The Fluidity Of Our Charter Rights

Judging by both past events and current practices, I think it is safe to say that neither Premier Dalton McGuinty nor Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, along with his underlings, have a great deal of respect for Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

First, of course, there are the well-documented violations of those rights that took place during the Toronto G20 Summit of June 2010, a summit in which both the above-mentioned conspired to deprive thousands of their charter rights throuh illegal arrests, detentions, and search and seizures, both 'leaders' fully aware of their complicity in illegal behaviour.

Unfortunately, however, these Charter violations continue on a daily basis. There is a program in Toronto called Toronto Anti-Violence Intervention Strategy (TAVIS), fully endorsed by both McGuinty and Blair and recently guaranteed permanent funding by the Premier, that aims to reduce gang violence in The Big Smoke which this summer has been beset by gun violence.

And while I don't pretend to know what the answer to this problem is, I hardly think it makes sense to go out of one's way to alienate the black community, which already has ample reason to be suspicious of the authorities.

Today's Toronto Star has a disturbing story with accompanying video about four young black men, ages 15 and 16, who decided to assert their rights against arbitrary police stops by refusing to identify themselves and attempting to walk away from the authorities. As you will read in the story, that attempt to enforce their charter rights had a very unpleasant consequence that could have ended in fatalities.

So my question is this: has anyone ever checked on the constitutional legitimacy of programs such as TAVIS? Indeed, would they withstand a Charter challenge?

Enbridge Apparently Spares All Expense

Unless you are one of those naive souls who believes in corporate integrity, this video should disturb you:

H/t 404 System Error

Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall...

It isn't always pleasant to look into the mirror, but I'm glad we have people like Chris Hedges to force us to on a regular basis.

Another Unpleasant Fact of Omnibus Bill C-38 Revealed

Given that it is a government with a well-known contempt for openness and democracy, the Harper regime rarely shocks me anymore. Its vilification campaigns of those with opposing views, its use of government power to muzzle the voice of science, its almost demonic obsession with resource extraction at any cost has left me pretty much inured to any emotional reaction other than disgust.

Yet even I was both shocked and appalled at what I learned reading The Toronto Star's editorial this morning.

The headline tells it all: Drilling for oil in the Gulf of St. Lawrence without a clue:

Buried within the more than 400 pages of this spring’s federal omnibus budget bill is an invitation for resource companies to open a new frontier in Canadian oil: the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

The gulf, which touches the coastlines of Canada’s five easternmost provinces, is the world’s largest estuary. It’s home to more than 2,000 species of marine wildlife — an ecosystem integral to the health of our Atlantic and Great Lakes fisheries.

Now, due to measures deep in the federal budget, that ecosystem may be under threat. The bill explicitly highlights the region’s potential for petroleum extraction and includes amendments to the Coasting Trade Act that give oil companies greater access to exploration vessels.

The editorial reveals that a company called Corridor Resources Inc. has applied to drill the first-ever deep-water well in the gulf, a development with dire environmental implications. Even without an oil spill, the seismic drilling will have profoundly negative effects on marine life, and to compound the environmental crime, there will be no way to measure those effects:

The budget rescinded the requirement for environmental assessments of exploratory drilling and crippled the Centre for Offshore Oil, Gas and Energy Research, the federal agency best equipped to deliver such assessments.

In a world already in the midst of the biggest disaster ever experienced by humanity, climate change, the Harper regime is unbowed in its headlong rush to give the corporate sector every opportunity to 'live for the moment," something it has historically proven to be very adept at.

Climate Change - Much Worse Than We thought

James E. Hansen has some very impressive credentials. Not only has he headed the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies for 31 years, he is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences at Columbia University.

But wait, there's more:

Hansen is best known for his research in the field of climatology, his testimony on climate change to congressional committees in 1988 that helped raise broad awareness of global warming, and his advocacy of action to avoid dangerous climate change. In recent years, Hansen has become an activist for action to mitigate the effects of climate change, which on a few occasions has led to his arrest.

In other words, here is a man eminently qualified to pronounce on the environmental catastrophes currently overtaking the earth. He is also the bane of the benighted, a.k.a., climate-change deniers.

In a piece appearing in The Washington Post entitled Climate change is here — and worse than we thought, Hansen offers some startling conclusions about his1988 Congressional testimony:

I was too optimistic.

My projections about increasing global temperature have been proved true. But I failed to fully explore how quickly that average rise would drive an increase in extreme weather.

In a new analysis of the past six decades of global temperatures, which will be published Monday, my colleagues and I have revealed a stunning increase in the frequency of extremely hot summers, with deeply troubling ramifications for not only our future but also for our present.

He goes on to detail some very alarming truths about the speed with which climate change has taken hold:

... the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide.

I hope you will take the time to read the entire article, and peruse some of the many responses to it that also show there is no convincing some of our present peril, including these nuggets:

Climate-Change is voodoo science and Ronal [sic] Reagan proved it....except Bill Clinton and A Gore destroyed the evidence.

All these Leftist-Marxist Climate-Changers are just trying to shut down more and more American industries to "re-distribute" the wealth to their favorite "poor countries"....Climate Change is as serious as collecting "beanie-babies"....

And here's my personal favourite:

It was warmer in the world during the time of Christ, 2000 years ago. How do you account for that?

H/t Alex Himelfarb

Sun TV - A Blight On Critical Thinking

Personally, I think we all give far too much attention to that parody-of-news-organization known as Sun TV. From the puerile rants of Ezra Levant to the sanctimonious pronouncements of religious hypocrites like Michael Coren, Sun TV is an egregious insult to anyone with a modicum of critical-thinking skills.

Yet here I am, adding to the cacophonous denunciations of this propaganda wing of the Harper Conservatives. Oh well, I will blame my lapse on the oppressively humid weather outside (now 41 degrees with the humidex). That, and this blistering article from Rabble.ca exposing the organization for what it is.

Harper's Parody of Democracy

Yesterday, I wrote a post expressing cynicism about Heritage Minister James Moore's tough talk concerning Enbridge, expressing the view that it was just more political posturing on the part of Harper Inc. since the company has come under much media scrutiny due to its record of oil spills.

Reading another story today about the time limits and restrictions placed on the NEB hearings into the pipeline, and the fact that it will be the Harper regime that makes the final determination about the pipeline, made me think back to my teaching days.

I always regarded school committee with disdain, and rarely sat on them, since they were generally gatherings characterized by a lot of talk and a paucity of action. On a few occasions I broke my embargo, each time coming away from the experience realizing I had thrown away many hours of my life for nought.

The very last time I sat on one (and I forget what it was for), the end result was that the principal entirely ignored our recommendations, imposing the decisions that he had hoped we would recommend.

Why even go through a charade of democratic participation when the end result is preordained, and the role of the committee is only to lend the air of legitimacy to the autocrat?

That is precisely what I believe is going to happen with the NEB hearings - after all of the applicants are heard, and thousands of hours of testimony are given, no matter the recommendation, the pipeline will go ahead. The best indicator of the future is found, of course, in this little nugget:

The government [has] formalized new rules that for the first time give the Harper cabinet the final word on whether the pipeline should go ahead, even if the arms-length NEB-led panel concludes the project is environmentally unsound.

Were the hearings anything but an empty public-relations exercise, would such a stipulation exist?