Wednesday, June 11, 2008 at 11:18pm | Edit Note | Delete

A prominent resource economist has pronounced himself disgusted with “dishonest” Conservative attack ads on a Liberal carbon tax proposal that’s yet to be unveiled.

Tory attack on carbon tax is dishonest: economist
Updated Tue. Jun. 10 2008 12:00 PM ET

CTV.ca News Staff

“The Conservatives — and I say this with great sadness because I don’t care which political party is in power — but if we’re going to do anything about climate change, we’re going to have to be honest with people,” Marc Jaccard of Simon Fraser University told CTV.ca on Tuesday.

“This is just totally dishonest.”

On the weekend, the Tories previewed ads aimed at the proposed carbon tax, painting it as Liberal Leader Stephane Dion’s “tax on everything.”

The ads are to start running Tuesday.

Jaccard, a co-author of the recent book Hot Air, said the Conservatives’ own policy on reducing greenhouse gas emissions won’t work because it doesn’t put a price on carbon for consumers.

“Their policy is to regulate industry and then have these offset loopholes where industry can subsidize consumers. But those are the types of policies that have never worked in the past,” he said.

The Conservatives have said their plan will cut Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 20 per cent below 2006 levels by 2020. But many environmental groups join Jaccard in saying the plan won’t work.

If it did work, the Conservative plan wouldn’t see Canada’s Kyoto Protocol target — to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by six per cent below 1990 levels by 2012 — achieved until 2025.

The Liberals are said to be proposing putting a tax on carbon. While the policy has yet to be released, the Grits have said it will be “tax shifting” and “revenue-neutral,” meaning that any revenue collected would be given back in the form of income or other tax cuts.

In the House of Commons’ question period on Monday, junior minister Jason Kenney accused the Liberals of engaging in a massive tax grab to pay for billions in unbudgeted election promises.

Dion said the ads are “misleading and a lie.”

Honest dialogue

“I’m not a fan of Stephane Dion, but when you get a politician out there that’s trying to start an honest dialogue and say to people, ‘you know what? We won’t get our emissions down if there isn’t a price on them and that’s just the truth’,” Jaccard said.

“And to see politicians saying, ‘Maybe I can stay in power’ or gain more power, or maybe a majority government, by distorting this” disgusted him, he said.

“Every one of those ads should say, ‘Oh and by the way, your income taxes are going down if (the Liberals) do put in that tax,’ but it’s not there.”

The Liberals say their plan, unlike the Conservative one, offers offsetting tax cuts.

Dion has said the plan won’t drive up prices at the gas pump, where high oil prices have driven gasoline prices up to record levels.

Some of the Tory ads were to run at gas pumps in Toronto and other parts of southern Ontario.

But Fuelcast, the company that operates the pump-side advertising network, said Monday it won’t run the ads.

The Conservatives have said they have a binding contract with Fuelcast, but if the company doesn’t honour the deal, they will up their radio buy instead.

source

http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080610/tory_ads_080610/20080610?hub=QPeriod

Stop fast-tracking flawed Gr. Lakes deal allowing H20 privatiz.
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Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 6:39pm | Edit Note | Delete

ACTION ALERT: Stop the fast-tracking of the flawed Great Lakes Basin Compact!

July 30, 2008

According to recent articles, U.S. Congress is fast-tracking the Great Lakes Basin Compact, leaving no room for debate. Our allies in the U.S., including Food and Water Watch, are trying to secure amendments in order to prevent the agreement from giving new rights to the bottled water industry.

The Council of Canadians has endorsed the testimony of lawyers James Olson and Michael H. Dettmer, which was submitted to Congress today on behalf of Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation and several other groups in the U.S. We continue to seek other organizations in Canada to sign on to the statement. Olson and Dettmer argue three main points:

* Congress must delete the “product” exception to the definition of “diversion” in the diversion ban.
* Congress must also delete the bottled water provision. Bottling Great Lakes water must be banned unless it is in the public interest, without harm, and for fair consideration to the public.
* Water should be protected by the public trust doctrine. The Great Lakes waters must not be subjected to private ownership. Reasonable use of a public water resource is allowable but privatization is not.

To read an article in today’s Detroit Free Press about the fast-tracking of the Compact legislation: http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080730/NEWS06/807300373.

To find out about the Council of Canadians’ criticisms of the Great Lakes Annex signed by Ontario, Quebec and the Great Lakes states in 2005, leading to the Great Lakes Basin Compact, visit: http://www.canadians.org/water/issues/Great_Lakes/index.html.

TAKE ACTION!

The U.S. law going through Congress to legalize the Great Lakes Basin Compact has the approval of the Ontario and Quebec governments despite the fact that it leaves wide open the possibility of massive removals of water from the shared watershed through bottled water exemptions. Let Congress know that Canadians are concerned by signing on to Food and Water Watch’s petition at: http://action.foodandwaterwatch.org/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=25279.

–
The Council of Canadians
700-170 Laurier Avenue West, Ottawa, ON K1P 5V5.
Tel: (613) 233-2773; Toll-free: 1-800-387-7177
Fax: (613) 233-6776
inquiries@canadians.org
www.canadians.org

Sunday, June 1, 2008 at 9:46pm | Edit Note | Delete

In 1968, Ken Stone stunned U of T with his act of defiance. Today, he’s still trying to save the world
Jun 01, 2008 04:30 AM

Leslie Scrivener
Feature Writer

Parents around the world must have thought their university-aged children had lost their senses in 1968. Spurning the benefits that two decades of post-war prosperity had brought, students went on strike, organized sit-ins and seemed bent on tearing down the old, conformist order and modelling a radical new world.

That was the summer when the idealistic Kenneth Everett Stone, a student activist, strode to the podium at Convocation Hall, accepted his honours Bachelor of Arts degree and, in a stunning act of protest, ripped his diploma in two. He had a moment at the microphone.

“Fellow niggers” the 21-year-old shouted in front of other University of Toronto graduates, professors and his uncomprehending parents. “Look what Mr. Charlie’s done to your minds.” (Mr. Charlie was a disparaging reference to white people.)

His education emphasized “marks, plagiarism and obedience,” he said. He had hoped for collegiality and bracing debates with professors, but what he got instead was rote learning.

“This piece of paper is meaningless,” he declared.

Some stood and applauded in agreement. Others shouted him down.

Emoke Szathmary, who also graduated that day, remembers how she felt as a 22-year-old who had worked hard to put herself through university. “I was amazed that he did it and further amazed that he didn’t seem to think there was any quality in his education, that it was something shoddy,” she says from Winnipeg, where she is the president of the University of Manitoba. “In those years you had to scramble for every nickel – if it was not worthwhile, I wondered, why did he stick around for four years?”

Bob Bossin, another graduate and co-founder of the folk group Stringband, recalls worrying about Stone while admiring his “great little piece of political theatre.

“It was a way of saying the emperor has no clothes and that the system is vulnerable, don’t fall for it.”

Bossin deliberated but ultimately chose not to join Stone and tear up his degree that day. “The ceremony was not so much for me, but for my mom – my dad was already dead – and my aunt. I didn’t feel like flipping them the bird.”

With convocation ceremonies beginning this week at U of T, it seemed appropriate to check in on Stone 40 years later.

He sits beside his wife, Kay, in their Hamilton kitchen while two of his four adult children listen to this story, which was front-page news in some Toronto newspapers. The close-knit family lives in a small house built in 1914 on what was a gladiola farm and is now engulfed by the city.

“I was an angry young person,” says the 61-year-old, his hair thin and his beard grey. “The administration refused to acknowledge that students had a role to play in the planning of the university.

“But my thinking wasn’t fully developed,” continues Stone, who majored in political science and economics at Innis College.”I’d worked every summer, I’d paid for it, and university was not what I’d expected – a dream world, talking to the professors. It was unrealistic.”

After all these years, Stone is still glad he did what he did. Though for stronger impact, he says, he should have organized a band of students to tear up their diplomas with him or some other group action. “I guess it was a sign I’d be an iconoclast. I already knew I’d be opposition to the status quo.”

And he’s still angry.

His life has been a continuum – of carrying placards at protests, agitating for change and writing letters to the editor. His boots have pounded the sidewalk in campaigns against racism and apartheid. He was a leader in a local California-grape boycott and has housed Central American refugees. Stone was a founding member of the Hamilton Association of Concerned Jewish Canadians to end the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza.

He also launched a suit against Chris Stockwell for a $3,000 bar tab the former Ontario energy minister and his staffers billed to taxpayers.

“He has never sold out,” says his friend Jim Zimmerman, now a book editor, who applauded him that day in Convocation Hall and later went to console Stone’s mother at home. “He’s still working for social change.”

Although Stone’s first wife was also an activist, he says his political activity put a strain on the marriage. “She got tired and resentful and we went our separate ways,” he recalls. During the seven-year partnership they had Danny, now 32, and Jessica, 30.

Stone met Kay, with whom he has two children, through union work. “He just stood out,” says the 54-year-old nurse. “It was more than just the issues of the local; he had a bigger picture. An injustice to one was an injustice to all.”

After getting his B.A., Stone went to work for the Ontario Union of Students and, later, a fertilizer factory. Then he drove a truck for Canada Post in Hamilton for 22 years, before moving on to a temporary position as grievance officer for the Canadian Union of Postal Workers.

Stone made an unsuccessful bid to be a Hamilton alderman in 1988. Two years later he returned to the University of Toronto for teacher training and made the dean’s list upon graduation. He went on to earn a master’s degree in political science from McMaster.

There were lean years when he was a supply teacher with a hefty student loan and supporting Kay and his children on $18,000 a year.

He’s a full-time teacher now, outside of Hamilton. “Because of my outspoken views,” he says, “I’ve had to work in places where my activism isn’t known.”

Stone does make time for the arts. He’s currently reading The Hanging of Angélique, an exposé of slavery in Canada by Afua Cooper. “I was astonished by the revelation that Jewish merchants were responsible for about 200 years of developing and expanding the slave trade in black Africans,” he says.

He and Kay have season tickets to Opera Hamilton. And Stone is a folksinger. “He doesn’t just go to the picket line – he writes the songs for it, too,” says Peter Shebib, a retired steelworker. “He should have gotten a lot further in the union and politics – he’s too honest and outspoken about the real issues … They like get-along folks.”

Stone and his family live modestly. Their house needs painting. There’s a 1965 Buick Skylark convertible in the garage, and Stone drives a ‘93 Saturn.

But he doesn’t regret a life that’s been marked by financial insecurity. “I don’t really care about the money,” he says. “My only regret is that I didn’t make it into politics. I think I could have contributed quite a bit.”

What makes him mad now? “George Bush’s war of terror against Arabs and Muslims, into which our own prime minister bought lock, stock and barrel. We’re paying for a losing counterinsurgency war in Afghanistan, where our troops control the ground they are standing on for a moment.” He berates Bush, (Defence Minister) Peter MacKay and (Liberal Leader) Stéphane Dion, saying they clamour for humanitarian interventions in Sudan’s Darfur region while creating humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and elsewhere.

After an interview, he sends an email saying: “I didn’t get an opportunity to say anything about a spinoff effect of Bush’s war of terror” – the racial profiling of Arabs and Muslims in Canada, and the RCMP and CSIS “hatching of phony plots.”

“I think he’s angry at people who don’t think for themselves and are led like sheep,” says son Danny, an environmental technologist.

Stone grew up on Old Park Rd. in Forest Hill, one of four children of a building contractor. He helped out his dad in the summer. He was valedictorian at his Hebrew school at Beth Shalom Synagogue and dreamed of a career in politics.

He went on to Innis College at the University of Toronto. The college was founded in 1964 to accommodate the baby boomers swelling university enrolment. Unlike the traditional colleges at U of T, which were based on religious affiliation, Innis shaped its own personality. “It evolved into a left-wing, socially conscious college embracing the spirit of change and dissent that was emerging in the late Sixties,” says Roger Riendeau, currently vice-principal of Innis. “It seemed to attract those kinds of students.” Someone at the time called Innis the “critical edge of the university.”

For students like Stone, the civil rights activists who came to Canada from sit-ins in Mississippi and hung around the common room, were galvanizing. “It was a time of intellectual ferment,” he says. “We were not accepting what we were being told … You could put out a leaflet at 9 a.m. and have an anti-war rally of 600 people at noon.”

He pauses. “Now it takes a month. In Hamilton you’ll get 125 people out.”

Stone, who became president of the Innis College Student Society, pushed hard to win the first student representation on the college council, which at that time was made up entirely of faculty and staff. By 1969, Innis was offering courses on cinema, urban studies, the environment and Canadian culture and society, all of which evolved into U of T’s first interdisciplinary programs.

“I learned more about politics from the fight for student power than I ever could learn from books and in the classroom,” he says.

He admits to having made a mistake at convocation, but not the one you’d think. “I didn’t tell my parents to stay away,” he says, holding his head in his hands. “What a faux pas. They were so proud. And they were inconsolable.”

“Bubbe still holds it against you,” says Danny, referring to his paternal grandmother, Janet. His brother, Brendan, 24, who sat on their dad’s shoulders through anti-free trade demonstrations, will start a PhD in social and political thought at York University. (Stone’s daughter Jessica works in health care in Australia, while Siobhan, 19, attends the University of Guelph.)

Stone’s 93-year-old widowed mother now lives in Baycrest Hospital. “My son has a very brilliant mind, he’s very clever,” she says. “But when he tore up his diploma I felt very badly. I was very embarrassed. I thought everyone was looking at me.”

To this day, she doesn’t understand why. “He was always very loving and considerate of others and wanted to help everybody. If he had not torn up his diploma, he may have been prime minister … “

And she still can’t accept that he believed in and initiated his act of protest. “He did it because his friends dared him to.”

So Stone was more than happy to learn four years ago that Innis College was going to honour him as one of 40 outstanding “Innisians” being singled out for its its 40th anniversary.

Some alumni objected to his inclusion and urged vice-principal Riendeau to reconsider.

“I insisted he be recognized,” he says. “I thought Ken reflected the spirit of Innis College … His defiant act was a principled statement.”

http://www.thestar.com/News/GTA/article/434895

Wednesday, July 30, 2008 at 11:09pm | Edit Note | Delete
From Monday’s Globe and Mail

July 28, 2008 at 8:11 AM EDT

Renewed criticism of the federal government’s continuing practice of underestimating annual revenues, particularly where it appears to be a deliberate political strategy, should compel the Conservatives to live up to past promises.

A recent report released by the Certified General Accountants Association of Canada – a thorough look at the federal Finance Department’s habit of stumbling upon multi-billion-dollar surpluses – concludes that the practice, whether planned or unplanned, strengthens an impression that Canadians are over-taxed (despite being a low-to-intermediate tax country). Meanwhile, it creates the perception that the government has money to spend and places it under pressure to spend it in the last third of the fiscal year. Never mind the erosion of the federal government’s credibility.

In 10 of the past 11 years, the federal surplus has exceeded initial budget projections by an average of $8.6-billion. The latest “surprise” surplus, announced by Stephen Harper’s government last fall, looked rather like hypocrisy.

“We promised the Canadian people that we would not hide surpluses, that we would be as transparent and accountable as we could be… and we would avoid the ‘March madness’ that [the Liberals] got into year after year with so-called surprise surpluses,” Jim Flaherty said in 2006, referring to last-minute, politically sensitive spending announced outside the budget.

Yet, with a surplus some $5-billion beyond expectations the next year, the Tories were prey to the same impulse to make end-of-year billion-plus dollar promises of their own. One notable example was $1.5-billion taken from the surplus for new environmental spending in February 2007, a substantial chunk of it for Quebec just ahead of an anticipated election.

As the CGA-Canada report points out, “One can’t help but wonder if surprise surpluses have become strategy… As a tactic, it does have appeal and creates, over time, a norm that permits accelerated debt retirement.” (Like his predecessors, Mr. Flaherty applied a large portion of last year’s surplus to reduce the debt, then running at $467-billion.) But deliberately underestimating tax revenues creates unreasonable expectations among taxpayers about the strength of the economy.

“While all countries face the same problem of ’small misses,’ Canada’s forecasting accuracy is worse than that of other countries,” the report cautions. “This leads to a conclusion that the invisible political pressure to avoid deficit may still play a very important role in shaping surprise surpluses.”

While the current economic slowdown and the result of recent tax cuts suggest any pending unplanned surplus will be smaller than in past years – the government actually ran a deficit of $517-million over the first two months of the current fiscal year – any more surprises are unwelcome. Mr. Harper has appointed a Parliamentary Budget Officer to provide independent analysis of the country’s finances. One hopes this will make a difference.

The goodwill of Canadian taxpayers pleasantly surprised by multi-billion-dollar “unplanned” surpluses may make it easier for governments to put billions toward paying down the public debt. But if the case can be made to taxpayers, then planned surpluses can pay down the public debt just as well as unplanned ones.

Saturday, August 2, 2008 at 11:11pm | Edit Note | Delete
THIS BILL IS DESIGNED BY THIS CONSERVATIVE GOVNT, PLEASE SEND A MESSAGE (EMAIL OR POSTAL) TO YOUR M.P., IT IS IMPORTANT FOR THEM TO KNOW YOU CARE ABOUT THIS

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LEAF (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund)

LEAF Position on Bill C-484
Today at 3:39pm
Bill C-484 threatens women’s human rights and equality

Bill C-484, Unborn Victims of Crime Act, seeks to amend the Criminal Code to create a separate offence and penalties for causing the injury or death of a fetus in situations where a pregnant woman is a victim of an offence.

The Bill is, at best, a seriously misguided and ineffective attempt to protect pregnant women from violence. Without actually offering any real protection to pregnant women, Bill C-484 threatens woman’s reproductive choice. Indeed, it contains provisions that will seriously undermine women’s Charter protected constitutional rights.

By creating a specific crime for the killing of an “unborn child”, this proposed legislation will in effect grant separate legal status to the fetus. It is well established under Canadian law that the fetus has no independent legal status and hence no right to life. The fetus is not recognized as a “child” until it is born. If enacted, Bill C-484 would provide unprecedented legal recognition of the fetus and fundamentally change Canadian law. This creates the potential for legal conflict between the rights of the fetus and the rights of the pregnant woman. By elevating the legal status of the fetus, Bill C-484 opens the door to recriminalizing abortion. C-484 could lead to significant violations of women’s right to reproductive autonomy and equality. This proposed change in the law is contrary to well established Canadian jurisprudence and contrary to the law in most western jurisdictions. Bill C-484 would result in profound social, political, moral and economic impacts on women, men and children.

It could criminalize pregnant women

If passed into law, this Bill could lead to the regulation and punishment of pregnant women in a variety of situations not explicitly addressed in the Bill.

Although the Bill specifies that it does not apply to a lawful abortion, or to any act or omission by the “mother of the child”, the experience with similar legislation in the United States shows that the Bill will have serious consequences in limiting women’s rights, consequences that are not in strict keeping with the language of the Bill.

It could be used to undermine abortion rights

The Bill has been introduced and is strongly supported by anti-abortion advocates. Many of the MPs who support Bill C-484 have longstanding ties to anti-abortion organizations and constituencies. If passed, it will be used as a tool by those who wish to limit women’s access to legal abortion.

It could lead to further violations of women’s autonomy

This proposal will also have far reaching impacts in other areas of law, including health law, child welfare law, employment law, tort law and constitutional law. Furthermore, these consequences and inequitable intrusions would be most strongly felt by women who are already marginalized in society, such as poor women, racialized women, immigrant women and disabled women. This Bill, rather than offering protection to women who are most marginalized in society, will in reality further their marginalization and the state’s intrusion into their lives.

Defence of Provocation

Bill C-484 specifically includes the defence of provocation and extends its use to the new offences created. Historically, and currently, the provocation defence has been used to excuse male violence against women who are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends. This defence shifts responsibility for male violence to the victim, by focusing on the behaviour that allegedly provokes a violent attack. There has been a long history of opposition to this defence by organizations, academics and individuals who reject its implicit endorsement of male rage in the “heat of passion” as excusable in criminal law. It is highly objectionable that this questionable defence should be further extended in the Criminal Code.

It fails to address a very real problem: male violence against wives and female partners

While this proposed legislation endangers the equality rights of all women, it would also fail to address the very real problem of spousal violence against women. It shifts the public focus away from the woman who is the immediate, intended target of harm. Notably, Bill C-484 does not make any reference to the harm done to a woman resulting from an attack that causes damage to the fetus. This is inexplicable when one considers that a fetus is never assaulted without the woman who carries the fetus also being assaulted.

In effect, the Bill attempts to mask the real issue calling out for redress: male violence. Male violence against women does indeed increase during pregnancy. However, this Bill will not effectively address this problem. Rather than this proposed legislation, we desperately need the commitment of resources for effective measures to enforce existing legislation to protect all women from violence. Protecting a pregnant woman from violence will also protect the fetus. We need to provide pregnant women with all of the necessary resources and support to ensure a safe and healthy pregnancy, including protection from male violence.

It is not necessary

It is not necessary to introduce new legislation to recognize that pregnancy and spousal violence are aggravating factors when women are assaulted. The Criminal Code and case law already recognize these factors for the purpose of sentencing. Given that most sentences arising out of the same act are served concurrently, this amendment is unlikely to have any impact on the time an offender spends in prison.

It would undermine women’s rights

We should be focusing on legal tools that can actually help to address and reduce violence against all women, including those who are pregnant. C-484 will not help to protect women from violence and will only further women’s inequality. By focusing on the rights of the fetus, instead of the rights of pregnant women, Bill C-484 has profound and disturbing implications for the health, safety and independence of all women. To pass this bill into law would be to seriously undermine women’s reproductive rights, women’s Charter rights, and women’s human rights.

We therefore recommend that Bill C-484 be defeated, with a clear message that women’s rights to autonomy and reproductive choice must be affirmed.

Friday, September 5, 2008 at 6:57pm | Edit Note | Delete
Sep 05, 2008 06:29 PM – TORONTO STAR
Sue Bailey
THE CANADIAN PRESS

OTTAWA–The Liberals will try to tap into voter concerns about affordable, safe child care early in the coming election campaign, sources say.

Leader Stéphane Dion will promise more child-care spaces while maintaining $1,200-a-year payments introduced by the Conservatives, said a source familiar with the party’s draft platform.

“What we heard from parents across the country is you can give them all of the money you want. But at the end of the day, if they have no space available to put their child, then that in itself is a significant challenge.”

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Liberals are counting on child care as a sleeper issue that will set them apart from the Tories.

“I think it will be brought to the forefront because you take a look at families … they’re struggling, they’re frustrated. And I think that frustration and that anger is going to come forward because the Conservatives have refused to listen.”

The former Liberal government had struck deals with the provinces for a $5-billion national daycare program to increase spaces and overhaul Canada’s dismal international standing when it comes to early learning.

Conservatives scrapped those plans when they took power in 2006 in favour of tax cuts, increased family benefits and scaled-back funding for new spaces. Such moves were hailed by the Canadian Taxpayers Federation and parents who say it’s more equal and efficient to give cash directly to families.

The government says provinces “have announced plans” for more than 60,000 new spaces since 2007, but did not provide an updated provincial breakdown.

The minister responsible, Monte Solberg, declined to be interviewed on the topic just hours before it was announced that he will not run in the campaign expected to start Sunday.

Parents who get the taxable $100-a-month cheques for each child under age six have so far received benefits worth almost $5 billion since July 2006.

The Conservatives also pledged during the last election campaign to create up to 125,000 spaces over five years. But in government, they had to shift gears when employers soundly rejected tax credits to set up business-based daycare.

Solberg pointed out last spring that $1.1 billion a year now flows to the provinces from Ottawa for child care – including $250 million to spur space creation. That’s about $400 million less than what the Liberals planned.

Today, parents in many cities face waiting lists of more than two years for regulated spaces, says Jody Dallaire of the Child Care Advocacy Association of Canada.

“We get calls regularly from parents returning to school or work who realize they won’t be able to find child care to meet their needs.

“We’ll have to see when their platform comes out but if you look at their past history, the Conservatives have not been good for child care in Canada.”

Dallaire says there’s no easy way to track how many of the 60,000 planned new spaces cited by the government have actually opened. Statistics must be painstakingly collected from each province and territory.

One of the few researchers doing such work reported last spring that the number of new regulated spaces dropped by thousands after the Conservatives took the helm.

Martha Friendly, executive director of Toronto’s Childcare Resource and Research Unit, said 26,600 spaces opened across Canada in 2006 – down from 32,600 in each of the previous two years and a steep drop from almost 51,000 a year between 2001 and 2004.

Those numbers are despite intense demand for high-quality, reliable programs, said the child-care research veteran of 30 years.

“Our vision is partly about child-care spaces,” Solberg said in an interview last April. “It’s also about giving parents choice so that they can provide for their children in the way that’s in alignment with their values and their situation.”

He also noted that not all provinces have used federal funding solely to create new spaces. Alberta, Quebec and Prince Edward Island have focused more on salary increases, training and other needs, he said.

From Friday’s Globe and Mail

September 5, 2008 at 5:34 AM EDT

The Conservatives’ effort to present Stephen Harper as an everyman is not true to who he is, and it is a good thing for the country that he is not just an ordinary guy.

Even before the writ has dropped, the Tory campaign has made clear its intention to portray Mr. Harper as a minivan-driving hockey dad from the suburbs. The Liberal Leader, Stéphane Dion, by contrast, is to be ruthlessly caricatured as a wimpy and elitist academic of the mad-professor type.

This kind of dumbed-down posturing is not entirely alien to Canadian political culture. The country had years of Jean Chretien’s le petit gars de Shawinigan shtick. Brian Mulroney made much of having fought his way up from modest roots. Ralph Klein revelled in his Uncle Ralph persona.

But markedly unusual men such as Pierre Trudeau and Mackenzie King have also flourished. Lester B. Pearson was a diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize laureate. John Turner, a Rhodes scholar. Peter Lougheed has an MBA from Harvard and is the grandson of a knight of the realm. They were all true to themselves. None succeeded by posing as a welder.

Mr. Harper is an economist, not a blue-collar worker. He was a lecturer at the University of Calgary, so he is on thin ice when he lampoons Mr. Dion for his admittedly more impressive academic credentials. He was president of the National Citizens Coalition, not of a curling league. He has also been either a political aide or a professional politician for most of his adult life.

Mr. Harper might be a man who resists the trappings of refinement, and has unassuming personal tastes. But he has spent his life working toward the place he now occupies, a taxpayer-funded mansion, with a domestic staff, a government car – and the power to make cabinet ministers snap to attention. He might prefer to collect cats rather than fine art, but then the art is from public collections anyway. Mr. Harper is also, as The Globe wrote two years ago, “studious, cerebral, disciplined and stubbornly principled.” And he is a first-class policy geek. He is not known to open beer bottles with his eye socket.

Is this a bad thing for a national political leader? Of course not. Mr. Harper is a man who has thought deeply about the issues and the country. That’s something Canadians should look for in a leader. The same, of course, can be said of Mr. Dion. So what is the lesson in Mr. Harper’s practice of Tim Horton-philia? That policy geeks also eat Timbits, nothing more.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20080905.weharper05/BNStory/specialComment/home

Source:

http://www.thestar.com/News/Canada/article/491933

Arabic-speaking soldier may prompt Canada to wade into legal debate
Sep 06, 2008 04:30 AM
Comments on this story (92)
Michelle Shephard
National Security Reporter

Peter Jemley is unique among the growing ranks of war resisters who have sought refuge in Canada.

For one thing, he’s old by military standards. The only reason the army considered the 38-year-old recruit three years ago was because the age cap had been raised to fill the U.S. military’s growing void.

The Tacoma, Wash., father of two young children also bucks the soldier stereotype. Jemley is a college history major, both quiet and fervently independent. If describing a bad situation he’s likely to say it “sucked,” then apologize for his profanity.

Now Jemley’s reasons for deserting set him apart too, and make his case a historic first.

He wants Canada to accept him as a refugee because he’s opposed to torture.

Jemley argues that as one of only a small number of Arabic linguists with top security clearance, he could be forced to violate international law by participating in the interrogations of terrorism suspects. It was something he hadn’t considered when he enlisted in 2005 and was handpicked to undergo two years of intense training due to his adeptness with languages.

Only last February did he discover that his government had sanctioned new rules on how terrorism suspects could be interrogated. He believes it’s torture and when he realized he might be asked to be a part of it, he fled.

“It’s a soldier’s obligation to say `no’ if their commander is doing things that are criminally complicit,” Jemley, now 42, said in a recent interview in Toronto. “I think everyone is agreeing now that torture is really what has been going on … I have every reason to believe that from my small pool that I belong to, with my credentials, that I’d be ordered to do such things.”

`Torture’ has become a much-debated word with profound legal implications since the 9/11 attacks and the U.S. administration’s decision to re-write the laws of war.

Detainees held at Guantanamo Bay and the undisclosed CIA prisons around the world have claimed widespread abuse. The CIA has admitted to using `coercive techniques’ during interrogations, such as waterboarding, a process whereby agents simulate drownings.

Much of the legal community considers this treatment torture and point to international laws such as the Geneva Conventions, which were established after WWII to impose legal restrictions on the barbarity of war.

Canada so far has largely been able to sidestep the debate about torture and the Bush administration’s post-9/11 policies. Other cases of deserters in Canada have focused on the larger question of the legality of the Iraq war. About a dozen cases are working their way through the refugee board and courts with varying legal arguments and one deserter has already been deported back to face a court martial.

The issue of Guantanamo’s legality arose earlier this year in the Supreme Court case concerning Canadian detainee Omar Khadr. The high court justices ruled that Canadian agents had acted illegally by interrogating the Toronto teenager in 2003 and 2004. But the high court relied on a U.S. Supreme Court decision that deemed Guantanamo illegal, rather than debating issues of torture and indefinite detention specifically.

Jemley’s case is the first to deal with the issue directly. The CIA has admitted it uses acts such as waterboarding. There’s evidence that Guantanamo detainees were subjected to programs such as sleep deprivation, intimidation with dogs and sexual humiliation. If these tactics are torture, thereby violating international law, Jemley argues he could be prosecuted for war crimes if he participates.

Canada must decide whether the U.S. administration has sanctioned torture in deciding his case, his lawyer says.

“There are specific rules for soldiers and the basic idea is nobody should participate in torture, ever,” said Jemley’s lawyer Jeffrey House. “Nobody should associate themselves with torture or violations of the Geneva Conventions because if we start to wink at violations of the Geneva Conventions they’re no longer law, they’re just guidelines.”

Calls to Jemley’s commander at the 341st Military Intelligence Battalion at Camp Murray, Tacoma, were not returned this week. But a letter of “unexcused absence” emailed to Jemley from Maj. Brian Bodenman outlined what penalties he could face if he failed to show up to training by yesterday’s deadline.

Punishment includes a court martial with possibility of jail time or a discharge and transfer to “inactive ready reserve.” The latter means Jemley could still be called to duty for a period of five years.

“To me it’s like being an indentured servant. You can’t leave, and you can’t give your skills back,” Jemley said.

Since the U.S. invaded Iraq in March 2003, there is no accurate account of how many deserters have fled to Canada – best guess is a couple hundred, with many remaining underground having not filed a refugee claim.

Comparisons are often made to the Vietnam War when thousands came to Canada. But during Vietnam there was a draft, and Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservative government has little sympathy for today’s deserters.

Jemley’s decision to join the army was not one he took lightly, nor one borne of patriotic duty. “It wasn’t a political decision. I didn’t really like the Bush administration any more then, than I do now, but Iraqis are people too and I’m not afraid of doing difficult things. So I thought I could help,” Jemley said.

After scoring extremely high on the army’s Defense Language Aptitude Battery test he was asked if he’d become a linguist and was sent to the Army’s language school in Monterey, Calif., for two years. Upon graduation, he spent a brief stint at the secretive National Security Agency, the U.S. government’s electronic eavesdropping agency, and then sought independent contracts where he could work until his unit was deployed.

In February, he signed a lucrative contract with Washington’s Office of Military Commissions, the legal arm of the Guantanamo trials that is prosecuting a couple dozen detainees, including Khadr. It was when Jemley started doing his own research into the Guantanamo cases that he came up with media reports about the waterboarding of suspects. When he was asked to sign an addendum to his OMC contract, which added that he must be available to be on-call for “other language related assignments,” he refused and was fired.

A second contract offered him work in unspecified locations with “the agency” based in northern Virginia. No one would confirm it was the CIA and when he couldn’t get answers about what he’d be doing he turned down the job.

By then he knew he was trapped. These were positions he could refuse, but if he was ordered to duty he couldn’t say no.

“I did everything I was supposed to. I’m not afraid to be deployed. I’m not afraid to die,” Jemley said.

“(But) I’m ashamed about what’s going on.”

His wife Sarah and children aged 8 and 3 have remained in Tacoma until Sarah can finish her master’s nursing degree. They hate the separation but Jemley says he’s confident in his decision.

“I know it sounds glib but I mean it. If one less person gets tortured then it’ll all be worth it.”