Northman's Fury

Harper isn't ignoring Kadr because he's brown-skinned or a Muslim. He's ignoring him because he doesn't want to upset his hero Bush. The fact that he's brown-skinned and Muslim are just a happy coincidence.

It's what we get for electing a poodle.

The headlines sounds good:

20% increase in energy efficiency in 12 years, premiers pledge

Except that anyone who pays attention to such things knows that increasing efficiency is a far different thing from decreasing overall energy usage. This allows overall usage to continue to increase, which won't help decrease the cost of energy, even if you do happen to use it more efficiently.

Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald said the No. 1 issue facing Canadians this winter is rising energy prices, but the targets the premiers have set out are achievable goals.

No shit. In fact, if you look at trends over the last 20 to 40 years, the "goals" the premiers just set for themselves are below what has been achieved already. Basically we can expect a 20% increase in energy efficiency without the government doing a damn thing, which gives you an idea of just how much their "pledge" is worth.

The Conservative government has appointed Preston Manning, the founder of the Reform party, to the federal science advisory panel.

Manning joins the Council of Canadian Academies, whose mandate is to provide an "independent, expert assessment of the science underlying pressing issues and matters of public interest," according to its website.

The group is supposed to "build public confidence that policy and regulatory decisions are being based on broadly accepted scientific knowledge and evidence."

Now I've always kind of liked Preston Manning. Back when he was running the Reform Party, I was a supporter and he always seemed a fair bit more rational and honest than most politicians. (Then Stockwell "The Flintstones is a documentary" Day took over, and the whole Canadian right started going to hell.) That said, he has no business being a science advisor. There is little chance of his "advice" being anything but political in nature.

It appears that Prime Minister "Yo Harper!" is continuing his Bush-emulating ways, outsourcing food safety to the very companies who are supposed to be regulated, and firing the scientist who stumbled upon the plan.

Confidential documents insecurely posted on the Canadian Food Inspection Agency's computer network laid out sensitive plans to turn over food inspections and labelling to industry and also led to the firing of the scientist who stumbled upon them.

Luc Pomerleau, a biologist with a 20-year "unblemished record" in government, said he was fired last week for "gross misconduct' and breaching security because he sent the documents to his union. Pomerleau, who is a union steward, also was deemed "unreliable," which means he no longer has the security clearance to do his job or to work again in the public service.

It is debatable whether or not this is Pomerleau's fault. The document was scanned and placed where any of the agencies employees could access it. As Michele Demers puts it, Pomerleau is being made a scapegoat for the senior manager who had the documents scanned and stored in an unsecured location.

She said the incident exposed another embarrassing security breach for the government, but the mistake rested with whomever authorized the documents be put on the server. Coincidentally, the circulation of the document came to light the same the week Maxime Bernier resigned from his position as federal affairs minister, after leaving classified documents in the apartment of former girlfriend Julie Couillard.

And, as has become standard operating procedure in such cases, the government is fast at work trying to figure out new ways to ensure Canadians learn as little as possible about what they're doing.

Treasury Board is reviewing the government security policy as part of its massive policy review. The new policy, which is being updated to reflect concerns about national security, will tighten rules for sharing classified information, as well how to handle it and destroy it.

And so, we are unlikely to learn any more about how Canadian's food safety has been compromised until after it's a done deal.

Via Panglossian Notes, this story from the Globe and Mail regarding a serious lack of planning and preparation in last year's "sovereignty exercise"

The Canadian Forces have come under fire in an internal report highly critical of military leaders' lack of interest in an Arctic sovereignty protection exercise last August.

. . .

It says Canadian military leaders didn't place a high enough priority on the operation, and it singles out for criticism Canada Command, the military organization given the task of defending this country.

The report says Canada Command failed to issue a set of orders that had been planned to help disseminate instructions on Operation Nanook.

“[It's] a sad testament to the lack of interest in this operation and its associated training events displayed by the superior HQ that directed it to be conducted in the first place.”

As Panglossian Notes says it, perhaps if we told them that the they were headed to a desert thousands of miles away, they would put more effort into it. After all, that seems to be the kind of missions the folks at HQ are most interested in these days.

Other than that, this is just the latest in a long line of examples of the federal government talking big about northern sovereignty and other northern issues, but failing to really push for a follow-through.

The US has Roe v. Wade. Canada has Dr. Henry Morgentaler. Twenty years ago, he took the fight for abortion rights to the Supreme Court and won. He's now been named to the Order of Canada, a well-deserved and long-postponed honour for this survivour of Auschwitz. His battle has been a long one, and as might be expected, still capable of generating a great deal of controversy.

In 1967, Morgentaler made his debut on the national stage and entered the abortion debate in a dramatic way. He testified before a government committee considering changes to the abortion law, advocating that any woman should have the right to end her pregnancy without risking death.

It was a bold statement. At the time, performing an abortion could land a doctor in jail with a life sentence. Women who had abortions faced imprisonment of up to two years.

Against that backdrop, Morgentaler at first refused requests to end pregnancies. But by 1969, he said he could refuse no longer. He opened an abortion clinic in Montreal and openly began performing abortions illegally — thousands of them. It was no secret; he gave interviews and even allowed TV news crews to film. He viewed the access to abortion as a simple matter of human rights.

Condemnation came quickly and on a variety of fronts. It didn’t take long for his first arrest.

He was subsequently acquitted by a jury. But the Quebec Court of Appeal overturned that acquittal and sentenced him to prison. He served 10 months in Montreal’s Bordeaux Jail.

The law was eventually changed so that a jury acquittal could no longer be overturned on appeal, another piece of Morgentaler's legacy.

There would, of course, be many more arrests, two more jury acquittals (one in Quebec and one in Ontario), at least eight raids on his clinics, one firebombing and huge legal bills.

As you may suspect, there is a lot of teeth-nashing and wailing in certain parts of the political spectrum. Today comes news that a priest in BC is turning in his OoC so as not to be associated with him. Granted I enjoyed the Craven Jamboree Father Larre created back when he was in Saskatchewan, but he's not exactly the kind of guy I'd want to be associated with anyway.

Father Larre, on the other hand, is probably best known for being convicted in 1992 on two counts of physically abusing children in his care at Bosco Homes in Saskatchewan: slapping and choking a female, and forcing another to take pills to teach her a lesson about drug abuse.

Nine other charges including one of sexual assault were overturned.

In 1998, Larre registered as a psychologist in B.C., but the B.C. College of Psychologists suspended his registration because it felt he posed "an immediate risk to the public."

I wonder how many of his fellow OoC recipients are happy he's returned the award?

As for the oh-so-tolerant Conservatives, they're doing everything in their power to distance themselves from this and diminish the honour if they can.

MP Maurice Vellacott, a Conservative from Saskatchewan who opposes abortion, told the Globe and Mail on Monday that he heard Morgentaler's appointment was not unanimous.

"This is a pretty divisive issue," he said. "I think we can all agree on that, so why would we have the highest honour in the country being issued when there is obviously a strong difference of opinion about it?"

A strong difference of opinion over the award? What do you think Canadians thought about giving the award to this guy? I didn't like him to begin with, and the fact that he destroyed the PC's as a force on the federal level is a major part of the reason the right got taken over by people unwilling to acknowledge the honour.

The Harper government said it had nothing to do with the appointment, which was announced by the Governor General’s office on the advice of a high-powered committee.

“The Conservative government is not involved in either deliberations or decisions with respect to which individuals are appointed to the Order of Canada,” said a statement issued Tuesday evening by Dimitri Soudas, a spokesman for Harper.

They do know their base. On the other hand, I suppose this explains why the Cons are losing their female supporters.