October 27, 2011 [Vancouver, Canada] – In the wake of high-profile gang violence related to the illegal marijuana industry in BC, a new coalition of academic, legal and health experts has released the first of a series of reports and polling results aimed at pressuring politicians to legally regulate marijuana sales under a public health framework.
The Angus Reid poll says 87% of BC respondents link gang violence to organized crime’s efforts to control the province’s massive illegal cannabis trade while the report, called Breaking the Silence, clearly demonstrates that cannabis prohibition in BC has been ineffective and caused significant social harms and public safety issues.
“From a scientific and public health perspective we know that making marijuana illegal has not achieved its stated objectives of limiting marijuana supply or rates of use,” said Dr. Evan Wood, a coalition member and Director of the Urban Health Research Initiative at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. “Given that marijuana prohibition has created a massive financial windfall for violent organized crime groups in BC, we must discuss alternatives to today’s failed laws with a focus on how to decrease violence, remove the illicit industry’s profit motive and improve public health and safety.”
I'm in a HRTO case and I did not use a lawyer because I don't want lawyers guarding the gates for Human Rights.
The Ontario Commission under B Hall has a 5% success rate for cases going forward, this means that my Disability case for wrongful dismissal while on LTD is stuck in a line-up of 95 career whiners and 4 other valid cases like me wait our turn.
While the HRTO employs many paper-pushers and young lawyers to hold the unemployment numbers down for McGuinty, it is bloated and slow and I'm now a risk for the 1 year limit for my complaint even when it was the HRTO that keeps delaying my complaint.
But here's the rub , I found pictures of Barbara Hall at Human Rights Fund-raisers hosted by my Employer that wants to promote Diversity and safe workplaces.
My employer got an Award from Barbara Hall the same year I was terminated while on disability coverage for a workplace injury they caused and now refuse to accommodate me for those injuries.
So for 5 years I have fought for my severance that has cost me $100,000.00 dollars in lost income, I ended up homeless at one point and now on Welfare/ODSP.
These Commissions are useless because in 2010 I read a STAR article that an immigrant on OAS was given $15000.00 for hurt feelings when an alleged slur was used to call the man a Gypsy while at a Coffee shop by a worker.
Then we have the 2011 case of the Hijab wearing muslim that was hurt from the bosses coment that her mico-waved lunch had a bad smell to it, the boss had their house seized by the HRTO to cover the estimated $30,000.00 expected for the muslim employee.
I'm the wrong colour, religion, sexual preference, gender, and citizenship because I was cursed with being born in Canada to Canadian parents that were born here before the 1930's which makes me the oppressor and evil one.
Since lawyers and Judges had once crusaded for the expansion of Slavery to all the 13 Colonies in the new USA in 1857 , I am a bit shy to run to these same Lawyer types that have no moral compass and just read and repeat what the Laws are.
Where were they when Public sector Union would not allow non-whites to join , where are they over the Honour Killings to demand a new Murder charge be made to end the importing of Shariah law as Dr. Sheema Khan tried to bring to Canada from Saudi Arabia.
If the HRTO is stalling to protect my employer , then it IS a conspiracy to violate my Human Rights and deny me accesss to justice for my disability as they choose who gets Charter Right protections.
Barbara Hall should have thought about how dangerous it would be to get close to the large Corporation and give them an Award for Human Rights in the workplace because now she must answer for why my case is less important than a Hijab wearing muslim with hurt feelings and will get at least $30,000.00 , or the Immigrant on OAS that has never worked in canada and now gets a Tax-free $15,000.00 gift from B. Hall.
Come November it will be one year from my filing, if the HRTo tried to do a cover-up and show bias in favour of my employer just becaus B. hall is buddies with them, the crap will hit the fan as I go public to expose this useless and bloated Shake-down scam from non-citizens to get rich in canada via suing citizens that actually worked for the wealth.
OTTAWA—A ruling Friday by the Supreme Court of Canada that winners of human rights cases cannot recover their legal costs will “absolutely” discourage many complainants from coming forward, a human rights lawyer says.
In a key administrative law ruling involving a woman’s sexual harassment complaints against the military, the Supreme Court of Canada said Parliament did not intend to give the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal the power to assess and award thousands of dollars to cover individual legal bills.
[...]
The Supreme Court of Canada unanimously upheld a Federal Court of Appeal conclusion that the tribunal only has the authority to decide compensation (up to a current maximum of $20,000) and expenses incurred during an infringement of rights, but not “legal costs.”
That term has a “distinct legal meaning,” said the high court, which is “compensation for legal expenses and services incurred in the litigation.”
The story's claim of all-party criticism of the bill is overblown, as the only Tory they could find to speak out was Senator Nancy Ruth. Nevertheless, I think Joe Comartin is correct when he says:“The Prime Minister, on more than one occasion, seemed to indicate to the media that he was not in favour of doing away with it,” Comartin says. “There are a number of different communities – the Jewish community, the Islamic community in Canada – are very opposed to that being done away with.”Certainly the gov's official response to the bill thus far is to pretend that it doesn't exist.
So why wouldn’t Manitobans have voted NDP? Hell, when they say they won’t sell Manitoba Hydro, you know they mean it. If it comes down to a choice between privatizing utilities and mortgaging the organs of Wawanesa schoolchildren to the Sultan of Brunei, we all know which one they’ll choose. Little Tyler better not get too attached to that spleen.
Well that certainly doesn't sound good. Bill 3 can be read in its entirety here, if you like. It looks long, and I'm too tired to go through it at the moment.The government has put the pedal to the metal in trying to get a vast shift of our privacy rights in place before anyone gets a chance to say boo about it.
Bill 3, which eliminates many of the privacy protections in the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act, was introduced Oct. 4 and has already had second reading. It could be law by the end of the month if they keep pushing.
So what is the big scary Halloween shocker?
Hiding behind euphemisms like "citizencentred services," the government is making a big grab not just to get, but to pass around and use our private personal information as it sees fit.
Some of the proposed amendments to the FOIPP Act would make it easier for government to collect our personal information and pass that information along to other persons, "partner" organizations and other governments (including U.S. Homeland Security). They would also allow the government to bring in (at some unspecified later time) regulations to govern new "data linkages" - while exempting the entire health-care sector from those regulations.
Canada's Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that posting online links to a website containing libellous material is not libel in itself.The top court upheld the B.C. Supreme Court's ruling Wednesday against former Green Party campaign manager Wayne Crooks, who had argued that there was no difference between publishing defamatory statements and publishing links to the sites where the statements were written.
P2Pnet.net, a technology and freedom of speech news website hosted by British Columbia resident Jon Newton, never published any of the claims that Crooks took issue with. It did not even comment on them.
Wednesday's ruling outlined the difference between linking to a website and actively encouraging readers to view the material.
More from Kirk Makin at the Globe and Mail, Michael Geist, and Howard Knopf at Excess Copyright.
This decision may have an impact on the copyright suit being leveled against my friends Mark and Connie Fournier.
Update: Dawg and BCL have a few reservations. More on this from Dr. Dawg. BCL has a few reservations.
Update II: Welcome Xanthippa's Chamberpot readers!
There is a rule (404, unless I am mistaken) which states that if the opposing counsel makes some mistake which ends up costing people money, then that opposing counsel must pay those costs. Not the client, but the counsel.
The Fourniers claimed that there was some sort of an irregularity in how they had been served with this lawsuit: an irregularity which cost them money and which was Mr. Katz’s fault. If I understand this correctly, this irregularity was also a subject of a complaint the Fourniers lodged with The Law Society of Upper Canada, the body which licenses lawyers to practice in Ontario.
Mr. Katz responded that the complaint was trivial and was dismissed without him having to even attend to it.
Mrs. Fournier disagreed with that, stating she had correspondence from the Law Society of Upper Canada which stated that they will only attend to the complaint based on what the judge’s ruling will be: if the judge will rule that the irregularity had indeed been Mr. Katz’s fault and awarded Fourniers financial compensation for the damages, they would look into the complaint. So, in her words, it was not dismissed but rather will either go forward or be dismissed, based on what the judge finds in the courtroom. Since it relates to the costs in the lawsuit, it will have to be the judge in this case whose opinion will determine how the complaint proceeds.
Mr. Katz was very focused on this part of the discussion, though he did not seem as cool and collected as he usually appears in the courtroom. He seemed downright anxious – and, who would not be, with such a serious charge against him? Once the topic of this irregularity and its consequences was brought up, he focused most of his attention and arguments in that direction.
Good work, Xan. More on Mark and Connie Fournier's legal problems here. The legal precedents that they are setting in this case should be taken into account.
Read it here.Well The above video will tell you far more then I can in a short blog. The most important thing to remember is there is no scientific tests they can run for mental health issues. But this report that they are now approving psychotropic drugs for children as young as four should have parents on high alert.
By the way the group that produced this video the Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR) is apparently affiliated with the Scientology movement. If that was all I had I would not post it. But the CCHR says this is a list of all the front groups for Big Pharma.
One of those groups CHADD was considered a front by many reputable organizations. CHADD was pushing Ritalin and the connection was discovered and reported. CHADD was operating in Canada as late as 2009. All this is being planned based on a study of only 165 children making any test results; whether clinical or statistical virtually worthless because of it's small size.
Right now the drug industry is almost in the middle of something it has being dreading for years the "patent cliff". Over at DailyFinance online they report on the 10 biggest-selling drugs that are about to lose their patent protection with an estimated $250 dollars in sales at risk between now and 2015.
As BusinessWire online reports 35 blockbuster drugs are set to go off patent in 2011 and 2012 and "more than $209 billion in annual branded drug sales are projected to go off-patent between 2011 and 2014".
As early as 2008 Bloomberg Business online was reporting that 10 top selling drugs were going off patent. One way Big Pharma is trying to stem the loss of revenue is with something called authorized generics.
Another way is described here as it points out, "it is clear that one of the main goals of this attack is to allow the pharmaceutical companies to take over the dietary supplement industry. Similar campaigns are under way in Europe and Canada and further along. Recently I pointed out that the CMA had accepted almost $800,000.00 from one drug company alone in Canada; Pfizer.
In the past Canadian doctors have accepted money from Big Pharma. A practice that is even more wide spread in the United States. Where signing off on ghostwritten articles produced by the drug companies was part of the scam. A practice that appears to have been in operation in Canada as you can read about here, here, and here.
In America the FDA kowtows to the drug companies. In Canada the same problem exists with Health Canada where as late as 2009 they also slanted their efforts towards the rapid approval of new drugs at the expense of the post-marketing pharmaco-surveillance.
So we have a huge drug industry that is about to lose, or is already losing, a lot of money from drugs going off patent. They appear to be trying to stem their losses, in part, by creating new markets for other drugs. Drugs that are dangerous for the children that take them; and dangerous for people around them.
As long as Big Pharma makes lots of money and the CMA keeps taking it's money a lot of people are in danger from shoddy marketing practices and shoddy oversight by both the Federal and Provincial governments. It doesn't seem to matter now - if it ever did - that a lot of them are little kids.
Nice.
To my mind, some of the things the Fourniers are charged with are difficult to understand – but one of them is very clear and will very likely set the legal precedent for Canada on a very hot topic: ‘inline linking’. The legal precedent on copyright issues regarding the insertion of an inline web link has been ruled by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, clarifying that inserting them does not violate US copyright laws. For search engines, anyway…There has not been a comparable ruling in Canada – yet.
Federal prosecutors have sent letters to landlords and owners of dispensaries across California warning them to halt sales of marijuana within 45 days or face property seizures and other legal backlash, though some raids have already commenced.
Why not let California officials enforce California law? If dispensaries do not qualify for the medical exemption, their operators can be prosecuted in state court.The Justice Department disdains such deference. Melinda Haag, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, said she will close down dispensaries that violate a federal ban on drug sales within 1,000 feet of "schools, parks, and other areas where children are present," whether not they comply with state law. She and her colleagues also claimed they were responding to nuisance complaints and violations of municipal ordinances, which is the job of local law enforcement agencies.
Haag has made it clear that federal prosecutors are determined to override state and local decisions. "We will enforce the [Controlled Substances Act] vigorously against individuals and organizations that participate in unlawful manufacturing and distribution activity involving marijuana," she wrote in a February letter to Oakland City Attorney John Russo, "even if such activities are permitted under state law."
Then, Margaret Wente in the Globe and Mail:As the Canadian Civil Liberties Association observes, "polemical statements of opinion, some of which may be offensive, are part of the protection for free speech.
The best response to hateful speech is to denounce and counter it, not ban it."
Hopefully, now circumstances will conspire to ensure our laws reflect those important principles.
For the record, I fully support gay rights. I also fully support free speech. That means anything this side of incitement to violence. I believe the current law is dreadful, because even the wisest people find it tough to draw the line between speech that’s merely offensive and speech that’s downright hateful. And in my limited experience, even human-rights bureaucrats aren’t always the wisest people. In any case, that line will always be hopelessly subjective.Then, the Ottawa Citizen editorial board:
The arguments of homophobes are easy enough to demolish in the open, using facts and sense. There's no need to drive such arguments underground. Expose them to the light and they wither.
There is a huge number of Americans who simply don't realize that they've been victimized by Wall Street – that they've paid inflated commodity prices due to irresponsible speculation and manipulation, seen their home values depressed thanks to corruption in the mortgage markets, subsidized banker bonuses with their tax dollars and/or been forced to pay usurious interest rates for consumer credit, among other things.
We just got home.So that's that. More when it becomes available.
We are guessing that the ruling should come down fairly soon, maybe within weeks but possibly within days. These days the courts do not like to strike parts of an affidavit in summary proceedings. The judge gave Richard Warman's lawyer ample opportunity to give her compelling reasons as to why she should strike parts of Connie's affidavit and he utterly failed to do so.
Scientists believe that the widespread use of antibiotics may be playing a significant role in exacerbating the obesity epidemic. - Independent Science UK
The rapidly escalating rates of obesity have been the cause of rise of the food police and growing attacks by the Nanny state blaming parents for having other poor parental skills, or worse, no concern for the welfare of their children at all. With theNanny State more and more threatening to remove children from the care of their parents. Already governments are using it as an excuse to raise taxes on sweetened drinks and remove more control from parents in the day to day decision making of parents.
But are parents really to blame? A growing body of evidence is now suggesting the drug companies might be the culprit. As with the rise of the Superbugs which I wrote about back on September 24 the over prescription of antibiotics might well be one of the culprits of the epidemic.
Antibiotics destroy beneficial bacteria in the gut that, "aid in digestion by providing useful substances that assist absorption of food and vitamins. These same bacteria also neutralize the bile salts and liver toxins dumped into our intestines and colons". There is also reason to believe that antibiotics used in animals to prevent epidemics of disease with the shift from pasture grazing to feed lots is leeching into the food supply as the antibiotics promote growth in the host (i.e. The farm animals).
Data presented to the Emory Predictive Health Institute showed that depletion of helpful colonic bacteria by antibiotics caused changes in concentrations of hormones that directly influence appetite, like leptin. As that link points out leptin assists in regulating both appetite and metabolism. Leptin levels are generally proportional to body fat, as leptin is released by fat cells. It is thought that many obese people may have developed leptin resistance – whereby the body fails to respond to leptin signals. But the evidence shown above now suggest that antibiotics might be the culprit.
But the cause of childhood obesity doesn't end with only just the use of antibiotics. Another well documented cause is anti-depressants and anti-psychotic drugs that are being fed to more and more children at increasingly younger and younger ages. This DEA report is from 1996 and should send chills down the backs of all parents, "...on the other hand, when we see that in some localities as many as 15 to 20 percent of the children have been put on Ritalin or a similar stimulant, there is good reason to conclude that this is "quick-fix." bogus medical practice which is nevertheless producing large profits".
Yet this article points out that Ritalin , with it's litany of side-effects, just might join the war - on obesity! It is also being taken more and more on university campuses in Canada. Articles like this one that state, "that taking Ritalin before an exam is no different from eating well or getting enough sleep", does nothing to help the situation
Recently I pointed to a link at Common Cause the shows the CMA in 2010 accepted almost $800,000.00 dollars from Pfizer pharmaceutical. But. "Pfizer is not the only drug company that has been caught systematically instructing its sales people to push prescription drugs to doctors and patients far beyond their approved uses or charged with illegal promotion, bribery, faking data, price fixing and fraud".
You can add the coming tsunami of drug induced mental health issues to this problem. In part aided by phony front groups financed by big pharma. As they dumb down the next generation with prescription drugs that not only aren't needed in most cases but are very dangerous. Especially as this report points out their use can be classified as child abuse.
As long as this is allowed to continue governments - who are part of the problem - will use this as an excuse to remove children from their parents. All the while blaming the parents. But it will be the children who pay.
*1) Before You Take That Pill - J. Douglas Bremner M.D
VANCOUVER, BC—Canadian labour unions should be required to be more transparent and financially accountable to their members, says Niels Veldhuis, Fraser Institute senior economist.“At the moment, most unionized workers are in the dark when it comes to how union executives spend the millions of dollars in dues they collect each year. There’s no accountability, and union executives are free to spend money on political activities and activist campaigns that their members may not support,” Veldhuis said.
“In 2006, the Fraser Institute released a study comparing Canadian union disclosure regulations to those in the United States, and we recommended that Canada enact similar, more stringent financial disclosure regulations for labour unions.”
The study, Union Disclosure in Canada and the United States, found that neither the federal government nor any province requires unions to publicly disclose financial information. Eight jurisdictions in Canada (seven provinces and the federal government) mandate some financial disclosure to union members, but only if formally requested, and there are no regulations specifying the amount of detail required in union financial statements. The full study can be downloaded for free at http://www.fraserinstitute.
org/research-news/display. aspx?id=13564 The notion that labour unions should fully and publicly disclose the uses to which their members’ dues are put is gaining some traction. On Monday, MP Russ Hiebert (South Surrey–White Rock–Cloverdale) introduced a Private Member’s Bill in the House of Commons to amend the Income Tax Act so as to improve labour union financial disclosure. The bill would require unions to file financial statements with Revenue Canada revealing (among other items) salaries of union executives and trustees, amount spent on labour relations activities, amount spent on political activities, amount spent on lobbying, and amount spent on collective bargaining.
“Greater public disclosure of union financial activity is a necessity in Canada, where many workers are forced to join a union as a condition of employment,” Veldhuis said.
“If labour unions are not required to provide financial disclosure, our research shows that Canadian workers will remain exposed to a double bias. They can be forced to join and financially support a union while having limited access to detailed information about how the union uses their money.”
–30–
Just in case anybody's interested.
On Thursday, October 6th, Mark and I will be in Federal Court in Ottawa at 9:30am. It is a Motion in a Copyright lawsuit brought against us by Richard Warman where he is trying to have (among other things), references to his "maximum disruption" campaign stricken from my Affidavit. If he is successful, we won't be able to use his track record and his own words in our defence.
Because this is our fifth lawsuit, we were not able to afford to retain an intellectual property lawyer to represent us, so I will be making my own legal submissions (I know...fool for a client LOL).
Anyway, I know it is election day so many of our friends will not be able to attend, but if you can't, thoughts/prayers are appreciated.
The hearing will be held in Court room #2 on the seventh floor of the Sir Thomas D'Arcy McGee Building, 90 Sparks Street at 9:30 a.m.
Connie
The Wildrose has committed to abolishing Section 3 of the Human Rights Act, as well as ensuring that true justice can be pursued by having Human Rights cases heard in a court of law, rather than in front of the Human Rights Commission. This would ensure that cases can be heard in a balanced environment, with real checks and balances, as well as trained legal professionals.Also, as part of a Wildrose increase to Legal Aid, Albertans that require legal assistance for human rights cases would have the resources offered to them to ensure the access they require.
And here is Alison Redford's answer to that same question:
I want to amend and fine-tune the existing legislation, after consultations with stakeholders, to better define and protect free speech in light of challenges to the statute in Freedom of expression must be shielded and Section 3 of the Alberta Human Rights Act should be repealed.
Read it all here. H/t to my uncle for sending me the survey - he knows who he is...
Section 3 of the Alberta Human Rights Act is toast.
The legislation is set to be tabled in the House on Monday afternoon by Conservative MP Russ Hiebert, who has won a draw allowing him to be the first parliamentarian to present his private member’s billThe bill’s content is still confidential, but its title shows it will seek to change the rules governing labour organizations under the Income Tax Act, which exempts unions, along with charities and municipalities, from paying taxes. If adopted, the bill will force unions “to apply financial disclosure rules” that are already in place for charities, said a source, given the tax benefit that they receive.The proposed bill is part of continued efforts in recent months by the Conservatives to take on Canada’s unions, which are key backers of the NDP.
I don't doubt that there's some crass political maneuvering going on here. After all, why wouldn't the Tories want to inflict a little damage on a major organizational force for the opposition? But a good idea is a good idea.
