April Reign

Speak your mind even if your voice shakes

Canada

Judge Not! Lest ye be shown to be an idiot!

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Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin
Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin
Claiming to represent one million plus nutbars Canadians, a group of no-lifers brought a complaint against Justice Beverley McLachlin.

Faced with an official complaint she be removed from office for revealing “bias” and a “political agenda,” Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin yesterday defended – and clarified – her role as head of a committee that recommended Dr. Henry Morgentaler receive the Order of Canada.

McLachlin said she doesn’t normally take part in the committee’s voting process – except to break a tie – and, “contrary to what has been reported,” doesn’t drive the closed-door debates over which nominees should be accorded the honour.

“Some idea was put out by – I don’t know who, some rumour or some source – that somehow the chair leads the discussion,” she told reporters at a news conference after a speech to the Canadian Bar Association’s governing council. “That’s just not the case.”

SOURCE

When will these people stop with their lies, obfuscations and slander? Well probably never. It is their modus operandi.

With no facts at hand and no basis in reality, they make up their own ‘facts’ and create their own ‘reality’ which they then try to foist on others.

This fundamentalist fetus fetishist freak out is getting old. Equally so their smearing spit speckled epistles and schmaltzy characterizations of every fertilized egg as perfectly white, pink cheeked, pudgy, progeny.

Your right to practice (and some of you could use the practice) religion ends at my right not to.

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Text from the Government: F*ck You!

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Harper and his band of scary men couldn’t even try to look like they gave a shit about Canadians on a small issue such as this.

But Prentice said in a statement Friday that after meeting with the two companies, he was “assured that customers charged for spam could contact their service provider to have the charges removed from their bills.”

“Given these undertakings by Bell Mobility and Telus, I would encourage consumers dissatisfied with existing plans to seek alternatives. The telecommunications market in Canada is dynamic — choice is available,” he said.

CBC

Choice is available, be sure to make the right one at the polls.

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pssst…Right wingers…over here

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Right wingers like to paint doomsday scenarios of Canada’s Health Care system. Pointing to our neighbours to the south they wail about personal responsibility and the way it should be. I’ve never understood personal responsibility and health care..you do get that catch a cold is just a phrase…right?

Over at the Apophatic Attic there is a post comparing the the Canadian and US health systems and guess what? You are actually paying fewer tax dollars and reaping more rewards under the Health Care Act. Bet that’s a kick in the head.

I never realised the US government pays for ANY health care, let alone 45% of total health care expenditures. I thought, due to my leftist prejudice, that the government just left sick people completely at the mercy of the private sector. So for a moment I was pretty impressed. But then math kicked in again, just as it did when I was contemplating Labour’s welfare reform plans.

70.2% of $3463 is $2431.03
45.1% of $6347 is $2862.50

What does this mean?

The US government already spends $431.47 more per capita on health care than the Canadian government.

Read it and be educated.

Rights, the Right doesn’t believe in them

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Can you afford your rights?
Can you afford your rights?
In April of last year I blogged about the Court Challenges Program and this quote;
Rainer Knopff, a political scientist at the University of Calgary, said the program was “a biased boondoggle that had gone well past its `best before’ date.”

The program only funded groups on “one side” of the political spectrum while “socially conservative groups never got any money. Not a penny, as far as I know,” said Knopff.
He also echoed then-Treasury Board president John Baird’s suggestion, made in defending the decision to kill the program, that it made no sense for Ottawa to spend public money helping groups challenge its own legislation.
“I don’t want to pay for surrogate litigants,” said Knopff, arguing public interest groups should raise their own money for Charter cases. “If they can’t raise the money – tough.”

Today CTV has a story about the further erosion of rights in Canada;

OTTAWA — A Montreal court may be about to make Canadian legal history in a case that could see offenders considered guilty until proved innocent.

A bail hearing at the court this week is believed to be the first involving so-called “reverse onus,” in which a defendant must prove why they deserve less time behind bars and why they should be released on bail pending trial.

This ‘test case’ involves gangs. Naturally one chooses the circumstance least likely to garner public sympathy to launch such an attack. It goes without saying that any argument to democracy and rights will be met with an allegation of supporting gangs and violence. It being the case, unfortunately that some cannot hold more than one thought in their mind at a time. This law may start out as being about gangs and gun crime but it will not end there.

Image via Wikipedia

Dave Schroder of Edmonton’s Guardian Angels network thinks the reverse onus rule is “long overdue.”

“When somebody has demonstrated their lack of respect for Canadian law, we do have the right to expect them to be put away,” he said.

We certainly do have a right to expect criminals to be “put away”, right after they have been proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt by a jury of their peers.

I say this as someone whose life has been touched by violent crime. The criminals never even charged. While I still am affected by these crimes, I don’t believe the Canadian criminal system should be built upon whatever revenge fantasies I may hold.

Our rights and freedoms are being stripped away by those who value sound bite over substance, authoritarianism over democracy and big brother over individual freedom. It is time for us, all of us, to speak up before our right to speak is taken too.

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I’m supporting the Liberals!

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Ok well one of them at least. Brent St. Denis has an answer to Bill C-484, Bill C-543 which says; “This enactment amends paragraph 718.2(a) of the Criminal Code by adding pregnancy as an aggravating circumstance for the purpose of sentencing … evidence that the offender, in committing the offence, abused a person who he or she knew or ought to have known was pregnant.”

Brent St. Denis
Brent St. Denis

When queried about why he decided to do this, St. Denis said, “Mr. Epps’ bill traded off a dilemma — many pro-choice members of Parliament felt trapped. And, after all, it’s hard to say you are against something the way Epps set it up. This will give MPs an option. This trumps Mr. Epps’ bill and his hidden agenda.”

Something else pointed out to me by St. Denis was what is happening in the United States where fetal protection laws have been passed.

“In 37 states, fetal protection laws make it a crime to cause harm to the fetus, but it has been shown that pregnant women are more likely to be punished for other behaviours and conditions that are not criminalized for other people. Such as drug or alcohol abuse or mental illness.”

That doesn’t seem like something we would want to happen in Canada, but don’t fool yourselves — Epps bill will do just that.

{emphasis added} SOURCE

Contact your MP

and email the Standing Committee on Justice and Human Rights to let them know there is a sensible alternative to the bill currently before them. One which recognizes that protecting women is the best way to protect fetuses. JUST@parl.gc.ca

And if you would like to send support to St. Denis;
Parliamentary Office:
584 Confederation Building
Ottawa ON K1A 0A6
Phone:
Fax:
Email: (613) 996-5376
(613) 995-6661
stdenb@parl.gc.ca
Constituency Office:
121 Barber Street
Espanola ON P5E 1S4
Phone:
Fax:
Toll Free: (705) 869-0059
(705) 869-5341
1-800-463-3335

Khadr Video Shames Canada

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Omar Khadr
Omar Khadr

CBC today carries the story and video the CSIS interview with Omar Khadr. Although the video quality is poor it is obvious that this is an anguished young teen. He tries to tell the integrators of his need for medical care and is met with a smug superior attitude and a complete lack of empathy. He is then told that his breakdown is a “strategy”. I’d like to see the CSIS agent endure half of what this boy did and see what his “strategy” would be.

“We Canadians stand for compassion, we stand for the rule of law. And what you are seeing there is the abuse of the rule of law as Canadian courts have indicated about Canadians and Canada’s involvement in Guantanamo Bay,” lawyer Dennis Edney told CBC News.

Omar Khadr getting battlefield first aid.
Image via Wikipedia

Edney said Canadian officials should have asked Khadr about potential torture, but instead went into the interview without any help for the then teenage boy.

“We don’t do that in Canada and that shouldn’t have happened to this young, most vulnerable boy in Guantanamo,” the lawyer said.

He also said Khadr suffers from several injuries, including the loss of sight in one eye and difficulty with the other, as well as shrapnel and bullet wounds. [ ..CBC ]

Presumably the CSIS agent saw this picture of Khadr as he lay nearly dead on the battlefield. Not an adult soldier but a child brought into war. But Harper doesn’t care for children. He is already trying to put more Canadian youth in prison. Why should he care about one that he can easily get his lunatic fringe to smear? One even went so far on the CBC site as to say that even if Khadr were 6 years old we should kill him. And this person is walking free.

Harper continues to use following LIberal precedent as an excuse for not doing  the Canadian thing, the right thing, the humane thing, the just thing. He refuses to bring Khadr home because he says the Liberals didn’t. Well since when does Harper follow the Liberal play book? In Nuremburg “following orders” was not accepted as an excuse to commit crimes against humanity. How much less successful would following a political foes precedent be?

Khadr is the only western prisoner not claimed by their country. His continued presence there, and this video shames all Canadians.  Harper must either bring Khadr home or step down as Prime Minister. A leader who refuses to protect his own people has committed treason against them.

You can see the tape here — Link opens Video in New Window

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