With the Conservative Party on the verge of a Senate majority -- following the upcoming retirement of a number of Senators, and the inevitable appointment of Conservatives to take their place -- Canadians should be asking them if such a Senate majority is necessary, or even desirable.
The truth is that, based on how the current Liberal majority tends to act, a Conservative majority is both necessary and desirable.
The recent ongoing episode regarding the Senate and Conservative MP Joy Smith's anti-human trafficking bill is a splendid example of this.
The bill is currently being held up in the Senate. The culprit seems to be independent Senator Anne Cools, backed by the Liberal caucus.
The bill, which seeks to set a five year mandatory minimum sentence for cases of human trafficking involving children, will be proclaimed before the Olympics, when human trafficking in Vancouver is expected to spike considerably.
"We have to protect our children," Smith insisted. "These people in the Senate think they are the fountain of knowledge against all the experts."
But Senator Cools seems to think that there's actually something to think about regarding this bill.
"It's such an infantile statement it needs no answer." Cools retorted. "It stands on its own ignorance."
The truth of the matter is that the very notion that an anti-human trafficking bill needs to be subject to any amount of "investigation and thought" is itself infantile. It sends the message that Cools either doesn't understand how dangerous and immoral a crime like human trafficking is, or that she simply lacks the moral and ethical maturity to act against it.
As it turns out, Cools' objection to the bill is the same as that offered by NDP MP Libby Davies -- an ideological opposition to mandatory minimum sentences.
"I do not believe that mandatory minimum sentences will cure either the problems of the criminal justice system or the social problems that cause these offences," Cools insisted. "This is a deep matter, and these are deep questions that need serious attention from government and I would admit, deep study in this place."
It apparently just doesn't occur to Anne Cools that those who traffick other human beings simply belong in jail, for as long as it's possible to keep them there.
If Joy Smith's bill has any deficiency at all, it's that the mandatory minimum sentence is too lenient. The mandatory minimum should be life in prison.
It seems that the Conservative Party understands this, and that the current crop of Liberals in the Senate simply doesn't. The retirement of each and every one of them -- and a Conservative majority in that chamber, to be followed by reform -- cannot come soon enough.
Television arrived in Vancouver in 1953 when CBUT Vancouver first went on the air.
The arrival of television in Canada would only serve to intensify the ongoing debate about the nature of broadcasting in Canada, and the role of government in the media.
The CBC had already been operating since 1932, when the government of Robert Bennet -- remembered best for the "Bennet Buggies", automobiles pulled by horses for lack of fuel, during the Great Depression -- enacted the recommendations of the Aird Commission. Originally formed as the Canadian Radio Broadcasting Commission, the CBC would operate under the pretenses of ensuring Canadian cultural content would be broadcasted in Canada.
The CRCB built its network out of a collection of radio stations operated by the Canadian National Railway.
In time -- in fact, in just over a decade -- television supplanted radio as the premier source of in-home entertainment for Canadian families. However, television proved to complicate the question of how Canadian cultural content would continue to be guaranteed, as economics and market forcers compelled Canadian broadcasters to begin importing more and more television programs from the United States.
This process would particularly accelerate after the introduction of private broadcasters, such as CTV, operating alongside the publicly-broadcasted CBC. In time, cable and satellite would accelerate this process even faster.
Whether Canadian culture remains sufficient justification for maintaining the CBC is a matter of some question. Private broadcasters, such as CTV, Showcase and Bravo, have trumped the CBC in recent years, producing notable Canadian content like Billable Hours, Corner Gas and Trailer Park Boys, while perhaps the best-known recent CBC production has been Little Mosque on the Prairie.
But even if ensuring that Canadian cultural content remains on the air isn't sufficient justification for continuing to operate the CBC, ensuring that remote communities continue to enjoy the benefit of broadcasting -- especially news and information -- certainly is.
In some sectors of the Canadian media, the response to the outrage swirling around the Liberal Party's "Anywhere but Copenhagen" contest has been anything but torrid.
Jedras and Kinsella both pointed to an image that appeared ont the Conservative Party website during the 2008 election, in which Stephane Dion appears in front of a red background peppered with what they had described as "bullet holes".
That the bullet holes in question don't resemble bullet holes as most Canadians would recognize them is just one problem with this attempt at a diversion. As Tim Powers points out in the Globe and Mail, the second problem it is that simply has no basis in truth:
"Warren's prop today was a picture of Stéphane Dion surrounded by paper holes depicting his flawed policy initiatives - like the carbon tax - along with comments from Liberals. But according to the Liberals these were bullet holes and this was therefore a terrible thing - as offensive as their assassination photo.
It was prepared by purchasing an iStockphoto image called 'Paper Holes.' That’s right, paper holes. The supplier (a Canadian company, by the way) describes the image as 'black hole [sic] in paper.' Check it out here."
And to make matters worse, the "headshots of possible shooters" were actually the headshots of people who had been challenging and questioning Dion's Green Shift policy (poking holes in it, if you will -- perhaps even paper holes).
Moreover, if one were to actually take time to read the text in question, they'll find this all makes perfect sense.
Of course, it's very unlikely that Jeff Jedras, Warren Kinsella, or anyone else from the Liberal Party will stop peddling their rhetoric even after it's shown to be demonstrably false.
But by displaying the contest entries on their webiste and using them for political purposes, the Party runs the risk of being embarrassed in more than simply the "whackos fantasize about assassinating Stephen Harper" department. They also run the risk of embarrassing themselves in the "can't keep the message straight" department.
A case in point is the above image, in which Harper's face is superimposed on an image of Kanye West interrupting Tailor Swift and the MTV Video Music Awards. The Spaceman award Swift just received is replaced by a picture of the Earth, and Harper/Kanye is saying "Yo Copenhagen, I'm really sorry about those GHGs, and I'mmma let you finish, but Canada-China relations are the worst of all time."
First off, Canada-China relations are currently not the worst of all time.
So, the creator of this particular image expects Stephen Harper to be "sorry about the GHGs". But he also expects Harper to be sorry about allegedly damaging relations with China. And if Canada succeeds in cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 65% by 2050 (very likely the commitment Canada will make at Copenhagen), and China's emissions continue to grow, what precisely will happen to Canada-China relations if Canada helps pursue sanctions against China?
This is why partisan ideologues shouldn't mix their messages. It simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
It doesn't take much imagination to figure out the point that Enormous Thriving Plants proprietor Audrey is trying to make with this hiccup-lengthed screed, digging up a news story more than a year old for what can only be considered dubious purposes.
It shouldn't be pretended that the number of Albertans who reject such basic science as evolution isn't troubling. But dredge the matter out of the "old news" box for the sole purpose of stirring up hostility against an entire Province?
It should just remind us of the character of the people we're dealing with.
In 2001, University of Colorado Professor Ward Churchill sparked a firestorm of controversy when he wrote and published an essay in which he described the victims as "Little Eichmanns".
In the essay, he wrote:
"As for those in the World Trade Center … Well, really, let’s get a grip here, shall we? True enough, they were civilians of a sort. But innocent? Gimme a break. They formed a technocratic corps at the very heart of America’s global financial empire — the ‘mighty engine of profit’ to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved — and they did so both willingly and knowingly… If there was a better, more effective, or in fact any other way of visiting some penalty befitting their participation upon the little Eichmanns inhabiting the sterile sanctuary of the twin towers, I’d really be interested in hearing about it."
Naturally, in the wake of an international outrage -- at least in the eyes of those not blinded by ideological fervour -- these comments were bound to provoke a great deal of animosity.
When They Came For Ward Churchill is a carefully-planned film, in which Churchill and the film's producers attempt to lionize him and transform him into a martyr at the same time. For those satisifed by the film's treatment of the affair, it may seem as if they succeeded. For those willing to weigh the film against a broader sample of reality, the film's failure is nothing short of dismal.
Throughout the film, clips of a speech given to a sympathetic audience in which Churchill spoke with his voice dripping with outrage.
Irritatingly, the film tacitly avoids speaking to anyone critical of Churchill, his comments, or his work. So on this note Churchill's history of plagiarism and fabrication within his own academic works goes entirely unaddressed.
But there's other value in When They Came After Ward Churchill: as an exploration of the attempts of Churchill -- and many individuals like him -- to make himself into a martyr.
In the film, Churchill appears before a sympathetic audience, backed by a party from a nearby First Nations tribe, replete with drums. Their dress and demanour suspiciously resembles that of "war party" styled militant protesters.
Churchill -- widely known as a self-styled blowhard -- seems to be striving to create the impression of himself as an otherwise-helpless target of reactionary forces.
Churchill reiterates a litany of Chomsky-esque historical grievances against the United States -- many of which, in many ways, are entirely legitimate, even if in some cases stripped of their historical context (the nature of the warfare used against Imperial Japan during the Second World War is an atrocity by today's terms, but Churchill is reflecting on an entirely different era of total warfare).
But to use those acts as justification for the 9/11 attacks would be to artificially transplant many of those grievances into the motivations of Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda. As will shortly be elaborated on shortly, this is a grave conceptual and analytical error.
Russel Means, a lawyer appearing alongside Churchill in interviews, insists that the backlash against Churchill was simply racism. He chooses to overlook the fact that many other academics and commentators have provoked similar outrage, without the benefit of having the race card to play.
(Canada's own Kevin Potvin comes to mind.)
This kind of disengenuous allusions to race and racism are a convenient refuge for the demagogue desperate to artificially establish themselves as a martyr.
Furthermore, in order to classify the response to Churchill's essay as "anti-intellectual" is to overlook the dubiousness of the academic, analytical, and conceptual value of his essay.
Most intriguing about the film is Churchill's own -- again, unchallenged -- attempt to spin the academic review of his work into a crusade against him.
Interestingly enough, the allegations of plagiarism pre-dated Churchill's "Little Eichmann" comments. In 1997, Fay Cohen, a professor at Dalhousie University, complained that Churchill had plagiarized her.
Churchill also takes time to complain about the state of aboriginal policy in the United States. His complaints are every bit as valid in the United States as they would be in Canada.
But, again, the last thing on Osama Bin Laden's mind was the state of American aboriginals. It can't be used to justify 9/11, or Churchill's comments about 9/11.
It's remarkable how willing Churchill is to contradict his own argument. While Churchill insists that he didn't mean to declare that the children, police officers, firemen, and other "support workers" were legitimate targets, he also argues that in order to be considered "innocent" one also has to oppose what he describes as the oppressive system of global capitalism.
Thus unless each and every one of those individuals were opponents of the social order Churchill so despises, they would still be considered legitimate targets according to his own argument.
But at the end of the day, the most pertinent point is this: Ward Churchill's comments weren't merely inflammatory, but they were also academically bankrupt.
Churchill's suggestions that the sins of global capitalism -- real, imagined, and invented -- justified 9/11 and rendered the victims of 9/11 legitimate simply doesn't hold water when one considers that Osama Bin Laden, and those who carried out the attack, wouldn't agree with Churchill's analysis of the attack.
Osama Bin Laden and Khalid Sheik Mohammed didn't plan and execute the 9/11 attacks as a retaliation against global capitalism. They didn't even plan and execute the attack as a retaliation against American foreign policy.
Al Qaeda planned and executed 9/11 as an act intending to intimidate the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia into giving into their demands, and helping to reestablish the Caliphate.
Not only does Ward Churchill's feigned outrage distract from the general weakness of his thesis, but the public outrage at them served as a distraction as well. In this particular sense, the controversy -- though well-provoked by Churchill -- was actually a grave disservice to the discourse on the matter, both public and academic.
Of all the crimes currently being perpetrated by organized networks across the world, human trafficking is easily one of the most dangerous, and easily the most immoral.
So on that note, it should be considered shocking to find that any government in Canada is doing anything less than their absolute best to prevent this horrific crime -- in which women are addicted to drugs and horribly abused in order to maintain control over them.
According to University of British Columbia Professor Benjamin Perrin, the province of Ontario isn't pulling its weight. In particular, the province has failed to provide victims of this crime with the help necessary to get them off the street, keep them off the street, and protect them from their assailants.
"The Ontario government should be very well aware that they are responsible for providing victim services, they're not doing so and that needs to change," fumed Perrin. "That's a major gap."
When Conservative MPP Bob Runciman called upon the Minister of Community Safety, Rick Bartolucci, to commit to examining the strategies other provinces are using to combat human trafficking, Bartolucci's response was notably non-committal.
Bartolucci insisted the Liberal government in Ontario does this on an ongoing basis. But it clearly hasn't taken the matter deeply to heart, as the government has no program worthy of mention.
"Whether it's lack of interest or what it is, I just don't think [the Liberals] have been paying any attention to this issue and taking a look at how serious it is," Runciman noted. "There's really been no reaction from them at all."
"I am astounded that the province of Ontario still does not have a system in place to coordinate services for victims of human trafficking," Perrin said. "It is inexcusable, it is dangerous public policy and it is putting the safety and well-being of victims of human trafficking at risk."
One would expect that any Canadian government worthy of governing in this country would treat an issue like human trafficking with the seriousness it deserves. But considering how the Ontario government handled some other recent cases, one simply has to wonder.
The Liberal government of Ontario is failing to show up for the fight against human trafficking.
But reading The Conservative Soul, it isn't hard to figure out why Sullivan would so dislike and distrust Palin.
In the book, Sullivan writes a great deal about fundamentalists, and the negative impact they've had on conservative political thought. Sullivan defines fundamentalism as the belief that one knows absolute truths about the world and intends to act upon them.
Palin's recent unfunny encounter with the chronically-unfunny Mary Walsh gives a good example of Palin's political fundamentalism. She tells Walsh, appearing as Marg Delahunty, to "have faith that common sense conservatism can be plugged into Canadian politics".
Sullivan wisely warns conservatives that the true nature of conservatism is one that comes with a healthy element of doubt: the proper conservative doesn't believe they know all the truths about the world, and dedicates themselves to the search for the truth.
Likewise, Sullivan warns conservatives to beware of anyone -- conservative, liberal or otherwise -- who claims to have all the right answers. The historical record of such individuals is far, far from encouraging. When such individuals do not produce folly, they produce tyranny instead.
Andrew Sullivan's Palin-related antics aside (and, naturally, fully considered), The Conservative Soul should, nonetheless, be considered vital reading for any political thinker, especially conservatives.
"We have to protect our children," Smith insisted. "These people in the Senate think they are the fountain of knowledge against all the experts."
On Facebook
