Mr. Harper’s G8 Blunder July 10, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Politics.Tags: G8 meeting, Michael Ignatieff Liberal leader, Stephen Harper blunder
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It didn’t take long for the Prime Minister to realize he’d made an embarrassing boo-boo.
Wrapping up the G8 meeting in Italy, he used the occasion of a sombre international gathering on the economy and climate change to mount a partisan political attack on Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.
As you see here, the PM blundered. Poor staff work had misinformed him about comments allegedly made by Ignatieff, but which were actually made by someone else — an unnamed academic.
The comments suggested that the G8 might morph itself into a larger body, but without Canada as a member.
Thinking it a good opportunity to tear a strip off the Leader of the Opposition, Harper let fly with such pie-in-the-face spoilers as:
- “Mr. Ignatieff is supposed to be a Canadian …”
- ” … irresponsible, coming from a senior Canadian parliamentarian.”
- “Nobody, but Mr. Ignatieff, in the world has suggested excluding Canada from a meeting of major countries. Nobody.”
Mr. Ignatieff, gentleman that he is, has accepted the PM’s apology.
“I accept the Prime Minister’s apology… Canada’s efforts would have been better spent engaging with global leaders on shared issues.”
Know what gets me about this? Not that sloppy work by the PM’s press secretary gave him a bum steer. Not that someone thinks Canada may get frozen out of future international confabs.
No, what gets me is that the Prime Minister of Canada (that’s all of us) would use the occasion of a global forum to launch a partisan attack on the leader of another party. To turn a G8 news conference into a venue for putting the knife into a domestic political rival.
Even if Mr. Ignatieff had said something along the lines of what he had (incorrectly) been reported to have said. That still wouldn’t have justified the PM’s remarks.
There’s no room for cheap domestic politicking at a serious gathering of heads of government.
It’s been a bad week for the PM. His chronic tardiness for G8 photo shoots.The dust-up caused by backroom Tories protesting the $400,000 tourism grant to the Toronto Gay Pride parade. News that the U.S. is going to build its own isotope facility, due entirely to Mr. Harper’s abandonment of Canadian production.
The latest public opinion poll put the Conservatives a point up on the Liberals. They won’t stay there, at this rate.
My day in court July 8, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Politics.Tags: Cabbagetown Toronto, Mayor David Miller, Parking tags, Toronto civic workers' strike
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It’s a muggy but coolish July afternoon in Toronto when I set out for the Ontario Court of Justice branch office in far-off suburban Scarborough, in the northeast corner of the city.
I’m due in Courtroom E9 at 3 o’clock to defend myself against a $100 fine for parking next to a fire hydrant on September 24, 2008.
The traffic is heavy and I’ve been forewarned that because of a strike of civic workers, you can’t use the Courthouse parking lot. I end up on a side street a few blocks away at a quarter to three. Just time to get myself before the Judge.
Look at this picture and you’ll understand why I elected to fight this charge.
Courtroom E9 turns out to be a modish and modern little room, nicely fixed out with blond benches and a grey carpet.
There are 14 people waiting to hear their fate. The prosecutor calls us forward, asks our names and how we wish to plead. He explains that we can plead guilty with an explanation, and put our faith in the judge to be generous to us. If we plead not guilty, but the judge convicts us, the fine can run as high as $500.
That gets me to thinking. Now, I don’t deny I parked where I’m accused of having done so. My defence is that it was dark, and the hydrant, which was set off by itself on the lawn of a nearby house, was invisible because tall grass had been allowed to grow up around it. Grass obviously planted in an effort to gentrify the look of this snobbish Cabbagetown Toronto street.
When I discovered the ticket on my windshield the next morning, I was so damn mad that I took the picture you see above. And I marched down to Metro Hall to say I wanted to go to trial. A few weeks later, I get the letter setting the court date.
After listing to the prosecutor, I’m thinking maybe I’d better plead guilty and throw myself on the mercy of the Judge! But before I can tell him that, he has news for me: The charge has been withdrawn! All I have to do is stick around, wait to be called, and then I’ll be told I’m free to go.
I was swept by a feeling of frustration and disappointment, mixed with the slight elation of knowing I had beaten the charge!
Before the Judge comes in, the court clerk tells us all that when we’re called up, we better not have our hands in our pockets, or our arms crossed. We have to show respect to the court, we’re told.
Finally, my turn arrives. The lady Judge asks my name. I tell her, and the prosecutor announces withdrawal of the charge. The Judge says I’m free to go. What a letdown!
So I decide to go for it. May I address the court, I ask? I say I’d like to acquaint the Court with the circumstances under which the ticket was issued. I have this photograph. I hold it up.
Give it to the prosecutor, the Judge says, airily waving me away. I offer it over. He doesn’t want it.
End of my day in court. But not end of my questions.
What were the parking officers doing issuing tickets they must have known they couldn’t defend? Was it because of their quota system?
What fool stood idly by and allowed someone to plant a dozen tall grass plants (I counted them this Spring), and then watched them grow all summer?
How many people paid their $100 fines without a murmur of protest?
Why could I not have been notified of the withdrawal of the charge, saving me the hassle of going to court?
Does this injustice have the makings of a class action lawsuit?
Of course, I won’t get an answer to any of the above.
PS – This summer some pretty low-growing flowers have been put in around the hydrant.
Far be it from me to protest the beautification of Toronto (especially with garbage piling up on the 17th day of the civic workers’ strike).
But don’t expect me to ever vote for Mayor Miller!
Ye Gods! What’s Sarah up to? July 5, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Politics.Tags: 2012 Presidedntial Race, Governor of Alaska, Palin resignation, Sarah Palin
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I’ve been thinking about Sarah Palin’s weird announcement about stepping down as Governor of Alaska — and her follow-up Facebook posting about leaving “for a higher calling.”
The best I can say for her is she’s “one of a kind.” There’s no counterpart for her in Canadian politics, nor in the more volatile bear pit of U.S. politics.
But she’s got lots of supporters, as irrational as they may seem to the rest of us.
Check out some of the comments on her Facebook Wall.
“We are behind you and will support you to the end,” one woman writes. Another opines: “We (Americans) need you to unite and lead us to overcome the Obamans who are dragging us into an abyss.”
There’s also a few detractors. But there’s no doubt that the folksy, irreverent (except for religion) and striking lady from Alaska generates a fantastic response from a certain section of the electorate.
So what does Sarah Palin want? To be President, of course. Well, duh.
My hunch is that she decided the Governorship, with its real life responsibilities and the accountability that it imposes on her, has become a big nuisance.
Instead of meeting the challenges she faces head on, proving her mettle and working to set right her mistakes (remember what the ethics board had to say?) she’s decided to go out and run for the White House.
Plus, all the attention will help her cash in on the book she’s writing (supposedly) for Harper Collins.
There’s already a couple of books about her. Neither are big sellers, but Trailblazer: An Intimate Biography of Sarah Palin, will get a boost from the weekend’s happenings. It’s by Lorenzo Benet, an editor of People magazine. She’s enjoyed a close relationship with People, to which she has given a number of exclusives. And she’s no fool — she knows you reach more pliable voters via a celebrity mag than through the New York Times.
I’ve carefully read the statement she issued last Friday. It’s so full of vacuous nonsense that it’s hard to comment on it rationally. And therein lies her strength — and danger.
Her strength is that she attracts attention like lightning. Her danger is that she attracts attention like lightning. Example: The Huffington Post, one of the best news aggregators on the web, now devotes a dedicated page to her antics.
Does the Republican Party really want a candidate who is so impetuous, so unpredictable, so apparently ill-informed as this woman?
Or will her candidacy set off the most paralyzing fight in the history of the GOP, split the party up the middle and along the edges, and pave the way for Barack Obama to carry every state in the Union (yes, even Alaska) in 2012?
To most Canadians, the Sarah Palin Show is just a sideshow, another example of how the stupid, the irrelevant and the irrational increasingly dominates the tone and character of American politics.
Thank God she’s not one of ours!
Justice on a global scale July 3, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Books, Politics.Tags: International Criminal Court, Sun Climbs Slow, Erna Paris, war crimes, genocide, Darfur, Robert S. McNamara
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An anniversary worth noting is that of the creation of the International Criminal Court which came into existence on July 1, 2002, as a global tribunal representing the conscience of the world.
Although the ICC is not supported by the United States, China, Russia or India, it represents the strongest international effort ever made to hold to account the perpetrators of war crimes, genocide, crimes against humanity, and the crime of aggression.
The ICC, like the World Court is based in The Hague. I visited that somber chamber some years ago and remember that the Court was hearing a dispute involving Libya.
Today, the ICC is pressing charges against individuals from four African states, Uganda, Congo, the Central African Republic and Sudan. The president of that sad country, Omar al Bashir, has been charged with genocide over his government’s treatment of people in the Darfur region. So far, he’s defied the court and remains in office.
As Erna Paris explains in her immensely readable and profoundly important new book, The Sun Climbs Slow: Justice in the Age of Imperial America (Knopf Canada), the ICC came into existence despite multiple efforts by the United States to maim, marginalize, and even kill it before birth .
The American efforts failed. Spurred by the examples of the special tribunals that weighed crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, 108 states have become members, among them Canada.
Paris takes us inside the fateful sessions where delegates gather to discuss, and finally in a midnight session, approve the Rome Statute that launches the ICC. Initially, the U.S. under President Clinton supported the court. The regime of George Bush famously “unsigned” his predecessor’s signing of the pact.
Beyond that, Paris takes us with her as she interviews advocates and opponents, judges and prosecutors, and generals and politicians involved in these fateful discussions.
Ms. Paris is one of the few Canadians I can think of who is internationally recognized as an authority on global affairs. Previous books, notably Long Shadows: Truth, Lies and History, established her preeminence in a narrow field that includes such names as Margaret Macmillan, Joe Schlessinger and Gwynn Dyer.
Her historical vision is broad; she takes us back to ancient Greece where might vs right was first debated, and to 19th century Europe where the first international effort to control wartime behavior resulted in the Brussels Declaration of 1874. It prohibited military attacks on undefended towns or other civilian targets. Think of Dresden, Coventry and Hiroshima!
But the core of the book is her examination, which she carries forward with evident sadness, of the insistent American opposition to the creation of the International Criminal Court.
John Bolton, who was George Bush’s Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, is fingered as the chief villain. He considers the ICC “fundamentally illegitimate.” It would bind countries that haven’t agreed to such constraint. More to the point, it could expose people like Henry Kissinger or Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s defence secretary, to criminal charges.
Not all Americans support Bolton. Cherif Bassiouni, the noted Chicago law professor, believes that because the military is controlled by civilians, it is they who should be held accountable. But “civilians, for all practical purposes, are unaccountable … the President is the golden cow that nobody ever reaches.”
Nor is the U.S. military without conscience. Paris writes of Gary Solis, law professor at West Point, who on arrival there was appalled to discover that he would be the first person ever to teach a dedicated course on the Geneva Conventions to officer cadets.
On the people held in Guantanamo, where “enemy combatants” await trial by military commissions, she has Solis predicting that the U.S. will never gain a single conviction.
The world is not prepared, he says, “to see trial, conviction and punishment based upon the lowered standards of rights and procedures that occur in military commissions.”
But perhaps her most cheerless observation is reserved for Robert McNamara, the Kennedy era U.S. Secretary of Defence during the Vietnam war.
Her interview with McNamara leads Paris to conclude he is genuinely remorseful for that crime against humanity. She notes he is not subject to the ICC whose jurisdiction is limited to events after it came into force. “But deep in his bones he seems to believe that he ought to be.”
Not that this is an unhappy book. The ICC, Paris writes, is the “dream reborn” of those like Robert H. Jackson, the chief American prosecutor at the Nuremberg Tribunal. Even though the sun climbs slow, the world at the start of the 21st century “stands poised to greet the morning light.”
UPDATE: Robert S. McNamara dies at 93, July 6, 2006
Telling lies about Canada June 30, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Culture, History.Tags: Canada Day, Doug Saunders, Lies about Canada, Multiculturalism, National Myths, The North
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Every country has its myths, based on its history, its character, or its perception of its place among the nations. Why should Canada be an exception?
It is not. Canada’s myths arise from our vast geography, our disinclination to join the United States in rebelling against a British heritage, and our retention of French and British cultures in a mix but not a mould that includes original peoples and later arrivals from around the world.
The myths that spring from a nation’s experiences are not necessarily entirely false. They usually contain a considerable degree of truth.
It is for this reason, on this Canada Day July 1st 2009, the 142nd since Confederation, that I quarrel with Doug Saunders of The Globe and Mail, over his article Lies Our Country Told Us. (I’d link you to it, but none seems available.)
Mr. Saunders says, “We are not the Canada we think we are. The country of our imagination — northern, colonial, rooted in a history of British settlement and only recently becoming pluralistic and multihued — is an illusion.”
He goes on to cite several of what he terms “lies” to buttress his argument.
I’m here to say I disagree with him on every one of them. Let’s take these so-called “lies” (or myths) one by one:
- “We are a northern nation.”
Not a lie.
Mr. Saunders argues that we lag way behind Norway and Russia in developing our north. And it’s never, he asserts, “been a major part of the Canadian identity.”
Tell that to Pierre Berton! He was born and raised in the Yukon and many of his 50 books provide telling narratives of how the North has figured prominently in Canadian life. Those like Klondike and The Mysterious North are as gripping and readable today as when they were written.
Or Ken McGoogan, author of romantic histories of the Arctic, such as Race to the Polar Sea and Ancient Mariner.
Of course, we’ve not used slave labor to built vast cities in the sub-Arctic, as the Soviet Union did.
But we’re pulling out oil and gas, gold, diamonds, furs and fish from the North. We’re asserting our Arctic sovereignty. And we’re trying to ensure a better future for the native Inuit and First Nations people of the region.
- “We are the People of 1867.”
Not a lie.
In suggesting this statement is a lie, Mr. Saunders tries to knock down the incontrovertible fact that Canada as a modern nation came into being in a Confederation designed expressly to accommodate the formerly warring communities of the English and the French.
He makes much of the fact that Canada had a heavy out-migration from 1867 to the early 1900s. That’s true, and many New England communities are today made up in the main of the descendants of French Canadians who moved to the mills of Boston and other towns for a better life. But countless hundreds of thousands of others stayed.
It is true, as Mr. Saunders says, that our population growth took off in the Laurier era when “stout men in sheepskin coats” — immigrants from eastern Europe — began to populate the prairies. A natural outgrowth of Canada having claimed for itself the relatively empty Northwest. The newcomers joined a country where being English dominated everything.
- “First we were colonial, then we became multicultural.”
Not a lie.
On this so-called “lie”, Mr. Saunders makes the weakest case of all. He cites research by Peter Henshaw, a University of Western Ontario historian, to argue that multiculturalism was promoted by English Canada as early as the 1930s. Henshaw names Governor General John Buchan as a chief architect. The motive, allegedly, was to weaken any true Canadian nationalism by mixing it up with a lot of competing loyalties.
My recollection of my school days in that era was that the Empire was everything, everything had to be British, and to be a Canada Firster was almost to be disloyal. There was no room for any other culture.
I don’t think a conspiratorial injection of multiculturalism ever figured into things.
Beginning in the 1960s, Canada changed from having been a mean and narrow country, drowned in the rigid strictures of Protestantism outside Quebec, and Catholicism inside, to a more generous, forward-looking, and liberated land of diversity, tolerance, and freedom of choice.
Our postwar immigration, our shedding of most of the vestiges of colonialism, and the entrenchment of multiculturalism as a core Canadian principle, made it all possible.
As we celebrate this Canada Day, there’s no need to tell lies about Canada. The truths we hold in common are the glue that will keep us together.
Right turn for Ontario? June 28, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Politics.Tags: Conservative party, Dalton McGuinty, Mike Harris, Ontario PCs, Rescuing Canada's Right, Tim Hudak
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It’s been 15 years since Mike Harris launched his Common Sense Revolution that drove compassion, caring and cooperation out of Queen’s Park in Toronto — along with New Democrat Premier Bob Rae.
Haris won back-to-back majority governments for his hard-right brand of Progressive Conservative government. It took his retirement and the inept maneuverings of his successors who tried and failed to keep the Revoliution going, to open the door to Dalton McGuinty and the Liberals.
Now, with McGuinty into his second term, Ontario’s PCs have gone”back to the future” by picking Harris acolyte Tim Hudak, 41, as their new leader.
Hudak says “We must take Ontario down an entirely different path from the one it’s now on.”
Meaning, of course, ditching social welfare for individual self-reliance; get tough laws on crime (whether they make any difference or not) and cultivating the entreprenurial crowd with promises of lower taxes and less regulation.
This sound so familiar to the Harris credo and the economic side of Bushism that it makes one wonder whether it’ll sail in the current environment.
The next Ontario election will be in 2011. It’s likely there’ll be strong similarities between the political situation at that time and the one that prevailed in 1995 when Harris won power.
We’ll (hopefully) have recently come out of recession. We’ll be deeper in debt that ever. And eight years of Liberalism will have no more solved our problems that did five years of the NDP’s version of social democracy.
But there’ll be one big difference.
We’ll have tried it all before. Been there. Done that.
Consider also that the Liberals may have a new leader by then. Someone who could put a fresh face to a government that has gathered its share of blunders and bloopers — like the eHealth fiasco and an ever-mounting provincial deficit.
Voters who saw the original Harris show as refreshing and different are unlikely to view the sequel through the same innocent eyes.
As well, Hudak has set himself up for a polarizing fight over his pledge to dump the Ontario Human Rights tribunal. There are many things wrong with the way the OHRC – like similar outfits – has gone overboard in allowing frivolous complaints. Abolition is not the answer.
It’s ironic that at a time when true Conservatives are growing more and more disenchanted with the party at the federal level, a champion of true Toryism has been elevated to the top spot in Ontario.
Hudak seems to be following the formula set out in Rescuing Canada’s Right, a 2005 book (Wiley) by Tasha Keiriddin and Adam Daifallah. They argue that the federal Tories are not really conservative. “Overall, federal governments, including conservative ones, have been pretty dismal from a small-c conservative perspective.”
Hudak, if he ever gets into power, is not likely to disappoint the authors.
Mike Harris was in the front row of Hudak supporters at the PC convention in Markham on Saturday. Those who watched him say he gloated with pleasure at the success of his protege.
How often will he be on the phone to Hudak in coming months? Who will really be calling the shots? Stay tuned.
What I learned about Puppy Mills June 25, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Culture, Politics.Tags: Mark Holland, Puppy mills, Reader's Digest
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The July Reader’s Digest, Canadian edition, is out with my feature article, Canada’s Puppy Mill Scandal.
Other than to say it describes my own personal experience with a dog that I believe came from a puppy mill, I’ll not go into detail on the article. You can read in the RD how unscrupulous breeders exploit their animals, sell off the puppies that often end up in pet stores, and profit from dogs that frequently carry serious genetic and behavioural defects. Present laws are ineffective in stopping this, despite frequent raids.
We lost Rory, our beautiful Wheaten terrier, after six years of struggling with his aggressive and anti-social behaviour. We tried everything – dog counselling, medication, you name it. Among other disturbing traits, he had a serious anxiety complex and tried to bite any one of us when we headed for the door.
I was heartbroken when we reached the decision that we had to have him put down — to end his suffering, and ours. I’d awaken in the night, tears streaming down my cheeks.
My partner Deborah thought it would be healthy if, as a writer, I wrote about the experience.
I started doing research, and found out from a prominent vet that Rory exhibited all the traits of an animal from an abusive puppy mill.
I moved on to investigating the prevalence of puppy mills. I discovered that even the valiant efforts of SPCA animal rescue officers were unable to bring these establishments under control.
Except in Ontario, laws are weak and penalties for animal abuse minimal.
Then it happened. A major raid in Quebec turned up appalling conditions at one particular mill. I interviewed people involved in the raid. Then I queried the Reader’s Digest, offering an outline of the story. I mentioned my own personal experience.
After about a week, I got an email back. They wanted the piece. I was sent the Writer’s Guidelines for the RD, and told I should model the piece to fit.
It took a couple of months of back and forth to finalize the piece. The editor I worked with was positive and supportive all the way. The fact checkers who worked with my manuscript were impeccable in their treatment.
With a circulation of 1.2 million and eight million readers, the Reader’s Digest is the most widely read magazine in Canada.
This means my piece exposing the evils of the puppy mills will catch a lot of eyeballs. I hope this will add to pressure on politicians to modernize our out of date legislation. Maybe it’ll give a boost to Liberal MP Mark Holland’s efforts to get his private member’s bill on the issue up for a vote.
We now have a lovely little Wheaten terrier which we obtained from Jan Cunningham, a small breeder in Ontario’s Prince Edward County. She came to us from a loving and caring home. We’ll never forget Rory, but Moreg is a delight every hour of the day.
The July issue of RD is on the newsstands now. I hope you’ll pick up a copy.
Canada – a scientific backwater? June 23, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Politics.Tags: AECL, Brad Wall, Chalk River, Harper, Ignatieff, Lisa Raitt, MDS Nordion, Medical isotopes
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It’s beginning to look like it. First there was the controversy over the disruption in the making of medical isotopes at the Atomic Energy of Canada Chalk River nuclear reactor. Then Prime Minister Harper’s announcement that Canada will get out of making these vital keys in diagnosing cancer, cardiac and other diseases.
Now comes the news that Canada’s one-time hi tech global flagship, Nortel Networks, is going to be sold off to Nokia-Siemens, the Finish-German telecommunications powerhouse.
As more than a few people have commented, it’s reminiscent of the 1959 shutdown of the Avro Arrow fight jet by Conserv ative prime minister John Diefenbaker. Or the earlier, less remembered, cancellation of Canadair’s commercial jet. The Liberal government cancelled that one in 1952, in order to divert funds to support UN operations in Korea.
What is it about Canada that once we get a leg up in some scientific field, our government bails out at the first sign of crisis?
Until a few months ago, Canada produced 31 per cent of the world’s supply of medical isotopes. Fifty thousand procedures a day have been carried out using these isotopes. They were supplied by MDS Nordion, a Toronto company which used technetium, a byproduct of molybdenum-99, from the aging nuclear reactor at Chalk River, Ont.
This sorry episode of research failure and technical blundering has been overshadowed by the cheap political games played out on Parliament Hill.
It started when the nuclear safety administrator tried to shut down the AECL facility for safety reasons in 2007. No way, shouted the PM. Just a Liberal appointee, he asserted. We won’t allow isotope production to be affected.
An apparently unstoppable heavy water leak earlier this year forced another shutdown. Nobody knows for how long. But the headlines went to Lisa Raitt, the energy minister, caught on tape saying it was a sexy issue that she’d solve in no time.
She can’t, of course. Now she’s appointed an “expert committee” to review the options. The preferred one, it seems, is to find other countries willing and able to take up the slack. So Canada once again becomes a consumer rather than a producer, a follower rather than a leader.
The alarms have been sounded all over the scientific community.
“It’s going to be a drain of brains outside Canada,” says Jean-Luc Urbain of the Canadian Association of Nuclear Medicine.
“If we don’t act now, maybe we should just put out the lights and go home,” says Domninic Ryan, prominent scientist.
Stephen DeFalco, head of MDS, disputes the government’s contention that the new Maple reactors, which were expected to replace the aging NRU facility, have fatal design flaws. Ottawa refuses to put any more money into that project.
According to Defalco:
The Maple reactors are complete, they are safe and they await final commissioning.
The tragedy in all of this is not only the health risks facing millions of people around the world due to Canada’s failure to maintain isotope production. As serious as that is, what may be even worse is the failure of successive Canadian governments to invest adequately in pure science and R&D.
We’ve got a Science Minister — Gerry Goodyear — who is an avowed religious creationist. An Opposition leader, Michael Ignatieff, who put isotopes on his list of concerns but has since been silent on the issue.
But there’s a glimmer of hope. Saskatchewan Premier Brad Wall, supported by scientists at the University of Saskatchewan, has plans to build a reactor in Saskatoon. It would be a 10-year project. And McMaster University, in Hamilton, says it can use its cyclotron to make isotopes.
One way or another, alternative supplies will be found, in Canada or abroad. But what a sorry commentary it all makes.
Harper’s backdown on Abdelrazik June 18, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Politics.Tags: Abousfian Abdelrazik, Arar case, Lawrence Cannon, Spy agency failings
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The Harper government blinked today. It backed down completely on its refusal to give Abousfian Abdelrazik, Canadian citizen, the right to return home after years of close custody in our Embassy in Sudan:
Tories to allow Abdelrazik to return to Canada
Toronto Star Jun 18, 2009 04:04 PM
OTTAWA – Abousfian Abdelrazik could soon be coming back to Canada.
Justice Minister Rob Nicholson announced this afternoon in Parliament that the federal government will comply with a court order to return him to Canada after he has been stranded in Sudan for more than a year.
“The government will comply with the court order,” Nicholson said in response during question period, in response to a query from Liberal MP Irwin Cotler.
I wrote about this situation in April, commenting then that “if Mr. Abdelrazik has committed a crime, bring him home to Canada for trial. If not, he has the right to return unmolested.”
In an interview with Don Newman on CBC TV’s Politics, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon said Mr. Abdelrazik would be coming home “as a free Canadian” with the right to do whatever he wishes.
A full-scale public inquiry is required into this mish-mash of spy boondoggling, government obstinance, and general disregard of the Charter rights of a Canadian citizen.
Just a couple of weeks ago, Mr. Cannon described Mr. Abdelrazilk as a threat to national security. This, despite the fact he’d been cleared by both the spy agency CSIS, and the RCMP.
This case is worse than the Marer Arar case, according to the NDP’s Paul Dewar. He wants the Commons foreign affairs committee to hear Mr. Abdelrazik’s story first-hand.
In the Arar case, U.S. authorities sent him off to Syria to be tortured. In the Abdelrazik case, it appears it was Canadian authorities who had him put in jail in Sudan.
You can be sure that Mr. Abdelrazik will be suing the Government of Canada. You can’t have people sent into the torture cells of third world countries with no evidence of wrongful doing.
Through all the years of the Cold War, we witnessed the build-up of enormous spy regimes, at great cost to the public, all of which yielded no value whatever to the security or well-being of the population.
When Communism came down, it was because of the bank-busting pursuit of military might by the Kremlin. The U.S. was within a hair’s bredth of similar collapse when Moscow gave up the ghost.
Our spy agencies are good at nailing innocent people on marginal evidence. Not so good at defending the principles of democracy and justice.
Ontario’s $2 billion boondoggle June 17, 2009
Posted by Ray Argyle in Politics.Tags: David Caplan, Dr. Alan Hudson, eHealth Onhtario, Premier McGuinty, Sarah Kramer
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The scandal over Ontario’s abortive efforts to move health records into the electronic age has taken another captive:
From the Globe and Mail Online
eHealth chairman resigns under a cloud
Hudson’s departure marks a fall from grace for McGuinty’s hand-picked choice to modernize Ontario’s health records
Karen Howlett and Lisa Priest
Toronto — The Globe and Mail, Wednesday, Jun. 17, 2009 05:45PM EDT
Alan Hudson resigned on Wednesday as chairman of eHealth Ontario amid a controversy over lucrative contracts awarded without competitive tenders and nickel-and-dime spending on snacks by consultants, some of whom charged thousands of dollars a day for their services.
Dr. Hudson’s departure marks a fall from grace in what many saw as a stellar record. Known as the man who could fix anything in health care, he was Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty’s hand-picked choice to modernize the province’s medical records.
“Today I want to acknowledge that our government came up short in the matter of eHealth,” Mr. McGuinty said at a news conference on Wednesday. “We should have done more to protect the public.”
Dr. Hudson is the second executive to leave eHealth Ontario in recent days. Sarah Kramer, his protégé and long-time business associate – whom he often described as brilliant – was forced to resign as chief executive officer on June 6.
All well and good, say I, but I think one more resignation is due — that of the Ontario Minister of Health, David Caplan.
This whole situation is tragic. Tragic for the individuals involved, as they were both dedicated, competent individuals. But more tragic for the people of Ontario, because it means yet more delays in building an electronic health records system that would improve health care and cut costs.
For all their competence, Dr. Hudson and Ms. Kramer were incredibly stupid in one respect. Giving out millions of dollars in untendered contracts to consulting firms hired to build the system. The fact that principals of those firms were former colleagues of the two eHealth officials is beside the point. And no one disputes the competence of the consultants, either.
But you can’t go around handing out millions of dollars of public business without a competitive tendering process.
Premier McGuinty says he’s fixed that, and there’ll be no more of it.
Dr. Hudson, in a speech just a week ago on receiving an honorary degree from the University of Toronto, observed that the idea of electronic health records has been around for 45 years but “unbelievably slow to penetrate clinical health care in a systematic fashion.” Promising better, he remarked that Ontario has set $2.3 billion aside for the job.
So far, all we know is that about $700 million has been spent on eHealth’s predecessor agency, with zero results.
Premier McGuinty needs to be more systematic about how he’s dealing with the crisis. During David Caplan’s watch at the Ministry of Health, the eHealth ship has gone on the rocks. It’s time to cast him up on the beach.
