One of the gravest assaults on civil liberties by George Bush II was the idea of "free speech zones" in which protest would be allowed - in blatant violation of the right to free speech contained in the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. And now these abominations on freedom have come to Canada.
For the G20 summit taking place in Toronto in late June, the Integrated Security Unit (a concretion of the Toronto Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police and the RCMP have declared a "designated speech zone" for protests. This is obscene. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms declares that all of Canada is, subject to reasonable limits, a designated speech zone. The notion that only in certain areas are the people to be free to exercise their constitutional rights is antithetical to free expression. Protesters are supposed to be mollified by the fact that there will be a "live feed" to the convention centre where the high priests of capital will be meeting so that the protests will be "visible." A few monitors showing protesters does not recompense us for our lost liberty.
I was prepared to accept the idea that there might be an area in which protests would be prohibited. I wasn't happy about the idea, but I was prepared to go along with it. But the notion that the entire city, with the exception of Queen's Park, is going to be an area in which free expression is to be suppressed is intolerable. The G20 has the right to meet, but they don't have the right to meet out of sight and out of mind of the people objecting to them. Shame on the police for going out of their way to curb our liberty. What a great commitment to constitutional governance they have.
Showing posts with label Rights. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Rights. Show all posts
Friday, May 14, 2010
Wednesday, February 04, 2009
Ignatieff Disgraces the Liberal Party, Harper Helps
I know it takes some doing, but Iggy has disgraced the Liberal Party of Canada once again. By voting in favour of the budget, he and his party voted in favour of the roll back of pay equity for women. The Liberals are now against equal pay for work of equal value. It's a sad day.
Pay equity is not some frill that can be cut in hard economic times. It is the absolute right of all women. The Harper-Ignatieff proposal cuts off women's access to the courts. Their alternative? The collective bargaining table. Bzzzt, sorry, try again. This proposal leaves behind all the women who work in non-union workplaces, a staggering 41% of all women who work outside the home.
Obviously, it would be nice if all women worked in unionized work places, but even if they did, denying access to the courts is not an acceptable approach to pay equity.
The Conservative-Liberal attack on pay equity also plays the ostrich when looking at the history of pay equity at the bargaining table. Federal civil servants negotiated pay equity almost twenty years ago, but since then have had to fight tooth and nail in the courts to force successive Liberal and Conservative governments to honour that pledge. Why would anyone be taken in and believe that now will be different. The corporate world is no more friendly to pay equity than our corporate government. They will fight as hard as can be to avoid pay equity obligations.
When pay equity is something to be gained at the negotiating table, it becomes something that can be negotiated away. That is an unacceptable possibility. Further, when pay equity is the subject of negotiation, it loses its rights-based aspect. It occurs to me that this is precisely what the Conservatives and their Liberal lackeys want. They want to move the discussion of equal pay for work of equal value away from a rights discourse. Because they don't seem to favour women's rights at all. Oh, the Liberals mouth the words when the camera is on, but their actions belie them. If they had any positive principles at all, they would have refused to vote for a budget containing the attack on pay equity, especially when they could have had it excised in exchange for their support.
The Liberals are lying, hypocritical assholes, at least their party brass is. We should be ashamed that our country has vacillated between dumb and dumber for better part of 150 years.
Pay equity is not some frill that can be cut in hard economic times. It is the absolute right of all women. The Harper-Ignatieff proposal cuts off women's access to the courts. Their alternative? The collective bargaining table. Bzzzt, sorry, try again. This proposal leaves behind all the women who work in non-union workplaces, a staggering 41% of all women who work outside the home.
Obviously, it would be nice if all women worked in unionized work places, but even if they did, denying access to the courts is not an acceptable approach to pay equity.
The Conservative-Liberal attack on pay equity also plays the ostrich when looking at the history of pay equity at the bargaining table. Federal civil servants negotiated pay equity almost twenty years ago, but since then have had to fight tooth and nail in the courts to force successive Liberal and Conservative governments to honour that pledge. Why would anyone be taken in and believe that now will be different. The corporate world is no more friendly to pay equity than our corporate government. They will fight as hard as can be to avoid pay equity obligations.
When pay equity is something to be gained at the negotiating table, it becomes something that can be negotiated away. That is an unacceptable possibility. Further, when pay equity is the subject of negotiation, it loses its rights-based aspect. It occurs to me that this is precisely what the Conservatives and their Liberal lackeys want. They want to move the discussion of equal pay for work of equal value away from a rights discourse. Because they don't seem to favour women's rights at all. Oh, the Liberals mouth the words when the camera is on, but their actions belie them. If they had any positive principles at all, they would have refused to vote for a budget containing the attack on pay equity, especially when they could have had it excised in exchange for their support.
The Liberals are lying, hypocritical assholes, at least their party brass is. We should be ashamed that our country has vacillated between dumb and dumber for better part of 150 years.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Obama Going in the Right Direction
I must say, I've been pleasantly surprised by President Obama's first days in office. He has issued an executive order to close down the torture camp at Guantanamo Bay within a year (good, but not perfect - it should close now), he has frozen all of Bush's "midnight regulations" ordered between Nov. 4 and Jan. 20. which would have done enormous damage, and today the FDA cleared the way for the first study on embryonic human stem cell therapy, and more importantly Obama lifted the global gag rule that stops US government funding from going to groups that discuss abortion abroad.
Ending the global gag rule is particularly important, because it denied so many women around the world access to the full array of family planning options. According to International Planned Parenthood, they've lost more than $100 million because of this rule.
This is a very encouraging sign that Obama will take a stand to protect the rights of women from the encroachments of conservatives, and I applaud him for that. Well done!
Ending the global gag rule is particularly important, because it denied so many women around the world access to the full array of family planning options. According to International Planned Parenthood, they've lost more than $100 million because of this rule.
This is a very encouraging sign that Obama will take a stand to protect the rights of women from the encroachments of conservatives, and I applaud him for that. Well done!
Monday, January 19, 2009
Montreal to Ban Masks at Protests
Of all the foolish stupidness in the world, this may not rate that high, but it is pretty damn foolish and stupid. The Montreal Gazette is reporting that the City of Montreal plans to ban the wearing of masks or face coverings at public demonstrations (as a side note, why this is in the "Business" section of the Gazette is beyond me).
This bylaw is quite possibly unconstitutional on two grounds. First, and more questionably, this bylaw is potentially in violation of the constitutional division of powers. This law bans a behaviour and attaches a penalty, with no connection to any provincial head of power that I can think of under the Constitution. This risks a finding that the law is, in pith and substance, criminal law and therefore ultra vires the province (and therefore the city, which derives all of its powers from the province). This is more shaky, because a good constitutional lawyer can make arguments for connection to a provincial head of power surprisingly easily. Second, this bylaw clearly runs afoul of the guarantee of freedom of expression in s. 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Many people wear masks to protests to parody a politician or world figure with whom they disagree. That is clearly conveying meaning, and therefore it fits within the rubric of s. 2. There may also be an issue of denial of liberty without the principles of fundamental justice since a law like this is dramatically over-broad, and would catch far more people the occasional yahoo that starts trouble a rally. The real question is whether it would survive the s. 1 test of being demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
I don't see any real or pressing need for this ban. Sure, at some protests a few masked idiots decide to start violence, but many people who wear masks or face coverings do so only to convey a political meaning, without any sinister intent. This is a massive and unnecessary intrusion into the civil liberties of protesters in Montreal.
A tightly focused law is the only way this would be acceptable, and to write such a law would be almost impossible. Any such law gives enormous discretion in enforcement to police officers. Frankly given the behaviour of police officers in Quebec, most damningly the agents provocateur placed by the Surete du Quebec at the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello a while ago, I don't see any reason to trust Quebec police with such discretion.
A law like this is also unnecessary. If the masked individuals are causing property damage or assaulting people, then arrest them and charge them with that. Arrest for wearing a mask is simply a form of guilt by association and preventative arrest. Our legal mechanisms have always been sufficient to deal with idiot anarcho-vandalists in the past, and they remain so now. This law is offensive, excessive and redundant, serving only to provide prosecutors with a means of loading the bill against defendants. The City of Montreal should see sense, and drop this law.
Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 1 (oh dear gawd, I can't wait for it to be over)
This bylaw is quite possibly unconstitutional on two grounds. First, and more questionably, this bylaw is potentially in violation of the constitutional division of powers. This law bans a behaviour and attaches a penalty, with no connection to any provincial head of power that I can think of under the Constitution. This risks a finding that the law is, in pith and substance, criminal law and therefore ultra vires the province (and therefore the city, which derives all of its powers from the province). This is more shaky, because a good constitutional lawyer can make arguments for connection to a provincial head of power surprisingly easily. Second, this bylaw clearly runs afoul of the guarantee of freedom of expression in s. 2 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Many people wear masks to protests to parody a politician or world figure with whom they disagree. That is clearly conveying meaning, and therefore it fits within the rubric of s. 2. There may also be an issue of denial of liberty without the principles of fundamental justice since a law like this is dramatically over-broad, and would catch far more people the occasional yahoo that starts trouble a rally. The real question is whether it would survive the s. 1 test of being demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
I don't see any real or pressing need for this ban. Sure, at some protests a few masked idiots decide to start violence, but many people who wear masks or face coverings do so only to convey a political meaning, without any sinister intent. This is a massive and unnecessary intrusion into the civil liberties of protesters in Montreal.
A tightly focused law is the only way this would be acceptable, and to write such a law would be almost impossible. Any such law gives enormous discretion in enforcement to police officers. Frankly given the behaviour of police officers in Quebec, most damningly the agents provocateur placed by the Surete du Quebec at the Security and Prosperity Partnership summit in Montebello a while ago, I don't see any reason to trust Quebec police with such discretion.
A law like this is also unnecessary. If the masked individuals are causing property damage or assaulting people, then arrest them and charge them with that. Arrest for wearing a mask is simply a form of guilt by association and preventative arrest. Our legal mechanisms have always been sufficient to deal with idiot anarcho-vandalists in the past, and they remain so now. This law is offensive, excessive and redundant, serving only to provide prosecutors with a means of loading the bill against defendants. The City of Montreal should see sense, and drop this law.
Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 1 (oh dear gawd, I can't wait for it to be over)
Thursday, January 15, 2009
A Momentous Time
As we approach the end of the reign of George Bush II, it becomes evident, to all but the most-close-eyed conservatives the hell to which we've been carried in Bush's hand-basket.
Human disasters are unfolding across the world. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the imperial west is brutally occupying, whether to extract oil or to protect pipeline routes. In Gaza the Palestinians are being slaughtered for political gain, in an appallingly crass, hubristic and hypocritical display. The genocide in Darfur continues to unfold, and American ally states from Lebanon to Pakistan to Georgia have been declaring states of emergency and clamping down on democratic opposition.
The great glory of modern capitalism, our globalized economy, is coming apart at the seams as economies across the world melt down, throwing workers out on the street, and bringing new protestations of Keynesian faith, despite the fact that the supposedly socialistic policy of bailouts simply enriches those already bloated with ill-gotten wealth. Bush and his wild-eyed acolytes of laissez-faire and the unfettered free market have proven to be unspeakable failures at managing the economy, as the ideological bankruptcy of their economic ideologies is proven to be matched only by its moral bankruptcy as in engages in one last orgy of upward redistribution of wealth. Executives get golden parachutes and workers get the soup kitchen line.
As laid out by the late, great, and incomparable Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose in their book Bill of Wrongs, the Bush regime has encouraged an all out assault on the principles of constitutional government in the United States, and this has had knock-on effects across the world. Canada puts in place Gitmo North and imprisons four men for eight years without charge, the opportunity to face their accusers or to know the evidence against them. Great Britain collapses into an agonized security state in which the average citizen of London is recorded on camera three hundred times every day, which would make Big Brother jealous. States in eastern Europe hold and torture men who have been kidnapped by the American government, in a practice called, with a chilling sterility, extraordinary rendition. American puppet regimes in the Middle East torture others, including Maher Arar who was confirmed to have committed no crime.
Bush and his flunkies have radically undermined the emergence of an international legal order, attempting to scuttle the International Criminal Court after securing major concessions. They have sabotaged attempts to save our climate from radical and disastrous change by recanting America's signature on the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They have undermined the Geneva Conventions on the Law of War by creating the status of illegal enemy combatant that has no basis in law and is simply an excuse to hold the racialized other forever in a legal black hole.
This is but a brief and incomplete catalogue of the worst excesses, and high crimes, of George Bush, called Dubya. But not all is dark.
In the election on Nov. 4, 2008 Americans spoke resoundingly of a desire for change. While they likely will get only cosmetic change out of Barack Obama, Americans were mobilized and involved in politics in a way not seen since the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Americans have been jolted out of political apathy, and it is to be hoped that their awakening will be transmitted to the slumbering populations of the rest of the industrialized world.
In Latin America a radical transformation of both economics and politics is gaining steam. A truly democratic and socialist movement has arisen, and is demanding justice and equality for their people, and an end to the domination of their states by their wealthy paleo-colonialist elites and foreign corporations. The people of Venezuela resisted an American-sponsored coup in 2002 that was eerily reminiscent of the coups in the southern cone during the 1970s. The workers and the indigenous populations have reclaimed control of their countries in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Centre-leftists have been elected by wide margins in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. South America faces a revolutionary moment, and it provides a template that can be followed across the South.
As the economy melts down, that defining revolutionary moment spreads into the industrialized economies. It is a self-evident failure of capitalism. Socialists must be ready with alternatives to present, or we will lose this moment, as we lost the moment of the Great Depression.
The last days of George W. Bush are a time for celebration, as the global tyrant leaves the scene. But we can't stop at celebration. We must push for a true revolutionary moment, to bring democratic socialism to all the people of the world.
Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 6
Human disasters are unfolding across the world. In Afghanistan and Iraq, the imperial west is brutally occupying, whether to extract oil or to protect pipeline routes. In Gaza the Palestinians are being slaughtered for political gain, in an appallingly crass, hubristic and hypocritical display. The genocide in Darfur continues to unfold, and American ally states from Lebanon to Pakistan to Georgia have been declaring states of emergency and clamping down on democratic opposition.
The great glory of modern capitalism, our globalized economy, is coming apart at the seams as economies across the world melt down, throwing workers out on the street, and bringing new protestations of Keynesian faith, despite the fact that the supposedly socialistic policy of bailouts simply enriches those already bloated with ill-gotten wealth. Bush and his wild-eyed acolytes of laissez-faire and the unfettered free market have proven to be unspeakable failures at managing the economy, as the ideological bankruptcy of their economic ideologies is proven to be matched only by its moral bankruptcy as in engages in one last orgy of upward redistribution of wealth. Executives get golden parachutes and workers get the soup kitchen line.
As laid out by the late, great, and incomparable Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose in their book Bill of Wrongs, the Bush regime has encouraged an all out assault on the principles of constitutional government in the United States, and this has had knock-on effects across the world. Canada puts in place Gitmo North and imprisons four men for eight years without charge, the opportunity to face their accusers or to know the evidence against them. Great Britain collapses into an agonized security state in which the average citizen of London is recorded on camera three hundred times every day, which would make Big Brother jealous. States in eastern Europe hold and torture men who have been kidnapped by the American government, in a practice called, with a chilling sterility, extraordinary rendition. American puppet regimes in the Middle East torture others, including Maher Arar who was confirmed to have committed no crime.
Bush and his flunkies have radically undermined the emergence of an international legal order, attempting to scuttle the International Criminal Court after securing major concessions. They have sabotaged attempts to save our climate from radical and disastrous change by recanting America's signature on the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. They have undermined the Geneva Conventions on the Law of War by creating the status of illegal enemy combatant that has no basis in law and is simply an excuse to hold the racialized other forever in a legal black hole.
This is but a brief and incomplete catalogue of the worst excesses, and high crimes, of George Bush, called Dubya. But not all is dark.
In the election on Nov. 4, 2008 Americans spoke resoundingly of a desire for change. While they likely will get only cosmetic change out of Barack Obama, Americans were mobilized and involved in politics in a way not seen since the election of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Americans have been jolted out of political apathy, and it is to be hoped that their awakening will be transmitted to the slumbering populations of the rest of the industrialized world.
In Latin America a radical transformation of both economics and politics is gaining steam. A truly democratic and socialist movement has arisen, and is demanding justice and equality for their people, and an end to the domination of their states by their wealthy paleo-colonialist elites and foreign corporations. The people of Venezuela resisted an American-sponsored coup in 2002 that was eerily reminiscent of the coups in the southern cone during the 1970s. The workers and the indigenous populations have reclaimed control of their countries in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. Centre-leftists have been elected by wide margins in Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay. South America faces a revolutionary moment, and it provides a template that can be followed across the South.
As the economy melts down, that defining revolutionary moment spreads into the industrialized economies. It is a self-evident failure of capitalism. Socialists must be ready with alternatives to present, or we will lose this moment, as we lost the moment of the Great Depression.
The last days of George W. Bush are a time for celebration, as the global tyrant leaves the scene. But we can't stop at celebration. We must push for a true revolutionary moment, to bring democratic socialism to all the people of the world.
Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 6
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Conservatives continue efforts to roll back women's rights
Another private members bill that would set the stage to radically roll back a woman's right to choose and to control her own body has been proposed by a Conservative member of parliament, Maurice Vellacott, MP for Saskatoon-Wanuskewin. Bill C-537 would allow health care practitioners to refuse to participate in a medical procedure that "offends a tenet of their religion."
If a person's religious beliefs prohibit them from offering a certain service, then that person should not get into a profession where they might be required to provide that service. If a person feels that their religion prevents them from giving out the 'morning after' pill, then they shouldn't be a pharmacist. If they can't perform an abortion, or prescribe emergency contraception, then the person shouldn't be a physician. If they can't perform a blood transfusion, they shouldn't practice emergency medicine. This really isn't that complex.
This bill is framed in the context of protecting religious rights, but it should tell you something that Vellacott is the chair of the "Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus" which includes both Conservative and Liberal MPs (but thankfully no New Democrats). This nonsense would allow doctors, who are being paid by the state, to refuse to provide abortions, in effect banning a practice that the Supreme Court of Canada (in R. v. Morgentaler, 1988) said the government could not use the law to ban, because doing that violated the right of women to "security of the person" under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This is the same philosophy that has seen women left without pharmacists willing to dispense emergency contraceptives in various parts of the United States. It is the philosophy that says that a doctor's dogmatic beliefs are more important that a woman's right to control her body. That is utter garbage and nonsense.
Furthermore, this bill follows hard on the heels of Bill C-484, which would impose extra penalties for killing a pregnant woman since the assault also terminates the fetus. That bill deems the fetus to be a person, since only a person is legally capable of being murdered, setting us back on the road to banning abortion as murder.
The Conservatives are being cagey on how they push this radical patriarchal and misogynist agenda. It is being done through private members bills, not government bills, so in the next election campaign Harper can claim his government had nothing to do with it. This is very important, because the majority of Canadians think this issue is settled, and that a woman has a right to choose. The Cons want to roll back a woman's rights, and want to take our society back to some twisted 1950s ideal, where everyone is white, everyone is straight, everyone is Christian, people don't have sex until they are thirty and a woman stays in the home, with a martini for her husband at the end of the day. That's not my Canada, and I sure as hell know it isn't any Canada I want to see. We have to remember that women's rights are human rights. If the Cons take rights away from one group, it is only a matter of time until they are taking them away from everyone else.
To everyone reading this in Canada, I encourage you to get in touch with your MP and let them know that you oppose this bill and bill C-484, and that you want them to vote against both bills. Tell your friends, make noise, be heard. Don't let the Conservatives take rights away in the dark and in silence.
Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 271
If a person's religious beliefs prohibit them from offering a certain service, then that person should not get into a profession where they might be required to provide that service. If a person feels that their religion prevents them from giving out the 'morning after' pill, then they shouldn't be a pharmacist. If they can't perform an abortion, or prescribe emergency contraception, then the person shouldn't be a physician. If they can't perform a blood transfusion, they shouldn't practice emergency medicine. This really isn't that complex.
This bill is framed in the context of protecting religious rights, but it should tell you something that Vellacott is the chair of the "Parliamentary Pro-Life Caucus" which includes both Conservative and Liberal MPs (but thankfully no New Democrats). This nonsense would allow doctors, who are being paid by the state, to refuse to provide abortions, in effect banning a practice that the Supreme Court of Canada (in R. v. Morgentaler, 1988) said the government could not use the law to ban, because doing that violated the right of women to "security of the person" under section 7 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
This is the same philosophy that has seen women left without pharmacists willing to dispense emergency contraceptives in various parts of the United States. It is the philosophy that says that a doctor's dogmatic beliefs are more important that a woman's right to control her body. That is utter garbage and nonsense.
Furthermore, this bill follows hard on the heels of Bill C-484, which would impose extra penalties for killing a pregnant woman since the assault also terminates the fetus. That bill deems the fetus to be a person, since only a person is legally capable of being murdered, setting us back on the road to banning abortion as murder.
The Conservatives are being cagey on how they push this radical patriarchal and misogynist agenda. It is being done through private members bills, not government bills, so in the next election campaign Harper can claim his government had nothing to do with it. This is very important, because the majority of Canadians think this issue is settled, and that a woman has a right to choose. The Cons want to roll back a woman's rights, and want to take our society back to some twisted 1950s ideal, where everyone is white, everyone is straight, everyone is Christian, people don't have sex until they are thirty and a woman stays in the home, with a martini for her husband at the end of the day. That's not my Canada, and I sure as hell know it isn't any Canada I want to see. We have to remember that women's rights are human rights. If the Cons take rights away from one group, it is only a matter of time until they are taking them away from everyone else.
To everyone reading this in Canada, I encourage you to get in touch with your MP and let them know that you oppose this bill and bill C-484, and that you want them to vote against both bills. Tell your friends, make noise, be heard. Don't let the Conservatives take rights away in the dark and in silence.
Days Remaining in Bush Presidency: 271
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