlement.
Gary Kivela was a casual truck driver for the city.
He filed a discrimination complaint claiming he was denied a permanent job because he has cerebral palsy.

Egads

Listening to Charles Adler rant a little today about the brazen politics involved in the selection of “black Haitian immigrant who came to Canada fleeing oppression” Michelle Who?” as new Governor General – I was struck with a realization.
All of her commendable talents aside, this marks the first time in Canadian history that the most symbolic patronage appointment in government has not been bestowed on a person who has, as in the words of the late US President John Kennedy, demonstrated “what you can do for your country.”
Instead, it has gone to an individual who brilliantly showcases the new Liberal Party version of citizenship; “What your country can do for you!”
At one of her first news conferences a reporter asked Michelle Jean if she thought she was a “token”. Well, that she isn’t.
She’s a poster child.

A post for the lurking (and not so lurking) lefties who are drawn here like moths to a bright light, offered in the genuine spirit of human compassion, for you know not what you have become.
Nick Cohen, on the ” inversion of principles” of his former comrades;

I’m sure that any halfway competent political philosopher could rip the assumptions of modern middle-class left-wingery apart. Why is it right to support a free market in sexual relationships but oppose free-market economics, for instance? But his criticisms would have little impact. It’s like a religion: the contradictions are obvious to outsiders but don’t disturb the faithful. You believe when you’re in its warm embrace. Alas, I’m out. Last week, after 44 years of regular church-going, the bell tolled, the book was closed and the candle was extinguished. I was excommunicated.
[…]
Auden noticed a retreat from universal principles in the 1930s – communism was fine in ‘semi-barbaric’ Russia but would have been a screaming outrage in a civilised country. He should have been alive today. With no socialism to provide international solidarity, good motives of tolerance and respect for other cultures have had the unintended consequence of leading a large part of post-modern liberal opinion into the position of 19th-century imperialists. It is presumptuous and oppressive to suggest that other cultures want the liberties we take for granted, their argument runs. So it may be, but believe that and the upshot is that democracy, feminism and human rights become good for whites but not for browns and brown-skinned people who contradict you are the tools of the neo-conservatives.
On the other hand when confronted with a movement of contemporary imperialism – Islamism wants an empire from the Philippines to Gibraltar – and which is tyrannical, homophobic, misogynist, racist and homicidal to boot, they feel it is valid because it is against Western culture. It expresses its feelings in a regrettably brutal manner perhaps, but that can’t hide its authenticity.

Read the rest.
Via the “inexplicably popular” Wretchard who adds;

The hollowing out of the Left — the death of its Bolshevik core — is one of the great unwritten stories of the late twentieth century. The decline of the cadre of professional revolutionaries at its center was simultaneously matched by the inrush from the periphery of the network of sympathizers, fellow travelers and “useful fools” which it once adopted as protective coloration. It was a classic case of the inmates taking over an asylum from which the keepers had fled. … the freak show of autonomists, zapatistas, rage-against-the-machine cultists, transgender spokespersons, abortion rights activists, militant gay and lesbians and tattered academics that characterize today’s Left. … To experience any real militancy, today’s Left wing activists must attach themselves as pathetic dogs to Islamic causes like the International Solidarity Movement. There, they can indulge their fantasy of advancing world socialism while objectively dying for Osama Bin Laden or Yasser Arafat. The circle is complete. The roles have been reversed.
The heirs to moribund Bolshevism have now become the “useful fools”, the protective coloration of a dynamic militant Islamism.

Jeff Goldstein misses the mark on the NCAA’s pronouncement that they will ban “the use of American Indian mascots by sports teams during its postseason tournaments”*.

The time to fight these irrational feints to “tolerance”–which have progressed to the point where we are now routinely airbrushing from our own history anything even remotely controversial, all for the benefit of minority self-identifiers vying for poltical control over a given identity group (a lucrative and quite powerful position to hold, as I’m sure Jesse Jackson can attest)–is now.
The slippery slope of politically correct linguistic accomodation has put us in the pathetic–and intellectually ridiculous–position of being afraid even now to identify our enemy in the “War on Terror”–which (as everyone knows but few will say publicly), is Islamic radicalism–particularly, the Wahhabist strain of Islam.
Words matter. And ceding control over language to special interest groups is a recipe for social disaster–particularly in a society supposedly designed around the rights of the individual. Edward Said and his academic ilk perfected this linguistic hijacking procedure, wherein political groups–under the guise of ethnic authenticity–laid claim to important terms of debate, then wielded control of those terms as a way to delegitimize critics. And the very same thing is happening here–a testament to how deeply rooted Said’s principles have become in the academy and on the policy level, and a running indictment on intellectual bankruptcy of our modern intelligensia.
Time to push back.

As a Canadian, I know the pain it causes me to see the word “Canuck” mocking me from the jersies of Swedish-born hockey players.
My good friend Goldstein suffers from the insensitivity of one who has yet to walk a mile in our Sorels – it’s not as though he is forced to endure indignities like “the New York Rangers pumelled the Charleston Chasidics in a game that was decidedly one sided”, 8 foot plush foam Stars of David cavorting with cheerleaders on the basketball courts, or insensitive gentiles in the stands waving the “mighty Menorah” at opposing teams.
Consulting my sports library, I reread my copy of the leaflet, “A Century of Jewish Sports Legends” – yet could find no rabbinical equivalent of the “San Diego Padres”. Could it be that Jews themselves recognize that the misappropriation of ones culture and faith by creators of sports logos is demeaning?
Say it isn’t so, my intolerant friend. Say it isn’t so.

Richard Aboulafia is the head of the Teal Group;

This delightful image of a bygone world was stunningly re-created in May when Bombardier received promises of $700 million in launch aid for its CSeries of 110/135-seat jetliners. Ottawa kicked in $320 million, Quebec $280 million, while the UK, hoping to replicate the DeLorean car experience in Northern Ireland, committed $100 million. I was disappointed to read this on the wires; I was hoping to see this nostalgic moment in a theater on a grainy black and white newsreel, with smiling, trench-coated ministers standing in front of DC-2s and De Havilland Dragon Rapides.
[…]
The 110/135-seat CSeries market is better than the 100-seat BRJ-X market, in the same way that death by hanging is way better than death by disembowelment. A revolutionary 110/135-seat design might just be competitive here. But the CSeries is stunningly non-revolutionary. So, this project would never happen without John Q. Mountie.
Even with this help, it still probably won’t happen. Government aid can help a marginal business case go ahead, as with the A380 or Japan’s aerostructure work. But no amount of sweetening — and the Canadian/UK offering is so sweet it’s saccharine — can make the CSeries go. The two major engine players in this class (CFM and IAE) responded to this sweet, yummy maple-flavored aid by just walking away.
If the CSeries was just a bad idea, it wouldn’t be a big deal. Bad ideas happen in this industry. If they didn’t, critics like me would be out of a job. What elevates the CSeries from “bad” to “carnivorously destructive” is what it means for the rest of Canada’s aerospace industry. It will suck up hundreds of millions of dollars, money that will be siphoned off from everything else.
Worse, the Canadian Government wants a vertically Canadian plane. David Emerson, Canada’s Minister of Industry, said “Canadian firms play key roles in many existing global aerospace projects, and the Government of Canada will work with companies across the aerospace industry to promote their capabilities to participate with Bombardier in the CSeries.” This means risk would be kept in country. If the CSeries fails, most of Canada’s aerospace suppliers will be dragged down with it.

Just another day in Paul Martin’s Bananada – where no price is too high when it comes to short term electoral gain in Quebec.

Via local radio: the Supreme Court of Canada has suspended their decision to strike down the Quebec private health-care ban case for 12 months.
Put your hand up if this surprises you.
update – and that isn’t all. They’re going to revisit the decision;

How can we solve African poverty? Certainly not by throwing them a rock concert.

Over at Tart Cider, Chris Selley (tipping hat to none other than that well-regarded intellectual paperweight, Antonia Zerbisias) fairly reeks of dismissiveness towards this post focusing on the inability of the CBC to comprehend that a state-funded media ought not declare itself neutral towards an enemy bent on its destruction.
Though I knew it was a waste of electrons, I left a comment and moved on.
Then, as it so happened, I surfed over to Norm Geras’ site to read this by Alan Johnston;

I’ve had enough. I awoke today at 7am. By 7.23am I’d heard two apologias for suicide bombing. I wake to the BBC’s Today programme, you see. A nice woman presenter politely thanked both apologists very much for their time.
I turned off and turned on my PC. At the BBC website I find the Tory Party Vice- Chair Sayeeda Warsi saying, ‘Mr Blair should negotiate with the terrorists. We need to bring these groups into the fold of the democratic process. As long as we exclude them and don’t hear them out, we will allow them to continue their hate.’
I reflect that I last heard this from Tony Benn � the hero of my youth whom I now think a dangerous political idiot – speaking on BBC’s Newsnight on the evening of 7/7 (and before that from Mo Mowlam about Bin Laden). I then notice the BBC has a story about ‘Muslim reactions to 7/7’. First voice up, top of the screen, is Dr Imran Waheed, the media representative of Hizb ut-Tahrir (Britain), who says, ‘What is required is for the whole society to accept responsibility for 7/7’. Hizb ut-Tahrir is a racist anti-Semitic organisation that supports suicide bombings.

So to Chris Selley, whose defense of the CBC’s aversion to the use of the word “terrorist” seems to boil down to “everyone else is doing it”, all I can offer is tosecond Mr. Johnston’s advice – that you might try reading a little less Amazing Wonderdog and a little more Tony Blair.
Or Norm Geras, for that matter.

Mark Johnson, Imprint staff. (U of Waterloo)

Like many Canadians, I reacted with a mixture of shock, sorrow and anger to the news of the horrifying terrorist attacks in downtown London, now dubbed “7/7.” The disaster, which took the lives of 52 people and counting, has even been referred to as England’s own September 11th.
I see things entirely differently. The deluded band of egocentric, paranoid terrorists that I think have made up the present and past governments of the United States of America has been launching petty, cowardly attacks on legitimate sovereign nations for decades, and 9/11 was something they had coming to them.
The World Trade Centre and the Pentagon I think were government-connected targets, and those attacks were not aimed at the general population.
In London, on the other hand, it was the mass transit system that was blown up, harming no one but civilians. The bombings were evidently retaliation for the British involvement in the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
After the Madrid bombings, which were timed to coincide with a national election, Spanish voters threw out an arrogant liar of a president � who sent their troops to die in Iraq � and elected a socialist who soon withdrew the troops to safety. In doing so, Spain wisely diminished its chances of provoking another attack.
We in Canada think of ourselves as relatively safe from terrorists, but were it not for the intelligent, thoughtful decision of an awesome former Prime Minister, Jean Chr�tien, to keep our troops out of the Iraq quagmire, it’s more than likely that we’d now be in line for some sort of terrorist attack.
Thank heavens we had (and continue to have) the Liberal Party of Canada in office!
[…]
R.I.P. to the victims of the London massacre and likewise to the victims of the U.S./U.K. massacres in Iraq and elsewhere. What goes around comes around, I suppose.

[emphasis mine]
Mark’s Angelfire homepage is probably subject to bandwidth limits, so I’ve quoted it in the extended entry.

“I serve as a director for the Liberal Party of Canada in my riding of Kitchener-Conestoga, and am obviously also a member of that prestigious political party. “

*Information was current as of Feb. 2005 – still trying to get confirmation on his current status with the riding ass’n.

Continue reading →

“Activities which degrade men or women through sexual stereotyping, or exploit the bodies of men, women, boys or girls solely for the purpose of attracting attention, are not permitted on Nathan Phillips Square.”

There, says Ms. Reid. Miss Universa non grata. She can come. But no sash, no tiara.

The big parade ends Gay Pride week which began on June 18th when the Rainbow Flag was raised in Nathan Philips Square in front of City Hall.

More photos of the welcomed parade participants. Not work safe.
(Not lunch safe, for that matter.)

I opined some time ago, that those who were coming down on the pro side of same sex marriage hadn’t considered all the consequences – one being the newly elevated status of gay couples when petitioning courts for custody of children from one partner’s previous marriage. (Contrary to popular belief, homosexuals have always had the right to marry. My long list of divorced gay friends puts to the lie to that one.) I asked the hypothetical question: “How would a judge view a situation in which a former husband, who, after leaving his wife for a new lover turned spouse, petitions for primary custody of his young children, on the basis of higher income and more stable home life, complete with the ability of his new partner to be a “stay at home” parent? What of her concerns about her sons being raised by a gay man she barely knows – can she even give voice to those?”
Now, “Angry” has a not so hypothetical case regarding adoption.

Would he [an Ontario family law judge], once gay marriage was entrenched, and in keeping with our government’s current equity legislation in the workplace, feel obliged to fast-track gays’ access to available children to make up for “past injustices” and their “disability” on the procreative front? And what about a single mother willing to give up her child for adoption, provided the baby went to a heterosexual couple? Whose rights would be privileged, hers or those of gay adoptive applicants?
The judge paused, then said, “I haven’t ever really thought about it.” Eventually the judge opined that a gay married couple’s rights should trump a biological mother’s right to have her child raised in a normative family. And on further reflection, he decided, he would also be partial to equity adoption policies for gays.

Discuss. (Be sure to read his post and the comments, first)
And be civil, or you’ll be tossed.

Success doesn’t pay.

“Just imagine working hard to build up a life and a future for your family, then someone comes and takes it all away and nothing can be done about it. The perpetrators have impunity. No, not Africa, its down home Manitoba where its good to be the chief.”

Some stories just tell themselves…..

B.C.’s Human Rights Tribunal has ruled that the International Village Mall in Vancouver discriminated against aboriginal people.
Complainant Gladys Radek was awarded $15,000 in the tribunal’s decision Wednesday. Radek claimed she and other native people had been discriminated against by security guards at the mall, who continually barred them from entering the mall.
Human Rights Tribunal member Lindsay Lyster agreed. In her decision, she says the mall’s owner, Henderson Development, and Securigard, the mall’s former security company, “established a pattern of systemic discrimination.”
[…]
It was mall policy to deny access to people who had dirty clothing, open sores and wounds, red eyes, and who were acting intoxicated. Lyster ruled that the policy created practices that had an unfair and discriminatory effect on aboriginal people.

H/T Vancouver Housing Market Blog
update
Maxed Out Mama has read the ruling in full and has provided some damning quotes from the judge that may actually reinforce the CBC’s quote above – which I originally thought was just very poorly thought out wording. (Bonus – Ward Churchill makes an “anonymous” appearance in the comments!)