It's so typical of this government. In the wake of the controversial aquittal of a Saskatchewan farmer who shot and killed a young First Nations man on his land, Justin Trudeau has vowed a major overhaul of the criminal justice system, even a new legal framework for indigenous people.
I agree that something needs to be done but I have no confidence that school marm Trudeau is the person to make that call.
There's a time honoured legal maxim or adage that states, "hard cases make bad law."
In one of the most quoted statements in American law, legendary American Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes, proclaimed that “great cases, like hard cases make bad law.” He explained that this was so because the “hydraulic pressures” of the great case tend to distort the judgments of the justices.
Laws written in the heat of a hard decision tend to be excessive, ill-conceived and ultimately ineffective. Then again, calm, dispassionate deliberation isn't exactly this prime minister's forte.
In a 15-minute speech in the House of Commons — an address short on concrete details — Trudeau said he wants to give new life to Section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, which recognizes and affirms Aboriginal and treaty rights.
Trudeau said governments have ignored these rights entirely for too long, leaving it to the courts to define them.
"Instead of outright recognizing and affirming Indigenous rights, as we promised we would, Indigenous Peoples were forced to prove, time and time again, through costly and drawn-out court challenges, that their rights existed, must be recognized and implemented," Trudeau said.
Trudeau is an emotional man. His father's motto, "Reason over Passion," wasn't passed along in the gene pool.
Trudeau said governments have ignored these rights entirely for too long, leaving it to the courts to define them.
"Instead of outright recognizing and affirming Indigenous rights, as we promised we would, Indigenous Peoples were forced to prove, time and time again, through costly and drawn-out court challenges, that their rights existed, must be recognized and implemented," Trudeau said.
I wonder if he'd like to begin by respecting Aboriginal rights in opposition to Kinder-Morgan. Oh no, that's already been sold out from under them. A little hypocritical? No, not a little. A lot.
8 comments:
We have moved from consistently one dimensional Harper to the logical chaos of Trudeau. Liberal policy is sort of like a ping pong ball on a boat deck in rough seas, all over the place.
Something needs to be done. No question. And it can begin with this government's duplicity toward First Nations existing rights. To get carried away over one criminal case, however, is troubling. Where was Trudeau's great concern for a sweeping overhaul before that verdict came down? Remember that he's had two years now and a First Nations chief as his Justice minister. Now he wants to pull his thumb out of his ass and drive through ill-considered reform?
I had a thought yesterday, white walking home. I thought of a machine, which used First Nations fat as its lubrication, and used First Nations blood as its fuel, and crushed down and pulped First Nations bones to become paper.
That Boushie case. It shows First Nations are still thought as wild animals. That young man shot down as though he were some wild dog wandered onto a property and after the farmer's chickens.
Just looking at the system from a statiscian's point of view, it could take eighty years before women, First Nations, and minorities have demographic representation within the law system itself. That's if it continues to grow linearly as it has been doing. There should be a way of growing that exponentially, somehow, but I don't think our current leaders are in any way capable of finding that method.
Why are you trying to turn Progressive Bloggers into your prrsonsl Facebook site again. Don't you realize that if everybody did that there would only be about three Bloggers on the front page,or don't you care? Don't you realize you're killing Progressive Bloggers. You're way past your past due date, isn't it time you retired?
Troy, the way we're going I doubt we've got eighty years. Yes, something must be done but I have no confidence we'll get it right if it comes from a politically-charged Ottawa. In most cases the pre-emptory challenge provision works reasonably well. In this case it was disastrous.
I hope there is a reasonable and effective alternative but it'll take a far better mind than mine to come up with it.
What do you think of Trudeau's First Nations policies so far? Are you inspired, encouraged? Is there a petro-state where the indigenous population has been given a square deal? Think Standing Rock. Think of the Shell fiasco in Nigeria. Think of the cancer village formerly known as Fort Chipewyan. Think of Kinder Morgan and what they had in mind for the Northern Gateway.
How do we begin to fix that, Troy>?
Anon, you asshole. I'm not killing PB. What have you been posting that you can't get on what, in your overheated mind, is the "front page"? Sorry but you're pathetic. The fact is blogs are dying out everywhere. People are moving into social media, even Scot Tribe. So, if you've got something to say, unbunch your panties and start posting. If you really don't have anything worthwhile to say, STFU.
One more thing, Anon. Your remarks reveal agism, outright bigotry. PriogBlog is expressly for progressives, a philosophy that eschews bigotry in all its forms. So, if my posts deter any bigot - a homophobe, a misogynist, a racist, a fascist or you - then I have served some small purpose. Don't condemn me for my good deeds. Look around. There are plenty of sites that embrace bigotry where you'll probably find a welcome home.
All Trudeau has done for First Nations so far is relent on some of our demands, which we've been making since Confederation. However, we First Nations view him suspiciously; we view anyone from Ottawa, and anybody who does business with Ottawa politicians, suspiciously.
As for how to defeat these monstrous companies such as Kinder-Morgan, and to undo our reliance on fossil fuels as a nation, the answers are surprisingly simple. Unfortunately, these answers aren't ground-level; they need to be written at the federal level. We don't have politicians with the slightest inclination of choosing these sorts of answer, either, right now. I've shared them before. Raise interest rates to a high level such as %20 (to destroy the current unsustainable level of inflation which is creating these over-inflated profits which are benefiting nobody excepting rogue corporations that have no interest in democracy). Create capital controls (to limit capital flight out of the country, and the influence of foreign monies in both our politics and marketplace). Raise or create tariffs (to control for imports and exports, which would have the added side-benefit of reducing illicit drug trade). Create rules and regulations to limit corporate power: rules such as corporations can only own one newspaper per province, one television station per province, one gas station per 750 square kilometers, one restaurant per 10,000 population in a similar square radius, ect, ect. However, one would need the backbone not seen in a Canadian Prime Minister since PET.
Reduce, and then stop subsidies to the tar sands, also. Rewrite bankruptcy rules as well to stop companies from going through bankruptcy to avoid having to do the cleanup for when they close down their mines and drills.
Another answer is to fund research and development of emerging technologies in batteries, and have these new batteries out in the marketplace within five years. Canada's severely behind the ball in this regard; I blame Harper for this, especially when it comes to his decision not to bail out RiM, Canada's formerly top mobile phone developer, which was formerly the top mobile phone developer on the planet. There's no reason Canada should not be a top-five developer of batteries right now, except for Harper's ridiculously short-sighted decision of allowing RiM to falter. However, Trudeau, too, has shown no vision in this regard. Canada should be laying the groundwork for this industry at a rapid scale. We needed to hit the ground sprinting as soon as his government was elected, with funding for universities to research and develop these new technologies. Now, we'll be playing catch-up with both the United States and South Korea, and reliant on their technologies, which is simply ridiculous. We've fallen fifteen to twenty years behind in this technology, and the longer nothing is done, the further behind we fall. We're entering into a new energy revolution, and we have no skin in the game.
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