Currents

Who are you going to vote for if Canada has an election in the fall? The question is a lot more urgent now that the Conservatives are itching for a crack at a majority. How does the loyal opposition feel about the news of impending opportunity to once again test our great democracy?

Stefan Dion: “Today is an additional episode of a continuing saga of a fabricated emergency by the prime minister” (Reuters). Translation: “If Harper calls an election now, I’m screwed. Why won’t he let us Liberals keep voting for the government’s bills until the voters get sick of, ah, ahem, Conservative political tricksAHAHAHAAA!!! Sorry. I couldn’t keep a straight face.”

As for the NDP’s Jack Layton, he reportedly “says Harper would be showing contempt for democratic institutions if he pulled the plug on Parliament without letting MPs come back to their seats.” (Canadian Press) Translation: “It would be far better for Harper to wait until we’re ready. Democracy can wait a bit.”

Anyone else feeling a little intimidated by the spectactular Chinese-hosted Olympics the past couple of weeks?

“Their budget for those Opening Ceremonies — $68 million — was more than our budget for all of our ceremonies”, says VANOC CEO John Furlong.

So, low expectations for Vancouver’s 2010 Olympics? We’ll make do with a “tasteful” ceremony? Very… Canadian.

I’ve been enjoying birthdays and barbecues, riding my new bike, reading An Illustrated History of Canada, dealing with clients outside of regular business hours, watching the Olympics and loving living in Vancouver in the summertime. Hence, a dearth of posting. Not to fear.

The gloomy autumn overcasy sky is not far off.

Oh, and it appears my most popular blog post in recent memory involves naked breasts and Canadian political correctness. What’s that they say about giving the public what they want?

How about you?

Canadian soldier and Canada-Afghanistan Solidarity Committee member Tylere Couture explains why he volunteered for the mission in Afghanistan.

My decision to deploy to Afghanistan was, more than any other reason, made after learning about the country’s almost incomprehensible infant, child, and maternal mortality rates…

He didn’t do it for George Bush. No mention of any oil pipeline. Nope, he just wanted to help a country get back on its feet and save the lives of women and children. It’s that simple.

I’m proud to know him.

UPDATE: Sadly, some stories of Canadian heroes end in tragedy. The latest horrors perpetrated by the Taliban against people who were just trying to help ordinary Afghan people show the evil that Afghanistan and the international community is up against. We will remember.

If there is justice, their sacrifice won’t have been in vain.

A headline reads, “Montreal riot raises questions about police tactics as anger simmers” (Canadian Press). Other reports on the violent Montreal riot this week talk about the need for “sensitivity training” by police: “We give sensitivity training to every police officer to help them to have better contact with different communities in Montreal. We’re ahead of any police department that we know. We have to continue to work on that” (Canwest).

The same article describes how the locals rampaged on the scene, torching cars and attacking authorities: The riot left three police officers and one ambulance worker injured. Among the injured was one female police officer who was shot in the leg. Delorme said she was in stable condition and the bullet didn’t cause serious damage. The ambulance worker had a bottle smashed on his head and the other police officers suffered minor injuries.

So… the cops need sensitivity training? To deal with these savages?

But what about the “root causes”? It might have been the shooting of a local by the cops. Or it might have been this: “It went on for about four hours,” said Jean-Claude Dargis, director of security for the shop, as he replayed a security video in which a steady stream of young men carry TVs, bicycles and guitars out of the store. “Here they’re fighting over who’s going to steal the guitar,” Dargis said. “They’re stealing from their own neighbours.” (Montreal Gazette)

And this: Men and women of all ages were seen running down the street hugging television sets, cartons of cigarettes and raw meat.

Canadian Press reported seeing an elderly woman carrying a stereo and laughing with her friend as they made their escape. Other looters were seen sipping beer grabbed from a nearby convenience store… (CBC News)

With the threat of a human rights complaint hanging over the heads of owners of a Vancouver H&M clothing store, the “right” of mothers to nurse their babies in public has become a cause celebre for women across Canada (Globe & Mail).

I don’t particularly want to see womens’ breasts hanging out so long as there is an infant attached to them. How about my right to not have to look at scenes like the one above? What’s so terrible about mothers having a little discretion to point their boobs and latched-on babies away from people who don’t want to see it?

Consider this deal: I will continue to not partake in the perfectly natural activities of picking my nose and scratching my balls in front of people so long as nursing moms in Vancouver are willing to show a little discretion.

Like most young Canadians starting out in post-secondary education, I flirted with the ideas of communism that seemed larger than life on campus (and oddly invisible in the real post-Soviet world of 1990s-era Winnipeg).

I didn’t particularly like the idea of a worker’s paradise, since the phrase struck my lazy self as a bit of an oxymoron. But most of my academic colleagues seemed awfully comfortable with the idea of Canada as a socialist counterweight to the free-market colossus to our south in much the same way that much of Canada’s academia today seems locked into an uncomfortable unspoken alliance with thuggish religious fanatics opposed to the USA — not to mention our own way of life.

Reading Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s works at the still-formative age of 18 thankfully turned me away from my commie sympathizer leanings. Anyone who has read the Gulag Archipelago — or any of the Russian writer’s other works, from One Day In the Life of Ivan Denisovich to Cancer Ward — understands why it is so important to treat communism and other ideologically extreme political dead-end movements with absolute contempt.

Solzhenitsyn had the courage to write. He was banished from his homeland and charged with treason by the Soviet Union’s ruthless leadership for the words that he wrote. But in the end, Solzhenitsyn’s words made a difference.

He won’t be soon forgotten.

The consensus amongst a crowd of fireworks watchers from the roof of my building last night is that the USA kicked Canada’s butt in the Vancouver Celebration of Light fireworks competition. This, despite a lack of wind that prevented the Yanks’ fireworks smoke from moving out of the way and made half the show sort of an exploding purple nebula.

What was up with the Canadian theme, anyway? Attack? Godzilla? I don’t get it.

Will the Chinese give us a fireworks show to make the Americans (and us) run for cover? More to come.

A friend also noted that last year during the Vancouver City garbage strike, everyone pitched in after the fireworks to keep the beaches clean. Then, the sanitation workers were hoping the beaches would turn into landfill sites so as to boost their strike power. This year, with the strike a fruit-fly tinged memory, the garbage is piling up for the city crew to deal with. Seems like Vancouverites can’t help sticking it to the city workers.

Either a full 60 per cent of Canadians really do hate brown people, or the president of the Canadian Islamic Congress owes Canada’s Prime Minister an immediate apology (Read Who’s Really Playing Politics With Omar Khadr, Mr. Elmasry?).

An Ipsos Reid poll result released today shows that a video released by supporters of the alleged grenade tossing son of Al Queda, Omar Khadr, has done nothing to change Canadians minds about his detention in Gitmo (National Post). NP stringer James Cowan writes:

The results also demonstrate public support for Stephen Harper’s decision not to intervene in the case. Overall, 60% of people said they believe Mr. Khadr should remain in U. S. custody, while 40% said he should be immediately returned to Canada. “The Prime Minister has echoed the sentiments of the country,” Mr. Wright said. “His position on this is pretty sound and opinion is pretty firm.”

That actually puts me in a minority, since I stated in my last post that Khadr ought to be sent to Canada to face trial. Can’t say I’m all that disappointed in the majority of Canadians who likely made the calculation that Omar Khadr, his family and their supporters may represent a dire security threat to the nation — and that should outweigh any other considerations.

Perhaps the majority is right after all about the downside of repatriating Khadr to Canada. I’m still not convinced. But I’m open to arguments.

Canadian Islamic Congress president Mohamed Elmasry says Prime Minister Stephen Harper couldn’t possibly have any reason to avoid speeding Canada’s Al Queda family’s celebrity son home in time for Ramadan other than pure filthy racism (Canadian Press: Harper ‘playing politics’ with Khadr because he’s brown-skinned: Muslim leader).

From Elmasry’s odd perspective, any other Canadian who agrees with the Prime Minister’s stand is automatically a racist. That Omar Khadr is alleged to have killed an American soldier on a foreign battlefield where Canadian forces could just as easily have been the victims couldn’t possibly be a factor. The fact that Canada may not even have the legal apparatus to deal with Khadr any more effectively than the Americans… also not a factor. That Khadr is the son of a woman who proudly declares, “We are an Al Queda family“… also, not relevant.

Not relevant. Not relevant. Not relevant. Anyone who disagrees hates brown people. Especially the Prime Minister.

Why Canadian Muslims don’t petition to have this slanderous demagogue removed from his position may in fact say more about Canadian Muslims than it does about Elmasry, sad to say.

Funny thing is, I actually agree with Elmasry on his side objective: bring Khadr home (His main objective being tarring Canadians with the sticky tar of racism so as to prevent them from speaking out against a creeping shift in this country’s values). I’ll let the erudite and Agreeable Lyle Neff take over from here with some solid reasoning on the Pith and Substance blog. Mr. Neff writes from Vancouver:

Ms T., although I grudgingly agree that Awful Omar Khadr should be pulled from Gitmo and put into Ontario clink for some less-hard years (because he was just a kid at the dawn of the war; because he may not have killed; because of his father’s malignancy), Canadian public opinion is quite right to hold the boy and his clan in contempt, as one does traitors.

Hey, remember when Jean Chretien interceded with Pakistan to get Omar’s murderous zealot dad sprung — ‘96, wasn’t it? No apology from the Grits as of yet…

I expect we’ll be waiting for that apology for some time, Neff. And now Paul Martin seems to have found his own 10-foot pole (Globe and Mail).