Is Secrecy The New Canadian Norm?

The Harper regime is notorious for its virtual embargo on information. Muzzling of scientists, heavily-redacted Freedom of Information documents, regular obstruction of Parliamentary officers have become the norm. In light of these profoundly anti-democratic traits, one has to ask whether the paranoid control that obsesses the regime has filtered down to other levels of government and institutions?

'Privacy rights' have become the default position of far too many. The Harper regime uses it regularly whenever it wishes to avoid answering uncomfortable questions. One of the latest examples of this deplorable tactic is to be found in the case of Bashir Makhtal,

a 46-year-old who lived and worked in Toronto, [who] has been languishing in an Ethiopian jail in Addis Ababa since he was convicted of terrorism in 2009. He has always denied the charges.

Makhtal was arrested on the border of Kenya and Somalia in 2006 after fleeing Mogadishu and the fall of the Islamic Courts Union.

Initially refusing a deal for a prison-transfer back to Canada because he claimed he was innocent, last year he accepted it, but the federal government has done nothing to faciliate that transfer, says his cousin.

The Canadian government response to these allegations?

François Lasalle, a spokesperson for Foreign Affairs, told the Star that “to protect the privacy of the individual concerned, further details on this case cannot be released.”

Similarly, Zarah Malik, a spokesperson for Public Safety Canada, told the Star that “the Privacy Act prevents federal government officials from discussing the specifics of an offender’s case.”

Other institutions inspired by this 'sterling' example include the RCMP, which now is refusing to divulge the identities of car accident victims and other such tragedies, even homicides.

Says lawyer David Fraser,

"Not disclosing the information very likely makes their jobs easier, and not having to ask the next of kin or the family to disclose whether they can disclose this information, it's one less thing that they have to do," he said.

"It's always easier — we see this across government — to just point to the privacy legislation as a reason to not do something … to not provide information to the media."

This cone of silence is given critical scrutiny by The Toronto Star:

Until this year the RCMP released the names of victims with their consent or the permission of their surviving relatives. Now it says it must comply with Privacy Act, regardless of the wishes of bereaved families.

“I wanted people to know my sons,” said Mary Anne MacIntyre of Judique, a small Cape Breton Community where 19-year-old Morgan MacIntyre and his 17-year-old brother Jordan were killed in a car crash two years ago. “Being Victim A or Victim B is just, to me, feels so cold.”

So even with the family's permission, the RCMP is obdurately hiding behind the privacy justification.

The federal behaviour is now infecting local police forces as well. This past February, two men were shot and killed by an armed security guard in a Toronto McDonald's restaurant. And that is about all we are ever likely to know, since it was announced this week that the guard will not be charged.

“Investigators consulted Senior Crown Attorneys and provided an overview of the circumstances surrounding the deaths,” police said in a statement issued Wednesday. “It was determined that there would be no reasonable prospect of conviction, therefore no criminal charges would be laid.”

Here is what columnist Edward Keenan had to say:

Two men were shot and killed, in public, in February. Police know who did it, but they will not tell us. They say no charges should be laid in the case, but they will not tell us why, or give us the information they uncovered in their investigation. Police have security-camera video of the incident, but they will not show it to us.

Two people are dead, and the Toronto Police Service’s response, after four months of investigation, boils down to: Nothing to see here. Trust us. Move along.

This is police state stuff.

Make no mistake about it; there are many unanswered question that call into question the administration of justice here:

Was it a clear-cut case of self-defence? I could imagine a hundred scenarios in which that’s possible, but we don’t know.

Why was this security guard armed in a restaurant? We don’t know. What kind of work was he doing nearby? We don’t know. Was his life in danger? Was he being robbed? Was he defending other people?

We don’t know.

People who live in dictatorships are used to being kept in the dark. They have very low expectations. We still live in a democracy, albeit one under steady attack by repressive forces from within. As Canadians approach the October election, one of the many questions they will have to ask themselves is whether or not they are comfortable being treated as children excluded from the conversations at the 'adult table'. If they are not, they would be wise to choose a government that sets a tone of transparency, not obfuscation, for its citizens.

Harperland As Seen By Editorial Cartoonists

H/t ipolitics

Our Baby-In Chief Strikes Again

It doesn't take a degree in psychology to know that Stephen Harper has, as they say, issues. His obsessive secrecy, reported emotional volatility, deep vindictiveness and completely ruthless dispatch of those who represent perspectives, policies and values differing from his own are all markers of a deeply disturbed individual. That he is Canada's prime minister is a national tragedy.

The latest instance of his lashing out, his puppet finance minister's public denunciation of Ontario's plan to establish its own Retirement Pension Plan, is yet another prime example of his unfitness to govern. Martin Regg Cohn writes,

People of goodwill can disagree. But why does a prime minister of ill will have to be so willfully disagreeable, so reflexively destructive, when playing electoral politics?

Stephen Harper’s pettiness in trying to sabotage Ontario’s legitimate efforts to create a public pension for middle-income workers sets a new low in gamesmanship. It will only take money out of the pockets of workers, taxpayers and employers who will be forced to pay higher fees because of the federal intransigence.

The establishment of the plan, upon which Ontario premier Kathleen Wynne campaigned, is a response to the refusal of the federal government to expand the Canada Pension Plan, which most provinces desire to see happen.

Harper’s decision this week to stab Ontario in the back — and middle-class Ontarians in the front — may go down as one of the most offensive, retrograde and thoughtless blunders ever committed by a sitting prime minister plotting his re-election on the backs of prospective pensioners.

His Conservative government is toying with the futures of young people who face a lifetime of precarious employment without proper pension coverage. Ontario’s plan is being designed by some of Canada’s foremost pension experts as a cost-effective, low-fee program that parallels the successful Canada Pension Plan.

Here's what minion Joe Oliver leaked to the public before sending to Ontario:

“The Ontario Government’s proposed ORPP would take money from workers and their families, kill jobs, and damage the economy,” Oliver writes with fatuous hyperbole in the undated letter leaked to the media before it was even transmitted to Queen’s Park.

As Regg Cohn tartly observes, this rejection is conspicuously absent of any research or statistics to back up his shrill dismissal. And to compound the insult, the feds are refusing to make any legislative changes to facilitate the Ontario pension:

Astonishingly, the Harper government will refuse to collect pension deductions on Ontario’s behalf or provide any information to assist the plan — services for which it would have been fairly compensated by the province. In short, it’s not merely a hands-off attitude but a hands-to-the throat approach.

The result of the PM’s partisan tantrum? Higher accounting and compliance costs for business, and additional government funding made necessary by the same federal Tories who always claim to be reducing red tape and cutting waste.

There appears to be only one solution for a prime minister who seems to have a temperament that never grew beyond the 'terrible twos' - isolate him from any further contact with the electorate by tossing him and his playmates out of their playpen in October.

Change Is Coming To Cuba, Not All Of It Necessarily Good

Readers of this blog will know that I have a special affection for Cuba, having visited it many times and gotten to know, to some extent, the 'real' Cuba. Yet it would be wrong for me or any other non-Cuban to pontificate about what is best for the country, given the changes that are coming due to its increasing normalization with the United States. The course of Cuba's future has to be decided by Cuba itself.

Nonetheless, one hopes that the ecological balance highlighted in the following will continue well into the future, despite what will undoubtedly be an onslaught of American tourism:

UPDATE: Why Isn't This Getting Wider Coverage?

While this story seems most timely and relevant, given the ongoing Council of the Federation meeting discussing pipeline growth, I couldn't even find a reference to it in this morning's Toronto Star. It should be front-page news.







UPDATE: Here is a live update from Nexen. One of the most interesting revelations is that the pipeline responsible for the spill is brand new, set up in 2014.

Our World - The Illustrated Version

Sometimes, words only muddy the message, so I'll let the following speak for themselves:









H/t Felipe TeTz

Kill The Messengers

For those of us who follow Canadian politics closely, Mark Bourrie's scathing chronicle of the Harper years, Kill the Messengers, perhaps offers few things that we don't already know. Nonetheless, to have a comprehensive written record of the myriad abuses of democracy, transparency, openness and free expression is an unsettling reminder of how much Canada has suffered and lost under the Harper regime. On that basis alone I strongly recommend the book.

Now more than halfway through it (I read it in measured amounts out of respect for my mental health), each chapter yields much that is worth reflecting on and writing about. However, since yesterday's post dealt in part about Harper's utter disdain for war vets, a disdain he attempts to conceal through his lofty rhetoric about "our brave men and women in uniform," I offer the following excerpt from the book dealing with Lt.-Col Pat Stogran, who says,

"It is beyond my comprehension how the system could knowingly deny so many of our veterans the rights and benefits that the people and the government of Canada recognized a long, long time ago as being their obligation to provide.'

Hired in 2007 as Canada's first veterans ombudsman, Stogran lost his job in 2010 for criticizing Harper and then Veterans Affairs Minister Julian Fantino for the way vets are treated.

Stogran, a combat veteran in the Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry in Afghanistan who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his experiences in the Balkans in the 1990s, knew well the problems that veterans face and wanted to be a fierce advocate for them and hence his interest in the position. Terminating him was not the finest strategic move on the part of the Harper regime:

Firing Stogran didn't shut him up: he immediately became a vocal critic of the government, saying it was not living up to its obligations and promises. He says that the administrators of the veterans' pension program had a "penny pinching insurance company mentality."

We started to put pressure on. They basically told me to pound salt. It became clear they weren't going to co-operate. It was a waiting game for me to leave . . . My ministers were as thick as three short planks. They were completely dependent on their deputy minister. Julian Fantino is a classic example. He's one of Harper's yes men who says the government is backing vets and is pouring money into programs to help them. At the same time, you have federal government lawyers saying in British Columbia that the government has no legal or moral obligation to the veterans. I argued against the lump sum. I said it was wrong to give people who were physically and emotionally traumatized a lump sum of money and then tell them 'have a good day.' Harper never did anything to back me up ... I despise Harper personally. He's pushed politics to another level."

Compounding the injustice of his dismissal is Stogan's belief that his medical records were improperly accessed:

In 2010 he applied to the privacy commissioner to find out why his Veterans Affairs file had been accessed hundreds of times.

The experiences of the erstwhile veterans ombudsman is but a small example of the nature of the Harper regime, serving as a pungent reminder of its intolerance of any dissent or criticism. I can only hope that voters in October roundly express their own intolerance of this repressive regime by casting it out of the office it is so manifestly unfit to hold.