Friday, 19th of June, 2009 – at 8 pm Eastern Daylight Savings Time (i.e. GMT-4), my friend, Juggernaut, will be hosting a live BlogTV session: learning about and discussing the differences between Canadian and American (as in, USAmerican) systems on such various issues as healthcare, education and other ‘public’ policies.
Juggernaut will be hosting: everyone can join, either by signing up or by participating as a guest.
He absolutely relishes sleeping on the sofa – and this is one dog that has elevated ‘sleeping’ into an art form. Really – I have known many dogs, and owned a few, but I have never met a dog who relishes sleep like this crazy canine does!
Also, he does not like strangers to sit on his the sofa. He’ll watch to see if the person gets up for some reason – even for a moment, sneak in behind them, steal the spot and immediately start pretending that he’s asleep, has been asleep in that spot for a very long time, and why is everyone getting all worked up about this?
He also loves to steal blankets: and has been known to quietly grab a corner and, slowly but steadily, sneak off with the blanket of an unwary person lying down on the sofa, watching TV late at night.
When my son and I came home Monday, he greeted us with great enthusiasm. He slithered off the sofa, stretched slowly and thoroughly, and wandered over to the front hallway to greet us. Honestly – this passes as ‘enthusiastic’ from him: sometimes, he just lifts his head off the sofa’s arm-rest and wags his tail a tiny bit to show he’s noticed you came in.
So, today’s was an enthusiastic greeting! Then, after he followed me to the kitchen and stopped in front of the fridge, hoping that his beautiful brown eyes would hypnotize me to give him a pepperette, when – suddenly and visibly – a though struck him.
Quite suddenly, he abandoned begging communicating and, with unusual swiftness, he ran to the living room. OK, we knew when we adopted him that he was ‘special’ and, though incredibly good natured, he was no border collie in the brain department – so I thought nothing of it.
Later, when I came into the living room, I noticed that he was not lying down on the sofa, but on a chair. And he was not really lying down in his usual way… instead, he was more ‘splayed’: all four paws spread as far apart as possible, his centre of gravity as low as he could get it. His head was not resting, but just slightly elevated in a high-strung sort of way. And his eyes…
His eyes were priceless! They were ‘big’ – his ‘vigilant look’ (well, as vigilant as he gets) – with lots of ‘white’ showing. And they were flashing, side to side – in a particularly self-pleased way!
Had his behaviour not been so ‘obvious’, I would not have looked around too closely to see what he was doing. But, his very demeanour gave away that he was ‘being tricky’: that he had ‘done’ something naughty and thought he was getting away with it!
It turns out that my son – in a fit of insomnia – brought his blanket down, watched some TV, then forgot his blanket on the chair. The dog knows ‘bed blankets’ are off limits to him: but this blanket was not on a bed, was it? So he lay down on it, spread his body as wide as possible to hide the fact that he was indeed occuppying a ‘bed blenket’ which was currently ‘not a bed blanket’… The dog was very, very pleased with himself!
So, what does this story have to do with my post today?
Yes, it was a bit of a long segway, and this story took me a few days to write up, but…
Why, that is almost as convincing as a ‘Cure-all’ salesman saying this potion in this here bottle will ‘cure all’!!! Better buy a few!!!
And, Mr. McGuinty, he is so concerned about the welfare of children, he’ll have to do what is best for all of the children! (Will somebody please shut up the parents of those peskyAutistic kids? They’re not even photogenic: no photo-ops from that lot!)
As I was saying: Mr. McGuinty, he is so caring, he only wants what is best for the children! And since that report by a guy who gets rich by sticking EVERY child into a ‘one-size-fits-all’ ‘institutions of teaching’, that is exactly what this kind and caring man announced he would do!!!
Aside: make no mistake! Our public schools are ‘institutions of teaching’, NOT ‘institutions of learning’!!! They are centered around the needs and desires of teachers, whose powerful union regularly holds the whole population hostage by refusing to ‘teach’ unless it is ‘on their terms’ – ONLY! Therefore, schedules, methodology, material and just about every aspect of ‘teaching’ you can name is tailored to suit the comfort of teachers. Students, who have no union to represent them, are just pawns to be cycled through the system – a pesky annoyance to be minimized and with which the teachers have to put up with as a minor part of this ‘education system’…
So, what is it that this caring, loving man (who is reportedly married to a teachers’ union activist) proposing to do???
He wants to institutionalize our children for 10.5 hours a day, 5-days per week, 50 weeks per year, from toddlerhood on!!!
Of course, the words he used to make his announcement were not as direct as my statement of it is – but the meaning is identical. His version is all about ‘what is best for the children’! And he has that ‘study’ (by a guy who, among others, will have an increased revenue stream if McGuinty institutes) this to back him up!
Here is the video – I invite you to watch the body language:
Did you notice it?
The way he shifts his eyes, the way he enunciates certain words, the way he uses his whole body to help him spit out some ‘concepts’?
It’s that SAME body language my not-so-bright (but way more lovable than McGuinty) dog used when he was trying to ‘pull one over’!
This sent me ‘looking for’ what it is that is ‘the loophole’ here: what is this man ‘pulling over’ on us?
Imagine living in a world where the nearest library or bookstore is a plane-ride away!
It gives me nightmares, just thinking about it… (I love books, I collect books, I like to touch books – I like just about everything about them…including acquiring them!)
If you live in or near Ontario, here is a chance to have some books delivered to kids who live in Northern communities so distant, the only way to reach them is to fly!
Between now and Sunday, 21st of June 2009 (this is an annual thing – check his website for the drive’s date in future years if this post has become stale), drop new books for readers 14 and under at any OPP (Ontario Provincial Police) station. If you are in the GTA area, you can also drop them off at the Toronto Police Stations.
They’ll take the books and fly them to Northern communities: heavy things like books are very expensive to ship there, so most kids cannot afford to get many. Also I am rather glad that this politician is using his budget towards something useful!
OK – I am sucker for these ‘feel good’ things, people helping people. (Even if some are politicians!) And I am a reader – life without books, to me, would be torture!
So, I am already plotting (pun intended) the books I’ll get: personally, I’ll skip the baby ones and aim towards the higher end of the 14-year-old age bracket….get the mind working, imagination soaring, ideas brewing… FUN!
One of my young American friends has asked me an honest question: “What is wrong with the Ontario Human Rights Commission?”
Where do I begin?!?!?
But, it is my bane that I always seem to think that if I know something, then it must be clear and obvious to everyone else! Of course, this is not so – and I KNOW that… I just forget it sometimes and do not explain things as thoroughly or clearly as I ought to. My apologies!
The topic of our Human Rights Commissions is less clear to people who do not live in Canada and have not been following what has been happening to our rights and freedoms…. but it is NO LESS important to them, because these things are spreading in Medusa-like fashion and subverting the very foundations on which our ‘Western’ civilization is built.
So, here is a little explanation (sorry if it is a bit of a rant – I get very emotional about this!)
OHRC is called ‘Ontario Human Rights Commission‘. It is a fancy name which suggests that its aims are to protect human rights: and, it – along with it mother-organization, the Canadian Human Rights Agency and sister ones, one for each Province and Territory in Canada – was created with that in mind. It was meant to be a non-threatening place that people who were denied housing or jobs because of the colour of their skin could go and record their grievance.
This was especially aimed at the less-privileged members of society who would not be able to afford an attorney and try to get justice in court.
So, the theory goes, the agency accepts the grievance/complaint, investigates it on its own and, if it finds it meritorious, it is then supposed to (somehow – without ever going to court) figure out a way to fix the problem. The solution it decides on then becomes legally binding, as if it were a declaration of a real court.
In effect, the ‘Human Rights Commissions’ – and/or their tribunals – become the complainant, the investigator, prosecutor and judge… It answers to nobody!
Can you spot the problem?
What has happened with Canadian HRCs – federal and provincial/territorial – is that they have been staffed with people who ‘have causes’. And these people are promoting their ’causes’ at the expense of REAL human rights.
Their main line is that ‘human rights’ have to be ‘balanced’ against the need of the society to ‘promote tolerance’. In other words, anything which these people find ‘rude’ or ‘intolerant’, they have the power to censor, ban and so on.
Here is a recent example from the Ontario HRC. A guy was smoking pot in the doorway of a restaurant. Pot is, of course, illegal – but this guy had a ‘medical exemption’. Smoking, however – inside and within 2 m (I think – this does vary from place to place) of a restaurant (or any other place where people work) is forbidden. The law does NOT specify cigarette smoke or pot or whatever else.
The ‘no smoking’ laws came about because people insisted that EVERYONE has the RIGHT to work in a smoke-free environment. And, nobody has the right to CHOOSE to work where people smoke, because ‘poor people’ might be coerced…. OK, so we all banned smoking in or near workplaces.
Now, this restaurant owner finds himself in front of the OHRC, because he asked a guy NOT to smoke within the legal ‘no-smoking’ boundary. He ended up – when it was all over – with tens of thousands of dollars in legal costs….
And, he lost: the OHRC said that because the guy has a ‘medical exemption’, he can smoke his pot anywhere he wants to – including INSIDE this guy’s restaurant.’
A couple of weeks later, the ‘no-smoking enforcement’ people show up at the restaurant for inspection, and see this guy smoking pot. They cite the restaurant owner for violation of the rights of his workers to work in a smoke-free environment – and the restaurant owner looses his liquor license….
The OHRC people are enforcing THEIR ruling and care nothing about the smoking bannies laws. The smoking bannies are enforcing THEIR laws, and don’t care about the OHRCs ruling – not their jurisdiction!
The poor sap gets caught in the middle – and pays, pays pays legal fees, fines and eventually looses his right to run his business (his type of restaurant cannot survive without a liquor license!).
But THAT is just ONE of MANY such cases.
And these HRCs have the right to issue a lifetime gag-order on people: forbidding them from speaking, writing, or communicating in any way, shape or form, publicly or privately, on specific topics. These lifetime gag-orders, once issued, are legally binding!
If you thought things could not get worse….
The ‘double jeopardy’ – where you can only be tried for a crime in one jurisdiction – does NOT APPLY with HRCs in Canada. For example, MacLeans magazine was charged – for the same complaint – in three different jurisdictions: Ontario, BC AND federally! And, they HAD TO prepare a defense – and pay lawyers – for each one of the three trials!
Recently, the OHRC’s head, Barbara Hall, has been making noises about expanding the scope of the ‘transgressions’ they will assume jurisdiction over.
Oh – by the way – TRUTH is NO DEFENSE against the HRCs!
The complainant does NOT have to prove anything. And, even if the defendant proves that what they said/did was TRUE, it does not matter – IF it has a POTENTIAL to harm someone by making them FEEL discriminated against!
So, no CRIME, no HARM is needed: only the POTENTIAL for ANYONE to PERCEIVE something MIGHT be hurtful or seen as discriminatory is sufficient to find one guilty…
Another thing I revile these organizations for is that they are often used at the tool to enforce linguistic apartheid which is like a cancer on our Canadian society.
The people running this – the investigators AND the ‘judges’ – do NOT have to have ANY training in law whatsoever. Many don’t! Evidence has shown that a cop dismissed for some serious corruption is now a mover and a shaker at the Ontario HRC… As well, some evidence seems to be coming that several of these HRCs have been infiltrated by radical Islamists who find anything short of instituting Sharia to be ‘offensive’!
Just think about it: extrajudicial process – with none of the restraints cops and real trials have (the HRCs can enter your premises and seize things without a warrant or notification to you – and you are NOT presumed innocent until proven guilty – and truth is no defense…), in the hands of people who think that individual rights are things that must systematically bow and be supplanted by ‘community needs’.
THAT – ALL of the things I listed above…and much more – is why so many of us want to get rid of these corrupt, un-accountable, oppressive organizations who now have the power to limit our human rights at their whim to serve their own special interests!
OK – I have to declare my personal bias: while I am not a member of any political party, I like Randy Hillier – and have liked him long before this leadership race started. I like what he stands for and I like the way he stands for it. Also, I am not a fan of the only leadership-hopeful who is a fan of the OHRC (whose federal counterpart has, BTW, just rejected their own reviewer’s call to clean up their act), Ms. Elliot.
This morning, I had the pleasure of being invited to the ‘post-debate’ breakfast with Tim Hudak.
Very interesting.
Of the conservative leadership candidates, Mr. Hudak is philosophically the closest to Mr. Hillier. Here’s a quick summary (from my point of view):
Human Rights Commissions – bad
Rule of law – good
Nanny state – bad
Individual freedoms – even in the workplace – good
Dalton McGuinty – bad
Tax cuts – good
Can’t really argue against that!
And, I do like the nifty little quote on his website:
“For too long, individual rights have been trampled by a dysfunctional human rights bureaucracy… and the democracy of our unionized workplaces has been eroded.”
– Tim Hudak
I must admit, in person, Mr. Hudak made a very good impression on me.
Despite the early hour – following a long and exhausting evening, he was bright and fresh and smiling and pleasant. Abandoning the microphone, he preferred to use his voice directly. Always a good move – if the venue allows it.
And he spoke well. He said all the ‘right’ pre-canned things, as is to be expected, touching on the his main campaign platforms. I was pleasantly surprised to find he sounded more conservative – and less ‘watered down’ – than I had expected. He even mentioned Ronals Regan! That is always a hit conservatives – and it certainly scored him points with this breakfast crowd.
This is important: if the people I talked to were representative of the whole group, many of them have not yet decided whom they will vote for when the time to elect a new leader comes. Many were weighing the Mike Harris endorsment of Tim (good) against the rumours that he has inherited a lot of the ‘John Tory people’ (bad). Many liked Randy Hillier, but worried about his electability in the Greater Toronto Area.
The main issues on people’s minds? Scrap the HRCs, lower taxes, fire the nanny and replace it with a state which respects people’s individual rights…. There might have been more, but these were what I heard most often and most loudly.
Still, I find it hard to gage people at these types of things. Things are all prepared, rehearsed, people know they are ‘on the record’ and so it’s hard to separate the ‘personna’ from the ‘person’ – if you know what I mean. So, despite the fact I quite liked Tim Hudak, I was not sure of my judgment.
Kids, on the other hand, are very good at judging a person!
Luckily, there was a lone kid at this breakfast. Lisa MacLeod had dragged along her young daughter, Victoria (then promptly left her to find entertainment on her own, while she herself went to schmooze talk to important people). Looking for someone to help her from her boredom, little Victoria turned to – you guessed it – Tim Hudak!
It was easy to see that Victoria knew him – and liked him. And, she obviously trusted him – and knew he would talk to her. Which he did. He got down to her level, so she could talk to him eye-to-eye, and instead of brushing her off, he actually talked to her. Until, that is, her mom ushered her away…
And, while I think (and I am not alone) that the endorsment by Lisa MacLeod is more likely going to hurt Tim Hudak in this leadership race than help him, the genuine endorsement by Ms. MacLeod Jr. is a strong plus for Mr. Hudak.
Because our most esteemed City Council gave my 10-year-old a nosebleed! LITERALLY! (And I use that term accurately.)
How?
Well, just read on…
The Ottawa City Council has so lost sight of what their role is – quite a while ago. I do not know if there is any hope of shaking them out of their fuzzy dreamworld and back into reality. You know, where we, the taxpayers without expense accounts have to live!
The only member of this Council who actually wanted to focus the City on its core tasks was the Mayor – and he has been effectively neutralized through lawfare. In the meantime, the rest of our elected officials are planning to spend hundreds of millions of our taxpayer dollars on a new Central Library – which will be a legacy to their brilliance and importance… a tourist attraction, they tell us… while they are also building another new library building on Woodroffe avenue – less than a 10-minute walk from an existing huge library in the former Nepean City Hall!
They are busy banning kids from playing street hockey, banning people from having nice gardens – or, at least gardens that look like the people want them to, banning people from selling their property – because they went there for a movie once, banning people from just about anything they can think of that is none of their (insert expletive of your own choice here) business, while wasting time doing anything they can think of – except their real jobs!
In the meantime, our most esteemed councilors do nothing to stop
duping huge amounts of raw sewage into the Ottawa river…
unruly crowds which illegally block our streets
endless pet projects, which lack vision for the city as a whole
neglect in maintaining city-owned buildings, so that they are condemned
AND our roads from getting so pot-hole riddled that, today, on the ride home, my son said his school-bus went over some bumps on the road that were so big, he got a nosebleed!
YES!
The school-bus ride on Ottawa City roads was SO ROUGH, my son was jostled so hard inside his school-bus, he started to bleed from his nose!
No, his head did not hit the window, or another seat, or anything like that. It was simply the force of the jostle – from the neglected, decaying and increasingly un-navigable Ottawa City streets – that triggered his nosebleed!
And, no – he does not get nosebleeds easily.
Yes, he has had some in the past – but they tended to result from expected causes: a sudden impact into a wall he did not see in time while running, or a ball whose trajectory he did not triangulate properly, and so on… all ‘normal’ and understandable reasons for an active kid to get a nosebleed from. And, no, he has not had any such ‘close encounters’ with walls or balls or related things – or any nosebleeds – in the last few days or weeks…so this is not a case of a ‘scab coming off’ or any such thing.
He said he was lucky that a lot of the kids sitting near him had kleenexes, so he did not get his blood all over the bus or any of the other kids. Still, his own shirt bore the marks of it…
In other words, through their failure to maintain the roads – one of their primary roles as our elected officials – the Ottawa City Council, in no uncertain terms, gave my son a bloody nose!
I could not make this stuff up if I tried… and I am so angry now, that if a Councillor showed his or her face to me now, I would give them such a tongue-lashing, their EARS would hurt! May be not bleed, but – man – when kids end up bleeding, because our politicians are not doing their jobs…
Oh, I had better end this and go calm down a bit… I wonder if our politicians will fix the roads leading up to their Taj Mahal of a new library….you know, so the ‘tourists’ don’t get blood on the books!
First, he grieved for his wife Manjari and children, Sirikan (7) and Sarada (4). He grieved long and deeply.
Then he found a way to make sure they were never forgotten – in this best way possible.
This scientists went back to his wife’s birthplace in India and, using funds he raised by opening a charitable organisations which bears her name: the Manjari Sankurathri Memorial Foundation (MSMF), he opened a school for kids who would otherwise not be able to get an education!
Though the doors of life closed on his daughter, a school bearing Sarada’s name opened the doors to a new, better life for hundreds of children. What a worthy legacy!
He noticed that many of the poorest people in the region could not earn a living because they were blind. Being a scientist, he analysed the problem and soon realized that the leading cause of blindness were cataracts or other treatable conditions.
Devoting much energy to this, he added an eye clinic to the school: the bus, once it brought the pupils to school, could then bring the blind to the clinic where they are treated.
When I see people selflessly helping others, I cannot but be touched by their devotion to the cause of humanity. Yes, I do wish I could live up to the standards they set: and, yes, I also know I am not strong enough to! I doubt that most of us could only aspire to their strength!
And, when you see someone suffer a personal tragedy of this magnitude – a tragedy which resulted from human avarice and hate – and give your loved ones memory meaning through helping others, I cannot but see this person as a real-life hero!
So, I cannot but respect and admire them – and their work.
Letting everyone else know about them – and their work – is the least I can do!
If YOU would like to help Dr. Chandra in his work – and enjoy the most delicious Indian food EVER, here is your chance!
I speak of nothing other than the annual MSMF fundraising picnic, coming up in Ottawa on Saturday, the 13th of June, 2009.
I have gone to this picnic many many times: the people are friendly and the food is, well, really, really awesome!
All the food is prepared on-site (the Andrew Haydon Park). Some of it is made – and donated – by the best Indian restaurants in Ottawa. But, the best dishes are the ones prepared by some of the best Indian cooks in the world: but whose cooking you can only taste if you are invited to their home, or if you come to this picnic!
If you cannot come, you can still help! (Sorry, you’ll miss out on the food – but, if you’d like, I’ll describe it for you afterwards!)
So, if you happen to be in the Ottawa area, you just might want to drop in, enjoy some awesome food – and be a part of something great at the same time!
Doors-open Ottawa is a weekend when all kinds of neat places open their doors and let us, the ‘unwashed masses’, peek in!
OK – so, many of the places are quite familiar: the Hindu Temple, the Ottawa Mosque, the Gurdwara, many of the Churches….
But – a lot of the really awesome science labs are open, too! From CANMET (see granite blocks crushed before your eyes – and get a fragment as a souvenier) to the bug labs (Canada’s ONLY nematode taxonomist explains the intricacies of his profession – on a tour guided by one of Marc Garneau’s distant cousins!)
This is a really awesome thing!
The only criticism? Putting it on the last weekend before high-school exams keeps a lot of young people who could benefit from learning about the ‘reality’ of various choices in education/professions because they have to study – in order to have high-enough grades to make it into schools that prepare them for these types of careers!
Tim Denton, the CRTC commissioner, has recently made the following statement:
‘The rights of Canadians to talk and communicate across the Internet are vastly too important to be subjected to a scheme of government licensing. If more Canadians were aware how close their communications have come to being regulated by this Commission, not by our will but because we administer an obsolete statute, they would be rightly concerned. Fortunately, good sense prevailed and the evidence for intervention was not yet present. But this confluence of facts may not always be there. Thus the call for a government review of a digital transition strategy is both wise and opportune. Let us fix this problem.’
And while I do not believe that the CRTC has the right to control our wavelengths, the reality is that they do. And, to their credit, they have (as Michael Geist’s post puts it so eloquently), decided to keep their hands off the internet – for now.
But, they will go on to develop a new comprehensive national digital strategy…
All of our voices should be heard, to help ensure that the net truly remains neutral – or, at least as neutral as possible. This is important: still, most of us are not sure how to best be heard…
Citizens from coast to coast are expected to engage in Canada’s first-ever online LIVE video-streamed national conversation about the future of broadband in this country.
During Town Hall meetings in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver, viewers can take part in the confab through live, real-time online chat available at theREALnews.com, rabble.ca, TheTyee, Beyond Robson, SaveOurNet.ca and other participating websites.
The first of these innovative town hall meetings takes place in Toronto on Monday, June 8. The participating websites will start streaming video at 7:30 p.m.
The town hall events will bring together web innovators, entrepreneurs, social change leaders, cultural workers and citizens to discuss the future of the Internet in Canada. The sessions will be recorded and will form part of the citizen testimony that SaveOurNet.ca’s Steve Anderson will use to guide his presentation to the CRTC at the July 6 traffic management hearing.
SaveOurNet.ca is encouraging people who live within commuting distance to attend the town hall sessions to meet and mingle with fellow Netizens who want a say in Canada’s future Internet.
Here are the details, along with some updated information:
TORONTO • June 8 • 7 p.m.
The Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. West
Speakers include:
Mark Surman, Executive Director, Mozilla Foundation
Olivia Chow, NDP Member of Parliament
Steve Anderson, co-founder, SaveOurNet.ca
Rocky Gaudrault, CEO, Teksavvy Solutions Inc.
Derek Blackadder, National Representative with CUPE
Special guests:
Jesse Brown, Search Engine
David Skinner, Communications Professor, York University
Kim Elliot, Rabble.ca
Mark Kuznicki, remarkk consultant
Dan O’Brien, ACTRA
Ben Lewis, Canadian Federation of Students
Wayne Mcphail, w8nc
OTTAWA • June 10 • 7 p.m.
Ottawa Public Library Main Branch, 120 Metcalfe St.
Speakers include:
Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair in Internet and E-commerce Law, University of Ottawa, blogger
Charlie Angus, NDP MP, Heritage and Culture critic
Rocky Gaudrault, CEO, Teksavvy Solutions Inc.
Bill St. Arnaud, Chief Research Officer for CANARIE Inc.
Introduction by Steve Anderson, co-founder, SaveOurNet.ca
Discussion Facilitator: Marita Moll, TeleCommunities Canada
Special guests:
Mike Gifford, founder of Open Concept Consulting Inc. Leslie Regan Shade, Communications Professor, Concordia University Graham Cox, Canadian Federation of Students
Canada’s FIRST live INTERNET DANCE PARTY will hit Vancouver on Saturday, June 20! This is a fundraiser for host SaveOurNet.ca as well as the official after party for VanChangeCamp.
6 to 8 p.m. – Social & Film Screening
8 p.m. to 2 a.m. – Internet Dance Party
Gallery Gachet
Special Guests:
Quest Poetics feat: Mello Black, Mario Vaira, & DJ Hayze
More guests to be announced soon!
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 