In the land of the nipper-tipper [final update]

In a southern Ontario backwater called Keswick, racism more associated with that other South flourishes--with the tacit approval of at least some small-town officials.

This is the area in which local residents have been wont to throw any Asian-origin people they encounter into Lake Simcoe for the crime of angling.The practice has a name--"nipper-tipping"--the word "nipper," like that other n-word, being a racial slur.

It's trouble-makers--that's the official version. Not even necessarily racist. Just some local lads out on a tear.

But Keswick has had other problems, too. Residents woke up two years ago to find homophobic and anti-Semitic graffiti spray-painted on houses and cars. A swastika was scrawled on the Sutton District High School: school board spokesperson Ross Virgo said at the time, "It's seen as an isolated, singular act of mischief."

Now Keswick in the news again. A bright 15-year-old Asian-Canadian boy was confronted by a racist bully on the school grounds, who proceeded to call him a "fucking Chinese" and punch him in the mouth. His victim, who had had some martial arts training, struck one blow with his left hand and put the bully out of the fight with a broken nose. Quite literally, it seems, this kid can take his opponent with one hand tied behind his back, as the old challenge has it.

This is the point, however, at which the official connection to racism in the area became apparent. The police were called: they arrested the bullying victim and have criminally charged him with assault. The school initially suspended him for twenty days, and the principal, one Catherine McGinley, has recommended to the York Region District School Board that he be expelled, not only from Keswick High School, but from all schools in the region. Meanwhile the bully has had not even a word of reproof from the authorities.*

This classic get-out-of-town message, however, has met with resistance, it being 2009 and all. Three hundred students walked out of McGinley's school to protest, and the aforementioned Ross Virgo now claims that McGinley's letter was a mistake, that after further investigation no expulsion was being contemplated--although no one thought to inform the family, who had been thoughtfully copied on it.

Meanwhile the police have re-opened the case and are investigating the attack on the 15-year-old as a possible hate crime. And the local mayor has visited the family to assure them that they are welcome in his town.

Amazing what a little national publicity can do. The frantic backpedalling of various officials, all of whom had leaped to punish an Asian-Canadian kid without bothering to investigate the circumstances, is a heartwarming sight to see. But the story isn't over by a long shot. The boy has begun serving his 20-day suspension, and he still faces criminal charges. The bully continues to go to class, and at this point faces no charges at all.

This cannot stand. Why not be heard? Send politely-worded comments to the school principal here; to the local she'iff York Regional Chief of Police Armand P. La Barge here; and to the Crown Attorney's office by fax at (905)853-4849.

UPDATE: Blogger leftdog brings us Keswick High's anti-bullying policy:

Bullying can take the form of physical, verbal, or emotional abuse directly or over communication networks (cyber bullying). At Keswick High School, there is a zero-tolerance policy on bullying which is supported by the York Region District School Board, and the Ministry of Education of Ontario.

UPPERDATE: (May 5) Nothing like a little sunshine to put things right. The school board has reversed itself, and the kid is back in class with no mark on his academic record. Now we wait for the Crown Attorney to withdraw the one-sided charges laid by the York Regional Police.

Spokesperson Ross Virgo stated that in the future the board would ensure that “school leaders have the benefit of all the information that's available to them from the outset.” Noting the obvious, he continued: “The school recognizes that this whole situation could have benefited from a more thorough investigation from the outset and it deeply regrets the premature sending of that expulsion letter.”

[H/t The Galloping Beaver.]

UPPESTDATE: (May 7) And now the Chief of York Regional Police has admitted that the initial police investigation had been "flawed from the outset," and called yesterday for the Crown to drop the charges. Chief La Barge praised the students who walked out of Keswick High for initiated his review: "Without hesitation, it was the student protest," he said.

[H/t reader "sassy"]

FINALE: (May 13) And at last--closure.

___________________
*Correction: Reports confirm that the bully, too, was suspended, for the same length of time as his intended victim.

Standards

Readers will know that, at least recently, I have tried to keep my eye on the news rather than on other bloggers, although admittedly some of the low-hanging fruit on the Right is difficult to resist. I run an open comments section, and generally we all manage to keep the debates civil.

The commenters who venture over here, from across the political spectrum, tend to cooperate in this: and the result is some intense conversation that very often gets beneath the surface of events, and well past the political clichés, into a genuine exploration of the issues.

I don't tend to rule with a heavy hand over here, although regulars are aware that I don't have any time for trollin' and cussin'. As I've said before, this is a family blog, G-rated, and I'd like to keep it that way.

So far, so good. But there are times when I do intervene. I won't tolerate racism here, for example. I won't tolerate comments that make light of genocide. There are limits. This is not a First Amendment blog.

In the comments on my "URQ QOTY" post, which was simply a quotation from Canada's first-ranked conservative blogger, who urged the genocide of the Tamils in Sri Lanka so that traffic could get back to normal in Toronto, commenter "Raphael Alexander" (not his real name) asked a question:

But do you have an opinion on the illegal closure of a major highway artery in the largest city in Canada?

And commenter Jay Currie responded thus:

Raphael, nothing but a legitimate show of support for an illegal terrorist organization holding civilians hostage in a warzone. Pretty much taught Hamas and Hezbollah everything they know. So, of course, it's Kate who's the problem here.

Now, understand the context. In Sri Lanka, genocide is happening before our eyes. Between 50,000-100,000 Tamils are bottled up in a three-kilometre-square piece of land, under continual bombardment from Sinhalese forces. The last hospital in the zone has been shelled for two days straight. The United Nations has called that as a war crime, and described the on-going extermination of Tamils by government forces as a "bloodbath."

The Sri Lankan government, which forbids journalists from approaching the kill zone, claims that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) are shelling their own people. No one with a milligram of cortical matter, of course, believes that for one moment.

There is a large Tamil community in Canada, whose friends and families are being ethnically cleansed as I write. In a desperate cry for help, they have crowded onto highways to block traffic, first in Ottawa, and more recently in Toronto. "Do something!" they are saying. "Make it stop!" Perhaps there is nothing we can do officially but wring our hands; but these people have strayed well beyond our usual Canadian calm. Their families are being slaughtered. And that has made them demonstrative.

But unimpeded traffic-flow for some is more important than human lives, particularly the lives of brown people. Kate just wants the Sri Lankan forces to finish the job; and "Raphael" (and to be fair, many others) want the traffic to get moving again.

Enter Jay Currie, who ventured the comment reproduced above. He jumps to the defence of a person who has just advocated genocide. He deliberately misrepresents the protests (they are not a "show of support" for the LTTE, but an anguished plea for official assistance). He reproduces Sri Lankan propaganda, claiming that the tens of thousands of Tamil civilians being remorselessly slaughtered by the Sri Lankan armed forces are LTTE hostages. And he shows not a whit of concern about that slaughter.

I had this to say in reply:

Congratulations, Jay, for the revisionist post of the year.

The Sinhalese have the Tamils bottled up in a tiny bit of land and are shelling them mercilessly, Tigers and civilians alike. Thousands are dying. And the best you can do is tell us that the Tigers are on a terrorist list in Canada? The friends and families desperately acting out their angst in Canada at the impending slaughter of their loved ones are--what?--worthy of a stupid, snarky comment?

You've provided the weakest excuse for genocide I've ever heard--worse even than supporting it because some traffic was slowed down, as the wretched Kate did. Frankly, I'm beginning to understand, as I've never fully understood before, the meaning of the phrase "the banality of evil."

I gave you a pass (eventually) on the "pancake" nonsense, because I thought it might have been a kind of over-the-top boyish exuberance that you were too stubborn to withdraw. But I'm afraid this reveals that you're simply a nasty, racist piece of goods. Begone.

And I banned him.

Readers are free to comment on this, should they so choose. Perhaps I went too far. Perhaps I misread Jay's comment. In the cold light of day, I don't believe that I did: the implications in his comment still seem rather stark. In any case, he has responded, to the applause of his regular gang of lightweights, and in fairness I am linking to his piece.

The thrust of his post, if "thrust" is the right word--his heart doesn't really seem to be in it--is that I am banning opinion that conflicts with mine. Those regulars who continually nip at my heels here might be amused to hear that. It's not political opinion at issue in this case; it's common decency. Those who find cause for amusement in peace protesters being run over by bulldozers, or who make light of genocide, are simply not welcome here.

If I overreacted, I'm sure some of my commenters will tell me. But, as pompous as it sounds, I do have standards, and I feel a strong need to maintain them in my own house.

UPDATE: I should have drawn attention to this telling phrase in Currie's response: "[Dawg's] overdone sympathy for people of colour". Shorter Jay: I'm a "n----r-lover."

Ottawa Police: something smells

Admittedly this is only one side of the story, but perhaps it will make readers as uncomfortable as it did me.

An Ottawa taxi driver, Sami Aldobani, is nursing a broken wrist, broken fingers and other injuries after being attacked by a thug in an apparent fit of road rage.

The thug followed him down the Airport Parkway into the Airport Taxi parking lot. Both men exited their cars, and the thug shouted racist insults, then proceeded to beat the taxi driver savagely until fellow cabbies pulled him off and restrained him.

This is where it gets interesting. The thug hauled out a police ID and showed it to a witness, one of thirty or so who had gathered. Two police officers arrived a few minutes later, he showed them his ID, and the two officers then told the gathering crowd to back off.

The police officers then got into the back seat of the thug's grey Nissan Xterra SUV and the thug drove away with them. Four other officers arrived, and one drove the officers' patrol car away.

The cabbie spent the night in hospital. The cops say that they are holding no one in custody at present, but are "investigating."

More of the culture of cop impunity? You decide.

UPDATE: Local CBC news is reporting that the assailant was indeed a police officer. He remains on active duty while the alleged "investigation" continues. A police spokesperson said the latter "may take some time." Anyone seen this movie before?

Control freaks

There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. --The Outer Limits

First it was Bernie Farber of the Canadian Jewish Congress, helping to prevent impressionable young children in Toronto from being exposed to a book called Three Wishes: Palestinian and Israeli Children Speak. A discussion of the issue may be found here.

Later that same year (2006), a play about a pro-Palestinian activist, My Name Is Rachel Corrie, was shut down because it "might offend the Jewish community."

More recently, the battle trumpets have been sounded by Farber and by the indefatigable Shimon Fogel of the Canada-Israel Committee, because Al-Jazeera English has applied for a broadcasting licence in Canada.

Here's a taste of Farber's bafflegab:

Asked why Al-Jazeera English should not be given a Canadian licence when it is carried by an Israeli provider, Farber replied, “Israel must deal with issues pertinent to its geopolitical circumstances. Canada is in a much different situation with laws that address broadcasting, all of which must be adhered to.”

But Fogel is far more blunt:

Israelis have multiple sources of news and analysis that all focus on the same issues and the same level of intensity as Al-Jazeera, minus the distortion. Here in Canada, however, the audience is considerably more naive and lacks the capacity to view the broadcast in a critical way, or to seek alternative perspectives.

And let's not forget Frank Dimant of B'nai Brith and his bizarre misreading of Caryl Churchill's play, Seven Jewish Children:

The City of Toronto should not allow a venue that it funds to be the staging ground for a divisive play that promotes anti-Jewish hatred. As its name denotes, 'Seven Jewish Children' does not even pretend to target Israel exclusively. It is clearly aimed at maligning Jews, depicting them as oppressors of Palestinians, blood-thirsty aggressors and child killers. It disturbingly inverts history, using Holocaust imagery to allege that the Jews, once the victims, are actively teaching their own children callous disregard for the suffering of others.

Dimant was in the news earlier this year, commending Carleton University for banning a poster he didn't like, and demanding that "Israeli Apartheid Week," a series of events taking place on numerous university campuses, be shut down.

How nice for us to have this gaggle of professional lobbyists around to protect naive, uncritical Canadians like me from seeing and hearing the wrong things and hence drawing "tainted and compromised" conclusions. How wonderful to have this protection virtually from the cradle to the grave.

Man, I'm going to get into trouble for this. The Usual Suspects will pounce, braying about the latest instance, right here at Dawg's Blawg, of International Jewish Conspiracy talk. The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion will get a mention. And "left anti-Semitism," of course. But the truth is far more mundane.

In Canada there are all sorts of ethnic lobby groups. (It's OK to call them ethnic lobby groups, by the way--with one exception.) They all advocate for their constituencies, are politically active, work with the media, and so on. They're involved as citizens, and their existence enriches the social and political culture of this country.

But it's also OK to be critical of these groups when their advocacy crosses the line and becomes anti-democratic. And what we are seeing in the instant case is precisely that: advocates who want to shut down debate, censor and ban. There's no conspiracy here, nothing secretive, and plenty of Jewish opposition, like Jewish Independent Voices (scroll to the end). In reality it's just a handful of control-freaks on a power trip, and these come in all shapes, sizes, ethnicities and colours. As citizens, however, it is our right and indeed our duty to push back.

Sometimes I wonder: whatever happened to the Jewish love of disputation? My old friends used to get into lengthy, arm-waving late-night discussions with me at the drop of a hat. Amos Oz, in This Land of Israel, describes an incident in that country where he was pulled into a discussion by right-wingers, told to sit down with them, peppered with questions, given cigarettes, listened to, harangued.... There was no talk of banning; there was heated debate, but no hatred. Nobody told him to shut up--indeed, they wanted him to speak, to argue with them. Engagement was the thing.

Farber, Dimant and Fogel could learn a lesson or two from them.

Larrygate [updated]

We can dream. But this case raises so many questions.

Here's the timeline. Terry Kilrea, no slouch himself in the thick-as-a-post right-winger department, withdrew his candidacy during the 2006 mayoralty election campaign, and threw his miniscule support behind the incumbent mayor Bob Chiarelli rather than the more conservative Larry O'Brien.

Why did Kilrea take himself out of contention? Why didn't he support his natural ally in looks, brains and politics? Why, shortly after the election, did he come out swinging with the affidavit that landed Larry in such a heap of trouble? And what's the food like at Hy's Steakhouse?

The trial resumes this week. Here's the Ottawa Citizen Larry O'Brien trial site, the CBC Larry O'Brien trial site and the Ottawa Sun Larry O'Brien trial site.

Win, draw or lose, I hope the process wipes that revolting smirk off his face.

[h/t ZeroMeansZero]

UPDATE: (May 11) Today's hearing, and the proceedings in the days to come, via Twitter.

URQ QOTY

"Hey Sri Lanka, would you just hurry up and finish them off so traffic can get back to normal?"

--Kate McMillan, Small Dead Animals

Experts

This phrase caught my eye this morning, from an entry in the Globe & Mail's "Social Studies" column:

Health experts advise coughing into your elbow, and instead of shaking hands touch [sic] elbows.

It's the flu scare, of course, but I, for one, want to know more about the "experts" who are trying to overturn an ages-old custom on what appears, at least to this observer, to be a whimsical impulse. Yes, yes, clean hands are important when there's a plague about, but it's probably better simply not to put them in your mouth or touch food after you've coughed into them--you know, the elementary precautions beaten into us by parents and kindergarten schoolteachers.

But "experts" are speaking. Experts. Never mind terrorist fist jabs, now it's the elbow dap, on the streets and in the corridors of power. Stephen Harper, meet Michael Ignatieff. Michael, meet Stephen. (Ouch! Maybe a little practice is needed, gentlemen.)

Nope, won't do. Too fraught with danger, to one's funnybone and the ribs of others. If physical contact is now under the ban, may I suggest a simpler substitution, with centuries of use behind it? On meeting, men and women should simply bow--or, failing that, curtsey. But then, I'm no expert.

Descent into madness

Funny...I've just been having a chat b/c with Mike Brock about postmodernism and science, with me taking the view that science is neither "objective," nor value-free, nor the only valid epistemology. Now, reading today's Globe & Mail, I find myself on another side of the question.

It seems that Stephen Harper has been shoehorning his pals into various plum appointments, including the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) and the Canada Foundation for Innovation. That's not surprising in itself. The problem is that they're climate-change deniers, although neither of the two people in question is a climatologist: one is an Fraser Institute economist, and the other, a mathematician and Conservative Party insider.

So two more ideological cranks now join evolution deniers like Stockwell Day, Minister of International Trade, and Gary Goodyear, Minister of State for Science and Technology. We have yet to determine if anyone in the Conservative fold is a flat-earther or a disbeliever in the germ theory of disease, but at this point who would be surprised?

In any case, this is deeply troubling. The two new appointees will sit in judgement on scientific research proposals, after all, which is a bit like having Bishop Fred Henry on the board of Assisted Human Reproduction Canada. (Whoops, perhaps I shouldn't put ideas into the wrong minds.) They claim that they will not try to shut down climate research. We shall see.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Foundation for Climate and Atmospheric Sciences, the main source of support for climate researchers, is being starved of resources by the Conservatives, and will have to shut down next year unless it receives more funding.

The retreat from science into a dark-age bunker of superstition and illiteracy, fortified with far-right ideology, is something we've already witnessed south of the border. And the madness continues down there: in the land of the First Amendment, a court in California (no, not Georgia, not Tennessee) has just ruled that teachers may not criticize creationism in the schools. But, slowly but surely, the same thing is happening right here at home.

I don't believe that science is more than a highly productive procedure, but that's no small thing--just look around. We might argue about its truth-claims, and whether it is the only means of knowing, and whether in its current form its practice is gendered or otherwise biased, but we can't deny its substantial achievements. To place barriers in its way, in the form of ideologues and God-botherers who do not merely critique science but stand in active opposition to it, is a grossly irresponsible turn in public policy.

The considerable shortcomings of Islamic fundamentalism have been well-canvassed in Canada and elsewhere--its insularity, its cultivation of ignorance, its fanaticism. But there are other fundamentalisms, no less invidious if given free reign. We are not nearly so far down that path as our neighbours to the south, one-quarter of whom believed that Christ was due to return in 2007, and a majority of whom reject the theory of evolution. But we're getting there, by golly, inch by inch, as the Harper agenda rolls on. And we have every right, I think, to be alarmed.

[h/t Robert McLelland]

Seven Jewish Children

The full text.

Caryl Churchill's play was banned by the BBC--which also banned a plea from a coalition of charities for humanitarian assistance to Gaza. Meanwhile, here at home...

I swear Frank Dimant is going to make a Speech Warrior™ out of me yet.

The Texas Two-Step: charging the victim

...for her rape kit.

Texas: "We're number one!"

How fortunate to be Canadian. Praise the Lord and pass the Grey Poupon.

Line in the sand

No, a thousand times no.

Hasibullah Sadiqi is on trial in Ottawa for shooting his sister and her fiancé in what is being described as an "honour killing." And it appears that the defence team will concede that he indeed shot the couple, but argue provocation.

This cannot stand, any more than a similar defence for Christian parents who beat their children to death because they think God told them to.

In the latter case, one might argue insanity. In the former, it appears that the defence counsel will argue culture. From the article in the Ottawa Citizen:

Although Sadiqi came to Canada when he was very young, he had a "profound attachment" to his heritage, which shaped his views of relationships between men and women, [Crown Attorney Mark] Moors said. The Crown intends to lead expert testimony regarding honour killings, he said.

The defence will not dispute the fact that Sadiqi was responsible for the killings. Natasha Calvinho, one of Sadiqi's lawyers, told the jury that the case centres on the classification of the homicides.

She and the rest of the defence team, it appears, would like to get the charge bumped down to manslaughter. Perhaps we should all be grateful that they aren't arguing for an outright acquittal.

The phrase "cultural relativism" is poorly understood, and is often badly misused by anthropological illiterates to mean "anything goes, so long as it's what a group of people has always done before, or decides to do now." Such commentators should take Anthropology 101. Cultural relativism is about understanding other lifeways (I don't like the word "culture" much, as I indicate below): it is an epistemological approach, not a moral one.

Briefly stated, it is an attempt to understand other lifeways on their own terms, rather than through the lens of our own. It was pioneered by Franz Boas as a refreshing alternative to earlier classificatory methodologies (I'm thinking Lewis Henry Morgan here), containing the notion of cultural evolution and heavily overlayed with imperial assumption: "their present is our past; our present is their future."

Understanding, however, does not imply condonation; or else, for example, we would look at the Third Reich as an instance of cultural expression (which of course it was) and proceed to excuse the Holocaust as simply "what Germans did."

I use that reductio for two reasons. First, to indicate the gulf that actually exists between cultural relativism and moral relativism. And secondly, to make the point that there is no such thing as a culture, in the sense of a bounded whole, a thing in itself, some kind of essence. Of course Nazism is what some Germans did; others fought against it, and still others were indifferent. "Cultures" are made up of people and their interactions and their symbology and their relations to "the environment." (I prefer to see humans as a part of the environment, not apart from "it.") Hence they are always in flux, cannot be pinned down, and in fact do not exist apart from the people who live them.

Obviously it is important to understand the significance of honour killings; how such a notion arises, and why, in the lifeways of groups of people. But it is equally important to oppose them, as, no doubt, sundry members of those "cultures" do as well--a key point, I think.

In Canada such things have remained somewhat abstract until recently. We are a nation of laws, or so many of us believe, and that, as the Charter of Rights and Freedoms reminds us, includes the notion that we are equal before the law. Yes, there are wrinkles--aboriginal sentencing circles, for example, which, as a form of restorative justice, mesh uneasily with the practice if not the concept of law--but we hold to the principle of equality, even if only as an ideal.

Enter people whose lifeways are different, sometimes significantly so. They come to our territory--and eventually become part of the "our"--under a sort of contractual understanding. They gain opportunities, a new life, a new home; in return, they offer ideas, energy, participation--and they give up practices that the citizens of their new country consider abhorrent, and against which laws are passed. If they transgress, they are treated the same as any other citizen.

That's the theory.

But things fall apart just as soon as we begin to argue that those who have joined our polity should be judged by the standards of the one from which they have come. This has nothing to do with the ossified notion of "multiculturalism": we're talking public policy. It is improper in the extreme to claim some kind of special consideration for the perpetrator of a brutal crime because, despite being socialized in this country, he has some attachment to an "Afghan heritage." Even leaving aside the latter phantasm--all Afghans do not support honour killings, after all--the notion of applying differing standards on the basis of "culture" is deeply disturbing.

It is not the eventual outcome of the trial that concerns me here. It is that such a defence is even permitted, based as it is upon patently false notions and premises. What's next--the defence of necessity in a case of bride-burning? I shall be following this case with interest, and not a little anxiety.

Abdelrazik: "It's like Kafka, isn't it?"

Today the government presented its case, and counsel Anne "didn't you really torture yourself?" Turley began with a procedural bombshell.

In her opening remarks, she stated that once Foreign Minister Lawrence Cannon invoked "national security" under S.10.1 of the Canadian Passport Order, as he did on April 3, the presiding judge has no jurisdiction to determine if an emergency passport was denied improperly or not. The correct procedure, she stated, is to seek judicial review of the Minister's decision in a separate proceeding, and the deadline for that expired this past Monday. The Minister's exercise of discretion, she said, was therefore not properly before the court.

Sn. 10.1, she argued, in effect, gives the Minister virtually unfettered discretion to refuse to issue passports or revoke them at will. And the Minister's action, she said with a straight face, wasn't "part of a pattern." Justice Russel Zinn, of course, will have to determine whether this latest move, after a string of broken promises, is something entirely new that wipes the previous slate clean.

Turley then outlined a number of measures allegedly taken on Abdelrazik's behalf during his long exile in the Sudan. She argued that all kinds of consular assistance was offered, especially when he was in a Sudanese jail, but made the claim--to be echoed later by her sidekick Elizabeth Richards--that in any case no Canadian citizen has a legal right to consular assistance.

Before the UN placed Abdelrazik on its "no-fly" list in 2006, she claimed, Embassy staff were indeed trying to help him get repatriated. But somehow all of those plans fell through, including an offer, then repeated, by the Sudanese authorities to fly him to Canada themselves. What happened to those latter opportunities remains shrouded in mystery--or, as some might argue, in obfuscation.

She went on to argue that the mobility rights section of the Charter (Sn. 6) doesn't guarantee a right to travel though other countries. And a country's airspace is part of that nation, she said, invoking various international conventions. Hence Abdelrazik can't come home without transiting through the sovereign territory of other nations. A UN exemption for a national returning home, she said, only allows entry to a state, not transit through other states. In fact the UN, she went on, expressly forbids other nations to permit entry to those on the UN list. All this, she said, "makes perfect sense."

She then attempted to distinguish the Abdelrazik case from a recent similar one in which the UN had granted an exemption to a person on the list to travel from the UK to Somalia, with a stop in Nairobi, Kenya. The person involved has received an exemption to land in Kenya on the way back. What she failed to mention (but Paul Koring of the Globe and Mail noted to me in conversation) was that no overflight states in that case were covered in the exemption. Nevertheless, his repatriation duly took place. And in that case, an exemption was actually sought: whereas (and government counsel was vague on this point) the Canadian government, for all of the "help" they allegedly offered Abdelrazik, never sought such an exemption.

In the afternoon, Elizabeth Richards took over. She stated that under UN rules, Abdelrazik can make an application for an exemption all by himself, and bring evidence to support his request.

The response from Justice Zinn was swift:

"It's like Kafka, isn't it?"

He pointed out that Abdelrazik has no idea of either the evidence that put him on the list in the first place, or what evidence he should bring to overturn the decision.

Plowing along, Richardson, like Turley, argued that everything the government has or hasn't done to or for Abdelrazik is within its executive discretion. Consular assistance is discretionary. The Minister's decisions are discretionary. Asking the UN for an exemption for one of its citizens is discretionary. So I learned from government representatives today what a Canadian passport is worth if you get stuck overseas--whatever the government wants it to be worth. There is no legal obligation, said Richardson, for the government to come to the aid of its citizens.

(Imagine, whispered Koring to me, a lawyer standing up in an American court to argue that the US has no obligation to free its citizens from Somali pirates.)

In any case, the government argued, Canada isn't the problem here. It's a third party--the UN--that stands in Abdelrazik's way. Surely, asked the judge, issuing an emergency passport would be sufficient to get him home, so that not doing so is a violation of his mobility rights under the Charter?

Not so fast, was the response. The Charter doesn't even apply here, but if it does, the most you can do is ask the Minister to take a second look at his original decision. It would be most improper, they argued, for the judge to order that an emergency passport be issued--that's treading on executive authority and power.

What we had here, in a nutshell, was an argument for nearly unfettered discretion by Ministers to make decisions, and never mind the Charter of Rights and Freedoms--they have a kind of sovereign immunity, virtually shielded from judicial action.

So now we wait for the judge's verdict, while the government busies itself trying to keep another beige citizen out of Canada, Omar Khadr. It is appealing a lower court order to make every attempt to bring him home. Too bad, as I've said before (but it bears repeating) that neither of the people in question are lightskinned Canadians surnamed "Martin."

Abousfian Abdelrazik at Federal Court

They should cut a ten million dollar cheque for Abdelrazik now and spare Canadians the additional time and expense of a commission of inquiry.
--Ti-Guy

Today two events took place at about the same time at the Federal Court of Canada: an application by Abousfian Abdelrazik's legal team to force his repatriation, and another one for Mohamed Harkat on the vexed question of security certificates.

I chose the Abdelrazik hearing and was fortunate enough to meet the Globe and Mail's Paul Koring face-to-face: a pleasant man with an encyclopedic knowledge of the case. And Hélène Buzzetti of Le Devoir, whom I encountered just a few days ago at LibCon 2009--the journo who had put me onto last week's Radio-Canada interview with the UN's Richard Barrett--was in attendance as well.

Koring and Buzzetti had matching articles today, each featuring interviews with Barrett, the coordinator of the UN's Al-Quaeda and Taliban Monitoring Team, which oversees such things as the UN no-fly list upon which Abdelrazik was placed by the US in 2006.

Out in the lobby, Koring said that he'd been trying to talk to the UN for thirteen months, with no success. But suddenly a senior UN official has made himself available for several interviews in a single week, with two clear messages: there is nothing in the relevant UN resolutions that prevents Abdelrazik from flying back. And other nations on the route needn't agree to the exemption: "The overflight states don't come into it and they haven't ever come into it," he said. As Champ put it: the current position of the Canadian government suggests that the exemption doesn't apply "unless countries are side-by-side."

In fact, the language in UN resolution 1390* is so clear about exempting citizens returning home that most governments don't even apply for UN permits. "The UN isn't going to let itself be used as a fig leaf for this government," Koring said. "Their officials knew the court dates."

Minister of Foreign Affairs Lawrence Cannon, his back to the wall, snorted and fumed in the House of Commons today. On the devastating comments from Barrett: "This does not change anything." It's a "highly complex" case, he protested, and we have "our international commitments," and anyway the issue is now before the courts, and he will wait for the court's ruling.

Well, yes, so shall we all. It's presently before federal court Justice Russel W. Zinn; and the Department of Justice legal eagles sound as desperate as Cannon. Today the complainant's team made its case, while Abdelrazik watched by videolink. Tomorrow the respondent (the government of Canada) will mount its defence of the indefensible. But it has already offered us a foretaste. Before Abdelrazik co-counsel Paul Champ was a quarter-inch into his submissions, government counsel was rising to object to raising the issue of the refusal to issue a temporary passport to allow Abdelrazik to return home.

This matter is central to the complainant's case, of course. Incredibly, government counsel claimed it was excluded under "settlement privilege," because there had been (apparently) a settlement conference late last year which none of us in the audience had heard of, and about which it would be imprudent to speculate. The conference obviously got nowhere, in any case, but the issuance of a travel document had apparently come up during the course of it. That legal ploy was, to put it mildly, a long shot, and Justice Zinn promptly ruled against it.

There had been other such moves earlier in the day. Government lawyers tried to exclude all mention of torture, which Abdelrazik claims to have suffered at the hands of the Sudanese government. He has the scars to prove it, in fact, but the Justice Department claims his wounds were self-inflicted--tribal scars, said mouthpiece Anne Turley, indicating, at the very least, a profound ignorance of both Africa and of the religion of Islam, which forbids defacing the skin.

Today consisted primarily of a recitation of the facts with which Canadians are now sadly familiar. Yavar Hameed, chief counsel, argued his case on the basis of Section 6.1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms: "Every citizen of Canada has the right to enter, remain in and leave Canada." The question before the court, he said, came down to Abdelrazik's dependence upon the state to do something to allow him to exercise that right, which, otherwise, remains an abstraction.

Hameed led the court through a dismal list of acts of "procrastination, evasiveness, obfuscation and general bad faith" shown by both the Conservative and predecessor Liberal governments: a litany of broken promises and endlessly moving goalposts, as officials frankly toyed with Abdelrazik, lulling him with false hope while deliberately frustrating him at every turn.

There was the promise of a private charter plane in 2004, then the Sudanese offer to fly him home later that year, the hope of returning later with then-PM Paul Martin who was on an official visit to the Sudan, and 106 Canadian Forces non-stop flights between the two countries while he was marooned there. Somehow these all became "missed opportunities."

More recently, there were the sadistic games played by the Conservative government: first promising him his travel document if he could find an airline willing to fly him; then, when he'd done that, demanding a fully paid up ticket, knowing he was destitute and relying on shadowy anti-terrorist regulations to keep others from buying it for him (a ticket was purchased anyway); and then the execrable Lawrence Cannon invoking "national security" after everything else had blown up in his face.

Abdelrazik's legal representatives are asking for three things:

1) repatriation by any safe means at the government's disposal;
2) that Justice Zinn stay seized of the case until Abdelrazik is on Canadian soil; and
3) solicitor-client costs (which will be discussed after the judge gives his ruling on the application.

The government is up at 9:00am tomorrow. Stay tuned. It won't be pretty.

[H/t "sitsonsix"]

______________________________
*UN resolution 1390, Section 2b: With respect to persons on the list, member states are obligated to "[p]revent the entry into or the transit through their territories of these individuals, provided that nothing in this paragraph shall oblige any State to deny entry into or require the departure from its territories of its own nationals and this paragraph shall not apply where entry or transit is necessary for the fulfilment of a judicial process or the Committee determines on a case by case basis only that entry or transit is justified." [emphasis added]

The TelePrompter Kid

That Barack Obama and his alleged fatal dependency on the TelePrompter, eh? Some screechy right wingers are obsessed with this, even calling him TOTUS, and assigning the latter a blog. The truth is, of course, that Obama talks easily and eloquently with or without the machine, but he also like to give thoughtful answers, so he hesitates on occasion rather than offering the glibness that conservatives apparently prefer. In any case, why the electronic version of speaker's notes is supposed to be a cheat of some kind, I'll never know.

But could Obama's use of this tool have been influenced by somebody else? Former Conservative MP Garth Turner, in his new book Sheeple, offers us a tantalizing clue:

Everywhere [Stephen] Harper went, the big box went with him. Inside were the two stand-up clear panels that reflected the text of the speech being scrolled on the two back-and-white monitors below. Also in the box was the clear plastic podium that travelled to every event, along with the snap-in plastic side panels for the water glass....

...At a late-campaign event in Burlington [the lead-up to the January 2006 election], the crowd of five hundred was kept waiting twenty minutes while campaign workers scrambled to get the box to the front of the room, the podium rushed together, and the cabling in place before Harper was waved in. It was a particularly crucial rally, featuring a feeble but feisty Bill Davis, longtime former PC premier of Ontario, who was there to make Harper look less scary...

Part of the messaging that night involved the use of children, several of whom sat on the carpeted hotel riser at Harper's feet while he spoke. Directly in front of me, one of them insisted on banging her feet back and forth during the talk, until she succeeded in disconnecting the coaxial cable connecting the two monitors feeding the plastic display panels.

The TelePrompter went black, unknown to the techies who could not see it from their vantage point. Harper stuttered an imperceptible amount, and continued his stump speech--already delivered countless times--looking down now at the printed text placed in the three-ring binder before him on the podium. Laureen Harper was next to me. I could sense her growing panic, staring over her husband's shoulder into the darkness where the words should have been. She started looking around discretely for help, but none was near...

[I]t was not going well. Rivulets of sweat has started to appear on the back of the leader's neck, darkening the top of his blue shirt collar. He miscued a joke about Davis, because it was new material and required looking down. Laureen grimaced a little through a smile. The two of them were completely in sync, feeling the stress, aching over the words yet to come, trying to get through an event that should have been routine, unremarkable, forgettable...

Harper made the decision to dump a bunch of pages, cut his losses, and get out. ..The media took no notice, having tuned out when the speech started. Instead those few reporters who still had to file tonight were trying to find something new in this suburban crowd to report on. That ended up being Davis, former icon of moderation, who found himself in a scrum, while Laureen was handing her husband a tissue. [Sheeple, 38-39]

Obama might pause now and then when he talks off the cuff, or even get ahead of his TelePrompter--and have the grace to wave it off with a smile. But, up to now at least, Michelle hasn't had to give him a Kleenex to wipe cold sweat from his neck.

Abdelrazik: the sorry saga continues

While the Conservative government stubbornly insists that marooned Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik may not return home because he would have to travel through the airspace of other countries, a UN official late last week pulled the rug out from under the Harper regime.

Richard Barrett, the UN official responsible for monitoring al-Quaeda, has confirmed that Canada may indeed authorize his return, even if his name is on the UN no-fly list. He emphasized that Abdelrazik is a Canadian citizen, and the government has every right to return him to Canada: the matter, he said, is in the government's hands.

Meanwhile, thanks to Paul Koring at the Globe and Mail, we learn that our secret police, CSIS, have been in this up to their sorry necks from the start. I always thought that their recent claims of being squeaky-clean, and even demanding an investigation of their activities, was protesting a bit too much. Worse, it looks as though they interrogated Abdelrazik on their own hook, keeping Foreign Affairs in the dark.

In any case, even that unsavoury crew has now given him a clean bill of health. The only thing that stands between Abdelrazik and reunion with his family in Canada, it seems is the paranoia--and manifest racism--of the Harper government.

Note: The Globe and Mail ran a wonderful editorial on this case and the rule of law last week (which, I can't help but observe, looks somewhat familiar). The points made are powerful, and are a good summing-up of the disturbing features and consequences of the government's arbitrary and illegal actions.

LibCon 2009: eco-friendly turtles and afterthoughts

Gotta love Vancouver.

The room service menu at the Hotel Vancouver has an entire page devoted to human companions. Tasty snacks and serious meals are available for dawgs, and, for some reason, cats. I had to phone down about the "eco-friendly turtles" on the menu, however: turns out they're a plush toy made of recycled materials for the canines. Bravo, Hotel Vancouver: I'm truly impressed. And your white labs in the lobby have been a joy to meet.

But back to LibCon 2009.

This Convention, unlike the Conservative one in Winnipeg, was open and transparent to the media from day one; but it's easy to be transparent when there's nothing much to see. The event was symbolic, not substantial--intended to mark a turning-point for the Liberal Party and rally the troops. In the latter, it clearly succeeded: delegates left the Convention obviously pumped. Whether or not this is a true point of departure, a brand-new direction for the Liberals, however, remains to be seen.

Certainly the polls are starting to move in their favour, and a further post-Convention bounce is likely. Michael Ignatieff's message of unity may well resonate with Canadians, badly affected by the recession, who might be a little tired at this point of Stephen Harper's antagonistic style, not to mention his floundering in the midst of a crisis. But what future are we really being offered?

On reflection, I realize that I was overly dismissive of Ignatieff's speech to the delegates yesterday evening. Not because it contained much substance--it didn't--but because its primary theme, a new way of doing politics that seeks compromise and collaboration instead of confrontation, was delivered with sufficient passion to make its mark. In addition, his notion of belonging to the imagined community of Canada in various ways versus a narrow patriotism is well worth exploring: in it, perhaps, we can see the end of formulaic multiculturalism on one hand, and ruthless assimilationism on the other.

But these are merely words. We have heard these lofty visionary statements before from the Liberal Party: the reality has been that its famed pragmatism soon ceases to be in the service of vision, and becomes instead a series of disjointed tactics for winning and maintaining power. Liberals oppose from the left and govern from the right as the old saying has it, and I saw nothing over the past few days that promises anything better.

I attended today's press conference with Ignatieff. He was clear on one or two issues: for example, he promised to bring in one national standard for EI, likely to be 360 hours of work as the eligibility threshhold. EI restrictions and 54 different eligibility standards presently existing across the country are a sore point for Canadians at the moment, and the Liberals clearly hope to tap the rising anger. It is likely to be a key issue in the days ahead. But this will be only a temporary measure to help Canadians weather the recession.

His party will press ahead with a cap-and-trade system to address the issue of greenhouse gases: it will not introduce a carbon tax.

I had the opportunity to ask him a question about the asbestos issue, since he has been dancing around it for weeks: now that the Health Canada report on asbestos is in the public domain, will he and his party take a final, definitive stand on the export of this carcinogen to the Third World? His reply is a textbook example about what's wrong with Liberal politics, renewal or no renewal.

What I got in response was a series of disjointed talking points. They're taking asbestos out of the Parliament buildings, so there must be something wrong with it. Of course Canada shouldn't be exporting anything that can harm others. Science must drive this issue, but, he said, there is substantial disagreement on the dangers of chrysotile asbestos.

In fact there is no more "substantial disagreement" about the dangers of chrysotile than there is about global warming, despite the claims of the Chrysotile Institute and those of the climate change deniers respectively. If science is really to drive policy on this, then Ignatieff should stop trolling for votes and start boning up on the literature. He might begin with the aforementioned 16pp Health Canada report.

On April 1, Ignatieff stated: "[W]e have an obligation to international agreements to the countries that we export to, to make them aware of the risks." This appeared to me at the time to be a substantial withdrawal from his more forthright statement on March 28: "Our export of this dangerous product overseas has to stop." And so it is: but he reiterated the former statement this morning. Does this signal an intention to place chrysotile asbestos on the Rotterdam Convention list of toxic substances, something Canada has been fighting against for years?

Ignatieff also stated that this is a matter of some concern to Quebec, where the toxic mineral is mined, and that his party would have to work with the unions; he compared the issue to tobacco, in an attempt to make it look complex and difficult to resolve quickly. But we are talking here about all of 700 part-time jobs. Surely the proven lethality of the product should be all that is required to make a clear statement of intent.

This, in a nutshell, is what's wrong with Liberal discourse. It's all hints and suggestions that can be taken any way at all. Because straight talk is so rare from these folks, we are forced into a process of divination. An asbestos worker in Quebec listening to Ignatieff this morning would have been heartened; so might apolitical opponents of asbestos exports, or supporters of the Rotterdam Convention. A journalist at the presser thought she had heard a clear indication that Ignatieff would ban the production and export of asbestos.

Yet I can find nothing in his words that indicate a commitment to do anything at all. Uniting, bridging, unifying: concretely this would appear to be the same old "all things to all people" approach that Liberals have used for decades to gull the voters.

And so, by the end of this Convention, having met some simpatico bloggers and delegates and had a pleasant enough time, I nevertheless find myself looking forward to returning to a real world of unequivocal talk and commitment. I've had quite enough snake oil for the moment, although the hunger of the electorate for it has historically been insatiable. Renewal? I don't see it. Just a renewed determination to put the same old same old into the driver's seat. And sadly, I think they're on the brink of pulling it off.

LibCon 2009: liveblogging Iggy

Former human rights advocate Michael Ignatieff is now leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, by a 97% vote (there were some spoiled ballots).

With the inevitable boosting and fawning overtures, the man who would be king has just assumed the stage to give his acceptance speech. I am alone here in the bloggers' room, hoping to avoid serious aura contamination.

6:30 "I'll give this job everything I've got...our time has come...unity in diversity..."

6:34 "We will lead you back to prosperity."

6:39 Much talk about "the Canadian way." EI reform is on the table. We need a knowledge society, where what counts is what you know--not who you know." A society with accessible childcare: one where "women get equal pay for work of equal value." (This although he abandoned the concept just weeks ago by supporting Harper's Bill C-10, which makes pay equity negotiable and punishes unions that try to represent members who seek it.)

6:40 Ignatieff wants a Canada where every aboriginal can have a "world-class, not a second class education." No to illiteracy, disability not a barrier, training for the unemployed....

6:47 Support for training and for research.

6:48 We offer tolerance and diversity and citizenship to a troubled and sometimes tormented world. People can belong in their own way....

6:52 We are a serious people....Where there is no peace to keep we will fight.

6:54 (speaks directly to Stephen Harper): "You have played province against province, group against group, region against region, individual against individual." "You don't understand Canada." While Harper divides, a leader should unite the people of this country. "Mr. Harper, you have failed us."

6:56 We can build on the basis of cooperation, not confrontation. "We can...yes, we can." (Good grief.) "Let us dare to dream, but let us also dare to act." We are "a great people with a great future."

[The speech ends. A flood of clichés with nuggets of policy, or are they even that? What does Ignatieff stand for--really? Pay equity if necessary, but not necessarily pay equity? Peace or war? Setting an example for the world, or sacrificing poor people on the altar of free trade with Columbia and deadly asbestos imports to India?

Your guess is as good as mine. But guess it is.

In fairness, an address of this kind is not meant to do much more than inspire and uplift with personal vision. But in this case I found that vision--other than the "we unite, the Conservatives divide" theme--to be vague and unsatisfying, for the most part boilerplate Liberal rhetoric mixed with ambiguous intentions.

Comments are welcome, especially from those who listened to the speech.

LibCon 2009: One Member, One Vote...sort of

By an overwhelming margin, the delegates have passed a form of "one member, one vote" to determine the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada from now on. Earlier today, until the polls closed, delegates voted for Michael Ignatieff--the only name on the ballot.

I have always had problems with OMOV, and fought against it at an NDP Convention a few years back, but to no avail. The phrase, once "one man, one vote," is so deeply encoded in our political, social and cultural DNA that it seems no longer susceptible to rational argument. (I put the picture of Nelson Mandela up for a reason.) Yet I don't believe that one can simply apply that noble concept everywhere.

Another cliché that we live by is the "level playing field." But in the case at hand, the two concepts are utterly antagonistic. OMOV in a political party is virtually a guarantee that the incumbent will remain in place until he or she dies or chooses to step down. Without a substantial war-chest, a challenger is dead in the water: lacking the daily exposure of the incumbent, and the means to travel all over the country to talk to rank-and-file members even if no incumbent runs, he or she cannot hope to succeed.

Under a delegate system, people are chosen by their riding associations and are, at least ideally, accountable to them. They go to Convention where they have the opportunity to make their voices heard under one roof, and to have a serious run for election. While they are unlikely to prevail if they simply "come off the floor," they have considerably more opportunity to present themselves and their ideas by actively engaging other delegates, and they can do so with far fewer resources.

Moreover, complicating things further, the system just adopted by the Liberals isn't really "one member, one vote" at all. Every riding association has been placed on an equal footing, so that the votes from a 100-member association will count for the same as those from a 10,000-member one. A single Liberal member in the former will have 100 times the voting power as one in the latter. That's OMOV in name only.

The latter point was indeed raised during the foreshortened debate that ensued. But the fix was in. Bob Rae thundered clichés at the mic: "The Liberal Party is your party, not a private club...it belongs to all the people of Canada...". "Make every vote count," said Belinda Stronach, who assured the delegation that she had "always considered the Liberal Party the party of the people of Canada." [!] None of the remarks had any direct, logical bearing upon the issue at hand. But that seldom matters in this sort of debate.

If a Liberal leader had an (admittedly slim) chance of being unseated before, the new system has ensured that the leader is politically impregnable. Welcome to the era of Michael Ignatieff, unchallenged today--and unchallengeable tomorrow.

LibCon 2009: human rights and wrongs

Resolutions today! With two delegates permitted to debate the "pro" side and two the "con."

Resolution 124 in the Priority Policy Resolutions book proposed that two new grounds of discrimination be added to the Canadian Human Rights Act: "type of citizenship status" and "socioeconomic class." It also supported providing the Commission with the ability to follow up and enforce its rulings. It was a confusing resolution, it must be said, with many wrinkles, including making the CHRC accountable to Parliament, which (lawyer Jason Cherniak tells me) is impossible: a judicial body cannot be made accountable to a legislative one.

But the debate, as is often the case, was not about the resolution. It was about the very existence of human rights commissions.

Speakers for the negative had evidently been provided with talking points by the Conservative Party of Canada, wittering on about "abuses" and a "100% conviction rate" and whatnot. (No one is "convicted" under any human rights act, and the "100%," inaccurate even in context, refers exclusively to Section 13 complaints under the CHRA.) Some delegates may have reacted to that sort of thing: in any event, badly constructed as it was, the motion passed.

One delegate in favour was my old friend Wendy Robbins, presently the Coordinator of Women's Studies at the University of New Brunswick. As an academic, she fought discrimination in the awarding of Canada Research Chairs, and a complaint from her and several other professors before the Canadian Human Rights Commission in 2004 led to a mediated settlement in 2006. Yet the problem persists, she informed me: a CHRC with more enforcement power might have been able to resolve the matter more effectively.

Wouldn't "socioeconomic class" create difficulties, such as landlords being subject to complaints from tenants evicted for nonpayment of rent? In her view such a provision would obviously need further definition, but we should look at the problem more broadly. If Ford can suspend monthly car payments when a purchaser loses his or her job, she said, the state should be able to expand that principle to ensure that no one goes without shelter if they become unable to pay for it.

As for the resolution in its entirety, she agreed that there were many things wrong with it. But, as noted, it wasn't being debated.

Next post: One Member, One Vote...sort of

LibCon 2009: bridges and transitions

Transitioning from the PSAC Convention to the Liberal Convention just upstairs at the Vancouver Convention Centre proved to be less than serene--mild culture shock set in almost immediately.

It appears that I'm the only non-Liberal blogger here, but I did run into Impolitical, and Danielle Takacs of Galloping Around the Golden Horseshoe, Steve V., Woman at Mile 0 and Runesmith, inter alia, as well as the helpful Jason Cherniak, so I do have some people to talk to on occasion.

I took in some of a policy panel called "Canada and the World: Earning our Place at the Table," chaired by Bob Rae and Denis Coderre. Bill Graham spoke at length about "Liberal values," which appear to mean in this instance being above the fray and helping to "bridge irreconcilable differences." Then I went outside into the sunny air and discovered what he meant.

A demonstration a few meters from the Centre, small but passionate, was in full swing. Its theme: Just Say No. It seems that the Harper government, with Liberal support, is poised to ratify a free trade agreement between Canada and the murderous narco-state of Colombia.

Speaker after speaker noted the rising number of killings at the hands of Colombia's roving paramilitaries and regular forces: trade unionists, aboriginal leaders and human rights advocates are fair game for this regime. Of all the trade unionists killed around the world, 70% of them are Colombian. The government of Alvaro Uribe deigns to investigate about 3% of them, as a public relations gesture.

Uribe has extradited some of the most notorious Colombian paramilitary leaders to the US, but there is more to this than meets the eye. Ensuing trials will conceal much more than they are likely to reveal, including the close links between the Colombian government and its extra-judicial death squads.

More than four million of the poorest Colombians have been displaced, their land stolen out from under them by government forces, to make way for lucrative tourist resorts. Some of the tactics used to eliminate inconvenient civilians have been inventive, such as the "false positives" initiative, in which victims of the Colombian armed forces are dressed up in guerilla uniforms after they are murdered. Indigenous peoples find themselves between a rock and a hard place, targeted by FARC (the guerillas in the country) and government forces alike.

Harper claims that it's foolish to demand that human rights issues be resolved before trade relations are established, and the Liberals have traditionally been open to that kind of argument as well. Bilateral and multilateral agreements to enrich business--which is what free trade really amounts to--is alleged to improve the human rights climate under oppressive regimes.

Someone's going to have to draw me a map on that one. Given that countries like Colombia are presently improving business conditions by smashing trade unions, murdering or imprisoning their leaders and activists and creating a docile labour force by these and other means, it's hard to see why increased trade opportunities should offer anything to those workers but more of the same, and no examples to the contrary ever seem to be forthcoming.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have sounded the alarm about the worsening conditions in that country, not only for trade unionists but for activists of all stripes. The House of Commons Standing Committee on International Trade has recommended that a human rights impact assessment be carried out and the findings addressed before the FTA with Colombia is ratified.

But don't hold your breath. Former human rights advocate Michael Ignatieff has a bridge to build.

Asbestos and the Iggy Jig

Former human rights advocate Michael Ignatieff is still tripping the light fantastic on the asbestos issue--but he's failing to keep time.

I noted in an earlier post that his position on the export of the carcinogenic mineral asbestos shifted within a single week. Now he's back at it, now claiming that no final position can be taken until a delayed Health Canada report becomes available.

Says Ignatieff: “The government has a study on chrysotile asbestos they have not released. They should release that and then we can resolve this once and for all.”

The trouble is, the report in question was released to the public last month.

As Ignatieff struggles to keep up, his party just days ago supported the Conservatives on the House Standing Committee on Natural Resources by approving the gift of a quarter of a million dollars to the Quebec-based Chrysotile Institute, which pimps for the industry.

Meanwhile, we continue to export 200,000 tons of the poison to the Third World every year , with catastrophic consequences. Unfortunately for them, the suffering populations in question contain no potential votes for the Liberal Party of Canada.

[H/t Accidental Deliberations]