Last week, the legislature's select standing committee on children and youth met in Vancouver to hear six presentations on the province's child poverty crisis. But don't expect its member to do anything more about the problem.
It appears that our federal politicians are coming to their senses. After weeks of public outrage over the Board of Internal Economy’s refusal to allow Auditor-General Sheila Fraser to conduct a parliamentary performance audit, the Conservatives announced that they will be making a proposal that would allow Ms. Fraser to open the books. The Tories will be presenting their plan to the Board this week, in an attempt to break the logjam while saving as much face as possible under the circumstances.Read the rest here. Meanwhile, Alison Crawford offers some analysis of the MP expenses which have been voluntarily disclosed by individual representatives, over at Inside Politics.
But MPs have little dignity left to salvage. Over the past few weeks, the Conservatives, Liberals and New Democrats have treated increasingly irate voters to a litany of excuses, flip-flops, and outrageous attempts at justifying the Board’s position. Only the Bloc Quebecois supported Ms. Fraser’s request, ironically turning the separatist party into the champion of the Canadian taxpayer.
"There's no reason no to do it. It's really just common sense." That's what the provincial Liberal House Leader Mike de Jong told The Globe and Mail's Justine Hunter when asked about making MLA constituency office and travel expenses public. But if British Columbia's elected officials really wanted to be open and accountable, they'd also make the legislature subject to freedom of information requests. Right now, the people have no means of forcibly finding out what's going on in the people's house - which this years has a budget of more than $68 million. It's been that way since the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act was introduced in 1992.
Along with what is commonly called assault, the thug also kept telling BCF that he did not “have permission” to take pictures. It seems to drive lefties and Islamists and other kooks crazy that, in a public place, anyone can shoot video of anything. Which is, of course, an excellent reason to take a cheap video camera to such demos.
The Liberals just can't catch a break on the Harmonized Sales Tax.Sympathy? Anyone?
Not only did Elections B.C. shoot down their proposed mail-out campaign, but now the Fight HST folks have found a way to turn the government's own tools against it.
Two Fight HST sign-up sessions for the front lawn of the B.C. legislature this weekend were advertised in, of all places, the Legislative Assembly of B.C. website. Both were listed under the calendar of events for use of the public grounds.
If you're a Liberal, that's got to sting. Not only can't you advertise against the HST fighters -- because you forgot to register as an official opponent -- but your own government websites are being used to promote your enemies.
CALGARY - Canada is on its way to becoming more competitive than the United States, but only if Ottawa continues to reduce corporate taxes, according to a new report by the School of Public Policy at the University of Calgary.Read the rest here.
As federal and provincial corporate tax reductions happen, in particular when British Columbia and Ontario harmonize their sales taxes with the federal GST, Canada will become even more of a haven for investors, author Jack Mintz said Wednesday.
A further three-point reduction in federal corporate income tax rates could attract $49 billion in new capital investment and create almost a quarter of a million jobs, Mintz said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper told representatives from Canada's cities and towns on Friday that the federal government's two-year infrastructure stimulus program will end on schedule next spring.Read the rest here.
In his address to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in Toronto on Friday, Harper said the thousands of infrastructure projects were an important part of Canada's economic recovery, but warned mayors and other municipal representatives that they can't expect to live on stimulus funds forever.
"People can't live on adrenalin, and economies can't live on stimulus," Harper said.
The $43 billion infrastructure program must end March 31, 2011, to let the government begin reducing the deficit and lead the recovery from last year's global financial crisis, the prime minister said.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper shot back Thursday at a report that cast doubt on Ottawa's stimulus spending, defending his government's "unprecedented" efforts to pull Canada out of a recession.Read the rest here.
Government officials have repeatedly insisted the $47.2-billion spending splurge was necessary and directly responsible for Canada's economy emerging from recession in late 2009.
But on Tuesday, the Fraser Institute, which champions free-market economic solutions, concluded government spending and infrastructure investment accounted for just 0.2 percentage points of the 1.1 per cent growth between the second and third quarters of 2009.
The report further asserts that stimulus spending played no role at all in the one per cent improvement between the third and fourth quarter, saying an increase in net exports was the main reason for that growth.
"First of all, that’s completely wrong and quite frankly contradicted by very serious work that’s been done [elsewhere]" Harper told reporters. "Economic theory and history is clear, governments must … make sure [funds] are put to productive use in the economy to create jobs.
"That is what we have been doing, that has been successful [and] every reputable international study says so, by the way, not just for us."
Long-term, he said the private sector has to take the reins for job creation, but he rejected outright any suggestion that government actions weren't directly responsible for pulling the country out of recession.
"If we had not done this … the recession would have been a lot worse," he said, citing studies from world bodies such as the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-Operation and Development to back up the claim.
Read the rest here. More from Jay Currie and Blazing Cat Fur.All current S.13 cases halted!
In a ruling dated May 26, 2010, Tribunal Member Edward Lustig adjourned a Section 13 complaint file by the Canadian Jewish Congress against Henry Makow until a final decision in the Lemire case.
The Tribunal’s ruling stated:
[8] I have reviewed the submissions of the parties and have concluded that it would be appropriate and would properly serve the interests of justice if this matter was adjourned. While the Supreme Court of Canada has ruled in Canada (Human Rights Commission) v. Taylor, 1990 3 S.C.R. 892 that s. 13 (1) of the CHRA is constitutional, the application now before the Federal Court seeks to bring clarity to this issue in view of the distinct factual and legal context giving rise to this Tribunal's decision in Warman v. Lemire. Clearly Member Hadjis' decision goes beyond the consideration alone of the penalty provisions in s. 54 of the CHRA, as he chose not to "read out" the penalty provisions and preserve s. 13 of the CHRA. It is now up to the Federal Court to determine the operability of s. 13 of the CHRA. This will achieve the clarity that the Commission has indicated and that I agree is desirable in order to allow the Tribunal to be able to determine this and other cases brought under s. 13 of the CHRA.
[9] For these reasons I hereby adjourn these proceedings sine die pending the final outcome in the Warman v. Lemire case.
"Signed by"
Edward P. Lustig
OTTAWA, Ontario
May 26, 2010
[...]I was just forwarded an almost identical decision by Mr. Lustig in the Arthur Topham case, but I don't think Arthur has it up on his site yet!
For a little while now, I've disagreed with Kathy Shaidle's approach to Section 13(1) - namely, just breaking the pathetic little clause to the point of unenforceability. I've disagreed because I want to see this thing off the books entirely - it might be unenforceable soon, indeed, seems to be rapidly approaching that point, but that doesn't mean that things won't change in the future. Damage has already been done by Section 13(1). I want to ensure that such damage is never allowed to occur in the future - and folks like me and Kathy and dozens of others won't always be there to keep the pressure on.
But Kathy makes a very good point, in that Section 13(1) is unlikely to ever be repealed by a politician. Ever. That's why my faith has been placed in the courts lately - and this little step backward for the CHRT machine means that this faith is not entirely misplaced.With its poll numbers plummeting, the Campbell administration has moved to keep a closer eye on the records being released by Crown corporations in response to freedom of information requests. And that's "not a good sign" for British Columbians concerned about openness and transparency in government, according to one of the province's leading freedom of information advocates. Those requests - which are used by reporters and opposition politicians to find out what officials aren't telling British Columbians - can often lead to damaging stories about the government. But the province has now ordered the Crowns - which include agencies such as the British Columbia Lottery Corp. and Insurance Corporation of British Columbia - to notify them about those records before they're made public. And that order has Vincent Gogolek, the BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association's policy and communications director, worried.Read the rest here. But wait - there's more:
The BC Freedom of Information and Privacy Association has asked for investigation into an order requiring Crown corporations to notify the provincial government of records they're planning to release in response to freedom of information requests. Public Eye exclusively told you about the order - which has been added the letters of expectations outlining the relationship between the government and the Crowns - earlier today. In response to our coverage, the association's executive director Darrell Evans has asked acting freedom of information and privacy commissioner Paul Fraser's office to probe that new requirement.
Sigh...The newspaper has undertaken to refrain from publishing any images of the Prophet Muhammad while reviewing their editorial policy in terms of religious matters, after a meeting with Muslim leaders from a cross-section of organisations, and interest groups.
The meeting at Channel Islam in Johannesburg on Wednesday followed a failed court attempt by the Muslim Council of Theologians to stop the newspaper from publishing a Zapiro cartoon on May 21.
The former Quebec director of B'nai Brith has pleaded guilty to child pornography charges.I realize this is coming across as sour grapes on my part, but considering how B'nai Brith has happily supported hate speech laws in the past, essentially going after people for much lesser crimes than the ones above, I can't help but feel a nice sense of schadenfreude at hearing about this story.
Bill Surkis pleaded guilty to one count of accessing and one count of possessing child pornography when he appeared in a Montreal courtroom today.
The former director of the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Centre turned himself in to police a year ago after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
With the introduction of long-overdue legislation, Canada's online reputation as a "haven for spammers" will soon be deleted, Industry Minister Tony Clement said yesterday.Read the rest here.
Well behind such countries as the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia, Canada currently has no specific anti-spam laws. If passed, the Fighting Internet and Wireless Spam Act will set out tough new measures for people who send commercial e-mails or "cellphone spam" through text without consent, a problem which costs Canadians up to $3 billion a year, Clement said.
"Canada is seen as a haven for spammers because of the gaps in our current legislation. It's just basically not modern enough to deal with these issues," said Clement, who told reporters yesterday that his wife, Lynne, had been the victim of identity theft after filling out an online questionnaire from what she thought was a bank.
"We're a place where spammers can reside and inflict their damage on the world."
The Conservative legislation affects both legitimate businesses sending "unsolicited commercial electronic messages," and illicit individuals or companies involved in a host of online misdeeds, including spyware, malware (malicious software), spoofing, e-mail phishing and identity theft.
Read the rest here.I’ve got a neglected heap of notes for weblogging topics, but Craig Venter’s latest biotechnology stunt metaphorically swept them clear from my desk. It is not easy to comprehend by means of plain English what Venter and his research institute have achieved. The title of their paper for Science offers the best possible short summary: “Creation of a bacterial cell controlled by a chemically synthesized genome.” Reactions range from the alarmist—dear God, he’s created synthetic life!—to the dismissive—bah, it’s not synthetic life at all! (The Raelians, for their part, take the view “He’s created synthetic life, and we think it’s awesome!”)
Here’s the strictly technological significance of what Venter has done: he used computers to create a synthetic genome that never previously existed in nature, turned that information into physically existing DNA, replaced the DNA of an existing organism with the new DNA, and successfully showed that his artificial software “worked”—that it could self-reproduce and serve as the design for functioning progeny. It is the production of an all-new life form from human programming. I do not think Scots SF author Ken MacLeod goes too far when he writes “This is a moment in evolution, the origin of a new kingdom: the Synthetica, as artist Daisy Ginsberg has suggested we call it, supplementing nature’s bacteria, eukarya, and archaea.”
[...]
Brooks is saying that there are no new theoretical implications from the Venter team’s accomplishment, as there actually were from the Venterian work that preceded the demonstration of synthetic life—namely, paring the smallest genome known to exist in nature down to an even smaller instruction set, and getting humans closer (closer than God or natural selection ever managed) to the theoretical minimum of information needed for a DNA sequence to be meaningful. Playing God? Hell, that’s for amateurs!
That DNA can practically be edited will come as a shock only to those whose anti-materialist or vitalist views depend on clinging to some particular state of human technological ignorance. There are no longer very many biologists in that category. If life can be designed and mass-produced synthetically like machines, there won’t be much ground left on which to argue that living things aren’t machines.
Biologists presented with the Venter news are instinctively contemplating the revival of familiar old forms previously discarded by natural selection, and the synthetic genome adds spice to the ethical debates over whether we would be justified in making a Neanderthal or a woolly mammoth. This is not really a big theoretical deal either. The more important, wider prospect on offer is the ability to recover biodiversity by artificial means, and the eventual end of the rule than “extinction” is the definitive end for a species. The thought of one day being able to see a dodo strut and squawk and lay eggs is romantic (in a way that warms even the stony heart of Darwinian tough-guy Richard Dawkins) and missions of that sort are now one big step closer to fruition.
The next time you post an opinion in an online forum or a Facebook group message board, don't be surprised if you get a rebuttal from a federal employee.This might be rather rude to say, but: F*ck you Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade. Is your regard for Canadian citizens so low that you are diverting precious resources to lecturing them on what they can and cannot say about your activities?
The government is looking for ways to monitor online chatter about political issues and correct what it perceives as misinformation.
The move started recently with a pilot project on the East Coast seal hunt. A Toronto-based company called Social Media Group has been hired to help counter some information put forward by the anti-sealing movement.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade has paid the firm $75,000 "to monitor social activity and help identify ... areas where misinformation is being presented and repeated as fact," Simone MacAndrew, a department spokesperson, said in an email.
The firm alerts the government to questionable online comments and then employees in Foreign Affairs or the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, who have recently been trained in online posting, point the authors to information the government considers more accurate.
Indeed.But forget the Orwellian overtones. There are approximately 4 gazillion blogs in this country, not to mention another gazillion or so on Facebook, and 4 or 5 people who read the Toronto Star. If each one gets 10 comments a day, that’s 40 gazillion comments to monitor. And as the operator of a blog, I can assure you that not all the comments come from sane, level-headed people with a pertinent point to make.
Just how many people does the government plan to hire to do the monitoring? All of Saskatchewan? What will be their qualifications for deciding whether the comment I surreptitiously leave on some Liberal blog, under an assumed name, is “correct” or not? Do I have to be correct according to Conservative Party ideology, or Liberal party ideology? What if I feel the stimulus plan was a crock — does some unnamed junior civil servant from a bunker in Ottawa pop up unannounced on my laptop and lecture me about the benefits of Canada’s Economic Action Plan?
Memo to Ottawa: I don’t need to be corrected. First overpaid civil servant with a fat pension who sends me a “corrective e-mail”, and I vote for Elizabeth May.
And let us not forget the most recent announcement concerning the South Fraser Perimeter Road preferred proponent ( bidder) – each of the losing bidders there also receive a lovely cheque in the amount of $1.5 million each, just for losing… http://www.partnershipsbc.ca/pdf/SFPR_RFQ_072908.pdf Page 16/62, Section 2.3 :Now, one must remember that submitting any bid to the province and the MOT is a risk venture at best, because the MOT makes all the rules, and often changes or breaks them as the bidding process goes along. The right and ability to do this, often with no notification to the bidders, is clearly written into the wording of the most recent large projects, and to be honest, reading some of these Request for Proposals makes it seem like the bidding process is as safe as jumping into a pit of cobra’s who’ve been tortured for a while already. But still, big business is never without risk, and in many other private sector industries there is no such thing as a consolation cheque for not getting the job.
So why is the Ministry of Transportation still handing out such lucrative stipends to these losing bidders? That is a question for Shirley Bond, I would say.
Take for example the losing bidders for the Sea to Sky highway, who each walked away with a cool $1.5 million each : Page 51/77 section 6.2
The Province will pay a $1.5 million stipend ( the Stipend) to each proponent that is not selected as the Preferred Proponent…
…a Stipend in the amount of $1,500,000.00 will be paid to each Proponent that is not selected as the Preferred Proponent…
But the award for the largest consolation prize in the history of BC bids that I am aware of has to be given to the RAV line losing bidders, each of whom received … are you ready for this? $ 4 million each.You read that right, $ 4 million dollars for NOT making the cut : http://www.ravprapidtransit.com/files/uploads/docs/doc173.pdf Page 42/96. section 12.5 :
You can do the math, these amounts add up in to a massive sum of money when you consider this is the way it’s done on most large projects initiated by the provincial government. And while I’ve only started to crack the surface of the muck that covers every surface of the MOT, it leads me to wonder if these kind of consolatory offerings are the norm for losing bidders in other ministry projects and contracts! I highly suspect it is. Read the rest here.RAVCO upon Closing will pay an honorarium to the unsuccessful BAFO Proponent covering a significant portion of its costs up to $4 million
-The New Democrats tossed a sharp-clawed cat among the hapless B.C. Liberal pigeons Monday, when they brought up some recent comments by former finance minister Carole Taylor against the harmonized sales tax.I'm actually becoming more and more of a fan of consumer taxes. I like people to be able to directly see the effects of government spending - if you want more infrastructure spending, then that's coming directly from your wallet. The direct impact of taxation is felt, while with other, municipal, property, income, corporate, etc. taxes, the impact tends to be a little more removed from daily life.
"This particular tax takes the tax off of business -- it takes $1.8 billion off business -- and puts it on consumers," said Taylor, "and so that shift is ideological."
Ouch.
"But I think the bigger issue is that just before the election he [Gordon Campbell] promised that they would not -- they would not -- do the harmonization of the sales tax. And then right after the election decided to do it."
Double ouch.
"No one likes taxes, but the other -- there's a feeling of having been deceived by the government that the people elected. And it's quite brutal. The [polling] numbers are very negative."
The upcoming appeal of Section 13, Canada's online hate speech law, "pits one set of rights -- human rights -- against another set of rights -- charter-guaranteed rights," according to a request for intervenor status by the African Canadian Legal Clinic.Read the rest here.
The hate speech case against webmaster Marc Lemire, brought to the Canadian Human Rights Commission by activist lawyer Richard Warman, is to be reviewed in Federal Court, after a tribunal last year decided that Mr. Lemire did violate Section 13, but that the law itself is an unconstitutional limit on free speech.
The Federal Court's decision "will seriously impact the ability of African Canadians to seek recourse for this type of offensive and damaging yet non-violent speech. Because of the potential for a far-reaching, negative impact on the African Canadian community, the ACLC ought to be present at the judicial review to protect the community's interests."
A grand gesture is taking shape in the middle of a hayfield at Woodwynn Farm as the first formerly homeless or addicted participants arrive at the landmark property in Central Saanich.Read the rest here.
More than 1,400 stakes stick out of the ground in a crazy pattern on a two-hectare parcel in the centre of the farm, which the Creating Homefulness Society is turning into a therapeutic community.
But it's the 385 kilograms of seeds in the ground under the stakes that executive director Richard Leblanc hopes will tell the world exactly what Woodwynn is all about.
Sunflowers and canola will spell out Woodwynn Farms and follow the swirling outline of a tree. The background of blue flax and red poppies will trace the words "believe in people."
"It's a wonderful opportunity for staff and volunteers and participants to work together and say 'believe in us' in a not-so-subtle way," said Leblanc. The display will be surrounded by 1.2 kilometres of deer fence and, when blooming, will include a 3.3-kilometre footpath.
When the project blooms -- hopefully all at once in mid July -- it should be visible on Google Earth and from the air. After the flowers disappear, the sunflowers will be used for seeds and canola for oil.
It's almost a year since the 78-hectare property was taken over by the society, after a hotly contested battle with the Farmlands Trust, a group simultaneously raising money to buy the historic property overlooking the Mount Newton Valley.
This new development is all about operating on a large scale. "Reading the genetic code of a wide range of species," the paper says, "has increased exponentially from these early studies. Our ability to rapidly digitize genomic information has increased by more than eight orders of magnitude over the past 25 years " This is a big scaling up in our technological abilities. Physicist Freeman Dyson, commenting on the paper, notes that "the sequencing and synthesizing DNA give us all the tools we need to create new forms of life". But it remains to be seen how it will serve in practice.How fascinating. Bio-ethics will never be the same.
One question is whether or not a DNA sequence alone enough to generate a living creature. One way of reading of the paper suggests this doesn't seem to be the case because of the use of old microplasma cells into which the DNA was inserted -- that this is not about "creating" life" because, the new life requires an existing living recipient cell. If this is the case, what is the chance of producing something de novo? The paper might appear to be about a somewhat banal technological feat. The new techniques build on existing capabilities. What else is being added, what is qualitatively new?
While it is correct to say that the individual cell was not created, a new line of cells (dare one say species?) was generated. This is new life that is self-propagating, i.e. "the cells with only the synthetic genome are self replicating and capable of logarithmic growth."
Back on Aug 20 2008, Marc Lemire beat the Canadian Human Rights Commission in a complaint he filed with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. The Privacy Commissioner found that “Under the circumstances, I am of the view that your complaint that the CHRC denied you access to personal information is well-founded and the CHRC has been so informed.”And we'll be there for it. Most excellent.
Not surprisingly for tin-pot fascists, the CHRC just continued on like nothing happened. The CHRC’s new tactic was to charge outrageous fee’s for Access or just claim “security” and deny everything. Recently, a writer for the National Post requested information from the CHRC regarding their “1,200 name enemies list”. The CHRC response was “in order for the Commission to process this part of your request, a search fee totaling $63,840 is required.”
On November 6 2008, Marc Lemire filed an access request with the CHRC for a copy of the “Section 13 investigators guide.” This is the internal guide used by investigators to harass and persecute Canadian writers.
[...]
On December 8 2008, the CHRC claimed “security concerns” and refused to release any part of the Section 13 guide. As a result, Lemire appealed to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner on January 19, 2009.
After more than a year of investigation, the Privacy Commission slammed the CHRC and forced them to provide a copy of the CHRC Section 13 guide.
[...]
Lemire received a partly censored copy of the guide in April 2010. The document is full of shocking information and a complete analysis will be made public shortly.
But what's interesting is that, in her decision, Justice Susan Griffin also stated she didn't agree with the government argument "that this case is not about document disclosure. To the contrary, this is exactly what this case is about."More on that argument here. This was always about disclosure. The government didn't want Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond to have access to certain cabinet documents - their argument being that there might be an innapropriate release of information once that happened. The fact that Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond is a highly-trained legal professional who knows more than ninety percent of the population about disclosure of precisely that sort of information didn't matter - the government line was, essentially, no exceptions to the rule.
Last week, the provincial Liberals proved themselves to have a poor understanding of British Columbia's laws. But no matter - because the Liberals also proved themselves willing to change those laws so their understanding of them becomes British Columbia's legal reality. For example, on Thursday Finance Minister Colin Hansen alleged Bill Vander Zalm's petition campaign against the harmonized sales tax had misled voters. He then went on to suggest that could invalidate the signatures collected by the former premier. But a reading of the Recall and Initiative Act reveals no such penalty exists.Read the rest here ( with more updates on the situation here, here, and here. )
Then, on Friday, Attorney General Mike de Jong said the children and youth representative's sweeping legal right to access government information doesn't apply to cabinet documents. The reason: according to him, the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act prohibits the province from releasing such documents. But a reading of that act reveals that prohibition only applies to the government's response to freedom of information requests - not the representative's powers.
Of course, it's possible this isn't just incompetence. It's possible something less innocent is going on. Which could explain why the Liberals introduced an amendment stating the representative doesn't have that authority, making sure their opinion prevails.
“A Nazi can never be a victim but only a victimizer,”
May I have your attention please? - Linda Stone - SIME 09 from Ayman van Bregt on Vimeo.
H/t to Boing Boing.
Social workers and social service agencies have come out against provincial government legislation that will ensure children and youth representative Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond's information rights don't give her unrestricted access cabinet documents. In separate emails to the media, the Federation of Community Social Services of BC and the BC Association of Social Workers condemned the Campbell administration's proposed amendments to the Representative for Children and Youth Act.Read the rest here.
Victoria, B.C. — Premier Gordon Campbell has been ordered to hand over cabinet materials to the children’s watchdog.Read the rest here.
Justice Susan Griffin found that Campbell and Children’s Minister Mary Polak failed to comply with the law by denying Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond access to cabinet documents needed to complete an audit.
The documents will be turned over today.
Turpel-Lafond, the provincial representative for children and youth, wants the documents for an audit of the Child in the Home of a Relative program, which serves about 4,400 children who are unable to live with their parents.
Read the rest here.We could, of course, change this. We could insist that the Government tries to seek a gender balance and, in all likelihood, we’d probably be no worse off then we currently are in terms of quality of Government, but women would be worse off, I think. It’s not enough just to see women in power, achieving great things. To really count, to really make a difference to young women who might aspire to such things, they need to know that women in power got there by being superb, unmatched in skill and talent – and not by schmoozing their way into the Prime Minister’s Inner Circle, or worse because there’s some arbitrary quota to create the illusion of meritocracy.
The call for gender balance for the sake of it is just another version of the same fucked up, un-meritocratic system we already have. In politics, it’s all about Prime Ministers wanting to make sure they can trust and work with the people who run those key departments far more than it’s about how good these could-be ministers might be. What the lack of women in the cabinet reveals is how few women have been able to penetrate Cameron’s inner circle to become essential to him – except, perhaps, for Theresa May. This may indeed be true of Clegg too, who’s rewarded HIS inner circle – another sausage fest from what we can tell.
We know how Brown regarded women in his Government – Window Dressing. So, perhaps, let’s look at this seeming reversal as progress, instead. We’re seeing the real underlying truth for once and can see how much work really needs to be done. No fig leaves, no window dressing, just the cold, naked truth which I’ll take over a pleasant fiction at any time.
The special prosecutor had just finished laying a dozen charges, the most serious ever in connection with the outcome of an election in B.C. The accused included the two senior officials in the Heed campaign, his manager and chief financial officer.Anyway. Further reading in the Sun from yesterday's edition. Jonathan Fowlie, Kim Bolan, and Lori Culbert have written a rather lengthy article on the potential downfall of Barinder Sall, who was Kash Heed's campaign organizer in the last election, and who most of this scandal can, currently, be pinned upon.
More than a whiff of scandal for the governing party and its "victorious" candidate. The coming court testimony might mean more political fallout. Plus police said their investigation was continuing.
Wheat and barley growers who don't produce more than 40 tonnes of grain a year would no longer be eligible to vote in Canadian Wheat Board elections under federal legislation introduced yesterday.
Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz said hobby farmers and former producers shouldn't get a say in elections which send farmer representatives to the board.
"Everyone agrees these important votes must be cast by real farmers, not producers who have left the business," said Ritz.
The legislation would mean any producer who didn't deliver 40 tonnes of wheat or barley to the board in either the year of the election or the previous two years would not be eligible to vote.
A Liberal member of Parliament has been charged with refusing to obey a police officer after an incident involving a breathalyzer test.My god. Refusing to co-operate, that bastard. They should throw the book at him.
Montreal-area MP Pablo Rodriguez will continue his duties within the Liberal caucus while fighting the charge.
He told a news conference Friday that the incident occurred following a traffic accident involving his car. Rodriguez said he waited at the scene for police to show up, and they did.
"Because I'd consumed a moderate amount of wine during the previous supper, the police officer asked me to proceed with a breathalyzer test, using a hand-held machine, which I did without hesitation," Rodriguez said.
But the test hit a snag. Rodriguez said he was unable to blow into the machine to the officer's satisfaction.
"Despite my attempts to blow into the device, which were not deemed satisfactory, a charge of refusing to co-operate was laid," he said.
I really must apologise for the lack of posts on this site since its inception. My input over-all has been rather sparse lately, due to a mix of factors.
As I said in my first post, this site is really a place for me to talk about my journey into the libertarian compound. But I'm afraid this post will accomplish very little of that.
Instead, I'd like to talk a little about child labor. Because after all, as a libertarian it's bound to come up eventually.
The reason I bring it up now is that I saw this story, via Douglas McIntyre at Daily Finance:
The National Labor Committee released a report called “China’s Youth Meet Microsoft [MSFT]: KYE factory in China produces for Microsoft and other U.S. Companies” on Apr. 13. It accuses KYE (photo, right), a major supplier to the world’s largest software company, of child-labor law violations in its factory in Dongguan, China.
The report says: “KYE recruits hundreds (up to 1,000) ‘work-study’ students 16 and 17 years of age, who work 15-hour shifts, six and seven days a week making webcams, mice and other computer peripherals. Some of the workers appear to be just 14 or 15 years old. A typical shift is from 7:45 a.m. to 10:55 p.m. Most of the students work for three months, but some stay longer.” The investigation was conducted over a three-year period.
[...]
Charles Kernaghan, executive director of the organization and author of the report, says of his group’s findings: “It sounded like torture. The frantic pace on the assembly line, same motion over and over for the 12 hours or more of work they did.”
The report adds: “As usual, the codes of conduct for Microsoft, HP [HPQ] and the Electronics Industry Council have zero impact.” The report makes a number of other allegations about work conditions in the facility.
Read it all here. H/t for this story to Uppity Woman, who takes a rather dim view of Microsoft and similar American companies for the above:
You know, I can at least in part understand why companies got fed up with being squeezed by American labor unions, taxes, and the cost of health insurance in the USA. But this isn’t about cutting costs any longer. When you exploit children, you are greedy. You are not only greedy, but you are barely human.
Now, perhaps it's me. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting the sentence above - after all, there's a difference between moral disagreement and condemnation, and pronouncing judgment that something or other should be banned, or forced to stop.
But let's say that this is merely a moral condemnation. Why?
Seriously, why? Why is it immoral to exploit child labor in third world countries? As another libertarian blogger put it recently:
Ideals, aspirations, rhetoric - none of these count for shit when it comes to picking a society up by its bootstraps. If there's nothing there, the wealth has to be created. It gets created sheer bloody hard physical work. And much like those kids are there to work the farm for the survival of the family, the reality of it is that they're there to work in the sweatshop for the (slightly better) survival of the family, too.
Oh, and a corollary to this: if you want those kids to get out of the sweatshops more quickly, spend your efforts getting free trade implemented with these poorer nations. Our protectionist policies like import tariffs, the CAP and so forth just drag out the time those kids are stuck in the sweatshop.
The faster we can buy stuff from them and the more of the money that goes to them, the better off both parties are: we get stuff slightly cheaper and they get a bigger market. And the faster they get their wealth, the faster they'll be able to afford schools and the faster those kids will get out of the factories and into lifestyles more like ours.
Exactly. The blogger - Obnoxio - also points out that charity is not nearly the alternative means of achieving that same end. It all depends on economic development: the wealther a nation and its people are, the better off they will be in the long run. But how they get to that state of wealth can be a horrific task.
And so let's go back to our fellow exploiting child - if you agree that a 15-17-year old is a child - labor. Is it a heartless thing for a company to use these people for their own ends? Yes, probably.
But really, it depends on how you make moral judgments. It's rather more complicated than just saying that certain behaviors are 'bad', and just leaving it at that. Do we judge something to be 'bad' based on intention, or based on outcome?
Ultimately, we like our justice system to be based on outcome. You do something, and then you get punished for it. And generally, it's considered unjustifiable to punish somebody for a crime that they haven't already committed ( certain police sting operations and the like skirt this line uncomfortably close, but let's ignore that for the sake of argument ).
In our justice system, we rely on outcomes-based judgment. Indeed, that seems like a fair way to go about things - intentions are rather meaningless without the power to back them up with real action. I might intend to do something, but whether or not I do it is all that really matters. The road to Hell, and all that.
And so, to go back to our sweatshop-exploiting capitalist, as Obnoxio once again expains:
Remember, kids, these guys are taking these jobs voluntarily because the jobs are better than any other option they have. Wages are low because there is vastly more supply than demand for the workers. But for all that, it's still better than what they had before.
You can rail about the heartless über-capitalist, but the capitalist is the guy who decides where he spends his own money. And the rational thing to do is to maximise your return on investment. If he chose not to invest his money in Outer Cuntistan, those people would continue their shitty lives scraping by an even worse existence off the land. And if you're going to start with minimum wage or any of that shit, he may still bother because he's a really nice guy, but crucially, he may well fuck off somewhere else.
Your noble ideals will have doomed Outer Cuntistan to another generation of desperate, grinding poverty and misery. But since your heart is in the right place, you can feel good about it. It is your right to feel good about people being worse off, kids dying, people being denied the chance to a better life. No, really, it is.
Motives trump outcomes, every single time, especially for social democrats.
I can certainly understand the importance of morals. I'm generally friendly with the idea of having them, certainly. But in the end, in the case of 'child' labor, we have to look at the outcome.
Is there a certain outcome for these people? No. We can't say for sure what will happen to them. But we can generally be assured that, over the long term, they, and the next generations in a compound fashion, will be better off as a whole because of the greater wealth and economic activity.The sooner we get through the development stages, the uncomfortable stages, the better things will be.
But let's not forget the attention. The more attention being concentrated on these areas, the more focus on their struggle, the better.
This is not to undermine critics' efforts. Companies need their critics to keep them honest. But let's not forget that ultimately, the good guy and the bad guy don't really apply to this situation. Money may not be able to buy happiness, but it can sure help someone at least catch a glimpse of that state of mind.
Ed note: I originally wrote this with another publication - well, any other publication - in mind, but, alas, I'm afraid that I left this too long for it to be too topical. Plus, I just don't have the energy to shop it around. So you get my whole entire review of the movie Kick-Ass. Exciting times.“Personally, I’m disappointed,” said Liberal MP Michelle Simson, a rookie Scarborough MP who unilaterally decided to post her detailed parliamentary expenses online. “There seems to be a public appetite just to be assured by someone like Sheila Fraser … because people just don’t believe politicians anymore.”
Prime Minister Stephen Harper is urging the European leaders he met with yesterday to focus on more agreeable financial system reforms rather than the global bank tax that Canada rejects and they strongly back.I'm sure they will, Stephen. But take note from your fellow in arms calling for fiscal restraint, Angela Merkel. She folded on Greece; you folded on the stimulus.
In Brussels to attend the annual Canada-European Union Summit where the progress on a major free trade deal between the two partners was a main discussion topic, Harper said it would be unfair to impose a levy on Canadian financial institutions.
Several European countries are calling for the worldwide tax on financial institutions in order to create an insurance fund that could be used to bail them out in the event of another financial crisis.
"In Canada, there were no taxpayer bailouts of financial institutions so we believe there is no justification for levies on banks and financial institutions," Harper said at a news conference following meetings with European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso and European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.
Harper said he understands why, in countries where taxpayers footed the bailouts for collapsed banks, there may be public pressure on governments to back the idea, but not in Canada.
Harper, his counterparts from the world's largest economies and EU leaders may have to agree to disagree on the bank tax idea when they meet at next month's G8 and G20 summits in Canada. The prime minister maintains that Canada is not alone in its rejection of the proposal and has "plenty of support" but acknowledged the proposal will be an "interesting" discussion at the meetings.
