the humorous (and sad) folly of Canada’s conservative government

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by Aos

I’m sure if you got close enough to Canada’s Minster of Health, Tony Clement, you would see a warning label that reads:

Warning: Leaving this man in office will increase the incidence of HIV and Hep C in the general population.

I’m joking but the situation is far from funny.

You know whenever I see another study about how good caffeine is for something, even though I know I should look more closely, I just think “of course”, and give an “as if” to any study showing the opposite. I like my coffee and as an individual, as foolish as that behavior might be, I’m not harming anyone by acting in that manner. Another can decide to believe that smoking is actually good for them. No harm to anyone but them.

These actions are excusable for an individual but as a government representative the same actions are reprehensible. When you are in charge of the nation’s health, your own little opinions are of little consequence when compared to the actual evidence. Unfortunately, out health minister is acting like an individual.

A recent paper still in pre publication status at the International Journal of Drug Policy (unfortunately accessible only through subscription) details the Canadian Government’s sorry dismissal of evidence of the Insite medically supervised drug injection site operation’s managing to reduce levels of harm associated with drug use in Vancouver. Insite was subjected to stringent control and in the first three years of operation no fewer than 22 peer reviewed studies emerged detailing the promise of this experiment. It reduced the amount of needle sharing, reduced the number of overdoses and increased the number of users entering detoxification treatments.

These 22 studies were dismissed as “right now, the only the research to date has proven conclusively is drug addicts need more help to get off drugs……given the need for more facts, I am unable to approve the current request to extend the Vancouver site for another three and a half years.” The paper details not only the minister’s response but the high level coordination with law enforcement to release a similar response. In other words, this is being treated as a criminal rather than a health matter. And there is little doubt that there has been some influence due to the constant and vocal American antagonism to the project.

My idea of government is an organization that attempts to fairly spread the costs and benefits over the whole population with the aim of improving everyone’s lot. Now, my politics have always been somewhat left to centre, a combination of Green Party, New Democrats and Liberals but until now I never felt threatened by the Conservatives. You still felt they were attempting to do the best for the people. But the Conservatives once again seem to be consulting the American playbook. Back with Mulroney there were always jokes about what was found obstructing Bush Sr’s bowels, and it was Mulroney. But he was small stuff in comparison to what is going on now. Just a couple of days ago, I read that the government has now demanded that all scientists working with Environment cannot speak without clearing it through official channels.

Strangely enough there is this perception of the right being tougher than the left and yet it is the right that is servile, that kowtows to imperialists and is much more worried about how the vote will go. Tough on crime and drugs has always been an easy play for votes.

So what is Tony’s true message? He wants those evil drug addicts out of this facility and back on the streets. He would rather they infect one another and their families (because, Tony, they have children and lovers and parents who come into contact with them); he would rather they die of overdose and be denied human care. He must think they deserve to die. And a few drug deaths, and an increase in disease is immaterial when it comes to getting tough on drugs. You have to break a few eggs right?

by Aos

I was first reading about this on Primordial Blog but it has resurfaced and deserves comment.

In my newspaper this morning I read that we had just stood shoulder to shoulder with the Americans to be the only developed nations not ratifying the Kyoto accord. Now maybe I should say the Bush representatives because just like Canadians, many Americans do not support their government’s stand on this issue.

The reason for withholding support is that it places us at an economic disadvantage; it would hamper our competitiveness on the global arena. That is, unless everyone plays ball. And some nations jostling to join our developed club are not agreeing, nations like China. Frankly, expecting China to follow any environmental guidelines is absurd. In this regard, their history over the last century is appalling.

But the point is this. It doesn’t matter what China does. Its a question of moral standing. The only way China will ever even consider such a stance is is everyone else has already done so, and possibly has ended up embargoing Chinese goods. You just can’t wait for China.

And what if there is a critical tipping point. What if China gets us almost all the way there but Canada’s little contribution is the one that just puts us over that edge. Sure it really only got to that point because of China but would that make you feel any better?

My poor metaphor is this: there is a little old lady with a big old heart who runs a soup kitchen out of the front of her house and feeds all of us. She sort of knows it but can’t do much about the fact that we sneak into her house at night and steal stuff that she makes soup with. Everybody is doing it. Now we noticed that the soup was starting to get a little thin and we recognized that the potatoes that were usually in the soup were probably the ones we stole last night. So we got together and thought that maybe, because we like the soup and want it to keep coming, that we shouldn’t be stealing her stuff. A few people say, sorry, we’re still hungry and we need more than just the soup. Besides we don’t get as much soup as you guys and never have. A couple of the well fed people say well if you keep stealing, then why should we stop?

Here from the Montreal Gazette is the report (written by Jan Bagnell, December 12, 2007)

Canadians should be ashamed of our government’s actions in Bali
We’re one of the world’s Top 10 polluters, yet we try to undermine the climate talks

On Monday, speaking from Oslo’s sober, beautiful city hall, this year’s recipients of the Nobel Peace Prize, former U.S. vice-president Al Gore and Rajendra Pachauri, chairperson of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, made the case, once again, that the world faces a “planetary emergency.”

Gore urged the countries gathered in Bali to negotiate and ratify an ambitious successor to the 1990 Kyoto Protocol. Failure to take responsibility to curb carbon emissions, Gore warned, especially by the United States and China, the world’s worst offenders, means those two nations will “stand accountable before history.”

Half a world away in Bali, it wasn’t clear how many people were listening. In a strictly scientific sense, the Bali negotiations, which end Friday, should not be difficult. Climate change is a scientific reality, as the exhaustive, six-year study by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change made clear this year.

“Bali must be the political response to the recent scientific reports by the IPCC,” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said. “All countries must do what they can to reach agreement by 2009, and to have it in force by the expiry of the current Kyoto Protocol commitment period in 2012.”

But Canada, for one, seems to have no intention of doing any such thing. Our country, one of the world’s Top 10 emitters of greenhouse gases, will, under the Harper government, continue to undermine negotiations under cover of seeking “fairness.”

Fairness, to the Harper government, consists in waiting until other top emitters sign on to a post-Kyoto agreement before it commits itself to anything. China, India and the United States would have to agree to cut their greenhouse-gas emissions by a fixed number before Canada acts.

Canada is already ranked near the bottom of a list of 56 countries that together are responsible for more than 90 per cent of energy-related carbon-dioxide emissions around the world.

In an index measuring climate protection performance, compiled by environmental watchdog Germanwatch (www.germanwatch.org/klima/ccpi2008.pdf), Canada is ranked 53, above only Australia, at 54, the U.S. at 55, and Saudi Arabia in last place. Canada and the U.S. in 2004 emitted about 20 tonnes of greenhouse-gas emissions per capita.

With Australia committed to signing Kyoto, thanks to its new prime minister, the three nations remaining at the bottom of the index suffered the further indignity of receiving Fossil of the Day awards from youth groups attending Bali. Saudi Arabia won for refusing to endorse any emissions target; the U.S. for “blocking the international effort to fight climate change”; and Canada for “telling a committee in Bali that emission-reduction obligations were not necessary for all largest emitting countries.”

It seems unlikely that Canada could do much worse, but apparently we are about to, according to reports out of Bali this week. Criticism of Canada’s performance is coming from all directions. After meeting Canadian Environment Minister John Baird, Yvo de Boer, head of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said at a press conference in Bali: “I personally find it interesting to hear Canada just a little while ago indicating it would not meet its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol and now calling on developing countries to take binding reduction targets.”

Baird has been telling other nations at Bali that Canada plans to reduce its emissions by six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 - leaving out the critically important information that it will calculate the decrease using 2006 as the baseline year. Other nations use 1990.

Rajendra Pachauri also singled Canada out for criticism, saying in an interview in New Delhi that the Harper government “has been a government of skeptics. They do not want to do anything on climate change.”

In Bali, CTV reported, an increasing number of scientists and other countries are blaming Canada for spearheading, along with the U.S. and Japan, opposition to the draft UN resolution calling for developed countries to cut emissions by 25 per cent to 40 per cent by 2020.

By the weekend, our obstructionist delegation will be back in Canada. Baird might be unconvinced by science and the concerns of another 170 countries, but seeing him through the astonished eyes of the rest of the world should prove an eye-opener for Canadians.

This government is snuggling ever closer to the government down south. What is the most perturbing about this, and most indicative of short sightedness and lack of even political savvy not to mention common sense, is that the government down south has little popular support for most of its policies and has in general operated not only in ignorance of the evidence but in knowing opposition to it. We are tying our foreign and domestic policies to a known and accepted failure. It just doesn’t make any sense.

I am not simply speaking of foreign commentary on American policy but their own domestic criticism. The tragic way in which we are really becoming American is that we are becoming a population out of step with our government. This is actually quite new up here. In general, though we had some quibbles, we generally identified with our government and now; now we are estranged like so many Americans are. Our governments no longer reflect us.

by Aos

Though this blog was set up in response to a power we find threatening, I plan to write about Canadian government foibles in general. Most of the content will castigate the Conservatives I’m sure but I think that if any plaudits are due, I just might be handing some out. The reason I want to make this explicit (and this reflects my view, Angry Canuck may wish to put this another way or disagree altogether) is that some Conservative shortcomings will reflect the shortcomings of any governing power.

Governments waste money. They are inefficient and even if they get a handle on the budget, they then enact laws with unintended financial consequences. But I wouldn’t trade expensive government for no government at all. Countries do need managing. But the point is that choosing parties to support is almost always a choosing of lesser evils.

That being said, we will go after Harper and pals, and also any things we find nonsense from any party (see rant below). We hope that this allows for more reasonable discussions with our readers and gets us more than just the usual choir. We all have our idiosyncratic dogmatisms and they will be in full display but we do want to try to be a little open about things.

If you will allow me one little general diversionary rant not really connected to the foregoing except in being a “general thought”. One little peculiarity of Canadian government practice I would like to comment on is the allowing of a separatist party to have Federal standing. Now I might be Albertan but I really don’t have a big problem with Quebec, and if they want to discuss separation within their house, that is their business. But it is both insane and strange that this be given open federal status. Canada, like all countries, is a house in need of continual repair and renovation. Why would I include among the contractors for the job, a salvage crew that would like to rip off part of the house and take it away with them?

By Aos

Recently, the Harper government unveiled their new get tough on crime bill. Part of the bill involves mandatory sentencing applied to cannabis production.

What does mandatory sentencing mean?

It means that the government does not trust judges with the discretion to decide reasonable courses of action following a conviction. It means that the elected officials think they know more about the system than the judges do. That’s rather unlikely. The judges see people come and go. They see the results of incarceration and of release. And they can take this into account when they apply the law.

Now the law applies equally to all in that the same crime is being broken. However there are many reasons why such a thing happens and they range from honest error to evil intent. Judges are there to discern between the two and to apply what is required.

Mandatory sentencing removes variability in sentencing. It means more people in prisons and more people demanding trials because to be found guilty leads to an automatic term. It means a lot of public money going to building new prisons, housing prisoners and then dealing with the effects on society of individuals trying to recover from jail time.

In this case, we have a policy which might be defensible if applied to heinous crimes such as rape and murder but when applied to “possessing one marijuana plant” it is not only absurd but damaging to society as a whole. What is being suggested for this dangerous botanical affront is a mandatory sentence of six months or 132 days. Just to put that into perspective, in 2003 (as reported by StatsCan) the median sentence for major assaults was 75 days, for breaking and entering 150 days and for impaired driving 30 days. So if someone down the street has a marijuana plant growing in their kitchen, this is worse than them beating me to a pulp, worse than driving drunk and almost running me down, and almost as bad as breaking into my house.

Now some people may think we have to crack down on the big producers. So here we have allowable maximum sentences for marijuana trafficking of up to 14 years. Once again, let me see how this would affect me. If I kill someone I get out in 7 years but if I sell them marijuana (marijuana for god’s sake) I can get 14. And I don’t think it really matters that I sell hundreds of people marijuana in comparison to taking a life. Hey, rape is only about a year so this is 14 times worse than rape?

But ok, let’s say you think that marijuana use and sale is really terrible and something has to be done.The problem with these laws is that when you stop small timers from growing plants for themselves and their friends, you drive the business into the hands of the professionals.

Let me tell you a little something about marijuana distribution. When I was in high school I and most of the people in my school smoked some marijuana. We got it from our friends and they got it from theirs. No one was pressured into using it and no one made a big deal about it. And most of us ended up as doctors and lawyers and plumbers and other useful members of society. It was a phase.

Take any one of us and give us a 6 month prison term and depending on the person, you lose a doctor, a lawyer, even a plumber.You get someone who has to lie to get and keep a job, who then loses that job if the lie is found out, who is scared of travelling and someone who other than smoke a little bit of plant matter never broke another law.

So you have one of two scenarios; One: the casual users continue to grow their plant, get caught, cost society 6 months of room and board, have their lives and the lives of many around them ruined, and clog the prisons and courts, or Two: the casual users all stop and the all the business is taken over by your friendly Hell’s Angels, increasing their profits substantially.

“Tougher penalties for people who produce and traffic drugs will only scare the ma-and-pa producers, and organized crime will fill the gap,” said Eugene Oscapella, a criminal lawyer who teaches drug policy at the University of Ottawa and once advised the Law Reform Commission of Canada on the issue.

“Organized crime doesn’t care about the law. With these changes, this government is doing a service for organized crime.” Oscapella says decades of experience with tough, mandatory penalties in the United States have proven that the threat of prison terms doesn’t deter drug traffickers or growers, just as similar policies never deterred organized criminals and illegal bootleggers during the U.S. prohibition on alcohol. -Montreal Gazette Nov 21, 2007

Apart from this the drug war is a sad failed experiment in wasted lives and effort. I was at a conference last year where I saw an ex-police chief speak out about why he and so many of his colleagues now fought the war on drugs.They had followed the mantra, infiltrated groups, entrapped individuals, and now they were confronted with the human cost, with the daily tragedy resulting from their actions.

But back on the issue of the effectiveness of mandatory sentences, this 2002 report on the Justice Canada website had this to say.

From a utilitarian point of view, incarcerating occasional, non-violent offenders, for substantial periods, constitutes a colossal waste of justice system resources.

Severe MMS seem to be least effective in relation to drug offences. Studies using a variety of methodologies seriously question the value of the “drug war” approach. The draconian penalties in Malaysia are routinely circumvented by the judiciary and the tough MMS in the US (both at the state and federal levels) have imprisoned mostly low-level, nonviolent offenders. Drug consumption and drug-related crime seem to be unaffected, in any measurable way, by severe MMS.

Both mathematical modeling techniques and field work arrive at the conclusion that treatment-oriented approaches are more cost effective than harsh prison terms. Most drug dealers operate at a low-level and are not committed to this activity in a single-minded way. MMS are blunt instruments that provide a poor return on taxpayers’ dollars because they fail to distinguish between low and high-level, as well as hardcore versus transient dealers. An optimal approach might require a mix of accessible treatment for addicted dealers, employment opportunities for part-time dealers, and tough sentences for hardcore, high-level dealers.

Or from this more recent 2005 report again on the Justice Canada website:

Mandatory penalties have well-documented negative impacts on the criminal justice system, as reflected in evidence-based research from a variety of sources. Apart from increasing rates of incarceration, MMPs create rigidity in the sentencing process, reduce the courts’ ability to craft individualized sentences which take into account both aggravating and mitigating circumstances, increase racial disparities in inmate populations, remove incentives for guilty pleas, increase the numbers of charges going to trial and cause significant dissatisfaction among judges, defence counsel and prosecutors.

A March 2005 report from criminologist Julian V. Roberts, Mandatory Sentences of Imprisonment in Western Nations Representative Models, found that very few countries have enacted mandatory sentences of imprisonment. Contrary to the Canadian experience, the majority of jurisdictions that do have MMPs (which are mostly for murder) allow courts to not impose them in exceptional circumstances. And countries with some of the most severe laws for MMPs are beginning to repeal them. For example, about 25 U.S. states in the past few years have passed laws eliminating or reducing some of the lengthy MMPs, given the distortion, increased costs, and high rates of incarceration that have resulted from rigid sentencing schemes, such as California’s “Three Strikes” laws. Furthermore, the American Bar Assocation released a 2004 report following lengthy study and recommended an end to MMPs. Other findings included MMPs not having any evident effect on crime rates, and declining public support for these penalties.

What we have to conclude from this is that the present power in Ottawa though obviously enamoured of the American approach to all things, learns no lessons from American failures nor listens to evidence from reports commissioned from its own Justice Department. Changes of administration do not mean changes of evidence. All that we ask of Harper and his cronies is this: do what you think is right but do it with your eyes open and with some view to history. Learn from what has been tried before.

I’ll leave the last word to Justice Gomery who put it rather succinctly:

“In the last couple of decades, U.S. has gone the way of mandatory sentencing for a whole bunch of crimes and the result is their prisons are jammed.

“I find it hard to understand how the richest country in the world has one of - if not the - highest prison population in the world. There’s something wrong there, and the problem is mandatory sentences. I’m disappointed to see Canada drifting in that direction.”

Other voices on this:

Dan Gardner at the Ottawa Citizen

And Alex Roslin on how this is leading to the privatization of prisons.

by Angry Canuck

The Dutch cabinet voted last week to extend the country’s military deployment in Afghanistan by two years. Dutch soldiers, 1,700 are currently stationed in Uruzgan province, near Kandahar province where Canadian troops are deployed.

The Dutch mandate was to expire in 2008. The cabinet voted to extend its military commitment by two years, until 2010 under pressure from NATO, the UN and the Afghani government. Twelve Dutch soldiers have been killed and the government is facing public pressure to end their country’s involvement.

The cabinet’s decision needs to approval of the nation’s parliament.

“This wasn’t a decision taken overnight,” Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende told reporters. “This mission will end on Aug. 1, 2010, whatever happens.”

The decision “comes in response to a request by the Afghan government, NATO and the United Nations,” said a news release from the Dutch government.

“The main objectives of the mission are to stabilize the country, support the government, army and police, and train Afghan units so that they can eventually take over.”

Read the whole story at CBC News.

Canada’s military commitment in Afghanistan ends in 2009. Harper’s parliamentarians are set to make a decision in February 2008 on an extension of the mission that has seen 73 Canadian soldiers and one diplomat killed. Harper has said an extension will not be granted without parliamentary consensus.

I can see it now, the cabinet discussions: If the Dutch are staying we have to stay. We can’t let those clog-wearing tulip-growers show us up. We just bought all those tanks. How can we spins this? How can we get Canadians to support a knee-jerk American war?

Answer: Another tax cut. Canadians will support anything if it involves stopping the rectal bleeding known as taxation. Just ask Mike Harris and the PCs in Ontario. They stayed in power for years based on tax cuts.

Yes, it’s in the wind. Two more years, four more, a generation perhaps, of killing Afghans civilians in a pointless conflict.

by Angry Canuck

A big backtrack by the Conservatives on previous government policies. Remember Charles Ng and how he couldn’t be extradited due to concerns about the death penalty? Apparently, under Harper, Canada has adopted a “kill them all, let God sort them out” attitude.

…Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s announcement this month that Canada would no longer seek clemency for Canadians sentenced to death in democratic countries where the individual will receive a fair trial.

Harper also said Canada would no longer co-sponsor a UN resolution opposing the use of the death penalty around the world.

The announcement marked a reversal in a longstanding foreign policy and a move Liberal foreign affairs critic Bob Rae called “disgraceful.”

The whole story at CBC News.

A Canadian sits on death row in Montana. Will the government help? No. He’s taking them to court.

An Alberta man on death row in Montana is taking the Canadian government to court over its decision not to intervene in his case.

Lawyers representing Ronald Allen Smith on Tuesday submitted an application to the Federal Court of Canada for a judicial review of the government’s decision.

On Nov. 1, Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said he wouldn’t ask American authorities to hand over Smith, who faces lethal injection for murdering two men in 1982 during a road trip south of the border.

“We will not actively pursue bringing back to Canada murderers who have been tried in a democratic country that supports the rule of law,” Day told the House of Commons at the time.

Read the whole story at CBC News

Mr. Day: To which rule of law are you referring? Is that the law that allows countries to invade and occupy sovereign nations based on trumped-up intelligence data?

Bravo, Stephen. I’m glad that you, and your band of righteous right-wingers have started to show your true colors. Why don’t you, and your public security buffoon Stocky Day, take a road trip down to Montana and push the plunger yourselves?

I wish Mr. Smith all the luck in his challenge. The federal court won’t do anything as there will be little public outcry. I’d be interested to see the government’s response if the murder was committed by a Conservative Party MP while on a Washington DC junket.

by Angry Canuck

The former Liberal Deputy PM has been busy. John Manley spent a week touring Afghanistan as part of his current role as leader of a five-person committee appointed to make recommendations on Canada’s military future in the mid-east nation.

The committee arrived in Afghanistan a week ago and toured through areas including Kandahar, Kabul and Mazar-e Sharif.

“All of us have seen things that have helped us a great deal in the understanding the complexity of this country, and the complexity of the issues facing the international community and facing Canada,” Manley told reporters at the airbase in Kandahar on Tuesday night, before leaving Afghanistan on Wednesday.

The whole story at CBC News.

The committee will present recommendations the house in January on Canada’s future when its military commitment to Afghanistan ends in February 2009. There are four option for the committee to consider: Continued training for the Afghan army and police forces, focusing on Kandahar’s reconstruction, moving military operations to other areas of Afghanistan, or, the withdrawal of Canadian forces.

Stephen Harper appointed the committee in October. Many were surprised by his choice of a liberal to head the group. Harper said he wanted to the group to be non-partisan. Sitting on the committee are three former Mulroney men, Pamela Wallin, former journalist and Canadian Consul to New York (appointed by Jean Chrétien), and former Deputy PM Manley.

How will this cookie crumble? Three conservatives, a liberal, and a liberal diplomatic appointee? I expect the committee will say Canada should stay in Afghanistan another few years, despite the outcry from Canadians and the rising death toll. Why didn’t Harper appoint five ordinary Canadians, voters, average joes? Because they aren’t smart enough to make decision bigger than marking an X on a ballot. They need a strong conservative hand to show them the way and paddle their backsides.
Manley and Wallin attaching their names to this joke committee and it’s eventual recommendations grates on me. The term “played” comes to mind.

What’s this site about?

Idiots, morons, and hypocritical zealots. Yes, Canada’s conservative government.

The mission of conservative foibles is to point out (and ridicule) the insane decisions of Stephen Harper and his band of stunted followers.

Discussion is welcome and encouraged.