Conservative M.P. finds a new low
April 13, 2012
Because about two-thirds of this blog’s readers are from the United States, I’m a little embarrassed by the report below. It’s important to emphasize, however, that not all Canadians are as stupid and tasteless as New Brunswick MP John Williamson.
Not surprisingly, the Federal Conservatives have dropped in polls in the last week, particularly in Quebec where they’re down to 11% of decided women voters. The gun registry, whose destruction Williamson was celebrating in the quote listed below, was set up in memory of the fourteen young women killed in 1989 by Marc Lepine at l’Ecole Polytechnique, an engineering school of the University of Montreal.
The mud from the barrage of lies to Canadians about F-35 costs during an election campaign, the Robo-call scandals attempting to suppress non-Conservative votes, the blundering attempt at Internet surveillance put forth in the name of protecting children from child pornography in Bill C-30, and now the tasteless triumphalism in the House of Commons about the destruction of the Long Gun Registry — it has finally begun to stick to Stephen Harper and his thugs.
The following is a letter to the National Post, 11 April, 2012.
Dishonouring MLK’s dream
On Aug. 23, 1963, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. gave one of the greatest speeches of the 20th century, ‘I Have A Dream,” to 200,000 people during the historic March On Washington.
Last Thursday, one day after the 44th anniversary of Dr. King’s assassination by an unregistered long gun, John Williamson, Conservative MP for New Brunswick Southwest, rose in the house, and with fiery bluster shouted, “Free at last, free at last,” while fellow Conservatives cheered as they celebrated the end of the long-gun registry.
No words can describe the lack of respect and decency exhibited by the “Honourable” Mr. Williams and those who applauded his comments, as he subverted one of the most famous passages from Dr. King’s speech, given moments before he was felled in the prime of life by a bullet from an unregistered long gun.
I can only hope that after the next election, the 61% of Canadians who did not vote Conservative can also proclaim: “Free at last, free at last, praise the Lord, we’re free at last.”
Al Yolles, Toronto.
With characteristic restraint the Hansard parliamentary transcript reporter truncated Williamson’s comment to “free at last” and left it at that. But CBC reporter Kadie O’Malley reports that Williamson was not to be denied. He went back into the official record and replaced the discreet omission with, “Free at last! Free at last! Law abiding Canadians are now free at last!”
Members of the Harper regime often seem unclear on the concept of standing upon the shoulders of giants. They come across a lot more like primates in a cage, soiling all they touch.
I don’t like plagiarists.
Job action at Canadian Customs?
April 6, 2012
The Tire Rack is an online vendor which ships its product to selected installers around the United States. Cheney Tire in Watertown is one of these and I have been impressed with their service, so I took the Lexus down for new summer tires. On Wednesday morning I was rolling on new rubber by 10:00 a.m., even though the shop operates on a first-come, first-served basis.
Then I stopped at Canadian Customs. Two booths were open for cars and two for trucks, with a line several hundred yards long. An attendant eventually cut one of the truck lines and sent a few of us to booth seven for processing.
My agent-of-the-day came on duty at 11:00 and spent three minutes futzing around his work space. Then he closed the blinds so he couldn’t see us. He called each car in by putting his hand out the window and twisting it. The line seemed to move very slowly as he worked his way through a half dozen cars before me.
When I arrived he muttered his way through some of the usual questions, but didn’t ask about the Duty Free Store, a line I have come to expect. His voice had a trick of losing volume in the the last half of sentences, so that I had to ask him to repeat himself frequently. Then he asked for my license number. I said, “I don’t know have it memorized. Why do you ask me for it when all you have to do is look at the screen and see it?”
“I wouldn’t ask you if I could see that, now would I?” in a nasty tone. So I read him the license number from the invoice for my tires. He required several corrections to get the whole plate number typed in correctly. Then he sent me on my way to the cashier.
Inside the office there were more uniformed personnel standing around than I normally see, easily enough to staff the full array of booths. I suspected some sort of work-to-rule program, perhaps in reaction to last week’s federal budget. Whatever it was, it had cost me an extra hour out of my Wednesday morning and a lot of wasted fuel.
When government fights with its employees, the public suffers.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/story/2012/04/11/mb-cbsa-border-budget-cuts.html
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Returning Snowbirds and shoppers: feel free to post updates from Customs experiences as comments to this article.
The Kiss, Canadian version
April 1, 2012
Trudeau vs Brazeau fight, March 31st
March 31, 2012
Sun TV had exclusive coverage of the charity fight, and this meant viewers were stuck for a full evening with two talking heads at the front of the screen and various unidentified boxers whaling away at each other in the background. If there was any organization to the program, I didn’t notice it. For example the two didn’t talk boxing, or charity either, for that matter. In fact host Ezra Levant’s attempts at humour made me think back fondly to the blond guy Garth on Wayne’s World. Sun TV milked every minute of its evening with multiple viewers by ranting on about how wonderful they are. It reminded me of getting caught at a wake with a particularly obnoxious distant family member. I just wished the men would fight and get it over so I would never have to watch channel 517 again.
Then came the boxers. Patrick Brazeau looked bloodthirsty. Justin Trudeau looked totally focused on something, and it wasn’t the crowds around him.
At the bell Brazeau tore into Trudeau. Justin had to fend him off with open hands when he got too close. But after a couple of brutal flurries, Trudeau’s jabs started to find their mark and keep the stronger man away. He survived the first round. Trudeau came out with heavy jabs to begin the second round, and after the first minute, Brazeau was beaten. Trudeau stalked him around the ring. Brazeau got off his chair reluctantly to face the third, and only rose when chided by his opponent.
Two standing eight-counts and Trudeau had Brazeau cornered and was hitting him at will, and they weren’t light jabs to score points. They were roundhouse rights intended to put his opponent down, just the punches Brazeau unleashed on Trudeau in the first round until his arms gave out. Trudeau proved to all that he can take a hard combination, he has stamina, and all of Canada saw his killer instinct as he closed in on the weakening Brazeau. Trudeau seemed to be the only one in the arena not eager for the ref to stop the fight.
So Liberal scion Justin Trudeau beat the stuffings out of Harper’s boy-senator.
It’ll be interesting to see how the PMO spins this one. The wrong guy won, and by a knockout.
What was MP Garry Breitkreuz thinking?
March 29, 2012
OTTAWA Citizen, March 29 — Saskatchewan Tory MP Garry Breitkreuz found himself in hot water Thursday after an Ottawa mother complained he told a Grade 10 class that everyone in Canada should be armed — especially girls.
Wow! Breitkreuz has obviously never spent much time around a high school.
Any veteran teacher will tell you that the most dangerous creature in a high school is a grade nine or ten girl. From time to time, high school boys fight. The battles are usually structured affairs, played out according to a generally-accepted set of rules, and scored on a primitive points basis. Sure, passions run high, but the goal is a limited one, and at least around the school the thing plays out with an eye to future consequences.
As a vice principal I had occasion to speak to a few pugilists in my office. One conversation which comes to mind was with a young man who was no stranger to battle, in the school after sessions in various detention facilities. He commented upon a couple of his Somali friends: “The reason that those guys are so dangerous is that they are totally unco-ordinated. They just can’t fight. So they pick up anything they can lay hands on and use it as a weapon, and they’re so scared they don’t know how or when to quit.”
The deadliest fight I have ever broken up didn’t look like much. Seven or eight well dressed grade nine girls were gathered in a tight circle outside the school on the lunch hour of a snowy January day. Except that I noticed another equally well dressed girl on the ground, inside the circle. They were methodically stomping her into the ice. I broke it up. The girls moved away while I helped the victim. Then I had to restrain the bruised and bloodied kid from scrambling after the nearest of her attackers, teeth and claws bared.
It was all I could do to restrain a 105 pound, 14 year-old in a berserker’s rage. I had to pick her up. With feet off the ground she calmed down enough for me to get her into the school. The cause of the attack was a rumour linking the victim, a new girl to the school, with the boyfriend of one of her attackers. The scary part of the episode was that none of them knew how to quit.
When Garry Breitkreuz mused about arming teen-aged girls for their own protection, he was probably thinking about a deterrent for predatory older males. But in my experience the biggest threat to the fourteen year-old girl is another fourteen-year-old girl and her friends. Around a school yard boys fight to score points and win status. Girls fight to destroy rivals. This is absolutely not the place for firearms.
Creepy surveillance from your local store
February 22, 2012
I read somewhere last week that most espionage is now commercial. This is worth a read.
Bill C-30: An Act to Pick Our Pockets
February 20, 2012
Why don’t you ever say what you mean, Mr. Harper? Your minister Tony Clement said: “If only one Canadian complained about the mandatory long-form census, that was good enough to kill it,” when the real purpose was to reduce the credibility of census information so you could make decisions based upon hunches rather than data. Take the Crime Bill, for example.
You eliminated the long-gun registry because it was a Liberal legacy, but you took your time about doing it because it was such a great cash cow for the Conservative Party. Your argument was that no one should be made a criminal or subjected to arbitrary search and seizure just because he owned a rifle or shotgun.
But then you came out with Bill C-30, the Lawful Access Act. Former Prime Minister Paul Martin tried a version of this bill before, but it died on the order paper due to an election. Some regulation of electronic communications is necessary to get our house in order, but C-30 goes way beyond any reasonable law in that it gives police, public employees, and “Inspectors” the right to snoop into the online activities of ordinary Canadians without notifying anybody of what they are doing.
Sure, the bill has the usual pages of how notifications and permissions have to be obtained, but the loopholes are there: any policeman or employee in a police station or anybody appointed as an “Inspector” can snoop without the victim’s knowledge and not leave a record.
This bill, if enacted, will make Canada a police state. And this comes from a government which killed the long-form census because fewer than ten Canadians over a period of two years complained about it? A government which killed the long-gun registry rather than risk making criminals out of farmers with unregistered .22’s?
These were feints before the real roundup. Mr. Harper, your thought police (all right, “Inspectors”) will do more harm to ordinary Canadians of all ages than any number of long-gun registries or long-form census rules.
And how did you defend this invasive legislation in the House? An hour before the first reading someone changed the name to the “Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.” The only thing Bill C-30 has to do with child pornography is that both are about the Internet.
Then Vic Toews, your Minister of Public Safety, stood up in the House of Commons and faced down any critic of the bill with what may go down in history as the stupidest comment ever made in the Canadian Parliament: “He can stand with us or with the child pornographers.” So a government which didn’t want to make a criminal out of a farmer with an unregistered shotgun has now called virtually all Canadians outside Parliament Hill the worst kind of criminal.
This comment was so mystifying that I tried to track its origins down with Google. It traced partly to the attack-dog style of your government, Mr. Harper, and the way you have trained your ministers to respond with bullying put-downs to opponents. “You’re not supporting our troops!” and “Liberals are soft on crime!” over the last six years have been standard substitutes for reasoned argument in question period. On June 20, 2004 you yourself said, “Paul Martin supports child pornography!”
But the child pornography accusation of Toews was more extreme than the others, so I looked a little further. Then I came up with the following quotation:
“The state must declare the child to be the most precious treasure of the people. As long as the government is perceived as working for the benefit of the children, the people will happily endure almost any curtailment of liberty and almost any deprivation.”
Was this the idea floating around in the mind of your Minister of Public Safety —
hide behind the children and you can manipulate the people any way you want?
So if the long-form census was to cut off support to needy people and aboriginals because you would no longer be able to count them, and the long-gun registry was to fill the party coffers and erase a liberal tradition, what’s the point behind Bill C-30?
It’s not eliminating child pornography. Effective laws are already in place to do that. But the same part of Bill C-30 which allows emergency access to Internet records for an Amber Alert can allow access to businessmen who want to find ways to make the Internet pay.
Mr. Harper’s favourite slogan in the last election was: “Canadians don’t care about that. It’s all about the economy.” Most of the Internet in Canada is still free, but if corporations can track our clicks they can meter them and make us pay. Internet copyright laws in Canada are just about unenforceable at the moment. On Torrent sites I can download first run movies and view them along with yesterday’s T.V. programs if I want, all without commercials. My friends in the United States can’t do that.
Bill C-30 is a giant step toward tracking our keyboard clicks to make us pay. There’s no moral or safety issue here, just indirection and scare tactics, the standard techniques of the pickpocket and the mugger.
“We can fake the oath!”
February 5, 2012
“We can fake the _____!” has become the hottest catchphrase in journalism since CP reporter Jennifer Ditchburn broke the story about the faked citizenship ceremony on October 19th, 2011 at Sun TV in Toronto. Minister of Citizenship and Immigration Jason Kenney blamed a middle level bureaucrat for the fiasco, so for your amusement I decided to fake an excerpt from the autobiography of the scapegoat, Tracie LeBlanc.
Tracie’s, my handbag salon, used to be a T-shirt shop in the basement of the Eaton Centre. It’s tough starting out in retail, but if the business fails it’s because of what I did or didn’t do, not because The Minister told Raylene to find a scapegoat for last October’s foul-up at Sun TV.
I was working at Citizenship and Immigration on a short-term contract. In the job interview I told them that the character in literature which had the most influence on me was Winston Smith in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-four. I loved the way that each day Winston had his hand on the pulse of the nation, and was able to contribute using his intelligence and imagination, even within the confines of a bureaucracy. Both of my interviewers smiled when I mentioned Comrade Ogilvie, the heroic character Winston completely made up to fill a news gap.
Then two weeks later a voice called and asked me to start at 400 University Avenue, where I was escorted to a fourth-floor cubicle not unlike the one Winston occupied in the first chapters of Orwell’s novel.
I was to be an acting senior communications advisor. My job was to sign letters and press releases cranked out by The Minister and many levels of management above me. The letters were already written by the time they got to my inbox, but it was my name, Tracie LeBlanc, that was the signature on the final copy.
Then came the show at the Sun TV studio at 25 Ontario Street. The Minister wanted a Citizenship Week ceremony on a tame network and Sun TV was happy to oblige.
Someone had to call new Canadians and ask them to come to the studio. Margaret asked me to round up ten bodies and get them in front of a camera on Wednesday, October 19th at 2:00 p.m. She sent along a list of 3000 names and phone numbers.
Nobody answered during working hours. The machines contained messages in languages I couldn’t understand. When I stayed late to call, I’d get a couple of words out and then somebody would swear at me for interrupting their supper hour. Whatever happened to phone manners?
But on Saturday morning I did manage to nab one sweet Pakistani woman who was very polite to me. She confided that she was a stay-at-home mother and would only be able to attend the ceremony on a Wednesday if she could bring her son and daughter along. I assured her that would be just fine.
A dozen others agreed to come, but they didn’t sound serious about it. I put them down as possibles, and warned Margaret that we might have a problem with numbers because most new Canadians who would talk to me couldn’t take time off work.
As a backup I slipped over to the Eaton Centre, found a T-shirt store having a going-out-of-business sale, and had the guy print me ten, extra-large T-shirts. He only had white left, so I took them.
As a student I had learned that there are two things that motivate everybody: free food and free clothes. I figured if I couldn’t get enough new Canadians into the studio, I could nab a few people in the office with T-shirts and Subway coupons.
At ten o’clock Wednesday morning I made like a T-shirt cannon, tossing shirts over the cubicles to anyone who looked up. “Does this mean I have to become a Canadian citizen again?” Fred yelled.
“That’s what it says. I’ll likely only need you as a spectator, but I’ll buy lunch, and you might get on camera if nobody shows up.” More arms went up.
As I had feared, only the nice Pakistani lady and her two kids showed up. Seven of my crew extended the line in front of the camera. The other three mugged behind the glass and took pictures for the office bulletin board.
My bosses were effusive in their praise for my “quick thinking.” “Thanks for the feed back and the quick fix to bring CIC staff,” wrote Raylene Baker. Senior management had noticed me!
The whole thing would have been just an amusing incident if not for Jennifer Ditchburn. Using a freedom of information chit she nabbed the emails which had been flowing back and forth from The Minister to our office and to Sun TV. When she put together the account of my T-shirts and the bogus photo-op, it hit the fan.
By then I was well out of it. My contract hadn’t been renewed because of the upcoming federal budget. If I do another contract maybe it will be in the Prime Minister’s Office. Those guys are no more qualified than I am, they make a lot of money, and they get to have the real fun.
A Christmas Poem (sorta)
December 19, 2011
‘Tis the week before Christmas and throughout the land
We’re shopping and driving and making big plans
For family reunions and holiday cheer
With hopes for some snowflakes and weather that’s clear.
–
The Snowbirds are circling; their flocks swiftly grow.
They line up at Customs: the post-Christmas show.
They drive south in convoy, the like you won’t see,
To trailers in Florida, cheap houses and free,
“An endless vacation with friends from round here.
Our dollar is rich. We have months without fear
Of Florida hospitals, for OHIP will pay
‘Til April’s return to our gardens and play.”
–
With all the elections the signs are worn out.
The pundits keep writing; the Tories must tout
Their latest achievements with PMO rule,
For democracy’s finished. The MPs look bored.
They’re ignorant and arrogant and mostly ignored.
–
While Senators are playing their way through the East,
Concussions are hurting the visual feast
Of hockey like ballet. The best of the best
Are sitting on sidelines from murderous hits.
Enforcers are dying: brain lesions and drugs.
Each saw a career if he acts like a thug.
The great game’s in danger: inertia’s the threat.
They can’t make it safer: the violence gets
The fans in the boxes, the sponsors in line,
And another career ends – a trifling fine.
–
The point’s not to solve things in rhymes such as this,
But rather to show how, though much is amiss,
There’s many amongst us who put up quite a show.
They love what life brings them: a positive glow
Surrounds what they do, and they greet life with a smile.
–
We saw a young artisan who showed us this view.
She makes stained glass windows so brave and so new.
While the young woman shapes these bright fragments of light
Her cats loll on counters and grin at the sight
Of fresh hands to pat them. Her shop is a place
Of warmth and contentment, and artistic grace.
–
Perhaps the solution to winter’s sad drift
Lies in the activity and even the thrift
It takes for a project to come to fruition:
Commitment and effort, and even emotion.
–
So let’s not get upset with Ottawa’s drift.
We’ll deal with it later, and try not to shift
Our attitudes right to match Harper’s great plan
To scare us with justice and burn down the land
With oil sands and pipelines and shipments out West
Past Prince Rupert Sound in oil tankers, no less.
–
Instead let’s be thankful, and busy and glad.
This time in this great land there’s joy to be had.
The lakes have just frozen. The air’s crisp and clear.
Put on your long undies and pull Winter near.
It can’t take your bear hug, but soon melts away.
–
The nights will grow shorter, and each passing day:
With friends you grow stronger. The prospect of play
On frozen expanses of ice and of snow
Inspires us to action. The maples soon grow,
But first there’s the syrup, that warm, glowing taste!
The smell captures our memories and so we make haste
To get out the buckets, the pan and the gear.
It’s our way of knowing that spring is soon near.
–
So send me no invites to Florida down there.
Don’t bug me with politics. I just cannot care.
Keep Cherry off Hockey: that’s just fine with me,
But don’t miss the dog sleds — and ice fishing’s free.
Best wishes to all,
Rod and Bet Croskery
The War of 1812
October 13, 2011
When he gave it to me Grandpa Charlie told me that the old musket once saw action in the Battle of Crysler’s Farm. Apparently my great-great-great-grandfather sent his hired man to serve in his stead when the militia call went out. The gun came back, but the unnamed hired man was killed in the fighting. This may be an apocryphal tale, but the gun looks like the ones in the film.
Last night I watched both halves of the History Channel take on the War of 1812. It’s hard to believe that this 2004 film documents the same war I remember from Canadian history and family tradition. The film does not mention Tecumseh, or Isaac Brock, for example. The fall of Detroit, a brilliant deception by Tecumseh, they attributed to cowardice and incompetence on the part of its defenders. The subjects of Queenston Heights and Crysler’s Farm did not come up.
The narrator does mention casually that York was burned by American raiders, explaining that Britain used that peccadillo as justification for an all-out assault on Washington and the burning of the White House. He also mention the sacking of villages in the area and the rape of surviving women by British soldiers. I’d never heard that one before. But the film’s main energy is devoted to the burning of Washington, the defense of Baltimore and the Battle of New Orleans. These segments are myth-makers, with James Madison and Andrew Jackson the prime beneficiaries.
I guess the most egregious fault in the film is the complete absence of aboriginal characters. Indians did the bulk of the fighting for the British in hope that under British rule they would be protected from the genocidal practices of the expanding American states. In this propaganda film for American consumers, I can understand the exalted presence of black warriors defending their homeland, but the failure to identify Tecumseh as the only competent military leader on either side in the early part of the war is just bad history.
So what was the point of wheeling out this expensive piece of American revisionism at this time? The film makes much of the destruction of Washington, the camera working lovingly over an artfully-burned miniature of the White House, showing this as the absolute low point in the fortunes of the young nation.
It turns out that God was indeed on the American side, with a sudden, cataclysmic storm and later a tornado decimating the British forces for this profanation of the New Jerusalem which the poorly-led militia had failed to defend.
Then it was up to James Madison and his first lady to drag their countrymen up by their bootstraps. And so they did, with Madison quickly reconvening his cabinet and governing from the only public building still standing, the Washington post office.
Smarting from the Washington defeat, merchants and citizen militia defended the commercial centre, Baltimore, from the British fleet by sinking their own merchant ships to block the entrance to the harbour. The self-sacrifice and heroism of the wealthy merchants and the free black men, farmers, privateers, and everyone in between, combined in this massive, concerted effort to save what they had achieved from certain destruction.
And there were flags, two of them in turn triumphantly waving from the fort as the British ships hoisted anchor and sailed away after a night of bombardment. Francis Scott Key wrote his heroic poem. Someone fitted it to the tune of a British drinking song, and the rousing Star Spangled Banner was born.
A nation which would be strong enshrines its greatest defeats in memory to inspire its citizens never to allow them to happen again. So this telling of the loss of Detroit, the sacking of Washington, must reverberate in the minds of Americans and inspire them to make sacrifices and work together to make their nation once again great. That’s what nationalist propaganda is all about.
But this film offers little to Canadians apart from providing the backstory of an excellent national anthem. If we wish to understand our own historical roots, clearly we need a telling of the Canadian version, as The War of 1812 shows we certainly can’t rely on American sources for this one.
If Stephen Harper wants to spend $25 million to make Canadians more aware of this important part of our history, it’s O.K. by me. As long as he doesn’t spend most of it on a painting of Tony Clement in a heroic pose.
the Walnut Diary 