The Curse of Canada's Asbestos Exports

While I have written previously about Canada's ongoing indefensible export of death, also known as asbestos, a story in today's Star puts this abominable practice back into the public consciousness.

Entitled Tories tussle with asbestos widow over use of party logo in ad campaign, the piece details how Michaela Keyserlingk, whose husband Robert died in 2009 of mesothelioma, (a cancer caused almost exclusively by exposure to asbestos) has been running an online banner since the spring that reads, “Canada is the only western country that still exports deadly asbestos!” It is a campaign that has the Conservative Party of Canada upset and threatening legal action.

Her crime? The unauthorized use of the Tory trademark, which is used as part of her banner admonition, Danger – Canada is the only western country that still exports deadly asbestos!

Is her appropriation of the CPC logo trademark infringement? Of course. But the more important question? Is Mrs. Keyserlingk morally justified in its use? Same answer!

Should you like to show support for this brave Canadian, please consider visiting her website.

Michael Coren Violates CRTC Rules On Sun TV With Racist Remark

I was just reading a comment on Dr. Dawg's Blog that makes reference to a recent appearance by Michael Coren on Brian Lilley's show, Byline. In an interview about the London riots, Coren makes a racist comment that violates both Canadian Broadcast Standards and CRTC regulations when he says the riots are "not about Blackberries but about black thugs."

He then goes on to crow that he can say this on Sun TV when others are too frightened to speak.

I just emailed a complaint to the CRTC about this, and from past experience I know they are bound by law to investigate. I hope many others will also lodge a complaint.

Here is the video, and the offending remark comes at about the 3:20 minute mark:

Toronto Police: True Blue To The End

Anyone who might be concerned that recent events have put a strain on police solidarity can rest easy.

In an article in The Star entitled Retiring deputy chief calls G20 reaction overblown, Tony Warr, who is set to retire at month's end, has nothing but praise for the actions of police at last summer's G20 fiasco in Toronto.

A few quotations from the piece, which I am reproducing below, help to amply demonstrate not only police intransigence and misplaced loyalties, but also why the scars of that infamous weekend will likely never heal:

The public and media overreacted to events during the G20 summit, and police should hold their heads high. 

“There was a lot of good work done.”

“I defy anybody to have an event like that in their city and not have that kind of problem. Ours was a pretty minor one compared to what’s gone on in other cities.”

[T]here “seems to be a campaign by the media to keep this alive.”

Warr said he doesn’t want to second-guess officers for rounding up 1,100 people in the biggest mass arrest in Canadian history.

“Some of the media reaction was just disgusting,” 

Warr also made no apologies for the horrid conditions at the temporary detention centre on Eastern Ave., which was criticized for being overcrowded and having limited toilet facilities:

“People complained about the conditions there, but what did they expect when they get arrested? They’re not going to be taken to the Hilton. Jail is not a nice place,”

When such a shocking lack of empathy, understanding and insight into the seriousness of what transpired last year comes from a Deputy Police Chief, and our political 'leaders', both provincial and federal, display a similar nonchalance about egregious police wrongdoing, is it any wonder that the antipathy and suspicion of Canadians towards the police continues to fester and grow?

Hamilton Libraries: Something To Answer For

The other day I wrote a post called Hamilton's Vindication, with a link to a story detailing Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina's invitation to author Margaret Atwood to tour the Central Library facilities. I suggested that Hamilton was enjoying a burgeoning reputation as a magnet for the arts, and that Toronto, its traditional rival down the road, was suffering a real loss of cachet thanks to the depredations being contemplated by the philistines at their City Hall (aka the Ford brothers and their wrecking crew). There was, in all honesty, an element of gloating to my post.

To be fair, Hamilton's hands are not entirely clean when it comes to its libraries. Yesterday, Spec civic affairs columnist Andrew Dreschel wrote a piece entitled Let’s make sure Atwood hears the full story, reminding people of the fact that the Picton branch, located in a poor area of Hamilton, was closed in 2009 to free up $140,000. To put the proposed Toronto closures into perspective, the article suggests the closing was justified, and did little harm to those affected.

In today's Spectator, there is an excellent rebuttal to that assertion by Hamilton reader Kathleen Moore. While I am providing a link to that rebuttal, due to the often ephemeral nature of online letters to the editor, I am also taking the liberty of reproducing her thoughtful response below:

Picton closure hurt a community

Re: Atwood should hear the Picton story (Column, Aug. 12)

I was a volunteer at the Picton Library branch and three generations of my immediate family frequented that branch. I’m sure you’re familiar with the phrase “If you build it, they will come.” The opposite is true as well, “if you unbuild it, they will stop coming.”

I watched as the branch brought in fewer and fewer books, cut programs and then drastically cut hours of operation. Of course, visitors and borrowing rates fell. The library board had engineered its own excuse to close the branch.

This all occurred before the excellent exposure given by The Hamilton Spectator Code Red series.

It is difficult to believe that in this day and age there are people who are unaware that illiteracy leads to poverty, which then leads to ill health and early decline. All of these things take a great toll on our society as a whole.

One of the largest housing projects in the city is at Strachan and James Street North. It is full of single-parent families and immigrants. Many of them don’t speak English or speak it as a second language. These are the people who can least afford to access an alternative to a public library. These are the people who are already battling a system that seems determined to keep them down. These are the people who were most comfortable in the atmosphere of a neighbourhood branch library.

To close a library branch in an area of the city where it can do the most good is counterproductive, and in the long run costs all of us far more than keeping that one little branch open and offering literacy skills to those who need them the most.

I can’t help but feel this great sacrifice was made so funds could be used for the bright and shiny new branches that have been built in the “burbs.” Pretty is as pretty does, and yes, I’d love to sit and chat with Margaret Atwood about the real cost associated with our library system, and I would tell her that when the focus of “long-term strategic thinking” is the bottom line, and we look at our library system as a separate entity and independent business instead of as a basic societal necessity, we all pay a much greater price in the long run.

I was opposed, and am still opposed, to the closing of Picton Library Branch.

Kathleen Moore, Hamilton

Vindication For Those Abused By G20 Police Forces

The vast majority of the 1100 people abused, assaulted and arrested as a result of the thuggish actions of the G20 police forces, apparently intent on suppressing Canadians' Charter Rights last June in Toronto, must be feeling a deep measure of vindication today, this despite the fact that Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair have never acknowledged that anything wrong transpired and, of course, have blocked any attempts to hold an inquiry to begin to heal the damage done to our democratic traditions and our trust in the police.

The Toronto Star headline, Aggression during G20 rally ‘perpetrated by police,’ judge rules speaks a truth long evident to those who were either present at the demonstrations or saw a wealth of video evidence depicting an out-of control constabulary wilfully suppressing our democratic right to protest last year in Ontario's capital.

Justice Melvyn Green made his comments after dismissing the charges against a 32-year-old bricklayer from London, Ontario, Michael Puddy, whose only 'crime' seems to have been wearing a T-shirt that offended police sensibilities, leading to his being arrested and charged with obstructing police, concealing a weapon and possession of a prohibited weapon, a pocket knife that he uses in his trade.

As reported in the Star,

The London, Ont. bricklayer was on his way to a concert downtown when he joined the front line of the late-night Saturday rally. Puddy was wearing a “Police Bastard” T-shirt named after a punk band, when he was pushed to the ground and cuffed.

Puddy was shuffled from officer to officer and eventually transported to the temporary Prisoner Processing Unit on Eastern Ave. He spent two days behind bars and was forced to sleep on a concrete floor and use a toilet without a door before he was released on $25,000 bail.

Justice Green made the following comment which, to me, reflects the most serious implications of the unwarranted police actions:

“The zealous exercise of police arrest powers in the context of political demonstrations risks distorting the necessary if delicate balance between law enforcement concerns for public safety and order, on the one hand, and individual rights and freedoms, on the other.”

How do we calculate the true cost of police actions that one normally associates with non-democratic states? How many people, for example, will choose to never (again) take part in a public demonstration or otherwise stand up for their beliefs because of what happened in Toronto?

Even if it is only one person, the cost of the G20 will still have been too high.

The Ongoing Devolution of Toronto

Perhaps it stems from a sense of inadequacy, a measure of paranoia, or a recognition that when all is said or done, they are just not up to the job, but when those of the far right-wing take power, we are frequently witness to a type of unbridled glee that manifests itself in parades of intolerance, hyperbolic rhetoric, and vindictive behaviour.

That certainly appears to be what is happening in Toronto where Mayor Ford and his minions are having a field day in exacting revenge against those who ignored, scorned or rebuffed their agenda before the electorate believed their false campaign promises (no cuts, lower taxes, ending the gravy train) and put them in office.

There are people like Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, for example, who seems immune to the realization that each of his public utterances and actions invites ridicule from thinking people. There was, of course, his use of his video camera during the Dyke March to ensure no political messages were being conveyed. His discovery of an Israeli Apartheid placard emboldened him in his quest to defund Pride Toronto, totally ignoring what a financial boost the Toronto receives from their panoply of activities.

Recently, the good Councillor started a Facebook Page for his supporters, vowing to vet the site so that it is not infiltrated by “communists and layabouts.” A pity Joseph McCarthy has been gone these many years.

As well, he has a 'new plan' to rid Toronto of panhandlers, apparently through the elimination of all shelters, accompanied by either incarceration or hospitalization.

The latest insult to the thinking person is the fact that, under the direction of Mayor Ford, “the civic appointments committee is sweeping clean some boards, including the one overseeing libraries, with all members denied a chance at reappointment.”

To replace those individuals on these formerly arms-length boards, “Mayor Rob Ford’s office has taken an unprecedented interest in the process, even — according to witnesses — handing council allies a list of the citizen applicants, marked up with notes, during the short-listing.”

The other source of candidates for appointments? The Toronto Sun, that bastion of informed and balanced opinion whose readers are equally thoughtful. As reported in The Star,

City staff compiled and classified applications made in response to ads placed by the city in the Toronto Sun. The committee, dominated by Ford loyalists including Nunziata, the mayor’s councillor brother Doug and Councillor Giorgio Mammoliti, winnowed the names to a short list last month.

A shame, isn't it, how political ambition and personal agendas are so often pursued at the expense of the greater good.

Hamilton's Vindication?

While long regarded as something of a provincial backwater vis-a-vis its 'world-class' cousin 70 kilometres down the highway, the City of Hamilton is surely feeling a measure of cultural vindication now that the barbarians have breached the gates of Toronto.

As reported in the Toronto Star, world-renowned Margaret Atwood (despite her apparent obscurity to the Ford clan), has received and accepted an invitation from Hamilton Mayor Bob Bratina to visit and tour Hamilton's central library, an institution that recently underwent a multi-million dollar publically-funded renovation to better serve the people.

Responding to the insult hurled at her by Doug Ford, the Toronto mayor's brother (who said that if Atwood walked by, “I wouldn’t have a clue who she is” ) Mayor Bratina had this to say:

“We’re very proud of our Canadian cultural icons and regret that there was any question that Margaret Atwood’s stature might be dismissed in any way,” he said. “There’s a regrettable backwoods feeling to all this and it’s not right, it’s not true.”

Hamilton, which is quickly building a solid reputation for welcoming and supporting the arts as an important economic driver, is attracting a substantial number of artists from the Toronto area, both on the basis of cheap rents and land prices and an increasingly cosmopolitan attitude that only cities such as Toronto used to be able to lay claim to.