The Secret Fears of the Globe and Mail

The Globe and Mail has given editorial endorsement to Stephen Harper and the Conservatives, as well they might. To endorse or vote for the Liberals is to condone, and in fact encourage, theft, deceit and incompetence on a scale never before seen in Canadian political history.

Despite the editorial endorsement though, the Globe news editors seem frightened at the idea of a Harper government. Most people read news stories because of the headline. Headlines have a considerable impact on the impression given by the paper as a whole, even if the reader doesn't read the story under the headline.

In the last month the Globe has given pretty even treatment of the political news, and no large complaint could be made about it.

Today, though, with the election on Monday, consider the headlines in the front section of the Globe - "The West wants in", "The West is in with a vengeance", "Tories would imperil right to abortion, Martin says", "US groups urged to keep quiet on Conservative victory", "Tories would curb access to abortion, activists warn". That is the majority of the political news headlines in this last edition of the Globe before the election on the day after tomorrow.

The clear impression is that the Globe news editors have chosen to highlight stories which will tend to cause voters to shy away from the Conservatives. They spotlight the hot button (and false) issues raised by the Liberals - abortion, US influence and Western dominance. The stories are selected and headlined even though there is no substance to them. The mere fact that some Liberal makes an unsubstantiated claim that Harper is a devil worshipper should not make it a headline in the Globe.

Despite its editorial endorsement of the Conservatives, it seems that the news department has a hidden agenda at this last moment before the election, and its secret fears have come out.

Bilingualism forever

Although he did not originate the concept, Trudeau created the bilingual program we have today in Canada. Year after year, the Auditor General and the Official Languages Commissioner have complained that although we spend half a billion dollars a year on it, Canada is no more bilingual now than it was 35 years ago.

By any standard but those of the Liberal Party, the bilingualism program in Canada is an abject failure. After huge expenditure, the bilingualism rate is unchanged. You would think that any sensible government would cancel this expensive and useless bureaucracy.

It has, after all, been applied upside down by the Liberals. They have made it a requirement for many of the top positions in government that the applicant be bilingual. It is not the top positions which need to be bilingual. In my own management experience within the federal government, I always had the benefit of simultaneous translation at any national meetings I attended. We see this service in Parliament every day.

It is the clerks and others who deal with the public in bilingual areas, who need to be bilingual, not the managers.

So why have the Liberals spent so much money on bilingualism, when for decades it has failed in its stated purpose? Why have they applied it at the top, and not at the bottom?

Because from the Liberals self serving view, bilingualism as they have imposed it is a smashing success. By requiring those in the top jobs to be bilingual, there is an automatic bias in favour of filling that job by someone from Quebec. The politicians who have promoted and asked us to pay for the bilingual program, are all from Quebec. It has led to the top levels of the civil service in Ottawa being dominated by Quebec francophones. Before the bilingualism program, when the merit principle was all that officially mattered, the civil service was run by anglophones.

This program has succeeded beyond Trudeau's dreams in having Canada's government taken over and run by Quebecois francophones. Why should the Liberals cancel a program which has achieved exactly what they wanted? We can expect the bilingualism program to be continued exactly as is, if the Liberals form the next government, no matter what the Auditor General or Commissioner of Official Languages might say about its failure.

Martin and property rights

Paul Martin's latest rant is against Stephen Harper's suggestion that property rights be included in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Martin says the sky will fall, if this is done. It will lead to elimination of workplace safety, child labour law, and the minumum wage law. How this follows from protecting property rights is a puzzlement, but Paul Martin has no problem making soaring leaps of illogic when it comes to attacking Harper.

No doubt it will come as a surprise to Martin to find that property rights are already protected in federal legislation. The 1960 Bill of Rights, which has never been repealed, provides in s. 1 (a) for "the right of the individual to life, liberty, security of the person and the enjoyment of property....". This is federal legislation binding on the federal government, and it has been in place for 45 years. Martin seems unaware of this.

If the sky was going to fall because property rights were protected in the Charter, it would have fallen long ago. Once again Martin has demonstrated that he is both dishonest and incompetent.

Paul Martin notwithstanding

Last night, in the course of the leader's debate, Paul Martin pledged that the Liberals would amend the constitution to remove the "notwithstanding clause" from the Charter of Rights.

Before considering this proposition, let's review the situation. Our parliamentary democracy is founded on a number of principles. Perhaps the most important is the concept of the Supremacy of Parliament. It provides that of the three branches of government, Parliament, the Judiciary and the Executive, Parliament rules.

Parliament is accountable to the people, and consists of duly elected representatives of the people. The Judiciary is not accountable to the people, or anyone else for that matter, and is not elected by anyone.

In the past, the Judiciary was controlled by its own sense of its proper place in the Canadian democratic system. It viewed its job to be applying and interpreting the laws enacted by Parliament. The Judiciary did not create laws.

That changed after 1982 as a result of the Charter of Rights, one of Pierre Trudeau's many misguided and destructive conceits. Using the Charter, Chief Justice Brian Dickson and Justice Bertha Wilson rained down a series of judgments which stretched the words of the Charter beyond recognition. Police authority and powers were severly curtailed, as if Canada had been a police state prior to being saved by Dickson and Wilson. The Supreme Court of Canada decided that it could "read in" powers which were not set out in the Charter. They could invent new law, they decided.

In a short time, the law was not what Parliament enacted, it was what the Supreme Court of Canada said it was. The Court went so far as to direct elected legislatures to enact law which that legislature had specifically considered and rejected. (Vriend) So much for the Supremacy of Parliament and parliamentary democracy in this country.

To their shame, the elected legislatures and federal Parliament, took this lying down. The Supreme Court of Canada was running amok and out of control, but it became a matter of poitical dogma that no premier, except that of Quebec, and certainly no Liberal Prime Minister, would use the only check on judicial excess, which is the "notwithstanding clause" in the Charter of Rights.

We have no mechanism in our system to check or balance the judiciary. There is no public input in the appointment of judges, and they are appointed until they are 75. They cannot be fired, except by Act of Parliament, which is a political impossibility.

No mechanism was necessary before Brian Dickson became the Chief Justice, because of the self control and sense of propriety of the judges, as well as their clear understanding of the position of the Supreme Court of Canada in the system.

Now, with 20 years of overweening assumption of power by the Supreme Court, it has become necessary to rein it in and restore the Supremacy of Parliament. Since no other mechanism exists to do this, the notwithstanding clause in the Charter of Rights must be used to do so. That clause provides that legislation shall operate notwithstanding the Charter for a period of five years, if the legislation expressly so declares.

It has never been used by the Liberals. It should have been. For Paul Martin to suggest last night that the only check and safeguard that exists to control an out of control Judiciary be abandoned, shows that Paul Martin and the Liberals either don't understand our democratic system, or are so in the grip of a Liberal ideology that they are prepared to damage or destroy our system rather than change their thinking. Probably both.

Our federal and provincial legislatures should not only retain the notwithstanding clause, they should use it whenever necessary to assert the Supremacy of Parliament principle, when it has been subverted by the judiciary. It is the only way we have to check and balance an otherwise unaccountable, uncontrolled judiciary.

Paul Martin was once again hugely wrong last night. His proposal to dump the notwithstanding clause would do great damage to Canadian democracy, and leave us with no check on the judiciary at all.

This man is not just morally unfit to govern - he is too stupid to govern.

Fend for yourself

Paul Martin's latest shot at the Conservatives in this election campaign is that they stand for "fend for yourself government". He says this as if it's a bad thing.

What Martin proposes is a government that will look after everyone. That is to say, a society where everyone is government dependent. A society where no on fends for himself, and turns over his liberty, and his money of course, to a government which will look after him - as the government sees fit.

Canada was built by men and women who fended for themselves. We admire our forefathers for their resolute character, their energy, and their personal triumphs. Was there a price to be paid for having a minimal government without the huge "safety net" so fundamental to Liberal thinking? Yes there was, but not nearly the price that is paid for a Liberal style government.

Before Trudeau, we did not see many people living in cardboard boxes or begging in the streets. People had to fend for themselves, so they did. They also got help from family and friends.

Liberals have worked hard over the past 35 years to replace the help of family or friends with help provided by government bureaucrats. Both types of help are uncertain, but personally I think I can count on family and friends more than the govenrment if I need assistance.

The financial cost of such "help" has become huge. Canada is considered to have taxation levels close to the highest in the world. We are all paying into government coffers far too much of our income, and we are getting far too little for it.

Aside from that, most government social programs tend to make the situation worse. An excellent book on the subject is Mona Charen's "Do-gooders: How liberals hurt those they claim to help". It conclusively shows how a variety of social programs have had the unintended consequence of promoting welfare dependency, crime, drug dealing and homelessness.

So when Paul Martin says that the Conservatives stand for "fend for yourself government", that's the best reason I can think of to vote Conservative.

Crime and Punishment in Canada

A couple of days ago, Michael Tripper, now a 41 year old professional, wrote a perceptive comment in the Globe and Mail about his early life as a gang member.

He said that they would skip school and attack random strangers in the subway, or beat up kids from other schools. "We engaged in horrible deeds and we loved every minute of it."

Eventually he changed. Why? "It was fear for myself that made me stop and think: the pain of others was simply not enough to warrant my attention back then."

He writes of becoming a thief to get what other kids had. "Of course I feared getting caught, but I could set that against a return-on-investment calculation: What would the punishment be? Was it worth the gain? Given the lax laws of the time, my friends and I even spoke of murder as being something we could get away with. Back then, we expected we'd be locked up until the age of 18 and then let go."

He writes that poverty might lead some into crime, but "if the laws are too easy on adolescents, then they will make their calculations of brutality. If the consequences are short and not too severe, the risks become irrelevant."

Tripper suggest two solutions to reduce gang crime. First, the courts must deal severly with any use of guns. Second, "the federal government must look at the causes of poverty, such as our high immigration levels. Pouring desparate people into large cities isn't helping poverty, it's adding to it."

He's right. In my 35 years as a defence counsel and prosecutor in the criminal courts of Canada I am convinced that the concept of rehabilitiation as practised in this country is a demonstrable failure. The violent crime rate in Canada is five times higher than it was in 1962. (See police statistics gathered by MP Garry Breitkreuz at http://www.garrybreitkreuz.com/publications/ ) Clearly the government and the courts are doing something wrong, and failing seriously in their duty to protect the Canadian public.

My own sentencing philosophy can be expressed in two words - punishment rehabilitates. I do not advocate brutality in the prison system. I do advocate discipline and deprivation of amenities. It is appalling to me that serious criminals in this country not only vote in jail, they get better entertainment, education, medical service than the average citizen, all at taxpayer's expense. In my view the past and present Commissioners of Corrections under the Chretien and Martin governments, Ingstrup and McLung, have done a lot of harm to Canada by their powder puff policies toward inmates. They have blood on their hands, put there by criminals that they failed to confine adequately, and certainly failed to rehabilitate.

If punishment is meaningful to the criminal, and the jail experience is unpleasant, he will more likely to be deterred from further crime, so as not to go back to jail. I didn't invent this approach. It is an approach that worked for centuries, until the likes of Ingstrup, McLung and a liberal judiciary bought into the idea that rehabilitation meant counselling and life skills training.

A friend of mine once commented that to him the way our present system works is this. A guy who is doing three break and enters a week, and clearing $1500 tax free dollars for less than eight hours work, gets caught for his last couple of B&E's, although he has done hundreds. He is sentenced to a few months in jail.

While in jail, the counsellor says to him, in effect, "you know it's wrong for you to work eight hours a week for $1500 and not pay taxes. You should work for 40 hours a week, for $400, and pay taxes on it. That's the right thing to do." The criminal thinks this is just nuts, but of course knows the right thing to say in order to get out early.

Criminals are not like you and I. Could you decide to go bash an old lady on the head and take her purse to get some beer money? Of course not, but this sort of thing happens every day. The only way to stop it is not to appeal to the conscience or sense of social responsibility of a thug who has none. It is to punish such action in a way that it meaningful to the thug, so that on the cost/benefit calculation it just isn't worth it to mug that old lady.

So remember - punishment rehabilitates.

An exchange with Robert Fulford on George Bush

Last Saturday, December 31, Robert Fulford wrote an editorial in the National Post expressing a positive view of George Bush and his successes in Iraq. I wrote Fulford about his column, and he replied. Herewith our exchange:

I used to think that George Jonas had the handle on political insight, but your column today about Islamism, Iraq and Bush puts you on the same pedestal.

I suppose that so many Canadians believe the canard that "Bush lied" because anyone who says so tends to get reported in the media. People who say that Bush is honest and has achieved good results, don't get nearly as much attention from the press.

I suppose that we are ignoring the Islamic jihad because our leaders, specifically Martin, are ignoring it. We are also ignoring it because we haven't been hit yet, of course. If any kind of attack takes place against political figures in Canada, the government will go into high gear to protect itself, and if there is time and manpower left over, other Canadians.

You have written today against the flow of conventional belief. Here is another conventional belief for you to think about. Trudeau was hailed in October 1970 for imposing the War Measures Act in response to the kidnapping of Cross and Laporte. (Note that I say kidnapping. Laporte's murder was not discovered until the day after the War Measures Act was imposed.) Trudeau was considered to be tough and resolute for imposing martial law against the "apprehended insurrection" arising out of the two kidnappings.

I don't see it that way at all. I think Trudeau was a coward. There had been dozens of political murders in Quebec by the FLQ over the previous decade, but since they only killed ordinary people, there was no apprehended insurrection. As soon as politicians were targetted, with the possibility that they might go after Trudeau himself, or Stanfield, all of a sudden, in an instant, there is justification to put soldiers on every street corner. I think Trudeau, and to his shame Stanfield, were just protecting themselves. Naturally my analysis of this isn't accepted by many, since it posits a dark side to Trudeau that tarnishes his chrome plated image, but on the other hand, most thinking people now do not see that there was justification for the War Measures Act to be imposed.

As you point out, both the American and Canadian Left have a hatred for Bush. I suspect that is because Bush has been successful in dealing with the Islamic jihad. There have been no terrorist acts on American soil since 9/11. Saddam is on trial by the Iraqis, and Iraq has had democratic elections. Khadaffi can visualize himself in a prisoner's box too, so Libya has become a relatively good citizen. There will be a fall of democratic ash from the Iraq volcano through the Arab world as a result of Bush's policy and actions. What the Left really hates is that Bush hasn't failed.

You do a good job of explaining the real truth, instead of the conventional truth, in your column today. I will clip it and insist that a judge friend of mine, who believes Bush lied about the WMDs, read it through.

Brian Purdy
Calgary

Fulford replied:

Thank you for your kind words about my piece in Saturday's paper and for the notion that the Islamists will have to kill Canadian politicians, not just Canadians, to get our attention. A brilliant insight.

Perhaps Canadians follow their leaders when despising Bush but they do it also because they feel good about it. They love to think they are intellectually superior to him. Most of them, of course, couldn't get into Yale, much less out (neither could I), and many would find a Harvard MBA program too tough. But somehow they think Bush dumb.

Early in the first term David Frum was promoting his book on Bush and was sometimes asked by a journalist or politician: "Is he smart?"

He always wanted to say, "Well, he's smarter than you," but he never did.
No matter what they say, the kid's a Canadian.

Best wishes for the New Year--and thank you for the mail you've sent me in 2005. I may not always respond appropriately, but I'm always grateful.

Regards
Bob

Why we need two tier Medicare

For a long time I had no firm views about Medicare. I heard all the ideological propaganda from the Liberals about how wonderful our government monopoly medicare was, and since I hadn't had to use it, I thought it might be true.

Three years ago my daughter Kathryn, who lives in Nova Scotia, had a serious operation to remove a cyst which was growing at the base of her skull, in the centre of her neck. It was a rare condition and the operation was the first of its kind in Nova Scotia. All seemed well for a while, but then the cyst came back. Now it is pressing on her carotid artery, slowly pinching it off. Her blood pressure has fallen to 90 over 54, she gets dizzy and weak, and something has to be done. Her surgeon wants to use a less invasive technique using special imaging equipment to drain the cyst to relieve the pressure. It should be a day patient procedure.

Here's how the government monopoly medicare system dealt with it. She had to wait from July to get to her scheduled operation date of December 19, with her condition getting worse every day. Then, on the 10th of December, she was notified that her operation was arbitrarily cancelled by a bureaucrat who decided that the operating rooms in the hospital would be closed at 3:00 PM during Christmas week. No new date was set. Her condition continues to get worse as the cyst presses more and more on her carotid artery.

They tell me that because there is a large backlog of orthopedic procedures in Nova Scotia, that the operating rooms will be allocated mainly to those operations in January. People with other problems can just wait. Administration rules.

It seems to me that once you turn over control to a government monopoly, arbitrary bureaucratic action without accountability becomes the norm. Polls have shown that Canadians hold politicians in the lowest regard of any professional group, and they are trusted the least. Does it make sense that you turn over all your health dollars to politicians and trust them with your health and your very life?

What is needed is an alternative to this dysfunctional and unsatisfactory government monopoly system. A parallel private system would remove those who use it from the public waiting lines. In addition, the money paid into the private system would create additional facilities which would benefit everyone.

We already have a parallel private system, as everyone knows. It exists in several provinces to some extent, but in the main, our parallel private system is in the United States. Those who need it, and can afford it, go there for medical treatment that they can't get from the government monopoly system.

Does it make sense that those Canadian dollars are spent in the American medical system? Wouldn't it make more sense for those dollars to be spent in Canada in a parallel private system here?

The reason we don't have a private system to complement government monopoly medicare is purely political and ideological. The Liberals want to control medicare completely. So do the NDP. They are quite ready to let Canadians die for lack of treatment, on the altar of their ideology.

It is long past time that Canadians started thinking rationally about our medicare system. The scare tactics of the Liberals, who scream "American style medicare" and "two tier system" as if they were bad things, should be rejected and replaced with a clear eyed consideration of the merits of a parallel private system.

For me at least, the decision is easy. We should have a Canadian private system complementing the government monopoly system, keep our medical dollars inside Canada, and demand that both systems are run for the benefit of patients, not the administrative convenience of the bureaucrats.

For your own sake don't vote Liberal in this election. It might be the death of you.

Conversation with Link Byfield on sex and the law

I read your column this morning with interest because I wanted to know your position on the swinger's club decision.

I agree with your comments about the assumption of power by the SCC as exemplified by McLachlan's remarks. As I have said before, we have no mechanism in our system, other than a Parliamentary dismissal of the judges, to restrain the court.

When it comes to sexual issues, I am probably a lot more libertarian than you are. I am far more concerned with violence, and the victimization of people than I am with consensual sexual matters, such as swinger's clubs. I do agree that children should be protected in respect to sexual exploitation, and that the minimum age for legal sex should be something like 16 or 17. To set the age at 14 is a failure of duty on the part of the government.

It seems to me that in a free society we have to permit things that we don't like and would not participate in ourselves, so long as the activity does not cause harm. And by "cause harm" I mean tangible harm, not some vague discomfort. So the test applied this time by the SCC does not upset me. "Community standards" is a test which has been used by zealots to persecute others in too many dubious cases. It is impossible for anyone to know if he has broken the law, if community standards is the test.Sex is not inherently bad or harmful. In fact at this stage of life I wish there was a lot more of it going around. The capitalist system, if allowed to work, will control commercial exposure of sex to the community to meet the community standard in any event. If a strip club decided to put a pornographic billboard on a major thoroughfare it is certain that it would offend enough people that the uproar would cause it to be taken down as a simple matter of good business sense. No need to criminally prosecute.

I am sure we could get into a long debate on this, about how declining moral values have eroded our community and so on, but I would rather debate the honesty and competence of government, and our response to violent or coercive crime, where I think the real harm is being done.

Good column.

Brian

______________


I always enjoy your reactions to what I write, but was away from thecomputer over the weekend. I trust you had a happy New Year, and wishyou every success in 2006.

I may not attach much more legal significance to the sin of lust thanyou do. I would support a fairly indulgent line on things like pornshops, peep shows, prostitution and now sex clubs.The secular law is the means whereby citizens preserve the natural human order, not a means of instituting and building social excellence.

The law should be defensive and minimalist rather than expansive andperfectionist. It is not to reinforce -- or even reflect -- Christ's beatitude "Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God."

By seeking to use the secular law to perfectly address "equality"concerns, today's progressive gay and feminist anti-religious reformersmake the same mistake their pro-religion social gospel predecessors dida hundred years ago with laws against drinking, adultery and burlesquetheatre.

Still, as G.K. Chesterton remarked back then, morality, like art,requires that a line be drawn somewhere.I think (contrary to the Supreme Court) there really are obscenities so depraved they can scald the mind and destroy social trust, and that such images should remain illegal. This was the earlier definition of obscenity thrown out by the SCC in Butler in 1992. I also believe that society (on behalf of growing children, who undergo a long period ofsexual latency) has a practical right to restrain overt public nudityand sexuality. However, this is more of a problem with TV, the Internetand sex education, and now gay pride parades and gay park amusementsthan in the sex clubs involved in this case. (I agree with you aboutrestoring a higher age of consent.)

Today's far more serious violation of natural law and the natural human order in my view is wide open abortion and the redefinition of marriage.On these I become very black and white.As some Christian once remarked, lust is not the worst sin, only themost common.

Best regards,
Link

______________________


I think we are mostly agreeing with each other. I think I would prefer to say the secular law should preserve human order, rather than "the natural human order", since I am not sure there actually is a natural human order.

Various groups of humans have created various orders for their society, and no one set of rules prevails everywhere. I hasten to add that of course all societies must prohibit murder, theft, vandalism, and other destructive actions.

It is interesting to note though, that some societies have no stricture against rape (e.g. the traditional Eskimos). I recall my female interpreter debating with me how white man's law had been imposed on the Eskimos. I took the position that our law was not much different than theirs in respect to murder, theft and vandalism, and she was the one who gave the rape example. Any man could take, by force if necessary, any unmarried female in traditional Eskimo society, she said. I asked her which law she preferred, which shut her up.

I agree that criminal law, and to a considerable extent civil law, should be a defensive bulwark against anti-social and destructive conduct. It should not be used, as it now is, to engineer a utopia. To use it in this way is to turn the law into a cattle chute, forcing everyone to move in the same direction, with the courts wielding a cattle prod. This amounts not only to a suppression of the freedom that individuals should have to find their own way so long as they do no harm to others, it is harmful in the long run to humanity, which is forced more and more into a sameness, with innovation, inventiveness, and just plain fun, being outlawed.

I think that is an interesting insight you have with respect to the suggestion that current day activists and those a hundred or more years ago are making a similar mistake. I hadn't thought of it, but I think you're right.

Was Butler the child porn decision? As I recall he possessed images of children having sex. This falls in my view into just about the only area where I support criminal law sanctions for consensual sexual activity. I find the idea of children having sex with adults to be abhorrent, whether or not the children "consent". I think that to permit pedophiles to possess such images lawfully is harmful, and a criminal law prohibition is appropriate. Pedophilia is an aberration which will always afflict a small percentage of the population, and we will have to cope with that by appropriate measures. Letting them have a library of child pornography is not an appropriate measure.

When it comes to adult consensual sex, I am pretty much an anything goes person. That includes nudity, including public nudity, as you might expect from my photographic works. I don't see any harm in naked people walking around, whether at a beach, in a park, or walking around the West Edmonton Mall if they want to. if you can see Arnold Schwarzenegger kill 50 people in a movie, then why is it so bad to see Uma Thurmann naked? Having spent time at Wreck Beach in Vancouver, where you can see 5,000 naked people on a hot summer afternoon, I have become pretty unaffected by nudity. I should take you there some time. It is an interesting and probably mind altering experience.

Since I am not a religious person, my views on abortion tend to be shaped by pragmatism. For a long time I was of the view that it was better that an unwanted child not be born, than to be born into circumstances where its existence was resented. Lately though, I have thought that abortion should be curtailed because our birth rate is too low, and we are losing the battle of the cradle to the Muslims. It is the duty of Canadian women to have a lot of sex and babies.

As for gay marriage, I am against it, again for pragmatic reasons. For some time I have felt that the gays have undue political clout due to their shrill political activism. At best they are 3% of the population. They are a very small tail wagging a large dog. I see no reason why the Liberals should decide it is a national priority that the very small percentage of gays who want to marry, i.e. a small percentage of a small percentage, should be permitted to do so when it profoundly offends a much larger group of religious people to whom it is a deeply felt moral issue.

Majorities have rights too.

Brian