A Shameful Legacy

During the dark years of the Harper administrations, Canadians became almost inured to the lengths it would go while promoting its neo-liberal agenda. The extolment of free trade, the promotion of tar sands development, the sneering dismissal of all environmental and climate-change concerns were what we came to expect from a government that was committed to servicing the corporate agenda at the expense of the people.

Then came the victory of the Trudeau-led Liberals, and all of us reveled in and breathed deeply of the liberated air that was all about us. But, as time passes, we are seeing that that air is not quite as pure as we had initially hoped.

Promises made are now being temporized. One of the most shameful instances of this is this government's continued importation of asbestos, the deadly mineral whose use the previous government staunchly defended until the last asbestos mines in Quebec closed in 2011.

It would seem amazing that in 2016, our country as yet has refused to ban the product, even though 55 countries, including Australia and Britain, have done so.

Canadian asbestos imports are on the rise. Despite international consensus that the carcinogen should be added to the United Nations’ list of hazardous materials, Canada is among the few countries to oppose the move.

The promise of change in the swearing in of the Trudeau government last fall is giving way to a far less attractive reality. Consider, for example, the hopeful rhetoric from earlier this year, when

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada was at last “moving to ban asbestos” because “its impact on workers far outweighs any benefits that it might provide.” This welcome promise prompted fanfare from health advocates and vulnerable workers who know all too well how devastating that impact can be.

The reality is looking less rosy:

Asked for an update by the Globe and Mail earlier this month, the Prime Minister’s Office hedged. Ottawa is “reviewing its strategy on asbestos, including a potential ban,” the spokesperson wrote.

One need not have a nuanced understanding of the English language to see the difference.

More troubling still, at recent UN meetings the federal government has again expressed doubt that so-called chrysotile asbestos should be covered under the Rotterdam Convention, an international treaty on hazardous materials. Its rationale? “It has not been proven that chrysotile asbestos causes cancer.”

Or consider what Gerry Caplan recently wrote about the experience of Katherine Ruff, Canada’s most prominent and knowledgeable advocate for a ban on all asbestos, who says,

“My experience with the current government is worse than what I experienced with the former Harper government.”

Repeated attempts by Ruff to get a meeting with Health Minister Jane Philpott or Environment Minister Catherine McKenna have met with no success. According to her, these

add up to a "lack of transparency, lack of democracy and lack of respect...in trying to communicate with the government over the past eight months, which is the opposite to what Prime Minister Trudeau promised."

Ruff's fuller consideration of the failure of the 'new' government to act on asbestos can be read in an op-ed she wrote in The Ottawa Citizen.

All of these disquieting signs echo the intransigent Harper cabal that so many of us so earnestly worked to dispose of.

I am growing increasingly pessimistic about the prospects for real change. May the passing of time prove my fears ill-founded.

Free Speech Is Fine

.... except when it is used to criticize Israel, as Mississauga, Ont. teacher Nadia Shoufani is learning.

She addressed a downtown Toronto rally on 2 July, marking al-Quds Day, an annual event held around the world to support Palestinian rights and to protest Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.

“Silence in situations of oppression and injustices is a crime against humanity,” Shoufani said in her speech at the rally, in which she condemned the Israeli occupation and Israel’s policies of home demolitions, land confiscation and arrests of Palestinians.

The fact that Shoufani called upon the occupied to resist was apparently too much for the Jewish lobby.

CBC reports that she is now being investigated on several fronts after Bnai Brith et al. complained:

Bruce Campbell, general manager of communications and community relations for the Dufferin-Peel Catholic District School Board [for whom she works], said Wednesday an investigation has begun. He said the matter was brought to the board's attention through a number of sources, including the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Center and B'nai Brith Canada.

The governing body for Ontario teachers is also prepared to bring down the hammer:

A spokesperson for the Ontario College of Teachers said the organization is "aware of the matter.

"If and when a complaint is launched to the College, we will deal with it accordingly," Gabrielle Barkany said in an email to CBC News.

Toronto police are also involved:

Toronto police said they have opened an investigation into comments made at the Al-Quds rally, but could not confirm that Shoufani herself is under investigation.

"It's being investigated as we speak," Const. Allyson Douglas-Cook said on Wednesday. "I can confirm that we are investigating comments made at the rally and there is more than one person involved."

MintPressNews reports that her stance has support, however, from those not afraid to criticize Israel:

Tyler Levitan, campaigns coordinator at Independent Jewish Voices-Canada, a group that supports Palestinian rights, said organisations like Bnai Brith Canada and Canadian Friends of Simon Wiesenthal “are shills for Israel”.

“Ms Shoufani was speaking passionately in support of the Palestinians’ right to defend themselves against an occupying power,” Levitan told MEE in an email.

“Under international law, those living under military occupation and a system of colonialism have the absolute right to resist. Ms Shoufani spoke as a defender of the rights of an occupied and besieged people to resist an obscenely violent and criminal military occupation over their lands.”

Nonetheless, mainstream lobbyists who oppose any defence of Palestinians have shown remarkable effectiveness in stifling criticism of the Jewish state:

Recently, pro-Israel lobby groups in Canada have launched several campaigns targeting groups and individuals supporting Palestinian rights.

Bnai Brith Canada lauded a parliamentary motion passed earlier this year condemning the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which seeks to hold Israel accountable under international law.

In March, the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs accused Canadian law professor Michael Lynk of demonstrating a pro-Palestinian bias and of being involved in “anti-Israel advocacy”. The accusations came after Lynk was appointed as the new Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

Pro-Israel groups have also urged Canada to maintain funding cuts on the United Nations agency that supports Palestinian refugees, UNRWA.

They are also pressuring the Green Party of Canada to dismiss two motions, set to be debated at a party convention in August, that would strip the Jewish National Fund of its charitable status and endorse BDS.

“I know from past experience that Bnai Brith would be using every means possible to try to shut down the al-Quds rally,” said Ken Stone, treasurer of the Hamilton Coalition to Stop the War and another speaker at the al-Quds Day rally in Toronto this year.

Stone told MEE that Bnai Brith Canada has taken the comments made at the rally out of context and distorted them in an effort to shut down the annual event and silence Canadian supporters of Palestinian rights.

“What they’re trying to do is … put a chill on people like Nadia Shoufani,” he said.

“[And] put a chill on people who might be tempted to get up at an al-Quds rally and declare their support for the Palestinian cause.”

What a wonderful ideal to aspire to - free speech and the open exchange of points of view. Too bad that when it comes to Israel, such democratic mainstays seem to have no place.

Elizabeth Warren On The Trans Pacific Partnership

Recently, U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren, a woman I much admire, released a five-minute video that takes aim at the Trans Pacific Partnership, specifically denouncing the Investor State Dispute Settlement provisions that give corporate entities the right to impinge upon a country's sovereignty through lawsuits if legislation affects their ability to make a profit.

Even though it is aimed at an American audience, Canada is mentioned in the warning; all of us would be very wise to take what she says very seriously, given the enthusiasm our 'new' government has for globalized trade.



I look forward to the day when our 'leaders' explain to us why these investor rights are good for all of us.

For more information about why this deal is bad and dangerous, click here.

Another Very Ominous Sign

Thanks to my friend, The Mound, for passing this on to me. It is not good news.

The Tyee reports the following:

As Arctic sea ice melts, one of the forces doing the melting is the Arctic Ocean itself.

No other region on the planet is warming as fast as the Arctic, where a balance of currents, ice, salinity, and sunlight has been disrupted.

This video by Hakai Magazine on the 'new Arctic' explains the latest research on how this is happening, from warm currents flowing north from the Atlantic and Pacific to drifting ice floes stirring the warmer saltier water up to the icy Arctic surface.

The rapid melting of Arctic sea ice has been named one of the most important global markers of climate change.

I was not able to embed the video, but you can see it here.

Meanwhile, NASA reports that Arctic sea ice is now declining at a rate of 13.4 percent per decade.



None of us should be resting easy.

Democracy's Shortcomings*

“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”

― Winston S. Churchill

The above is clearly not in accord with the thinking of our 'betters,' aka the corporate elite, who are now lamenting the terrible things that democracy can bring about.

Billionaire CEO Steve Schwarzman first sounded the alarm in January at the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

"I find the whole thing sort of astonishing, and what's remarkable is the amount of anger, whether it's on the Republican side or the Democratic side," he said, in a slow cadence that served to highlight his confusion. "Bernie Sanders, to me, is almost more stunning than some of the stuff going on on the Republican side. How is that happening? Why is that happening? What is the vein in America that is being tapped into, across parties, that's made people so unhappy?"

"Now," he concluded, smiling, "that's something you should spend some time on."

Schwarzman's bewilderment gave way to introspection and analysis, leading some to conclude there is too much democracy, thereby paving the way for demagogues like Donald Trump, who 'prey' on the emotions of the masses.

James Traub, writing in Foreign Policy, goes further:

It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them. Is that “elitist”?

Such an assertion provoked a strong response from Jake Johnson:

It is elites — including Traub himself — who have for decades cloaked devastating wars in the soaring rhetoric of "humanitarian intervention." It is elites who have forced upon crumbling economies austerity that has served to prolong and worsen already dire circumstances. It is elites who have peddled the fantasy of neoliberalism, which has created a system that lavishly rewards the wealthiest while leaving everyone else to compete for the rest. It is elites, political and corporate, who have devastated the environment in the name of profit. It is elites who have crashed the global economy.

The masses, for their part, are always there to pick up the costs.

And they're sick of it.

Writing in Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi says,

"Voters in America not only aren't over-empowered, they've for decades now been almost totally disenfranchised, subjects of one of the more brilliant change-suppressing systems ever invented.

People have no other source of influence ... Unions have been crushed. Nobody has any job security. Main Street institutions that once allowed people to walk down the road to sort things out with other human beings have been phased out. In their place now rest distant, unfeeling global bureaucracies.

Elites, by forcefully eliminating avenues for democratic progress, have cultivated the environment in which anti-establishment sentiment now thrives.

And the major political parties of the wealthiest nations on earth, in order to curry favor from big business, have pushed aside the needs of the working class, often disregarding workers as racists unworthy of attention. And the punditry has dutifully followed suit.

And so the schism between the elites and the masses continues. What is left unspoken, however, is the role that all of us can play in counteracting this alleged debasement of democracy.

We have a choice. We can choose to go along our merry way, content and narcotized by the trivial diversions available to us, or we can speak forcefully whenever the occasion demands that we do, and we can refuse to cede authority to the uninformed and the ignorant by turning out in droves during elections, debates, etc.

There is nothing inherently wrong with our democratic institutions. It is its potential participants who need to be regularly reminded of their responsibilities in facilitating their effective discharge. To say that there is no real choice in our political leadership may be true to some extent. But to use that as a reason for withdrawal will only serve the interests of a minority at the expense of the majority.

Anger is justified, but it must be tempered with reason. Otherwise, all will indeed be lost.

*Thanks to Kev for bringing this to my attention.

UPDATED: Somedays I Feel Very, Very Old

This is one of the reasons:



UPDATE: If you would like to read about augmented reality and its imminent arrival in Canada, click here.

UPDATED: According To Wood Harrelson, It's Simple

Unfortunately, thanks to the intractable and self-indulgent nature of far too many 'ordinary' people, it isn't.



UPDATE: Marie, over at A Puff of Absurdity, has a very interesting exploration of this issue. Click here to read it.