Police Out of Control?

The litany of reports of police misbehaviour demands serious investigation into police training and attitudes. The efficacy of the Toronto Police Services Board (TPSB) is also in question. 

--- The Canadian Association of Police Chiefs (CAPC) accepts $100,000 from Taser International Inc. as conference sponsor. A CAPC researcher accepts stock options from Taser international.

--- Families of 22 people shot by various Ontario police forces in the past five years are still waiting for an explanation.

--- After five years, Toronto police union past-president Bill McCormack continues to be on paid suspension pending investigation of improper conduct charges. The case will not be heard for two more years. Cost so far: Over $500,000.

--- A Toronto trial judge finds that "we have police officers who clearly lied while under oath."

--- Toronto police are blamed for drug probe delays.

--- A special investigation claimed there's a pattern of thefts by the Toronto police drug squad.

--- Toronto police party with the money received from the sale of stolen bicycles.

--- Toronto police enjoy higher salaries than their New York counterparts. By the judicious arrangement of their court appearances on minor traffic charges, some constables earn up to $160,000 a year. That's not counting the $60-$70 per hour they get for drinking coffee at construction sites.

--- As it approaches its first $1 billion budget, Toronto police refuse to disclose the cost of maintaining 28 horses and 43 equestrian officers. This, from The Globe and Mail. In fact, the amount ($7 million) is (not clearly) disclosed in the annual budget.

All these items are from newspapers. How much more is there that the media have not uncovered? Citizens are entitled to effective control over police activity. Clearly, we are not getting it.
________________________________________________________________

A copy of this post was e-mailed to TPSB on May 20, 2009. Reply received June 8.

Dear Mr. Peringer,

Thank you for your email dated May 20, 2009.

The Toronto Police Service Board is actively engaged in fulfilling its mandate to provide adequate and effective police service in a manner that is both accountable and respectful.

You may wish to link to Chair Mukherjee's blog, agendas and minutes of the TPSB at www.tpsb.ca and view the live web casts of the TPSB meetings to get a more accurate sense of the rigor which is inherent in police oversight in Toronto.

Again, thank you for taking the time to write to the TPSB.

Alok Mukherjee
Chair
Toronto Police Service Board

Citizenship of Convenience

Letter to The Globe and Mail, June 6, 2009. Unpublished.

Canada, it seems, has yet to learn the a difference between being a generous nation and a foolish one. Of the 2.7 million people with Canadian citizenship living abroad, more than half are believed to have dual citizenship, and be permanent residents of their country of origin (Canada's relationship with Lebanon, June 5).

These Canadians hold passports of convenience which they wave with patriotic fervour when they need a bolt hole. The evacuation of 15,000 "Canadians" during the 2006 Lebanese troubles cost us an estimated $65 million. We may be certain the owners of available ships boosted their rates when they learned Canada was involved.

More frightening is the possibility of these non-taxpaying "Canadians" swamping our health care system. Many of them maintain false Canadian addresses ( mainly in Quebec) in order to qualify for medicare or other benefit should the need arise.

Clearly there are two classes of Canadians: Those who pay taxes and those who free load.

Nation of Wimps

In a 1992 radio broadcast, journalist Lynda Frum posed this question: "What's to account for many men and women wanting to identify themselves as the victims of one sort of hardship or another?"

In 2011, a University of Manitoba doctoral student failed the required exams twice. He was awarded his degree because "he suffers from an extreme examination anxiety disability." We have no reports of such a disability during his Master's examinations.

In July 2010, a Vancouver woman sued the British Columbia's Lottery Corp. for not preventing her from gambling away $330,000 over three years.

In November 2005, an Ontario judge accepted sexsomnia as a defence against the charge of rape. Sexsomnia was described to the court as a sleep state precipitated by a combination of alcohol, genetics and sleep deprivation. The judge accepted this self-imposed state as adequate defence, and acquitted the accused on the basis that the attack had been involuntary. So get little sleep and drink to excess and you  have two-thirds permission to commit legal rape. A glib lawyer can fabricate the other third of your defence.

The Supreme Court of Canada has ruled that voluntary drunkenness is a defence against a charge of sexual assault. Away from the legal jargon, get blind drunk and the law will be blind to rape. Indeed, the blind leading the blind.

Loto-Quebec faced a $500-million class action law suit brought by 119,000 gamblers addicted to video lotteries. The plaintiffs claimed the casinos caused their financial losses, and should pay compensation. Curiously, the lawyer behind the action claims to be a recovering gambling addict. In January 2010, the government settled with a $50-million payment. How money cures addiction was not explained.

Addicted gamblers are suing the Ontario Lottery and Gaming Corporation for $3.5 million, claiming the OLG failed to prevent them from entering provincially-run casinos.

A lawyer who gambled away $1-million is suing seven casinos because they had "a duty of care" to spot her compulsive behaviour, and intervene. Similar lawsuits are also underway in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

When these people win their pots of money, odds are they head for the nearest casino, and the wheels start over again. This mischief provides an incentive to these people to sneak into the casino, lose money, then sue because of inadequate security. And our wrong-headed courts will give them another bag of money.

The family of a Saskatchewan drug addict is suing her dealer for failing to help her after she overdosed. Guess what she will do with the winnings.

An Ottawa lawyer, Paul Ebbs, successfully sued the federal government for "wrongful hiring" by making him endure three years of boredom in his job. It took him that long to realize the job was not "exciting, challenging and demanding" as he claimed he was promised. For realizing his job was boring after 36 months behind a desk, he received an undisclosed compensation. (A job applicant in a Dilbert cartoon said, "If you agree to give me no work, I will agree not to sue with some sort of bogus employee claim.")

Canadian courts have ruled that the host is responsible if a drunken guest at his party injures himself on the way home.

What's next? A class action against automobile manufacturers because they create dangerous drivers? Suing the liquor control board for creating alcoholics? Suing bridge builders for creating jump-off points? Suing municipalities because speed limits are not lower? The possibilities are endless.

While we may understand and perhaps sympathize with these people, the question remains: Need the general public compensate individuals for private problems? Why should the rest of us pay for self-inflicted wounds?

To turn a private problem into a public problem is unacceptable. Our legal system (courts and human rights tribunals) has created a culture of wimpy people looking for a pension plan due to their own weakness, indiscretion or mindless behaviour.

Linda Frum concluded her broadcast with the question: "Why is there such willingness to concede to the wrongdoings that victims present to us?"

Abortion versus School Attendance

According to a June 1, 2009 Canadian Press report, 146 schools in Ontario will close over the next two years. The reason is low enrolment. The impact on smaller communities could be devastating as young families will not move to towns with no schools. Local industry will suffer.

Since the 1997-1998 school year, there has been a 15 per cent decline in enrolment for Ontario elementary schools, and since 2002 average enrolment in secondary schools has dropped 14 per cent. Curious that no one sees the connection between school enrolment and live births.

There are 40,000 abortions in Ontario each year. That number of live births five years ago would fill many classrooms today.

In his History of Rome, Livy wrote, "Rome was not strong enough to challenge any of her neighbours, but great thought she was, her greatness seemed likely to last only for a generation. There were not enough women, and that --- added to the fact there was no intermarriage with neighbouring communities --- ruled out any hope of maintaining the level of population."

June 6, 1944

This year's commemoration of the World War Two invasion of Normandy (June 6, 1944) was billed as a "Franco-American ceremony." This offended British and Canadian sensibilities. Letters to The Globe and Mail pointed out Canada's contribution which included 14,000 soldiers who landed that day. My letter described the French contribution. Alas, only the final sentence was published.

Your editorial (Not Franco-American, June 2) is too kind to the French.

There were far more Polish troops attached to the Canadian army in the Normandy invasion than French with their 177 green berets. French troops did not land in Normandy until August 18. By that time, Canadian, British and American forces were well inland. Yet, the monument where the Canadians and Poles landed on June 6 reads (French first): This is the place where the French and their allies began the liberation of Europe.

Conveniently overlooked in this piece of mis-history was the fact that the Soviet army had earlier begun the de-Nazification of Europe on the eastern front, while American, British and Canadian forces were already chasing the German army up the boot of Italy in a horrendous campaign.

Perhaps the insult in not inviting the Queen, or Canadians, or Poles, was due to Winston Churchill who said to his associates in World War One, "Remember, gentlemen, it is not just France we are fighting for, it's for Champagne."

Human Rights and the Culture of Death

The very fact that we are discussing incest as a possible human right illustrates again the Pandora's box of mischief opened by The Charter of Rights and Freedoms (Globe and Mail editorial, The state has a place in this bedroom, Apr. 20).

Such legislation with its victim-promoting offspring has produced a plethora of laws, rules, regulations, and outright verbiage. Here are a few -- hate-crime laws, hate-speech laws, affirmative action, political correctness, fawning multiculturalism, enforced diversity, zero tolerance, thought police, sensitivity training, attitude re-education, social and language inclusion, describing anything displeasing as racist, ideological coercion, grievance promotion, conversation monitors, dialogue facilitators, and the excess of feel-good rules with weasel names created by control freaks, all designed to squeeze human thought into someone else's narrow view of the world.

Homosexuality was decriminalized on the grounds that the state should not interfere with the behaviour of consenting adults. Then, homosexual "marriage" by consenting adults. Abortion by a consenting adult (consent not sought from the person most affected). With consenting adults as the criterion, polygamy will soon be declared legal, and then incest, followed by removal of the minimum age of consent.

What then? If one believes in human rights and animal rights, what objection could there be to consensual bestiality? The recent homosexual parade in Madrid advocated just that. Or someone "marrying" his/her dog or goat? A political party in Holland advocates abolishing the age of sexual consent, legalizing bestiality, child pornography and pedophilia.

The Ontario Supreme court will soon declare that the laws against soliciting, pimping and operating a bawdy house violate the Charter of Rights guarantee to life, liberty and security of the person. Courts and human rights commissions do not deal in logic, the former thrives on paper-thin legal rationalization, the latter on slabs of feelings.

Does the state have any business interfering with consensual dueling? Or consensual murder-suicide pacts? Or assisting in the suicide of a consenting adult?

The Charter of Rights, as interpreted by our blinkered, with-it judges and bleeding-heart human rights commissars, is incrementally destroying the standards which made our civilization what it is. They are creating a culture of victimization, perversion and death.

Taser verses Stapler

Letter to the Toronto Star. Published April 4, 2009.

Re Victim was 'demonized' by RCMP, lawyer says (April 1):

Following their killing of Robert Dziekanski, the RCMP conducted a shameful investigation into his life. They sent investigators to Poland. This attempt to smear the victim cost the taxpayer $58,000.

Let's reverse the situation and investigate the mounties and their private lives. Did this quartet take breathalyzer tests that day? Does any of them have a record of assault, drunk-driving, wife-beating, child abuse and all the other things they investigated about their victim? In fact, such investigations did occur. The results further discredited certain RCMP officers.

Now that the RCMP has declared the stapler an offensive weapon, we should equip the mounties with this lethal device, and take away their tasers.

Of course, the Chiefs of Police advocate tasers. They accepted $100,000 from the manufacturer for their convention. It's time all our police forces at all levels got the public oversight so obviously lacking.

Only what the media want us to know

On March 17, 2009, Pope Benedict XVI opined that condom distribution in Africa was not the total solution to the scourge of HIV/AIDS, in fact, might worsen it. Neither the Toronto Star nor The Globe and Mail reported his reasons, preferring to adopt their usual stance of mocking anyone, especially a religious person, who disagrees with them. Neither newspaper printed letters critical of their stand. Neither printed letters detailing the reasons for the statement. Neither wants its readers to have the whole story to judge for themselves. These are the same people who proclaim the public's right to know, that is, to know only what they want readers to know.

Unpublished letter to The Globe and Mail:

Rather than taking the simplistic approach (as in today's cartoon) to the debate over condom use and HIV/AIDS, The Globe owes its readers the complete story.

Edward C. Green is the director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. In claiming the condom distribution exacerbates the AIDS problem, Green states, "The Pope is correct, or put it another way, the best evidence we have supports the Pope's comments."

Protestant minister Martin Ssempa of Uganda's abstinence and faithfulness anti-AIDS programs: "Condoms have not reduced HIV-AIDS anywhere in the world... Higher condom (use) across Africa has resulted in higher HIV... In countries where the Catholic Church is strong, there is lower HIV than places where the Catholic Church is not."

Sam L. Ruteikara, co-chair of Uganda's AIDS prevention Committee: "Profiteering has trumped prevention...AIDS is no longer a disease. It has become a multibillion-dollar industry. Meanwhile, effective HIV prevention methods, such as urging Africans to stick to one partner, don't qualify for lucrative universal-access status. Our wisdom about our own culture is ignored."


Unpublished letter to the Toronto Star:

Re Papal blind spot on HIV, editorial, Mar. 19

There is much to agree with in this editorial, but it paints a lopsided picture. While the debate over condom use in Africa rages in the Western media, mostly at the expense of the Catholic Church, these same media make scant mention of Catholic work combating the HIV/AIDS scourge.

The Church is the largest single contributor to the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients. One out of every four sufferers in the world benefits from Catholic initiatives, hospitals and clinics.

If the easy availability of condoms has not controlled HIV/AIDS in Canada, how can it do so in the Third World? Condoms may or may not be a quick fix for Africans, but experience indicated the long-term solution lies elsewhere.

We must also be wary of manufacturers, advertisers, distributors, foundations and other "charitable" organizations which have financial interests in the promotion of certain products.

Ode to Toronto at 175

Dear earth of my city:
From you we draw our strength,
Land for which many have died
But elsewhere;
Land where many have been born
And nourished;
Land which has welcomed many
Who prospered;
Land which inspires many
To create.

Under your roofs, we find shelter;
In your schools, growth;
In your libraries, ideas;
In your parks, recreation;
From your platforms, culture;
In your laws, protection;
In your streets, each other;
In your places of worship,ourselves;
In your cemeteries, final rest.

Environment impelled,
We renew our city each day;
Reverencing the past,
Enjoying the present,
Planning the future.
Like Ancient Athens's youth,
Let us pledge to make our city
Not only not less, but greater,
Better and more beautiful
Than it was given to us.

Evolution and the Catholic Church

Unpublished letter to the Toronto Star in reply to a letter erroneously stating the Catholic position on evolution.

Re Church perpetuates myths, too, Mar. 2

It's a source of humour when outsiders tell Catholics what they believe. Dylan Rivis creates his own myth with regard to faith and reason when he states that Catholics deny the theory of evolution. In fact, the Church teaches that evolution is an important part of God's plan for the universe.

John Paul II has said, "Science can purify religion from error and superstition. Religion can purify science from idolatry and false absolutes." Faith and reason are in conflict only to those who understand neither.

Mindset Journalism

In his book, The Death of Free Speech, John Ziegler examines how the news media have created arbitrary, biased, and illogical rules for determining what can and cannot be said in the public arena. Ziegler limited his investigation to secular events.

But his observations hold true for media reports of religious matters. Is it laziness or a propensity for steel-trap thinking that develops the rigidity all too evident in the common media? It is akin to censorship. Two recent examples.

1.   Pope Benedict XVI recently lifted the excommunication on a number of Catholics, one of whom, Bishop Richard Williamson, was later exposed as a holocaust denier. No matter what the multitude of Catholic news agencies reported, the secular press refused to acknowledge that the lifting of the excommunication and the holocaust denial were in no way related. The media linked the two events, often in the same sentence.

2.   The reportage of the profoundly troubling sex scandals within the Catholic Church is another example of mindset thinking. Child Maltreatment 2006, a report of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, states that 66 per cent of sexual abusers are parents, other relatives, unmarried partners of parents, friends or neighbours, and that only 0.5 per cent are "professionals." And clergy are a subset of "professionals," and Catholic clergy a subset of clergy.

The 2007 Annual Report of U.S. Catholic bishops, prepared by outside auditors, identified 15 allegations of childhood sexual abuse in the American Catholic Church from 2000 to 2007, an average of fewer than two per year. A 2007 investigation by the Associated Press identified 2,500 public school teachers who from 2001 through 2005, had their teaching licences revoked or restricted as a result of sexual misconduct with minors -- an average of 514 per year. The ratio of abuse in American public schools to that of the Catholic Church runs as high as 275 to one.

This in no way excuses any of this behaviour. All perpetrators must be prosecuted. But this does illustrate the media bias as to how these dreadful incidents are reported.

Folly Continues at the Ontario Human Rights Commission

In 2008, the Ontario Human Rights Commission smarted at the realization it had no jurisdiction to punish a journalist for what it perceived as "Islamophobia."

The Commission's website purports to define Islamophobia. The result is a wandering, erroneous and grammatically embarrassing effort. Such commissions wallow in vagueness, preferring to deal with feeling rather than fact. They exclude objective judgement, a condition favoured by the Utopian activists who inhabit such institutions.

Unable to impose political correctness on the media in Ontario, OHRC Chair Barbara Hall called for a national press council with compulsory membership for on-line media services. She would empower this yet another bureaucratic overseer to expose any breach of professional standards on the Internet, as she would like them to be.

In a manner exemplary of its communication skills, the Commission articulated, "Ensuring mechanisms are in place to provide opportunity for public scrutiny and the receipt of complaints, particularly from vulnerable groups is important, but must not cross the line into censorship."

From an editorial in The National Post: ". . . making all writers, bloggers and broadcasters hostage to a national press council is merely the first step toward letting the Barbara Halls of the world decide what you get to hear, see and read."

This attempted expansion of government intrusion was in reaction to the proposed curtailing of human rights commissions' jurisdiction as recommended by Law Professor Richard Moon. He wrote, "The use of censorship by the government should be confined to a narrow category of extreme expression --- that which threatens, advocates or justifies violence against members of an identifiable group."

The old public relations trick -- isolate the victim

One public relations trick is to isolate the victim, make him/her feel that they are the problem, that their complaint is unique, and that they should stop bothering us.

1.   Many years ago, I complained to the Public Relations Manager of the Toronto Transit Commission about the terrible smells which then emanated from the Summerhill subway station. He replied he had never heard of the problem, but made a note of it. Two or three years later, a business associate wrote to the TTC about the same matter. The letter she received was from the same person I had spoken to earlier. His reply was that he had never heard of the problem before.

2.   After returning from a package trip to the United Kingdom, I lodged a complaint with British Airways about the hotel they had reserved for me. The building was so decrepit water from the suite above mine leaked into my bathtub. Their reply was that no one had ever complained about that before.

3.   On another occasion, I pointed out to Canada Post the slow delivery of a first-class letter within Canada. Their reply was that they preferred to talk about the vast majority of their mail that does get delivered in due course.

4.  All of which brings to mind the old joke about the "Bug letter," except it's no joke. It's a normal public relations manoeuvre.

Iceland Can Bank on Canada

Letter to the Toronto Star. Published October 24, 2008.

Iceland's financial deep freeze has rendered its banks incapable of meeting international obligations, and its reserves unable to cover demand for cash withdrawals. Among angry depositors are 120 British municipalities, hospitals and charities, including Cambridge University. The government hopes the nationalization of its banks will solve the problem.

There is but one solution to Iceland's problem. The banks must renege on all foreign obligations, absolutely and totally. Indeed, the nation itself must declare bankruptcy. This unilateral action will render nugatory threatened European legal action.

Once the ice chips have settled, Iceland need only apply to Canada for provincial status. We can readily absorb its 300,000 inhabitants constituting less than one per cent of our population. We will have a debt-free province, a stepping stone to Europe, and another spectacular place to visit within our boundaries.

Another stage of Canada's manifest destiny entails reviving the plan to add the Turks and Caicos Islands to our domain. Taking its 30,000 sun worshipers into our fold poses no problem. Britain has found the colony's lawmakers to be corrupt. We can easily depose them, using our strong police presence in nearby Haiti.

Canada and the European Union have begun serious trade talks. With Iceland in our fold, we will already have a foot in the door.

Quality Trumps the Incidentals

Letter to the Toronto Star. Unpublished.

Re New push to make boards match colour of city, Jan 26 (2009)

Toronto has adopted a Utopian report that every board, commission, committee, sub-committee and school-yard huddle must consist of people reflecting the ethnic mix of the city. This misplaced idealism carries seeds of danger en route to failure. Nowhere do we read of quality, competence and ability.

In this quota system, the minority appointees will feel they represent only their particular ethnic or social group. In the absence of competition for these appointments, how else did they get the job? This initiative is based on the belief that the present system does not represent every community. By the same token, should we fear that ethnic appointees will not represent majority interests?

The danger is the ghettoization of supposedly pan-representative committees and commissions. Worse yet, the majority may defer to the representative of this or that particular community, even though the matter under debate is not in the best interests of the larger community. Worse still, the practice may develop whereby community representatives horse-trade authority among themselves.

Toronto's motto once was: Industry, Integrity, Intelligence. The city's new motto, Diversity Our Strength, celebrates our differences, not something we can all aspire to together.

This is multiculturalism and diversity gone barking mad. How else to keep this policy current other than by racial profiling? We can hope this is a temporary aberration in our city's passage into maturity. At which time, the sole criterion for appointment or election to office will be ability to speak to the interests of every community, and voters mature enough to judge candidates solely on quality, competence and ability.

One person cited in this report believes that children are inspired by people of the same skin colour, ethnicity or religion. Role models are important. But to the extent that it is true, our educators have failed. The challenge is to teach young people that they can be successful regardless of these incidentals, and that they should grasp good ideas and inspiration whatever their source.

Atheists and their Wannabes

Letter to The Globe and Mail. Unpublished.

Margaret Somerville, McGill University Founding Director of the Centre for Medicine, Ethics, and Law, speaks of the passion, actual or staged, of people like Richard Dawkins (The search for shared ethics, Jan 27, 2009). Atheists define themselves by what they do not believe.

But, Dawkins and his wannabes are anti-theists. They define themselves by what they ardently oppose. And what they oppose is the inclusion in the public forum of the beliefs of the majority, people, those people who acknowledge some form of Higher Power in the grand scope of things. As Professor Somerville points out this attempted exclusion is undemocratic.

The legal concept of separation of church and state originated in a distorted interpretation of the First Amendment of the the U.S. Constitution.  The Amendment was designed to protect churches from state interference, from the government creating a state religion. Somewhere along the line, it got contorted into its present configuration.

The fact that this concept is not in accord with Islamic thought poses a problem for the Western world.

The Anti-aging Racket

Letter to The Globe and Mail, January 14, 2009, in reaction to an article on aging. Published.

We want our wine to age, but whine when we age (The quest for the test tube of youth, Jan 10). We describe this futile quest by that anti-human, insulting word "anti-aging." This makes us prey to every faker, charlatan and snake oil salesman on the planet. Aging is not a disease.

The film of each life ends. That's all folks. The Book of Life has no sequel, not even a second edition. The quest for long life begins in youth by the proper care of the body. The only effect an elixir, nectar, ambrosia or potion will have is to decrease one's estate.

Rather than waste energy putting on the trappings of the young, a better option is to make the most of every day (and night) "before we too into the dust descend" when the world will hear "no more talk of thee and me." The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam offers an inspiring place to begin.

Letter to the Toronto Star. Unpublished.

Re Facing end of road the hardest part of living, Nov. 15

Pardon me if I detect a dab of condescension in Judy Steed's comments on aging. If Ms. Steed be "haunted by the eyes of old people," and "touched by their courage in growing old, in revealing their vulnerability," then she has not looked into my eyes or the eyes of other septuagenarians, octogenarians and nonagenarians whom I know. Yes, some people our age have shut down their life's horizon. That's a personal decision. It is not for others to judge, or even comment on.

Hardly is it "the bravest thing to continue to live." Its acceptance acknowledges that the parade of life one day will move on without us. And we move elsewhere. Frankly, that's not a bad idea. All required is a sense of maturity, a maturity younger people do not have, and will not understand until the sand of their hourglass has shifted into life's lower chamber. "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas," jokes a truly mature person.

Yes, older people sometimes become dependent on others. We are always dependent on someone, only in different ways at the different stages of life.

Those truly fearing time's passing may find solace in The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Among other things, this 12th century Persian advised:

So when at last the Angel of the Drink
Of Darkness finds you by the river-brink,
And, offering his Cup, invites your Soul
Forth to your Lips to quaff it --- do not shrink
.

Human Rights Act, Section 13

Never ask a question if you fear the answer. Jennifer Lynch, chief of the Canadian Human Rights Commission, had no such fear when she paid University of Windsor law professor $50,000 to report on Section 13 of The Canadian Human Rights Act. She did not anticipate the answer she got.

Contrary to Lynch's expectations, Moon recommended curtailing the commission's mandate. He recommended that hate speech be dealt with by our courts, not human rights commissions where the usual rules of fairness find scant application.

Rather than accept the report, Commissioner Lynch has launched a consultative process -- an obvious delaying tactic. Given that she recently hired a communications firm, may we fear some kind of public relations offensive? Will she then refer the matter to Parliament? Fortunately, some Members of Parliament are already planning to act on the report.

No law or commission has ever erased prejudice or bigotry. This has always been a matter for educators -- a role commissioners are decidedly ill equipped to play.

Universities and Freedom of Expression

Have the censorship-prone, politically-correct taken over our universities?

In February, the York University Federation of Students denied their fellow students space for a debate on abortion. The issue quickly became the right to express one's views. The students federation denied the pro-life students the enjoyment of that freedom.

The justification for censorship was that the subject matter might "upset, appall or traumatize sensitive" students. Surprised and intimidated by media coverage, the federation reversed itself. A friendly debate ensued, with no reports of anyone rendered upset, appalled or traumatized.

To its credit, the University of Waterloo held the same debate without incident.

About the same time, McMaster University administration cancelled a proposed Israeli Apartheid Week. Curiously enough, the same York Federation that initially banned a debate on abortion, objected to McMaster's suppression of free speech.

In 2007, pro-life students were denied official recognition by British Columbia's Capilano College, Kelowna College, and University of Victoria, as were similar groups at Newfoundland's Memorial University, Lakehead University, and Carlton University.

Carlton's student council dropped its support for the Canadian Cystic Fibrosis Fund when it learned that  cystic fibrosis was a white man's disease. It was therefore unworthy of support as not being sufficiently inclusive. Does that mean these students will never support the fight against sickle cell anemia which only afflicts black people? To their credit, the council reversed its position, but the concern over misguided political correctness continues.

Some students, and not a few interloping gay activists, at Ryerson University protested, less than peacefully, at the granting of an honorary degree to Margaret Somerville. The ethicist from McGill University is an advocate of the traditional family, something certain activists oppose.

In an edict smacking of vigilantism, officials at the University of Calgary will cancel your debate, talk, presentation, whatever, should they fear the slightest possibility of violence. That's tantamount to censorship by threat of violence. Does the university cancel raucous debate over student fee increases?

Queen's University joined this parade to oblivion by creating an "Intergroup Dialogue Program." This initiative pays students to roam the corridors of academe seeking out the private expression of opinions officialdom deems offensive, and substitute in their place the politically correct version.

The common media condemned this version of censorship, but not that related to abortion. Is this yet another example of selective reporting in order to impose on the general public another's view of the world?

What is it with certain young people, merely a few years out of high school, that they feel competent to judge opinions, withhold the right to express them, and replace them with their own? Let us hope we are not talking about future activist supreme court judges, or biased media editors, whom we already have in over-abundance.

The Globe and Mail and democracy

What is it that The Globe and Mail does not understand about democracy?

The issue in certain states in the recent U.S. elections was whether or not marriage was exclusively something between a man and a woman. Voters in most states affirmed their belief that such is the case. California made this affirmation for the second time when a majority voted for Proposition 8.

In a Globe and Mail editorial one can charitably describe as sniveling and churlish, this newspaper decried an exercise in democracy as backward, the work of social-conservative Republicans, a message of exclusion, et cetera.

In a most egregious and unforgivable statement, the editorialist observed that the California proposition was supported by 70 per cent of black voters. In a 19th century mind-set, the editorial opined, "That is not surprising, given higher rates of religiosity." My dictionary defines "religiosity" as sanctimonious. In Globe parlance, it is code for uneducated, backward African Americans.

This type of narrow thinking has provoked outbursts of racism in California. Homosexuals attacked, insulted and swore at black people for the democratic expression of opinion homosexuals describe as hate. The world awaits the Globe's expression of disapproval of: church invasions and vandalism by gay protesters, a gay theatre owner in California black-balling a director who supported Proposition 8, people being thrown to the ground, urinated on, shouted at and swarmed. And disapproval of mailing packages of white powder. The Director of the Los Angeles Film Festival was forced to resign because he donated to the Proposition 8 campaign. All this because homosexuals disagree with traditional marriage. And when one defends marriage, it is called hate speech.

Had the vote gone the other way, the Globe would have chastised complainers for not understanding that the people have spoken. Democracy is good only if one agrees with its results.

In Canada, the dilution of traditional marriage was imposed on us by a mere handful of activist judges across the country, cheered on by the common media. In Ontario, three judges purported to speak for all of us. The daughter of one of them, Chief Justice Roy McMurtry, was living in a lesbian relationship at the time her father signed the judgement. The obvious appearance of bias did not register on McMurtry. He  refused to withdraw from the case. Two weeks later, the Chief Justice of Ontario attended a party where he danced with the litigants who earlier had appeared before him.

The next step in this tawdry process will be jurists declaring unconstitutional laws against polygamy.