Scud Stud Drops One in PostMedia's Lap

Two hundred large, plus costs, - that's the tariff a Calgary court has awarded Arthur Kent in damages for defamation against PostMedia and scribe, Don Martin.

“While the article did not accuse Mr. Kent of any illegal or immoral acts, it characterized him as an egotistical, politically naive, arrogant candidate whose campaign was in disarray,” Justice Jo’Anne Strekaf said in a written decision Wednesday.

She awarded Kent a total of $200,000 from the defendants.

“I find that Mr. Kent is entitled to significantly more than nominal damages. He suffered substantial distress and damage as a result of the defamatory factual statements in the article,” she said.

“The damage was also exacerbated by the exaggerations and sarcastic tone in the article, by aspects of Mr. Martin’s conduct and by the unfairness to Mr. Kent from Mr. Martin’s failure to provide him with an opportunity to respond prior to publication of the article.”

“Alberta Conservatives have bestowed problem candidate Arthur Kent with a less flattering designation as he noisily blusters his way through their reeling election campaign — the Dud Scud,” Martin wrote.

Oopsie! I kind of think this is the sort of judgment that might invite an appeal. If not, Kent had better get busy to get his 200-grand out of Paul Godfrey while PostMedia is still afloat.

Some Would Say It's "A Start."

A giant sinkhole in Ottawa - at the junction of Rideau Street and Sussex Drive, no less.

Most Terminal Conditions are Progressive. That Matters - a Lot.

When it comes to terminal disease there are two groups, the living and the dying. There are those who have received a terminal diagnosis and those who have not. Life is very different depending on which group you're in.

The assisted dying issue often turns into a "debate" for the living. It's something much different for the dying. How many of us form opinions with no more than a passing familiarity with terminal disease? What follows is taken from a comment I posted yesterday.


Are you familiar with the 7 stages of Alzheimer's or the similar stages of progression of other terminal diseases?

Let's say you received an Alzheimer's diagnosis. You were told you had anywhere between 4 to 8 years. Being mildly interested you began to delve into your affliction whereupon you learned of the 7 stages that you would inescapably pass through without intervention. When you got to the particulars of stage 6 you said, "whoa, I don't ever want to have to go through that. Stage 5 maybe, at the outside, but stage 6, never."

It's your choice. You could ask your doctor to give you a head's up when he felt you were getting toward the end of your competency, perhaps around stage 3. You would then have to choose to die at that stage lest you be consigned to endure the excruciating and protracted demise at the latter stages due to the entirely predictable failure of competency that ensues.

How do you feel about it now? Should we require the terminal to go prematurely to be sure they can go at all? That seems to be what [many] contend. Or should the afflicted be able to specify that when - not if, but when - the disease progresses to a specific point and only then he be administered the end of life drugs? By what right do we put the terminally ill in that horrible trap?

Here's the other thing you must keep in your mind. To you, this is an abstract concept. Only those diagnosed with terminal conditions tend to see it from their perspective. The rest of us who don't, as yet, have "skin in the game" think it's up to us to call this for those who do.

What Did Abraham Lincoln Do to Deserve This?

Abraham Lincoln fought the slave state South in defence of the Union and, along the way, he abolished slavery. The "Party of Lincoln" however came to an end when Richard Nixon and his henchman, Lee Atwater, embraced the Rebel grievance and claimed the slave state South alienated by the Democrats' civil rights movement. Think of it as Nixon's pact with the Devil.

Racism as a political commodity. Here's how Atwater explained the "Southern Strategy" -

You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nigger, nigger, nigger.” By 1968 you can’t say “nigger”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nigger, nigger.”

For decades the Republicans have been trying to deny they're a party of racists but their new presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is straining that claim to the breaking point.

What is really testing Republican credibility are Trump's blatantly racist remarks about an American-born judge of Mexican ancestry who is currently presiding over a case involving Trump. Trump has sought to denigrate the judge, calling him a Mexican, and saying that, because of Trump's promise to wall off Mexico, the judge must step down.

Trump's remarks have been denounced by a host of Republican notables. They all agree what he's said is unquestionably racist. Yet they also all support their acknowledged racist for president of the United States.

Meanwhile Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, was left to mutter how "The party of Lincoln wants to win the White House."

“[T]he right-of-center world needs to respect the fact that the primary voters have spoken,” McConnell said. “Donald Trump has won the nomination the old fashioned way, he got more votes than anybody else.”

There are a few Republican holdouts, among them South Carolina senator, Lindsey Graham.

“If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, told the New York Times. “There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.” 

“There are a lot of people who want to be loyal to the Republican Party, including me,” Graham told NBC on Tuesday. “There’ll come a point in time where we’re gonna have to understand that it’s not just about the 2016 race, it’s about the future of the party, and I would like to support our nominee: I just can’t.”

Maybe, just maybe, Donald Trump will be the wheel on which the Republican Party is broken as Lindsey Graham suggests. If so he could be the best thing that happened to the GOP in generations. I'm sure old Abe would be pleased to see his broken party reborn.

Can You See Him Actually Doing It?

According to Donald Trump, every nation in the world has been pillaging the United States and he's going to put an end to it. President Trump would not only stop it but he'll make sure everyone pays.

Trump's xenophobic populism has attracted a lot of devoted followers. It's an old formula that has well served many of the most hated individuals in history. The people as victims of some foreign oppressor. When times are hard it's an easy sell. You can scapegoat just about any group, within reason.

Of course levelling threats during an election and carrying them out afterward are considerably different matters. One surely must dread to imagine what it could mean if Trump gives life to his phobic bellicosity. He could find that America's power suits the US far better when it is welcomed than when it is imposed, especially with the neighbours - Europe, Canada, Mexico in particular.

Let's hope and pray that never happens. Let's hope that Hillary prevails. Yet, if she does, what happens to the disaffected who have flocked to support not just Trump but also Bernie Sanders? Their passions and discontent stoked, where do they go? I expect we won't have to wait very long before we find out.

The Quality of Quantity

It's claimed that Soviet dictator, Joseph Stalin, quipped that, in matters military, quantity is a quality unto itself. Then again you don't have to be a Communist mass-murderer to know that.

When Allied armies landed in Normandy in 1944 they quickly found their Sherman tanks hopelessly outclassed by the German armour which was larger, more heavily armoured and more heavily gunned. The Germans came out way ahead on the kill/loss ratio. We lost far more tanks but we had far more tanks, enough that we managed to swarm the defender's armour and destroy it.

Which brings us to the search for a new fighter aircraft for the Royal Canadian Air Force.

Harper wanted to sign Canada on for the Lockheed-Martin, F-35 stealth light bomber. His plan was to equip the RCAF with about 60 F-35s. Out of that force about 15-20 would be hangared, held in reserve. Of the remaining 40 or so, probably 25 to 30 would be available at any given time, the others in for maintenance and repair. Now when you've got the second largest territory in the world, including vast unpopulated areas with challenging climate issues, that's not a lot of airplanes. When you consider that this vast, northern frontier is paralleled by the vast, northern frontier of our NATO adversary, Russia, those numbers of Canadian fighters seem minuscule.

The story got out yesterday that the Trudeau government will opt to replace our aging McDonnell Douglas CF/A-18A Hornet fighters with Boeing F/A-18E Super Hornet fighters.

Pierre Trudeau's government bought Canada the first batch of CF-18s, 138 in total. He got them at a good price as Canada was the first export customer. We even had an option (never exercised) for another hundred or so at the introductory price.

Those CF-18s have been. hands down, the most successful combat aircraft Canada has fielded since the end of WWII. Whether the 18Es will make the best replacement for the aging 18As is debatable although Australia just ordered another batch and the US Navy is continuing to buy them.

What hasn't been addressed is what we intend to do with them, the answer to which will indicate how many we need. Harper was big on sending CF-18s abroad in "penny packet" missions of 6-aircraft. We had a penny packet in the air campaign against ISIS. We still have a penny packet boring holes in the sky over the Baltic states. We also have fighters based at Cold Lake, Alberta, and Bagotville, Quebec, on NORAD duty.

The old numbers seemed more or less sufficient while the Arctic airspace was a dead zone where, every now and then, a Russian Bear bomber would put in an appearance just outside of our airspace. That is in the process of changing as Putin re-militarizes the Russian Arctic zone even as the Arctic sea ice steadily vanishes, inviting additional marine and naval activity in the polar region. It's becoming a brand new deal in the far north unlike anything we've known before.

There's really no way to know with any certainty what Canada's defence needs in the far north will be and the fighter choice has to reflect that vague future. Harjit Sajjan may be thinking of following Australia's approach of an interim buy of perhaps 60 of the updated F-18s now to be followed by something else later on as a clearer picture of our defence posture emerges. There are signs that the Americans could have something better than the F-35 by 2030, a new design that incorporates the best of the F-35 but leaves the considerable flaws behind. That might be Canada's best bet.

Slightly off topic but we have spent the last decade hearing about how Harper was the saviour of the Canadian Armed Forces which Pierre Trudeau had sent into a nose dive. Here's the truth no Conservative wants to read.

Legitimizing Racism

It seems a lot of Americans took the election of president Barack Obama as their cue to take racism mainstream. It reminds me of a comedian who said the only way America's first black president could win Republican support was for him to reinstate slavery. At all stations of life, from trailer trash to the top, racism flourished.

Now racism could become standard fare in the Oval Office, if Americans elect Donald Trump their next president. Trump is so effortlessly racist, he doesn't even know it. Seth Meyers takes a fun look at the racist president in waiting.

B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons Issues Assisted Dying Regulations

They're relatively brief, 5 pages in all, and to the point. The directives of the B.C. College of Physicians and Surgeons should also put to rest any concerns about some wave of assisted dying while Parliament  gets on with its job of legislating.

The regulations are interim only. It's expressly stated they will be in effect only until a medically assisted dying (MAID) law is enacted.

The college, probably anticipating that a federal law isn't far off, imposes a stipulation that the patient must be fully competent both at the time of making the request and at the time the drugs are administered.

In other words there'll be no advance directives in which a patient can stipulate when they reach a certain recognized stage in a progressive terminal disease, a final stage at which sufferers normally aren't competent, that the procedure should be undertaken.

For some individuals that will mean that they will be assisted to die but not on their terms, on the doctor's. And, once that window of competence is closed, they'll just have to tough it out.

The directives were issued yesterday.

They Sure Do Whine a Lot

It seems the Chinese have discovered that hard rock mining in Canada is a tough business.

An internal report last October by Ambassador Guy Saint-Jacques details a raft of complaints from an official with the China Mining Council about the unwanted surprises some mining companies encountered in Canada.

Wang Jiahua's "concerns seem to centre mostly in what he called less-developed, remote areas, where climate is harsh, infrastructure is less developed, and workforce is scarce," Saint-Jacques wrote.

What they didn't check out the sites before they laid down their cash? People, please, that's called "due diligence." It's Canada. Most of the place qualifies as "remote" and that's where you can expect to find infrastructure to be "less developed."

A former Canadian ambassador to Beijing calls the complaints an example of "negotiation by other means," and that the real goal is to put pressure on Canada to set aside its domestic restrictions.

"Did China really need to be reminded that the weather is harsh and infrastructure is limited in the Canadian North?" said David Mulroney, who was posted in Beijing from 2009 to 2012.

"China is trying to make us feel guilty enough to suspend our own laws and regulations, including those governing fair employment in Canada."

"China would like to do in Canada what it does with investment projects in the developing world, namely to ship in its own workforce and run the project as a Chinese enclave."

Harper bent over backwards to accommodate these clowns - until the story became public. Then he reinstated the rules and tried to bury the scandal. The Trudeau government needs to listen to Mulroney. This is "negotiation by other means" and we should let the Chinese know we'll have none of it.

The Isle of Man. When You Married Him For His Money But His Money Can't Be Found - The Isle of Man.

Its "The Art of the Deal, KPMG Style." When it came to flogging offshore hidey holes in the Isle of Man where rich Canadians could make their money vanish, KPMG thought to mine one rich vein of investors - those who wanted to hide their loot from the matrimonial clutches of their spouse. From CBC News:

Embattled accounting firm KPMG promoted its offshore Isle of Man tax avoidance scheme as a vehicle for stashing money away from ex­-spouses in divorce proceedings, documents handed over to a parliamentary probe reveal.

Those revelations are contained in several "private and confidential" emails between KPMG tax executives and an outside law firm, as well as in a talking point "script" for accounting sales reps to promote the Isle of Man tax dodge to their affluent clients.

The discovery that KPMG discussed avoiding Canadian laws in family disputes is the latest development in a growing scandal in which one of Canada's largest accounting firms ran a secret offshore scheme for more than a decade that that the Canada Revenue Agency alleges "intended to deceive" authorities.

Then there's this guy, Joel Nitikman, of the law firm Fraser Milner Casgrain, now Dentons.

Lawyer Joel Nitikman, who was asked for legal advice on KPMG's proposed offshore tax plan, wrote about the "possibility of avoiding the Divorce Act (Canada) and similar provincial legislation" if clients were to buy into the scheme.

In the finest traditions of the legal profession, Nitikman snarled and spat when approached by CBC.

"I didn't provide anything. I have no idea what you are talking about," Nitikman first told CBC News last year, before the letter became public. He cautioned against reporting any involvement. "If you do that I'm going to sue you because I didn't provide the legal opinion," he said.

NDP MP, Guy Caron, doesn't think too much of KPMG's scheme:

"Here we see that KPMG was advising their clients on how to not only avoid paying taxes but also avoid paying full divorce settlements or alimony," Caron says. "That's pretty despicable."

Apparently CBC still hasn't been sued by Mr. Nitikman. Perhaps the Writ got lost in the mail.

A Beast For the Slaying

Bring forward this beast, KPMG.

More details on the KPMG/Isle of Man tax dodge scheme. The CBC has revealed documents showing that KPMG's "anti tax-avoidance" group knew the deal was bent but apparently stood down as it went ahead anyway.


The executive writes in a January 2001 email, that a "majority" of the members of the group were concerned federal tax authorities might find out about undeclared money coming back to Canada. In that event, it would be "plausible" for the CRA to argue that the Income Tax Act was "violated," the email says.

Still, the KPMG executive writes, the revenue agency would not be able to challenge the tax plan without proof that the money had made its way back into Canada.

"It would be difficult for [the CRA] to criticize the transactions unless they have evidence of the moneys (sic) coming back," the email says.

The email also says that even if the CRA did eventually find out, "many taxation years could be statute barred." In other words, the email suggests, too much time might have passed for the agency to do anything about it.

Let's break that down. The group, whose name suggests it was designed to prevent tax-avoidance schemes, was actually engaged in figuring out whether KPMG execs could get away with it. 

Would the revenuers find out about it?

What were the chances the revenuers would be able to prove the illicit funds made their way back into Canada?

Even if the revenuers did discover the scheme, detect the transmission of funds and put together a case, might all or most of the illicit funds be off limits, "statute barred" through the passage of enough time?

They weren't trying to derail a tax scam before it got underway. They were gaming the odds of getting away with it. Yeah, sure, it's illegal as hell. But will the government even find out about it? And, even if they find out about it, will they be able to prove it? And even if they find out about it and they're able to prove it, will the clients still be off the hook thanks to the passage of time, the statute of limitations?

Who thinks like that except a bunch of crooks? It sounds exactly like organized crime, maybe without the broken bones and gunplay.

I think it's time we hauled that beast out into the light where we can kill it.

Smart Choice. Super Hornet for RCAF.

According to the National Post, the Trudeau government has decided to replace Canada's aging CF-18 fighters with CF-18 fighters.

The existing CF-18s were acquired by the Trudeau government, the Mk.1 Trudeau government, after an extensive competition that saw a fly off of the offerings - F-14, F-15, F-16, F-18 and Panavia Tornado.

There are plenty of options this time around - the F-18E Super Hornet, an updated F-15 Eagle, the Eurofighter Typhoon, the SAAB Gripen and the Dassault Rafale. Oh yeah, and the F-35 light attack bomber.

For some reason there'll be no true fighter competition this time, no fly off. It's not clear why. I imagine it's a political decision. It's bad enough we spurn Lockheed's uber costly, underperforming F-35. It would be a major snub to our next door neighbour if we didn't buy something else off their showroom floor. Besides we've had a great experience operating the original Hornet. While the Super Hornet differs in several respects, it's still familiar.

The decision might mean that Canada wouldn't be invited to participate in the opening day of an air war over China but I expect we'll be able to manage somehow.

So Much for Sunny Ways

It's a safe bet that the Trudeau government's politicized assisted dying law is being met with the same howls of derision in law schools across Canada as it is being spurned by our superior courts.

It's bad law. There's not even any argument. It's the very sort of thing we used to get from the Harper gang.

It speaks more for the integrity of the Trudeau government than anything else. They are playing politics at the expense of Canadians suffering from irremediable, unendurable conditions. That's beyond immoral and it is utterly inexcusable, unforgivable.

It's no wonder they can't tell the truth about it. They literally mock the afflicted and their suffering where that suits their partisan purposes.

Every lawyer in the country worth his salt sees through Trudeau's scam. It's that obvious. Lest there be any doubt, however, even the slightest shred, you can take it from the legendary Peter Hogg, for decades the leading expert on Canadian constitutional law.

Peter Hogg — who literally wrote the book on constitutional law in Canada, a text frequently cited by the Supreme Court — says Bill C-14 is inconsistent with the top court's landmark ruling known as the Carter decision last year, which struck down the ban on assisted dying as a violation of the charter right to life, liberty and security of the person.

Hogg is among the witnesses scheduled to appear today before the Senate's legal and constitutional affairs committee to discuss the bill.

In speaking notes prepared for the committee and obtained by The Canadian Press, Hogg notes that the Supreme Court specifically said Parliament could respond to its ruling "should they so choose, by enacting legislation consistent with the constitutional parameters set out in these reasons."

...If C-14 is enacted in its current form, Hogg says, "the class of entitled persons would no longer include people whose suffering is not an end-of-life condition."

"It is incredible to me that the court in Carter, when it called for legislation by Parliament 'consistent with the constitutional parameters set out in these reasons,' was envisaging legislation that would narrow the class of entitled persons."

...If the bill is enacted with the near-death provisions still intact, Hogg says "it can be safely predicted that a member of the newly excluded class" — someone who meets the Carter criteria but is not close to death — will challenge the constitutionality of the new law.

And he suggests the result of such a challenge is inevitable: "What judge would not strike down the end-of-life provisions?"

Judging by how superior courts in three provinces have handled it so far, the answer to Peter Hogg's question would be "none."

Is This Any Time for Canada's Justice Minister to be Playing Politics?

When it comes to the assisted dying issue, Trudeau justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, is playing politics - with people's lives at stake.

...the federal justice minister hasn't told the full story of how E.F. — a 58-year-old Alberta woman who died last week —obtained judicial approval to end her suffering with medical help, according to the woman's lawyer, Trista Caley.

To hear Wilson-Raybould tell it, E.F. "was suffering from a mental illness and ... a psychiatrist had approved (her) eligibility for medical assistance over Skype."

"I don't think that's a situation that we want to get into," she warned Liberals at the ruling party's national convention in Winnipeg last month.

The justice minister has repeatedly referred to the E.F. case while urging parliamentarians to pass Bill C-14, the government's proposed new law on assisted dying, by Monday. She's argued that many doctors will refuse to provide medical assistance in dying in the absence of a legal framework while others may provide it to vulnerable people who shouldn't be eligible — like E.F., in Wilson-Raybould's judgment.

Now we've heard the Trudeau government's version, let's hear the truth about this woman, E.F.

E.F.'s application for an assisted death was supported by three doctors: her long-time attending physician — who had treated her for 28 years, including referrals to several psychiatrists and at least one neurologist — an assisting doctor and a psychiatrist with expertise in E.F.'s condition, who reviewed her medical file but did not examine her.

It was the assisting doctor, based in Vancouver, who used Facetime to interview E.F, "in addition to" a full review of her entire medical chart, multiple telephone conversations with her attending physician and email exchanges with a long-time friend, Caley stressed in an email to The Canadian Press.

She noted that the use of electronic interface between doctors and patients is a widely accepted practice that is actually promoted by provincial telehealth programs.

"I question why this is acceptable practice except when utilized in the context of allowing our client to connect with a health care provider prepared to her assist her (who was) located in a different geographic location from her," Caley said.

In any event, Caley said affidavits from the three doctors were in evidence before Alberta's Court of Queen's Bench, which granted E.F. an exemption from the ban on assisted dying, and again before the Alberta Court of Appeal, which upheld the lower court's decision. In both courts, federal lawyers argued that the medical evidence of E.F.'s eligibility, particularly from the psychiatrist, was insufficient.

"At both levels of court, those arguments were rejected," Caley said.

E.F., whose name has never been disclosed to protect her and her family's privacy, had suffered for nine years from a psychiatric illness called "severe conversion disorder." It caused her muscles to spasm involuntarily, producing constant pain and migraines and rendering her effectively blind, incapable of walking and often incapable of eating.

To hear Jody tell it, E.F. just had a case of the "downers." That's our justice minister, really?

All three doctors agreed that E.F. was competent and enduring intolerable suffering that was irremediable. The Alberta Court of Appeal agreed, in the process blasting a hole in the rationale that the federal government has used to justify the restrictive approach taken in Bill C-14.

The appeal court said precluding a person who is not near death or suffering strictly from a psychological illness is inconsistent with last year's landmark Supreme Court ruling, which struck down the ban on assisted death and gave the government a year to come up with a new law. The court granted the government an extension earlier this year that was to expire Monday.

The top court directed that assisted dying should be available to consenting adults with "grievous and irremediable" medical conditions who are enduring suffering that is intolerable to them.

And that's another swift kick up the ass for you, Jody. You must be getting used to it by now. I hope so for you can expect there'll be plenty more where that came from just so long as you keep flouting the law. Imagine that, a justice minister working to undermine a desperately ill person's Charter protections. It's a funny old world, isn't it?

"It's Obscene" - Look At the Handiwork of the Butchers We're Arming.

There's only one way to honestly judge the Trudeau government's decision to go ahead with a multi-billion dollar weapons contract with Saudi Arabia. You have to look at what those bastards are really up to. We supply armoured fighting vehicles, some of them will be equipped with tank guns, cannon. The next country supplies something else - jet fighters perhaps or artillery. The Americans, until recently, were supplying those Saudi bastards with cluster bombs and intelligence. We, the West, are all in it together. It's a collaborative deal. We're all complicit in the outcome.

Maybe you haven't got the guts to see blackened bodies in their grotesque death poses. Maybe you can't bring yourself to see dismembered kids. Maybe you would rather not see the wholesale destruction of neighbourhoods, entire towns.

Maybe you can watch this spectacle and still say "jobs, jobs, jobs." Maybe you can say we don't have a choice.

You won't see this stuff on CBC or CTV or Global. You won't read about it in the major newspapers either. If you want the unvarnished truth you have to go to places such as Vice TV. There you'll find the truth about the butchery of our ally, Saudi Arabia, the stuff that Steffie Dion would never acknowledge as he dutifully signed off on the final clearances for the Death Wagon deal.

There are two particular reports that stand out, both by Australian journalist, Ben Anderson. The most recent one, "Return to Yemen," tells you what our federal governments, past and present, knew while they were greasing the wheels of the Saudi war machine.

I haven't been able to find a copy that I could embed but you can watch "Return to Yemen" at this link. See what the richest country in the Arab world dishes out to the civilian population of the poorest.

When the Flood Waters Recede

Severe flooding is here to stay. There's no way to fix it. We have warmed the atmosphere (with more of that to come) and that means the air can hold increasing amounts of water vapour (itself a powerful greenhouse gas). This generates severe storm events of increasing frequency, intensity and duration. Where it still rains it tends to rain harder than it did before, a lot harder. Storms deliver more rain than before.

In recent days there have been many reports of the floods ravaging Texas and Europe. The floods have claimed lives, caused an incredible amount of damage. Yet some of the worst, most lasting damage we can't really see, even after the flood waters recede. What those flood waters take with them is an awful lot of topsoil on a one way trip downstream to some lake bed or ocean.

When we fished for salmon at the mouth of the Fraser River there was this huge area of brown water. That was topsoil being carried by the Fraser out to sea. Flooding does exactly the same thing only on a far greater scale.

There are situations were flooding actually improves agriculture. For thousands of years Egyptian farmers have depended on the annual Nile floods to deposit silt onto their fields. That's topsoil moved from upstream to downstream.

The sort of flash flooding hammering Texas and Europe, however, strips topsoil and leaves the land depleted.

The study, "Soil Erosion: A Food and Environmental Threat," draws upon statistics on soil erosion from more than 125 sources. Here are some of the key findings:

The United States is losing soil 10 times faster -- and China and India are losing soil 30 to 40 times faster -- than the natural replenishment rate.

As a result of erosion over the past 40 years, 30 percent of the world's arable land has become unproductive.

About 60 percent of soil that is washed away ends up in rivers, streams and lakes, increasing the risks of flooding and intensifying water contamination from fertilizers and pesticides runoff.

In 1994, a study by Pimentel and Giampietro, found that "During the past 40 years nearly one-third of the world's cropland (1.5 billion hectares) has been abandoned because of soil erosion and degradation."  That's 20+ years ago, well before we began experiencing the climate change impacts we have today.

This is a knock-on effect of flooding. Soil degradation, in turn, has its own knock-on effects including water contamination - the toxic algae blooms that beset lakes including Lake Winnipeg and Lake Erie - and the worsening of coastal dead zones such as the devastation of inland fisheries in the Gulf of Mexico.

I am as amazed as I am dismayed that this problem, no, this massive threat, receives so little notice by both the public and their governments. In 2014 the UN Food and Agriculture Organization digested all the research (there's plenty) and issued a warning that mankind has 60 years of farmland remaining. At the rate we're degrading our farmland, most of it will be sterile within 60-years.

Here's the thing. If some foreign power was inflicting on us the damage to our ecosystems we're inflicting on ourselves and our heirs, we'd probably be at war. There are ways to rehabilitate our farmland, to bolster it against our excesses and, now, nature's to boot. The thing is it's not without cost and it takes a lot of time to implement. If we're going to start making the situation better we have to stop making it worse. That begins by putting a national soils programme on our government's "To Do" list, preferably somewhere near the top.

Obituary for the F-35?

The US Air Force does not want to get trapped with the F-35 when 2030 rolls around. Given that the partly stealthy light attack bomber won't be fully operational until 2019 that means they want its replacement or workaround coming on strength barely 11 years later. The link above will take you to a USAF study on what the US needs to maintain air superiority by 2030. It makes the case for a much better aircraft than what's on offer today.

Emerging integrated and networked air-to-air, surface-to-air, space and cyberspace threats, as well as aging and shrinking fleets of US weapon systems, threaten the Air Force’s ability to provide air superiority at the times and places required in the highly contested operational environments of 2030 and beyond. 

Threat capabilities are likely to advance along two major vectors over the next 15 years. First, traditional threat systems will continue to evolve and proliferate. Along this threat vector are advanced fighter aircraft, sensors, and weapons. While near-peers have most of these capabilities today, advanced air and surface threats are spreading to other countries around the world. Air superiority forces will face growing numbers of these threats across a wide range of locations and scenarios in 2030. 

The second threat vector is a series of comprehensive capabilities with a less predictable impact on warfare. These include increased threat capabilities to negate our advantages in the space domain, increased quantity and sophistication of cyberspace threats, and air threats including hypersonic weapons, low observable cruise missiles, and sophisticated conventional ballistic missile systems. How, when and where these capabilities emerge is less clear, but it is certain air superiority forces will face many of these threats by 2030. 

The Air Force’s projected force structure in 2030 is not capable of fighting and winning against this array of potential adversary capabilities.

Then there's this veiled warning - let's never, not ever, repeat the F-35 fiasco.

As the pace of technological advancements continue to increase the Air Force must leverage experimentation and prototyping to more rapidly infuse advanced technologies into the force. Additionally, the Air Force must reject thinking focused on “next generation” platforms. Such focus often creates a desire to push technology limits within the confines of a formal program. Such efforts should be accomplished within the S&T portfolio and proven through effective prototyping, harvesting when mature to a sufficient level for transition. Pushing those limits in a formal program increases risk to unacceptable levels, resulting in cost growth and schedule slips. This put such programs at risk of cancellation due to their nearly inevitable underperformance, and results in delivery of capabilities “late to need” by years or even decades.

No more "next generation" nonsense. No more building a plane at the same time you're struggling to develop the technology. From now on you develop technology through prototyping, the conventional approach.  New technology is to be "harvested when mature," i.e. when you know it works and are sure it's worthwhile.

Getting Out From Under Neoliberalism

The critics were right. Neoliberalism doesn't work. Got it. We've even got it from the brothel of neoliberal thought, the International Monetary Fund that has spent decades administering toxic neoliberal tonics to poor nations, especially Third World nations, around the world often finishing off the job begun by the developed nations. Even the IMF now says that neoliberal policy was "oversold" and, instead of helping, fuels inequality and economic chaos.

Here's how Fortune Magazine describes the IMF and neoliberalism:

Asking if the International Monetary Fund supports economic neoliberalism is like asking if the Pope is Catholic — the answer is so obvious it seems silly to even raise the question. The IMF has been one of the principle endorsers of neoliberalism—an ideology that promotes free markets, free trade, and small government—for decades.

So, what are we to make of this IMF mea culpa? I hope, very little. Take it for what it is, an admission. An admission that they've been driving us down a dead end road. Then go back to what the learned economists and social historians have been telling us for so long. Start with Nobel laureate economist, Joe Stiglitz, whose grounding in the subject of inequality goes back to his PhD thesis. Read Phil Mirowski and James Galbraith. Read John Ralston Saul's dissection of globalism.

There are many scholarly works exploring, analyzing and dissecting neoliberalism in all its guises including its core elements such as free market fundamentalism and globalism. It is a true Hydra, many-headed. It is not just an economic theory. It reaches right into the heart of governance and, especially, democracy. It creates a new order of power structures, economic and political. Given enough time and government collaboration it can transform democracy into oligarchy - even in the most powerful, notionally wealthy country on Earth. It is a stealth problem, operating out of the public eye, behind the scenes, under a veil of secrecy. 

The damage of neoliberalism could never have been achieved had it been undertaken in the open, subjected to public scrutiny from the get-go. This stuff is always presented to us, usually by then a fait accompli, as an agreement between governments or groups of governments, the EU for example. Yet the parties to these negotiations are public sector, governments, and private sector, corporations which today means transnationals. You know who doesn't get a seat at the table? That would be you. We have no place in this evolution of parallel powers, shared authority, this neoliberal partnership between government and corporate interests that can inevitably lead to something eerily resembling merger. They even have their own courts, secret courts, Investor-State Dispute Settlement tribunals, to manage their squabbles out of sight. Out of our sight, out of our mind.

Here's something to ponder. The United States worker, blue and white collar, has suffered about as much as any from the neoliberal era. Their once vibrant, prosperous middle class has been dismembered, limb by limb. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan even used a new, economic pejorative to define them. He called them the "precariat." The age of economic feudalism has arrived.

Now, do you think if you took America's Precariat, left it up to them, that they would choose to return to the economy of pre-Reagan America? Do you think they would choose to reverse the neoliberal decades of their decline? I think that would be a very safe bet.

Ten years ago when John Ralston Saul penned "The Collapse of Globalism," he pronounced the neoliberal age dead. Since then he's spoken of an "interregnum" or interval in which we're still stuck with neoliberalism mainly because we haven't imagined with what we'll replace it. We don't know what else to do.

There's a problem with our wallowing. Because neoliberalism harms far more people than it serves (that's the 99% versus 1% thing), the suffering it inflicts on the many breeds discontent and, eventually, unrest. People begin to look for a saviour, someone to rescue them from their oppression. And, where there's a demand, there'll be some charismatic show up to exploit it. It's called "populism"  and its face is the fascist movements rising across Europe and in the crowds that turn out to support people like Donald Trump. Sure Trump is backed by just 30% of the American voting public but history has shown that's easily enough on which to build an increasingly powerful movement.

Populism, like nationalism, is a force that can work for good or evil. There is negative and positive populism just as there is negative and positive nationalism. It can be confusing but there are ways to delineate one from the other and, history shows, that usually reflects whether it's a right wing or left wing movement.

Could the neoliberal order be supplanted by negative populism? Sure, it's happened before. It almost never turns out well, not for long, but it does flare up like a wood match. Negative populism also has a terrible track record of leading to wars.

Is there an alternative? Yeah, sure, if we want to reach for it. It won't be easy. My suggestion is that we embrace classic progressivism. Break the shackles of corporatism. Reconnect the state to the citizen. Reclaim sovereign powers that have been surrendered to the corporate sector and, yes, that means extracting ourselves from the tentacles of globalized free trade strictures. No new free trade deals. Gradually unwind the deals we're already in. 

We can still be a trading nation. Absolutely. That doesn't mean we have to prostrate ourselves to the transnationals and pay tribute to them in the form of unfettered access to the one thing they need most, access to our markets. The way we surrendered access to our markets reminds me of nothing so much as the Natives who traded Manhattan for beads. We did it on the strength of a promise that, eventually, down the road, we would have our reward - more jobs, better wages. There was a reward, to be sure, only it didn't go to the people, the wage earning public. It went to the 1%, the people who control the transnationals, and it came through the "trickle up" economy. All that Middle Class prosperity didn't evaporate. It went somewhere. Now where do you think it went?

We may not, today, have the great monopolies that Teddy Roosevelt sought to bust up but the new model of transnational corporations is equally oppressive. They have many advantages over traditional nation states including the ability to relocate economic activity, the ability to move capital and the ability to arrange their affairs so as to avoid taxation. It's a process of maximizing benefits by reducing commensurate obligations and responsibilities. These great advantages? To a very large extent they've all been bestowed by our governments, often for little or nothing but hollow promises in exchange. We and our governments have been conned.We've been had. People around the world have finally caught on.

And It Only Took 100,000 Years

If not this year then next. The Arctic will be ice free for the first time in 100,000 years.

Of course, the scientists' idea of "ice free" and yours or mine differs by about a million square kilometres.

“Ice free means the central part of the Arctic and the North Pole is ice free.”

Most of the remaining ice within the Arctic Circle would be trapped among the myriad of islands along Canada’s north coast.

The last time the Arctic was clear of ice is believed to be about 100,000 to 120,000 years ago.

The rapid warming of the polar region has been linked with extreme weather events such as “bomb cyclones”, flooding in the UK and out-of-season tornadoes in the United States.

Now We Know - Indeed

If you really want to help defend Saudi Arabia from ISIS cut up their credit cards. They don't need Canadian Death Wagons for that job. It's not as though they need light tanks to serve as armoured bank cars. Nobody, Saudis included, totes around that kind of money in cash.

A popular Liberal Party apologist suggests that the Trudeau government's decision to finalize the paperwork necessary to conclude the contract to deliver Canadian-made armoured fighting vehicles to Saudi Arabia is essential to help our Saudi allies fend off the evil designs of ISIS.

Nice, if it was remotely true. It's not. ISIS isn't Shiite Muslim. It's Sunni, an extremist fundamentalist variation of the Salafist/Wahhabist Sunni Islam cultivated by the Saudis themselves. It would be akin to infanticide for the Saudis to use their Canadian-made armoured fighting vehicles against their own hellspawn.

The Saudis do use vehicles like these for security, however. They do use them to suppress Shiite minority groups. They do use them to crush pro-democracy movements not just within Saudi Arabia but in the other Gulf States. There is, however, no record of Saudi Arabia deploying light armoured fighting vehicles in battle against ISIS.

What perplexes me most about this Liberal apologist's concerns for the security of Saudi Arabia arises out of his sexual orientation. He's gay and proudly so. That's terrific - in Canada. In Saudi Arabia, as in most of the Gulf States, homosexuality is punishable by stoning. Gays get their heads pulped by rocks. Gays get stoned. Sorcerers are beheaded. Six of one, half dozen....

You do the math.

On the Take - Who Owns the Government of British Columbia?

When the public is furious about something and their government refuses to so much as acknowledge it, chances are that government is working for someone other than the people who elected it.

There's a name for it, "political capture." The classic example is America's "bought and paid for" Congress that routinely ignores the needs and wishes of the American people to legislate on behalf of narrow but powerful and affluent interests.

What's the problem in British Columbia? In Vancouver, and to a lesser extent in other communities, it's the crisis in residential real estate and home ownership. Put simply, the market has become so skewed that my children and my friends' children have virtually no chance of ever affording a home in the same neighbourhoods in which they were born and raised. Those neighbourhoods belong to someone else now and multiple waves of foreign owners have upped and upped the values until they're no longer in reach of the local population.

The funny thing is a lot of this now uber-costly housing sits empty. It's not housing. It's a sink for what too often is "no questions asked" overseas money.

That's the point - no questions asked. The Vancouver Sun's Douglas Todd asks "Why?"

Richard Kurland, a leading immigration lawyer and researcher, said he’s puzzled for years over why Premier Christy Clark’s party has refused to address core issues behind the city’s unaffordability crisis, which is fuelled to a large degree by foreign capital and an unusually high proportion of rich immigrants.

For a long time Kurland couldn’t understand why the B.C. government would stubbornly ignore polls by Insights West and Angus Reid that capture the anger of voters, most of whom are shocked there is no longer any connection between Metro Vancouver’s wages and housing costs.

Kurland has reluctantly concluded the main reason B.C. Liberals don’t want to regulate the causes of runaway housing prices is that it would upset property developers.

“When you look at the real estate industry and our domestic political party system, there are links. And so a reduction in the number of clients would logically be against the interests of the real estate industry. Connect the dots.”

Read the article. It's fascinating. Real estate developers now "own" our provincial government. Christy Clark and her underlings are "bought and paid for."

Here's the kicker. Christy's Liberals aren't too fussy about where the money comes from. A lot of it is from foreign interests. Yes, that's right. In BC, politicians can be bought long distance.

For Integrity B.C., there is yet another campaign financing issue that needs addressing, which is almost startling for its rarity.

“My research shows it’s only B.C. that allows foreigners to donate to political parties,” [Dermod] Travis said. “I have not found anywhere else in the Western world where that happens.”

Two of the foreign-based property developers that have donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the B.C. Liberals, Travis says, are Onni Contracting, whose parent company is in Arizona, and The Holborn Group.

As Postmedia reporter Sam Cooper recently discovered, The Holborn Group is owned by one of Malaysia’s wealthiest families, led by Tony Tiah Thee Kian.

The Trumpeteers
Son, Ambergris; Daughter, Latavia Trump, DJT,
Some Asian guy, possibly Yakuza;
Son, 'Tardo Trump.

Holborn Group and related companies, which have given $226,000 to the B.C. Liberals, is erecting Vancouver’s Trump Tower, named after the expected Republican nominee for U.S. president.

Holborn Group is also building 10 residential towers on prime land next to Vancouver’s Little Mountain, which it bought from the B.C. government.

And who can forget Christy's quick visit to Calgary during the last election to pocket a juicy campaign contribution from the Oil Barons. What is this, Tammany Hall, West Coast style? Who is our premier, Christy "Boss" Clark?

Bill Maher - "The Left Are Better at Holding Their Own People Responsible."

Make no mistake, the Left has its share of apologists ready and willing to look the other way while lashing out at those who criticize their leaders or dissent from their policies.

For some, however, political affiliation isn't tribal. It's not joining a team. It's not lowering the bar. It's refusing to become an attack dog or an apologist.

For some, it's actually raising the bar for one of your own. Expecting more. Demanding better. Without that we don't advance. We stagnate.

The Poster Child for Climate Change

No tough science here. Warmer atmosphere, more water vapour. Juicier storms. Warmer Arctic atmosphere; slower, more undulating jet stream that can "park" severe weather systems over one spot for days (thinking of you, Calgary).

You might not have noticed this, especially if you're in drought, but we've noticed that our rainstorms are heavier now. Two years ago we had a rainstorm, 18-minutes from first drop to last, that had cars floating down the main street. That was a seriously Biblical-grade deluge.

Which brings us to the Lone Star State, where they know to the very bottom of their Old Testament hearts that global warming is a hoax. The city of Houston to be exact. Here's what "the hoax" has brought the good people of Houston - now and then.

"Houston, we have a problem."

Remembering Ali

He was The Greatest but he was so much more. Watch this. Amazing.



RIP Muhammed.

Having Your Cake and Eating It Too -

The federal government (at some point, eventually, maybe) is going to have to climb off its perch and see the mess it's making at the bottom of its birdcage. It so wants to follow the path of neoliberalism taken by every Canadian government going back to Mulroney. The problem is the wheels have fallen off that little red wagon. It's over.

Andrew Nikiforuk, Canada's top journalist on oil and gas policy, has a new piece in The Tyee. His latest offering explores a report on what the federal government's approval of bitumen and LNG pipelines will mean for carbon emissions and the extra burden it will put on every other sector of the Canadian economy.

Even building just one LNG terminal coupled with modest oil sands growth would increase oil and gas emissions from 26 per cent of Canada's total greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 to 45 per cent by 2030.

Under such a scenario, as forecasted by the National Energy Board, the rest of the economy would be forced to contract its emissions by 47 per cent in order to meet promised greenhouse gas reduction targets set by the Paris talks.

The other provinces have been carrying the ball on reducing Canada's greenhouse gas emissions and the federal government has been claiming the credit for it. Think the non-fossil energy sectors will be happy with the burden of  a further 47 per cent cut so that Ottawa, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia can pretend to be fossil energy superpowers?

Here's another story on David Hughes' report from the Edmonton Journal.

 

David Hughes calculated Alberta’s 100-megatonne cap on annual oilsands greenhouse gas emissions will allow bitumen production to increase by 45 per cent from 2014 levels.

That output can be carried by existing rail and pipeline companies, with space left over to allow for maintenance and outages, concluded Hughes, who said he didn’t take into account possible improvements to emissions technology.

“Notwithstanding the fact that the existing pipeline and rail infrastructure could handle a 45-per-cent growth in bitumen production over 2014 levels … governments and industry are pushing for more export pipelines,” he wrote.

“New pipelines are not needed if the Alberta government’s announced cap on emissions is observed.”

Hughes also warned the latest Environment Canada projections show that under existing energy and climate policies, the country’s emissions will be 55 per cent above targets set by December’s Paris Agreement for 2030.

A National Energy Board report shows Canada won’t meet those goals unless companies outside the oil and gas industry cut greenhouse gases up to 59 per cent from 2014 levels within 16 years, a “near-impossible” feat without severe economic impact, he wrote.

We're Number One, We're Number One.

The Guardian posted a nice photo essay today entitled, "From floods to forest fires: a warming planet in pictures."

I had to have a look. What was the first entry? This:

Alberta, Canada: The destructive quest for oil has turned this into a toxic wasteland. Above, dump trucks queue up to load with tar sands.

The article shows graphic images of environmental devastation in Canada, the UK, China, Australia, the Arctic and the US but then opens a second part, all the Green Energy initiatives around the world that, we hope, portend the demise of the fossil energy era, Canada's especially.

Wanted: Courage and Integrity. Urgently Needed for Hard Times Ahead.

Q:  What kind of government says, "I don't care if you have a Charter right, even a right to die humanely. I'm taking it away from you. I'm denying your right to a humane death. It will be the alternative death for you - protracted and unbearable."

A:  The Trudeau government. It has decided that the Rule of Law, the foundation of constitutional democracy, is optional and is to be set aside when it confounds the will of government.

Or that would be the situation if the Trudeau government had its way. And if you ever wondered why Canadians trust their judges and their doctors far more than their politicians, Liberal or Conservative, that's a great place to begin.

Fortunately our trust is not misplaced. Our judges have the courage and integrity our political caste so woefully lacks. We can see that in reading the Supreme Court of Canada's decision in the Carter case. We witnessed it in the decision of Chris Hinkson, Chief Justice of British Columbia in an assisted dying case earlier this week.

We also have some journalists, such as CBC's Neil Macdonald, capable of seeing through the Trudeau government's dodgy pretences.

Parliament ...will almost certainly go on arguing long after June 6 about who should be allowed an assisted death, and who shouldn't, and how sick you should be before society allows it, and how much time you should have left before you qualify, and how clear your mind should be, and whether anyone should have such a right in any event, because really, shouldn't it be God's decision?

That of course is what parliamentarians do. They can and should talk for as long as they see fit; years, if necessary.

Politicians are notoriously unable to decide such matters, and given the option, will discuss them indefinitely, and given a deadline, will likely miss it, which Parliament is in the process of doing right now with the government's bill to regulate medical assistance in dying.

Happily, it doesn't matter. Because the nine learned, fearless jurists a few doors down Wellington Street have once again made the tough decisions.

Absent some new law from Parliament, the existing criminal prohibition on helping someone commit suicide is null and void as of June 6, struck down as unconstitutional.

In part, the high court ruled that under the criminal prohibition, "people who are grievously and irremediably ill cannot seek a physician's assistance in dying and may be condemned to a life of severe and intolerable suffering. A person facing this prospect has two options: she can take her own life prematurely, often by violent or dangerous means, or she can suffer until she dies from natural causes. The choice is cruel."

This drew the usual howls of "judicial activism" from conservatives.

Actually, the justices were doing their job.

Courts are supposed to decide whether laws offend the Constitution. The Supremes decided the ban on assisted suicide did. And that's that.
A previous generation of high judges did exactly the same thing in 1988, when they struck down the old Criminal Code restriction on abortion, ruling it "manifestly unfair," creating so many barriers that abortion was effectively unavailable even to women who legally qualified for one.

As it did with the assisted dying law, the court gave Parliament the option of creating a new, constitutional law, which of course Parliament tried and failed to do.

The result: Abortion became just another medical treatment, a matter between a woman and her doctor, with government out of the picture. Just as assisted dying will almost certainly be as of June 6.

Doctors, after all, are responsible, self-regulating professionals, governed by quasi-judicial panels of their peers, who enforce ethics and standards of practices. For better or worse, democratic society trusts its doctors, just as it trusts its judges.

And thank Odin we still have those we can trust with our freedoms, our lives, and our right to die humanely. I'm sorry, Liberals. You can just keep polishing that turd in your hand as long as you like but, when you stop, it's still going to be a turd and it'll still be in your hand.

Update - There has been a lot of opinion expressed that reflects a poor grasp of the case and the Court's decision. Bear in mind this wasn't some close call, a 5-4 split for example. This was a per curiam decision. It was unanimous, 9-0. The entire court spoke with one voice.

For those who would like to read it, here's a link to the Carter v. Canada (AG) decision. Read it, let it sink in, and then come to your own conclusions about how the Trudeau government has chosen to try to get out from under it.

What the Fort Mac Fire Tells Canadians About Ourselves

A poli-sci prof from Brock University, Blayne Haggert, has an interesting look at how Canadians responded to the Fort Mac wildfires and the climate change issue and reads in it what might lie ahead. It ain't good.

..let’s discuss what the sincerely expressed desire not to link Fort McMurray and climate change says about Canada’s ability to respond to challenges posed by climate change. To do that, we have to think about why governments decide to act in certain situations but not in others.

According to John Kingdon, who wrote the book on government decision-making, governments do not act just because something bad happens (say, the slow cooking of the world). Rather, something has to be perceived as being a problem. Mr. Kingdon notes that “focusing events” create “policy windows” in which perceived problems (say, climate change) are linked to proposed solutions (say, deal with climate change via a carbon tax, or greater support for sustainable energy) and to the political will to do something.

...The Fort McMurray fire was a potential focusing event. Climate scientists and government experts agree that such extreme weather events are made more likely by climate change. Sure, you cannot link one event to climate change, but this is exactly what we expected to see more of based on what we know about climate change. Claiming that the Fort McMurray fire should be a political wake-up call was not an insane argument, especially because making it does not affect the immediate emergency response at all.

But most Canadians, many of whom are not climate-change deniers, have vehemently resisted making this link, and so that policy window – and with it, an opportunity for a serious discussion of how Canada should respond to climate change – has closed.

...Why Canadians have rejected this linkage is open to debate. Regardless, this rejection strongly suggests we as a society effectively are choosing the climate-change path of least resistance and maximum damage. We are choosing to deal with the increasing number of extreme weather events as they happen, and choosing to avoid even thinking about concerted, costly efforts to halt climate change.

Haggert isn't alone. He's not the first to notice that our society is showing little interest in acting effectively today to forestall catastrophe in a decade or two down the road. We have indeed chosen, "the climate change path of least resistance and maximum damage." Good luck with that. Let'er rip.

Liberals Back Down on Electoral Reform

The Liberal government has done the right thing and has decided to give up its majority on the electoral reform committee. It's a pretty big concession that responds to the main criticisms of the opposition parties.

The Trudeau government has given up control over the process that will determine how best to change the way Canadians vote, hoping to dispel perceptions that it’s trying to rig the electoral system to benefit the ruling Liberal party.

Democratic Institutions Minister Maryam Monsef announced two major concessions Thursday.

The Liberals will give up their majority on the all-party committee that is to explore alternatives to the current first-past-the-post voting system.

And Monsef also opened the door to an eventual referendum, leaving it up to the committee to advise on the best way to consult Canadians on whatever alternative voting system it winds up recommending.

I worry that these changes might lead to a referendum result in which the voting public succumbs to a natural resistance to change. We saw that in British Columbia. People feeling insecure about the effect of change can choose to stick with what they know, first past the post, flaws and all. 

Liberal Voices Stand Up for the Charter Right to Die Humanely

Dr. Hedy Fry, a veteran Liberal MP, has penned a thoughtful and reasoned op-ed in The Georgia Strait explaining why she refused to support the Trudeau government's compromised assisted dying bill.

I do not support Bill C-14 in its present state because I do not think that the final version of the bill reflects the intent of the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling on physician-assisted death (Carter case) nor do I think that it serves the patient's best interests.

I looked at this bill through the eyes of a family physician who had practised medicine for over 20 years. Over those years, I walked with my patients through their painful experiences of dying, their tortured fight with chronic irremediable diseases, disabilities, and mental illness.

‎I learned that each patient's experience was deeply personal and the level of suffering and endurance was unique to that individual. The eventual decision was driven by religious faith, personal ethics, family relationships, and a sense of dignity in suffering and death.

I do not think the current bill addresses this. I do not think the current bill recognizes the individual desire of a patient to choose whether to live or not in a body that has betrayed them.

The bill also does not give clarity to health-care professionals who struggle, daily, to provide the best possible physical, mental, and spiritual care and to fulfill the best interest of each patient.

The criteria in Bill C-14, requiring that "natural death is reasonably foreseeable” in order to allow medically assisted dying (MAID), is an ambiguous directive to physicians.

Does it mean that only those who are dying can access MAID?

Where does that leave those who endure "grievous and irremediable suffering"? That could escalate but not cause death? This definition was specific in the Supreme Court of Canada's ruling on Carter. Yet the definition has been limited in the bill to "serious, incurable illness disease and disability."

What does that mean for a patient who does not wish to take a “cure” for personal and other reasons?

I am also concerned that this bill does not allow for acceptance of clear, written, and witnessed "advance directives"‎ of the patient's intent regarding MAID—where the patient is of sound mind but concerned that he or she may not have the mental or physical capacity to do so later‎ in the illness or disability. As a physician, I have seen patients’ specific directives ignored, contravened, and debated by families who, out of love, seek to disregard them. I have seen families torn apart by these debates.

Meanwhile senator Larry Campbell says the Trudeau government's bill is unconstitutional.

The former coroner and mayor of Vancouver says the bill is unconstitutional in its current form because of its definition of "grievous and irremediable illness," and because it does not allow for advance planning in the case of a diagnosis like Alzheimer's that gradually renders a patient not competent in the late stages of the disease.

Campbell said the bill's importance makes it all the more vital to spend time on, or it will eventually end up being struck down by the Supreme Court.

"The idea that we have a gun to our heads and this has to be done in a certain timeframe — I believe the majority of senators reject this," Campbell told Early Edition host Rick Cluff. "I don't think the world will end on June 6 if this bill is not passed."

"It's our responsibility as senators to ensure that the bill is constitutional. That's what our job is."

Campbell's first concern with the bill is that its definition of grievous and irremediable illness does not include neurodegenerative diseases such as ALS. Those patients, he said, are "suffering horribly," but their deaths are not necessarily imminent.

His second concern is that the bill does not allow for advanced planning for legally assisted death in the case of a disease like Alzheimer's. Campbell says he has had his own end-of-life plan in place since his time in the B.C. coroner's office, where the suffering he saw affected him deeply. He wants Canadians in such situations to be able to legally plan for their deaths if — when the time comes — they are no longer able to do so.

Charter Right to Die Humanely Upheld by BC Supreme Court Chief Justice

The Chief Justice of the British Columbia Supreme Court, Christopher Hinkson, understands the plain meaning of the Supreme Court of Canada decision in the Carter case.

Another B.C. resident has been granted a court exemption allowing a physician-assisted death.

The woman, who can be identified only by the initials H.H. due to a publication ban imposed in the case, has a serious medical condition that has resulted in her suffering a number of symptoms leading to two strokes and requiring surgery.

In a petition filed in B.C. Supreme Court, she claimed that she fears experiencing another stroke, and believes that her condition is incurable and that her physical and psychological suffering is intolerable.

In approving the exemption, Chief Justice Christopher Hinkson found that H.H. was a competent adult who had carefully and thoughtfully come to her decision to seek a physician-assisted death.

“The evidence establishes that the petitioner’s condition is grievous and I find that it is irremediable,” Hinkson said in a written ruling released online Wednesday.

“It greatly interferes with the quality of her life. It is life threatening in at least the long term and could be so in the short term.”

Justice Hinkson didn't require that the woman be a walking corpse in order to be granted the exemption for a humane death. The condition was "irremediable", the test set by the SCC, and it was threatening, diminishing the quality of her life by both physical and psychological suffering.

Throwing Fuel on the Fire

It would be an understatement to say that tensions have been running high between the governments of Turkey and Germany lately. There have been negotiations that some might say border on blackmail for Turkish intervention to stem the flow of refugee/migrants out of Syria. There has been Recep Erdogan's angry demands that German comedians who have mocked him be punished. It's been generally a tense and at moments nasty time.

What an auspicious moment for Germany to poke Erdogan in the eye with a sharp stick. Germany's parliament has chosen this moment to pronounce the Ottoman Turk's slaughter of its Armenian population an act of "genocide."

The Turkish government angrily denounced the vote as "null and void" and President Recep Tayyip Erdogan recalled their ambassador back to Ankara for consultations.

Turkey's foreign minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, denounced the vote on Twitter, writing, "The way to close the dark pages of your own history is not by defaming the histories of other countries with irresponsible and baseless decisions."

For Turkey, there is scarcely a more sensitive topic than what historians say was the murder of more than 1 million Armenians and other Christian minorities in 1915-16. The Turkish government has long rejected the term genocide, saying that thousands of people, many of them Turks, died in the civil war that destroyed the Ottoman Empire. It also says that the estimates of the number of deaths have been exaggerated.

But the issue is also fraught for Germany. At the time of the killings, Germany, led by Kaiser Wilhelm I, was allied with the Ottomans, fighting alongside the Austro-Hungarian Empire against Britain, France and Russia in World War I. Acceptance of German responsibility for the atrocities of World War II has become an established part of the nation's culture, and historians and activists have said that the Armenian resolution was an important step in acknowledging Germany's indirect involvement in the 1915 killings.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

Quick, What Is It?

Think fast. What is this? Leave your answer and your age. No cheating.

I Don't Hate Justin Trudeau

There are some who say that I hate Justin Trudeau. One even claimed that I had suggested that JT be tossed in prison and ass raped. I can only assume that individual, who can be erratic in his vitriol, was either off his meds or onto some other product.

I don't hate Justin Trudeau. I frequently criticize his behaviour and his policies. And, yes, I do hold him to a higher standard than I did Stephen Harper. That's because Harper was a neoconservative, a Movement Conservative thug. I didn't expect anything better of him.

More was legitimately expected of Trudeau. The bar was set much higher. There was a good bit of hope in that calibration but still the expectation was reasonable for a leader of a majority government who proclaimed himself a progressive.

At the outset there were many fine things this new prime minister achieved. He restored the census; introduced a new communications policy that, among other things, removed the gags from federal government scientists; re-opened shuttered Coast Guard stations (at least those in the public eye); appointed non-partisan senators; restored funding for scientific environmental research - all good stuff. Those were commendable initiatives for which he was duly applauded.

Then came the difficulties. The mandate letter to Garneau to reinstate the oil tanker exclusion zone on our pristine north coast. Easiest thing in the world. Now either rescinded or ignored. No explanation but, judging by the saccharine TV ads Enbridge has recently been running, the Northern Gateway pipeline initiative is anything but dead. So much for Trudeau's promises.

The mandate letter to McKenna to prepare a climate change policy that the prime minister had promised to unveil within six months of taking office. That deadline has long since come and gone and it appears to be another promise that has died a premature death in some backroom deal.

There was the government's decision to support the Tories' motion to censure the Boycott/Divest/Sanction movement to compel the now far rightwing government of Israel to free the Palestinian people and restore their now thoroughly plundered homeland. BDS, a movement a leading Israeli columnist at the newspaper Haaretz has called not the best way to break Netanyahu's persecution but the only measure that could possibly work. I felt a little less proud of my country when Trudeau did that.

What's next? There are several unfortunate situations but I'll just stick with the most egregious. I won't get into things such as the Trans Pacific Partnership, TPP, because we're not there yet and it might be killed off in Washington before the government of the day has to deal with it.

Fossil fuels - coal, natural gas, bitumen, fracking. This government has shown zero leadership in this area. In fact it has picked up the Harper pledge to get a hazmat pipeline to "tidewater" so that we can export hazmat bitumen in hazmat tankers to Asia. He intends to complete Harper's work.

This is the leader who said a Liberal government would formulate policy on facts, evidence, science. It would not be the faith-based administration of the past. When it comes to bitumen what more evidence, what more science could he need to realize that, if we - mankind - are to have even a remote chance of keeping global warming below 2 degrees Celsius, almost all of that bitumen is going to have to be left in the ground, untouched, unburned. That promise? Another false flag.

Then there's the assisted dying legislation. The way that has been handled/manipulated speaks volumes about the integrity of this government and its leader.

In a constitutional democracy, legislatures enact laws. It is the judiciary that interprets those laws. In a better time under a better Trudeau, Parliament enacted our Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It is probably the finest, most important enactment in the history of Canada - right back to Confederation. It alone operated to restrain Harper's worst excesses and instincts. Had it not been for the Charter, Harper probably would have fulfilled his vow that you wouldn't recognize Canada today.

The Supreme Court of Canada, the final arbiter of statutory interpretation, was called upon to consider the federal criminal law against assisted dying in the Carter case. The Court ruled that Canadians do have a Charter right to die humanely in the event of terminal illness or certain chronic conditions that make life unbearable and that, in some circumstances, this right might extend to minors. The Court granted the federal government's request for a one-year extension before striking down the existing law in order for Parliament to enact a new assisted dying law.

With that it became the constitutional responsibility of the federal government and Parliament to introduce legislation that comported with the Court's ruling. That, and that alone, was what was required.

Trudeau has instead chosen to defy the Supreme Court and, in the process, flout the Rule of Law, by introducing legislation that falls far short of the Court's ruling. This, we're told, is because the public isn't prepared for the sort of law the Court has prescribed. The government will ignore the law and offer up its own interpretation of the Charter, one that accords with the vox populi, even as it whittles down the constitutional rights of the dying or those with chronic conditions that make life unbearable. This government, not some court, will decide who has the Charter right to die humanely.

This isn't about the mob, public opinion and partisan fortunes. It's about denying people their Charter rights for partisan political purposes. It's a crass and craven thing to do and there's nothing remotely hateful in exposing that and ensuring that the principal, this prime minister, wears it.

You see, Trudeau's problem isn't really with the Carter decision or the assisted dying law. His problem is with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Like Harper before him, he wants to ignore it, sneak around it. It was despicable when Harper tried it. It is at least as despicable when a Liberal prime minister tries it on - for partisan political considerations. Your Charter rights are subject to his partisan political interests and the temper of the mob.

Trudeau doesn't have the sand, the integrity, to stand up and admit that he doesn't like the Charter, that he wants it changed so that a prime minister can determine/ adjust/rescind fundamental rights and freedoms based on a litmus test of political advantage.

If he likes he can always seek to amend or replace the Charter. With the consent of the provinces he could probably simply tear it up. Only he won't do that, nor would any premier support him, because he and they know what would await them should they even try.

This has, at this prime minister's instance, become an issue that goes beyond the Carter decision, that transcends the deliberately flawed assisted dying bill. This is an issue of whether we will tolerate a prime minister who defies the Charter, our Charter. Once that starts, where does it end?

So if fiercely opposing the Liberal government on this and its several other failures is to be treated as "hating Justin" I couldn't care less. Rights undefended are rights lost. I'll speak out against it so long as I draw breath. Don't like that? Tough.