Dancing with Republicans

Worth framing:

I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an agreement on dinner plans with your date, and you suggest Italian and she states her preference would be a meal of tire rims and anthrax. If you can figure out a way to split the difference there and find a meal you will both enjoy, you can probably figure out how bipartisanship is going to work the next few years. --John Cole, Balloon Juice

[via David Ljunggren]

Welcome to Ottawa, Mr. President. Nice to get away for a bit, eh?

Atheist ads: fear and loathing at OC Transpo [updated]

Ottawa has joined two other cities--Victoria and Halifax--in an Axis of Benightedness.* The decision has been made: no atheist ads on our buses.

Canadian Cynic has a good account of OC Transpo official John Donaldson's prevarications. But thanks to Councillor Alex Cullen and the Ottawa Citizen, we can, thankfully, cut to the chase.

OC Transpo discriminates.

It turns out that the wretched officials over there have already approved religious bus ads, which could be appearing shortly.

In 2007, OC Transpo approved ads for Bus Stop Bible Studies, a campaign on panels inside buses quoting scripture and asking life’s big questions. Roughly 2,400 ads have run in Calgary, Burlington and Toronto, but the sponsor has not yet raised enough money to place the ads on Ottawa buses.

The sponsor of the ads seems like a stand-up guy:

Though the group hasn’t yet run the Bible-quoting ads in Ottawa, its founder is puzzled city staff’s rejection of the atheists ads.

“I don’t follow the logic,” said Bus Stop Bible Studies founder David Harrison. “Why would they approve ours and not theirs? If we don’t stand up for (the atheists’) rights, ours will be trampled too.”

Meanwhile, Donaldson continues to make it up as he goes along :

OC Transpo frequently rejects ads that might be considered sexist or show “inappropriate body images,” Donaldson said.

“We receive complaints about advertising material of all kinds of different subjects,” Donaldson said. “The same thing applies — if people are offended, and let us know about it, then there’s a provision in the contract to ...remove it.”

But clearly this sexist tripe** is perfectly all right with him.

Now OC Transpo's blatant double standards have been dragged into the pitiless glare of the noontime sun, this story may soon be concluded. But in the meantime, why not send an email (John.Donaldson@ottawa.ca) to let OC Transpo know what you think of their rank hypocrisy. And don't forget to copy it to Councillor Alex Cullen, Chair of Ottawa City Council's Transit Committee (Alex.Cullen@ottawa.ca).

UPDATE: (February 18) The Ottawa City Council Transit Committee has met. By a vote of 3 to 3, and for want of a majority, Councillor Alex Cullen's motion to permit atheist advertising on buses was defeated. On the side of the angels--so to speak--were Councillors Cullen, George Bedard and Jacques Legendre. The knuckle-draggers who prevailed were Rainer Bloess, Doug Thompson and Marianne Wilkinson.

The matter is going to the full City Council on March 11. For God's sake Please write to the Ottawa City Councillors and the Mayor, and remind them about the benefits of public debate in a democracy, the problem with OC Transpo's blatant double standards, what century we're living in, etc.

UPPERDATE: (February 19) CC got to it first, but this comment from the fossilized Marianne Wilkinson deserves quoting, without further comment:

I don’t think we should be demeaning people in advertising at OC Transpo. I think the words are offensive to everyone who believes in God, regardless of what religion they are. To me, as a Christian, it is demeaning. It grates on me.

________________

*Three other cities, in fact. Somehow I missed Vancouver. [H/t commenter beluga2]

**Virgin Radio has now pulled its ads voluntarily--no thanks to the selective censors at OC Transpo.[H/t The Fifth Column]

The Silence of the Speech Warriors™

My alma mater, not so alma in my eyes at the moment, has just banned the poster reproduced here from display during Israeli Apartheid Week. This is just the latest example of the suppression of pro-Palestinian voices on Canadian campuses.

The poster is provocative, certainly, although not in the same league as the Holocaust porn being peddled by the "pro-life" folks at the moment. Carleton University's administration, however, believes that the "image could be seen to incite others to infringe rights protected in the Ontario human rights code." For the life of me, I can't see how. As a reader of mine notes, "If it's OK for a cartoon to depict Mohammed as a terrorist, what's wrong with this?"

My goodness. A campus ban on free expression. Even a tasty mention of a "human rights code!" Tailor-made for the Speech Warriors™, and they've boldly leapt into action...

Er, no.

Perhaps they're still tired after orgiastic late-night partying to celebrate the punishment of the Canadian Arab Federation because its leader called Jason Kenney a name.

[H/t reader "forgottobuytinfoil]

UPDATE: (February 19) More. And the Western Standard's Terrence Watson rises to the challenge. (But he's different.)

And do check out Kateland's riposte at Dust My Broom. I'd like to respond, but I'm banned there.* Suffice it to say that her account is flawed in a number of respects: it uses dubious testimony, and incidents elsewhere, to justify the suppression of a poster on the campus of Carleton University. One doesn't have to be a free speech absolutist to see where that kind of argument leads us.

UPPERDATE: Silent no more. Speech Warrior™ Deborah Gyapong is outraged. Shorter Gyapong: "The CBC calls this a free speech issue? But...but...the human rights commissions!"
__________
*Whoops--it was cross-posted from her place, which is where I shall respond.

Feminists, go to Hell

...you're needed.

"The men, it seems, are the ones whose souls end up being pelted with fire and brimstone, while the women's souls are more likely to be broken on a wheel."

Maybe Richard Dawkins has a point after all.

A professional whore lashes back

Jason Kenney, our Minister of Immigration, is poised to slash funds for a resettlement program in Toronto that teaches new immigrants language and job-seeking skills. Was it not functioning properly? Was the money being misspent?

Not at all. Kenney is upset because the head of the Canadian Arab Federation, the recipient of the grant, called him a name.

95% of those who benefit from the CAF's Toronto program are non-Arab, not that that is in any way relevant. This petty, vindictive act of tyranny would hardly be more palatable if it struck only at one ethnic group. But it goes to show how cavalierly and arbitrarily the Minister is exercising his remit. It is clearly reminiscent of the cancellation of arts programs before the last election, done explicitly because the Cons didn't like the politics of some of the recipients. Nothing, it seems, has changed.

Of course, the Speech Warriors™ are going to the wall to defend...ah, no, they're not. Demonstrating the unbearable lightness of principle for which they have become notorious, they're lustily cheering on the sidelines for Jason Kenney, presently nursing his hurt feelings. As Ed Anger might say, these folks are having it both ways with more abandon than delegates at a swingers' convention.

So now it's out in the open--recipients of government grants are to be muzzled. They might have met all the written criteria for the programs in which they applied, winning their funding fair and square, but they will be singled out for rejection solely on political grounds.

At least Kenney's being honest and upfront about it. That's more than can be said for the aforementioned self-appointed defenders of free speech, who lose no time defending state suppression of it when it's Muslims rather than their neo-Nazi poster children who are at the receiving end.

Animal tales

...somehow the drunk fits quite naturally into this narrative. Pure poetry. Great concluding line.

Does not compute

From time to time, a few of us have unkindly referred to Stephen Harper and his ministers as robots. We didn't mean it literally, of course. But could it be that we've inadvertently stumbled onto something?

From Aaron Wherry via Chris Selley, and worth repeating here:

Mr. Paul Crête (Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, BQ):

Mr. Speaker, despite endless urging from the opposition parties and members of all sectors of civil society, the Conservative government is still stubbornly refusing to repatriate young Omar Khadr to Canada. Worse yet, the Prime Minister refuses to even raise the matter with President Obama when he visits, according to one of his spokespersons. We are talking here of a child soldier, imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for more than six years now and subjected to acts of torture.

Does the Prime Minister understand that he has a moral duty to discuss with President Obama the arrangements for repatriating this young Canadian citizen, Omar Khadr?

Will he do this or will he sink—

The Speaker:

The hon. Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, our position regarding Mr. Khadr remains unchanged. Mr. Khadr faces serious charges that include murder, attempted murder and terrorism.

We continue to closely monitor this situation, including the work of the American committee formed to study the fate of the detainees, including Mr. Khadr. Any speculation is premature at this time.

Mr. Paul Crête (Montmagny—L'Islet—Kamouraska—Rivière-du-Loup, BQ):

Mr. Speaker, the Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions comes into effect on March 18, 2007. Guided by Quebec, Canada signed that convention along with 95 other countries.

Since the United States has not yet signed, does the Prime Minister intend to put this on the agenda when he meets with President Obama, in order to convince him to sign the convention?

Mr. Deepak Obhrai (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, CPC):

Mr. Speaker, I will say this again. Our position regarding Mr. Khadr remains unchanged. Mr. Khadr faces serious charges, including murder. We continue to closely monitor the situation, including the work of the American committee formed by President Obama to study the fate of detainees, including Mr. Khadr.

The whole series of exchanges is worth a read (scroll down). Mr. Data, please report to the infirmary.

A conservative manifesto

...with feeling. And a conservative book praising white supremacists. Meanwhile the Usual Suspects™ witter on about that phantasmal, oxymoronic contruction, "liberal fascism."

Starting to look mighty like a diversion, folks.

[H/t Vanity Press and LGF via CC.]

Tainted meat inquiry

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency whistleblower who told his union last summer about plans to cut already-stretched resources for meat inspection is still unemployed. CFIA scientist Luc Pomerleau found the information on a server accessible to 5,000 people or so, and was fired for passing the item on to his union for discussion at a labour-management joint consultation session.

Because Stephen Harper doesn't want the public to know the danger they're in. Bad for business.

By no coincidence, that document surfaced just as Canadians were being poisoned and killed by tainted meat products: the listeriosis scandal. This appears, in fact, to be an on-going problem. But no lessons have been learned, it seems: even more "self-regulation" is planned, this time in the poultry industry, and senior veterinarians are sounding the alarm.

Meanwhile, there are two parallel inquiries about the listeriosis outbreak in play at the moment, a fake one and a real one.

The fake one, naturally, is happening under the aegis of the Conservative government. My old friend Bob Kingston has all the gory details of the current inspection regime here, and he's not too impressed with a behind-closed-doors investigation by a gagged researcher without the power to subpoena witnesses or to compel testimony. The redoubtable Sheila Weatherill is not only without the tools to do her job properly--she's in a clear conflict of interest as well. Like some of the uninspected products leaving our processing plants, this "investigation" simply doesn't pass the sniff test.

Here's the real one. Given the support of all three opposition parties on the House of Commons agriculture committee, it's likely to be approved later this week. In the meantime, before you tuck into that yummy sandwich, you just might want to consider using a Conservative as an official taster.

Soft drinks on parade

Just drink it, already, and stop complaining. OK, you can have this one instead.

Anyone wonder why I stick to beer?

No, not that beer.

I won! I won!

...and that's not, of course, without its risks. But I've been nominated (which seems to mean the same thing as actually winning) for something called a Premio Dardos award. This arrives courtesy of none other than The Phantom Observer, who lives on the other side of the aisle.

The award is "a blogging achievement that is given for recognition of cultural, ethical, literary, and personal values transmitted in the form of creative and original writing."

The rule, for this ill-concealed meme, is to pick five other bloggers to receive the award, each of whom must display the illo and pick five more bloggers, and....I smell a Ponzi scheme in there somewhere, but here goes.

Given Phantom's even-handedness, this author feels compelled to wander across the spectrum in search of his five characters. Let me start with the handsome stylist Dred Tory, who avoids all pigeonholes--a red Tory who likes Baudrillard--and whom I wish would post more often. Come on, Sir Francis, it's been nearly a month now! Maybe this award will be the fillip he needs.

And no such list would be complete if Stageleft and Balbulican were omitted. Not only is the writing consistently excellent over there, but the combox discussions are generally at a level of sophistication that shows what is possible when there is goodwill on all sides.

And in that same vein, although I doubt he will pass to nominations of his own, I nominate David Thompson, a British "muscular liberal" commentator (on the Right, where I sit, although he objects to that description) who runs one of the most elegant blogs in the 'sphere, truly a thing of beauty. I agree with barely a word the man says, but he says it so well.

Jon Swift deserves the nod, too. Grace, style, a satirical wit, and I don't believe his claim to be conservative for one minute. And I'm a sucker for the lolcatz thing, as old a ploy as it may be by now.

Dear me! Not very gender-balanced here. And so many fine people will inevitably be left out. It's like choosing five people from your grade-school class to go to your birthday party. As I said, there are risks in this enterprise. I may lose friends over this. But I can't quit now.

Back to gender. No list of this sort would be complete without the addition of CathieFromCanada. She sings unnoticed, like a bird, pulling the kernels off the daily cob for our reading pleasure (or displeasure). A good, meaty review of the world, loads of good links, and it should be on everybody's must-read list.

Well, that's it! So much for my get-back-to-work resolution.

*ducks*

UPDATE: Whoops! I didn't consult my co-blogger!

*ducks*

Sunday bits and pieces

A few stray threads in life's rich pattern. Then I really must get some work done, with some forays into comboxes, mind you.

• Downturn in Dubai. Foreigners flee the emirate in droves to avoid debtors' prisons.The airport has become a huge used car lot, some of the vehicles containing notes of apology and maxed-out credit cards.
  
  
• Now God, stand up for (Fascist) bastards! [Via JJ] A disruptive student sues everyone in sight after a professor stops him in the middle of a homophobic rant with a memorable phrase that makes me feel positively nostalgic.
  
  
• Bleeding fingernails: the Coleman saga continues. But could the Minnesota Senatorial election be a tie?
  
  
• Graft in Iraq: who knew? An investigation is underway. All that and one million dead Iraqis. Oh, and Blackwater. And Abu Ghraib. And Haditha. Suck air and grab clusters, Iraqi survivors, knowing that you "have been about as thoroughly liberated as it is possible for a [people and a country] to be."
  
  
• Where is running in an election undemocratic? Why, in Venezuela, of course. Hugo Chávez wants the right to run for a third term (or more), and the Venezuelans are voting today in a referendum that would allow that. A third term? Undemocratic! Are you listening, Mr. Harper?

What's in a name?

According to Blogging Tory and sometime writer for the National Post Raphael Alexander, it's the difference between being a "Canadian" and a real Canadian.

Some years ago Peter Gzowski (hmm, that last name...I don't know...) famously asked CBC listeners to complete the following sentence in 25 words or less: "As Canadian as..." The winning entry was, "As Canadian as possible under the circumstances." I still get a chuckle out of that, but it's an artful dodge. What makes us Canadian? How do we distinguish Canadians from, well, other people?

Could names be the touchstone? I invite readers to submit names that are "real" Canadian names, as opposed to merely "Canadian" names, and explain what makes those names Canadian. I'm looking forward to this.

Top Censored Stories for 2009

Project Censored has released its annual list of news suppressed--or at least underreported or ignored--by the corporate media.

Grab a coffee and start reading. From one million post-invasion deaths in Iraq, to increasing US subversion in Latin America, to the truth about American food aid, there's enough here to make a progressive's anger turn incandescent. Welcome to the ugly underbelly of globalization, in a world ruled by one superpower.

[H/t StraightGoods.com]

UPDATE: Project Censored is not without its progressive critics. As commenter "forgottobuytinfoil" notes, story #24 is a Trutherist piece, interesting only because it reveals the growth of that industry in Japan. Stories are ranked by a panel of judges, but not chosen by them: rather, the choices are made by students and faculty at Sonoma State University. Caveat lector.

Canadians in faraway places

To begin with, a success story. The slow Canadian takeover of the planet continues: first, it was the sixth President of Latvia, Vaira Vike-Freiberga; now it's the new Prime Minister of Somalia, Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, a Carleton University graduate twice over. A pesky clause in the US Constitution precludes one of our own from being President--for now--but we still control the American airwaves.

However, we are also making a habit of marooning ordinary Canadians in far-off lands, with no such prospects of success. I have written before about Abousfian Abdelrazik, Omar Khadr and Bashir Makhtal. Now we can add another name to the list: Abdihakim Mohamed, the autistic son of Canadian Anab Mohamed Issa.

Mohamed has been stranded in Kenya for three years, while the benighted bureaucrats running Passport Canada have been making one wild excuse after another for refusing to issue him a passport. No, he didn't "lose" his original one: his mother, worried that something might happen to it, brought it back to Canada with her--and it was promptly confiscated by Canadian officials at the Ottawa airport. (It is illegal to carry a passport that does not belong to you.) And that passport has now expired.

Read the whole miserable story here. Odd how this sort of thing never seems to happen to white Canadians, isn't it?

But if we keep exporting our citizens to run other countries, perhaps we can close the circle. Starting in Somalia: Prime Minister Omar Abdirashid Sharmarke, meet your fellow Canadian Abousfian Abdelrazik.* He can use a little help right about now.

UPDATE: Reader Raphael Alexander comments: these people aren't real Canadians--look at their funny names! Alexander, a Blogging Tory, currently writes for the National Post.

______________
*Er...no. I can't believe no one else picked this up, but I must with some embarrassment note that Somalia and Sudan are obviously different countries, separated by Ethiopia. While I have no reason to suppose that the new Somalian President's generosity of spirit would preclude a 1,000-mile journey to visit Mr. Abdelrazik in Khartoum, that wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Mea culpa.

Free speech follies, American edition

I don't know Joe Kaufman. The other day, however, I received an appeal from FrontPageMagazine's David Horowitz (no, I have no idea why I'm on his email list) to contribute funds to his legal defence. It seems he's being sued by "radical Muslims" for defamation, "to stop him from writing about Muslims in the future and to close down his web sites." He has also been served with a restraining order.

From the appeal letter:

Seven Muslim groups claim that Joe is a threat. They convinced a court that Joe "intends to threaten to take unlawful action...cause bodily injury...or threaten Plaintiffs or their members with immediate bodily injury."

Those Muslim rascals. How did they manage all that in the Land of the Free? In any case, this FrontPageMag writer somehow hasn't managed to get the lawsuit thrown out a year and a half later, and he's facing considerable legal fees. Back to David:

A victory by the Muslim groups would be the first step in silencing all of us. This is a free speech issue and nothing more: Joe has not lied about, threatened, or touched any of the Muslims who are suing him, or any other Muslims for that matter. He simply reported the truth, and for that these groups are doing their best to silence him - and to intimidate the rest of us.

The lawsuit against Joe Kaufman is part of a strategy by these Muslim groups to bully us into silence. That's why we cannot let them win. [emphasis in original]

"A free speech issue and nothing more." Well, I don't know the case at all. Maybe Kaufman is on the side of the angels. The way David tells it, anyway, this is one wronged fellow, being persecuted because he's been busy exposing Muslim charitable organizations who've allegedly been funneling money to Hamas and Hezbollah.

But, by the sheerest chance, I discovered that Joe Kaufman himself doesn't share Horowitz's passionate commitment to freedom of speech. It seems that Kaufman has recently been offended by a bus ad, not one promoting atheism this time, but Islam.

The ad campaign, in Broward County and Dade County, Florida, was sponsored by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. The text in question is "ISLAM: The Way of Life of Abraham, Moses, Jesus and Muhammad." A CAIR spokesman explains: "A Muslim is anyone who submits their will to God. By that definition Abraham and all the prophets are Muslim because they submitted their will to God."

Kaufman, who runs an outfit called Americans Against Hate, petitioned Broward County officials to remove the ad, calling it "offensive." They refused, so he organized a rally last month to "send a message."

According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel:

Kaufman writes for the right-leaning Web publication Front Page Magazine, and once called for nuclear attacks on Syria, Afghanistan and Iraq. Since founding Americans Against Hate as a terrorism watchdog group, he wrote that "pure merciless force" was the only way to deal with Muslims.

Gosh. "A free speech issue and nothing more," eh? Why do I get the feeling that there's maybe a little more to Kaufman's current travails than David Horowitz is letting on?

UPDATE: Seems my suspicions were correct. Reader "forgottobuytinfoil" directs us to considerably more information about the case in question. The restraining order was to keep this wingnut from disrupting a Muslim Family Day at an amusement park.

RCMP: who's in charge?

Yesterday RCMP Commissioner William Elliott announced that Taser use by his officers would be restricted. His announcement was not without equivocation--he wouldn't admit that Tasers actually kill people, it's just that people die after being Tasered--but he was relatively clear on one point: Tasers should only be used "where there is a threat, either to our officers or to members of the public."

What constitutes such a "threat" remains vague, as critics from the Liberals and the NDP were not slow to point out. But the Commissioner did appear to clarify, stating that Taser use is now to be restricted to situations in which the only alternative is to use a firearm.

Up to now, it could be, and frequently was, deployed when individuals were deemed to be "actively resistant." That notion has been extended to include an old man in a hospital bed, a young Inuk girl already handcuffed to her cell floor, a woman with kids on her lap, and a Native person refusing to remove his ceremonial necklace. As the National Post put it, Tasers have become "a convenient fallback for police seeking a quick end to unpleasant situations."

Will Elliott's new guidelines reverse the trend of steadily-increasing Taser use by his force? Will they rein in the lazy or sadistic officers who have been deploying Tasers as a hi-tech cattle prod?

One might find some cautious grounds for optimism in his announcement. But he evidently doesn't have the last word on the matter. From the Globe and Mail story, buried at the bottom:

Sergeant Scott Warren, chairman of the RCMP's officer safety committee, said the matter is more complicated in real-life situations.

"The commissioner, with all due respect, is incorrect to say we wouldn't use them again for actively resistant people," he told CTV News.

Here is more, from the CTV story:

[A]ccording to Sgt. Scott Warren, the chair of the RCMP's Officer Safety Committee, the so-called new regulations have been drawn up by officials who are out of touch with the realities of street-level policing.

In an interview with CTV's Power Play, Warren also said that the regulations don't adequately address the split-second decisions police must make everyday.

"Sometimes I think the commissioner is in over his head," said Warren, referring to Elliott, who is the first-ever civilian to head the national police force.

Business as usual, in other words. The line officers are prepared to do their own thing, never mind what the boss-man says. Be prepared for more shocking stories to come as this out-of-control organization continues to spiral downwards.

That Shaidle appearance

Yes, she's a frightful bigot. She's everything that my friends are saying she is, and they've got the quotations to prove it. But I'm finding myself conflicted on the flash campaign to get Kathy Shaidle off TVO tonight.

It's not that I'm buying into the Speech Warrior™ shtick. That's largely a bogus campaign to get social-conservative and anti-immigration agendas into the public arena without troublesome obstacles. But I can't help wondering if, on this occasion, we're setting ourselves up.

I'd have less difficulty with this effort if Shaidle were being asked for her views about Muslims, or the Chinese who (according to her) are constantly spitting, leaving cases of rotten vegetables in the streets, and ingesting illegal substances, or the Arabs, or...well, visit Warren Kinsella's site for a more substantial bill of indictment. Staggeringly awful, and utterly lacking in wit or intelligence.

But.

She's being asked for a religious take on the current "atheism on buses" campaign. Kathy kind of abandoned her orthodox Catholicism awhile ago, because it was getting in the way of her nuptials, but TVO seems not to have kept up, inviting her old "Relapsed Catholic" persona onto the show. So we have a possibly post-relapsed Catholic and certified Speech Warrior™ asked to comment on the struggle to place atheist messages on a public transit system.

Lots of neat cultural intersections there. But overall this is a wee bit like asking Ernst Zündel to comment on global warming or the relevance of stamp collecting, isn't it? It reminds me, in fact, of the Monty Python skit in which Karl Marx, Mao, Lenin and Che Guevara take part in a quiz show where they are asked a series of questions about soccer. There's just so much waiting in the wings, never to be called on stage, that we are mesmerized.

Admit it--isn't there possibly some good theatre in all this? Today's Kathy channelling the culture-vulture Kathy that was? The sweating, edge-of-the-seat tension--will she find a way to drag Muslims into the discussion? How will the by-now-forewarned host keep things on track?

Convince me. Maybe I'm just being contrarian. As a taxpayer I don't want to subsidize bigots. But what if the bigots are made to talk about stamp collecting? Atheist advertising? Crocodiles?

It just might prove to be a genuine pulse-pounding pleasure to watch such people writhe in their restraints. For surely Hell is being forced to discuss everything except what matters most to you.

UPDATE: Good grief. I was almost embarrassed for her. She missed an opening to do the anti-Muslim thing, but she called Obama a "Marxist professor." Robert Buckman repeated the phrase, with a classic Brit combination of incredulity and scorn, and at that point people on the panel simply stopped taking her seriously. A bit of flotsam she was, on a sea of serious thought.

Battle scars

Looks like the Plains of Abraham battle re-enactment is not a go. I think that's a pity.

These re-enactments are seldom what they seem. I have mused on them before, getting tripped up, mind you, by not being aware at the time of the sheer scope of these historical re-plays.

One thing for sure: they are not merely pageantry. And for those directly involved, it's not just playing. There is an experiential aspect to it, but I wonder how one could ever compare the original with its copy in that respect. No one dies. The fear is absent. Try to imagine that fear, the fear of being wounded before the word "anaesthesia" was coined. The American Civil War combined pre-anaesthetic medicine with proto-modern weaponry, leading not only to the worst battlefield carnage in its history right to the present (618,000 dead), but also frightful pain and suffering. 112 Unionists and 150 Confederates per thousand were wounded.

The re-enactments don't get at any of this. But that may not be as important as it may seem at first. With respect to the US, I have said that their popularity indicates, at least to me, that the Civil War isn't over. What about the battle of the Plains of Abraham?

The re-enactment of this decisive battle--or was it really decisive?--is not an annual event. In fact, it's the 250th anniversary of the real thing, complete with defiant masked ball and the eventual rout of General Montcalm's forces.

The last one was held a decade ago, when the Parti Québécois was in power, and everything went off without a hitch. But to Quebec souverainistes today, this is an exercise in triumphalism, pure and simple, and they plan to protest the events should they go on.

Everyone seems to be backing away, from the Prime Minister to the premier of Quebec. It's all up to the National Battlefields Commission now. The result, I think, is a foregone conclusion.

Some thoughts: history isn't in the past, but the present. We construct histories, narratizing fragments and imbuing them with meaning thereby.

Memorials and re-enactments are deeply ironic. For example, during the tourist season, the fortress at Louisbourg does daily re-enactments of life as it was when the place belonged to the French. But these are performed by local Nova Scotian English-speakers. The very muteness of Louisbourg speaks volumes. The "living history" here remains a snapshot, life marooned in time, but the French are English. And as they re-enact their historical moment for us, the dramatic irony of that moment is almost palpable. The characters in their period costumes play their roles with gusto, seemingly unaware, as they cheerfully go about their daily business, that theirs is a tragedy as yet to unfold.

As a historical site Louisbourg is a triumphalist construction. The very absence of tension in its (re)presentation ironically underscores that fact, contrasting starkly with the vigorously contested cultural and political debates that are carried on today about the place of Quebec in Confederation. The distancing in time of what is portrayed keeps the "French fact" at a safe remove.

A re-enactment of the battle of the Plains of Abraham, however, has no such remove. I, for one, want it to go ahead. And I want the souverainistes out to protest it, and any federalists who want to support it, and the history buffs, and the media, and the cultural critics. Because all of that, too, is part of the spectacle, the history, the meaning: a battle that is not yet over, carried on by other means.

A din of inequity

The Cons are pressing ahead to make it illegal for federal public service unions to bring pay equity complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission. As reported in today's Globe, there is no indication this will save any money: rather, it's clear that this move is based upon ideological opposition to the very notion of pay equity.

The issue is, instead, supposed to be brought to the bargaining table. And therein lie several problems.

First, the notion of bargaining a right is, or should be, repugnant to Canadians. Pay equity means that women and men are rewarded equally for work of equal value. Wage discrimination against women in an affront: but Harper's crew want to dicker about it. That's a bit like putting women's right to vote on the table: what, every election? Why not every second one? After reaching the age of 30?

Secondly, current legislation does not permit classification grievances: classification is the prerogative of the employer. But that's precisely what's caused all the problems in the past: federal public service classification schemes have been laden with implicit sexist value-judgments. It took a Canadian Human Rights Tribunal and the courts to blast their way through that thicket. Currently, classification grievances only go through an administrative process in which the employer has the last word. There is no third-party adjudication.

Finally, this is placing federal public service unions in an impossible position. Unions are to be made equally responsible with employers in achieving pay equity at the bargaining table. But, as we all know, the two parties are not on a level playing field. One party can, if arduous conditions are met, go out on strike--assuming that pay equity is a strikeable issue among the membership. The other can bring far more pressure to bear, up to and including back-to-work legislation. Yet, if an individual decides to bring a successful complaint of her own outside the collective bargaining process--a complaint that unions are to be prevented from backing--the union could be held jointly liable.

To add insult to injury, Treasury Board chief Victor Toews is weeping crocodile tears at the moment about the costs and delays inherent in the current process. Those costs and delays, of course, have arisen precisely because Treasury Board, under both Conservative and Liberal administrations, has traditionally fought pay equity complaints every step of the way, spending millions of the taxpayers' money to do so.

On top of that little bit of hypocrisy, the Conservatives are extolling the efficacy of collective bargaining just as they are presently engaged in rolling back signed collective agreements.

No word as yet from Ignatieff's Liberals.