Class-Action Lawsuits

A report in the July 11, 2012 National Post (Lawyers get best seats in Ticketmaster class-action) gives the impression that lawyers in class-action suits operate out of altruism. Yes, the plaintiffs pay no legal fees. Yes, the action may fail and the lawyers assessed costs which they will pass onto their clients. The report does not mention that lawyers may insure against such loss.

If it's all that risky, why do lawyers swarm all over accident and disaster sites, nudging each other to instigate lawsuits and sign up plaintiffs? The pot of gold at the end of the class-action rainbow is a big one.

Another report tells us that the Merchant Law Group of Regina, Saskatchewan, reaped $25-million from the $1.9-billion Indian Residential Schools settlement. In unusual candour, lawyer Tony Merchant said, "I hate to lead myself into doing things that aren't profitable, and I hope to be pleasantly surprised [by his latest class-action suit]. I'd be shocked if this turns into anything but profitable."

(In April 2013, it seems Tony Merchant has $1.7-million in a secret account in in the South Pacific Cook Islands. This, according to the Washington-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which also claims that Merchant has money in Bermuda with which he bought mutual funds in the tax haven of Luxembourg. The investigation continues.)

In the lawsuits following the 2010 G20 meeting in Toronto, shameless, publicity-seeking lawyers make sure the media are there when they present their claim at police headquarters, dragging their clients along to add to the spectacle. It is unnecessary for clients to be present on such occasions.

In another widely reported case, the plaintiff had no intention of a law suit until convinced otherwise by lawyers trolling the Internet for business. The public calls this fee-sniffing, ambulance chasing, and other less charitable terms. The Law Society of Upper Canada, the lawyers trade association in Ontario, approves of such behaviour. Inciting legal action was once considered unethical, if not illegal. How the winds of profit have changed.

"Democratic Deficit"?

"Few visible minorities on the bench, judicial study finds" read a headline in the Toronto Star of June 28, 2012. Immigration Reporter Nicholas Keung stated that "visible minorities are grossly under-represented in Canada's judiciary."

This observation was based on a report from Ryerson University's Diversity Institute whose founder, Wendy Cukier, described this situation as a "democratic deficit."

The report continues, "The problem with the federal appointment system is its concentration of decision-making in the hands of politicians."  Does this imply that politicians are anti-visible minority? Do we really care if the judge, or other appointee, is a polka-dotted Houyhnhnm, as long as he/she is competent and fair?

This same questionable argument permeates much of contemporary discourse. Minority groups demand that their distinguishing characteristic be represented in government services to the extent they are part of society.  But what if a certain minority group is the best in a certain field of endeavour? Should such a policy cap their participation?

The Toronto Raptors basketball team is overwhelmingly black. Does that constitute racism against non-blacks?

This demand for ethnic representation is a recent phenomenon. Before 1960, immigrants kept a low profile as they went about their business of turning virgin territory into productive farm land, of digging ditches so their sons and daughters could one day build condominiums, and operate rooming houses, so their children might attend university, get elected to political office and enjoy a better life. They would have considered "democratic deficit" as so much politically-correct jargon.

Competitive Eating Disgust

There are few public events more repugnant than an eating contest.

The U.S. Independence Day hot-dog competitive eating contest at New York's Coney Island is such an occasion. In what one report described as "a sweaty, gag-inducing spectacle", a California man this July 4 scarfed down 68 hotdogs in 10 minutes to take home the $10,000 prize. He said it would take several days for his body to recover from the ordeal.

For downing 46 dogs in the allotted time, a Virginia women won $10,000. Yes, someone offers money for such demeaning spectacles.

I hope news of this mischief does not reach central Africa where 15 million people (UN estimate)are currently suffering an acute food shortage.

Human Rights Tribunal Trashes Reasonableness (Again)

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal recently abrogated centuries of legal jurisprudence. In a case before her, Tribunal Adjudicator Leslie Reaume, a lawyer, wrote in her judgement, "The question before me is not whether the [police] respondents acted reasonably in these difficult circumstances, but whether [the complainant's] race was a factor."

One of the definitions of "reasonable" in The Canadian Law Dictionary is: "That which is fit and appropriate to the end in view." That does not apply to the Ontario Human Rights Commission.

Toronto police were investigating a gun call. The suspect was a black male driving a black car, and likely armed. Yes, the suspect's skin colour was a factor as was the colour of his car. The police were not searching for a black man in a blue car or a white man in a black car. A police officer decided that the complainant's person and vehicle fit the general description of someone he spotted.

According to a newspaper report, the complainant was uncooperative in refusing to answer the officer's inquiries.and "the conversation escalated". In such a situation, reasonable police procedure would be draw their weapons, force an alleged suspect to his knees then put him in the cruiser. At that moment, the police radio reported the suspect had been spotted elsewhere. The complainant was released.

Human Rights Adjudicator Reaume speculated, "I do not believe that if the suspect had been a Caucasian man in the same circumstances, with no other defining characteristics, particularly age ...[that the officer] ... would have chosen to investigate the first Caucasian man he saw driving the same car at the same intersection." On the basis of this speculative non-belief of non-proof, she determined discrimination.

She said that the complainant has been "stereotyped as a person with some probability of being involved in a gun-related incident" because he was a black man. By what stretch of the imagination can reasonable suspicion be deemed stereotyping?

The bizarre language of her judgement continues, "It is consistent with a finding of racial profiling that all black men, or all black men of a certain age, driving along in the area in a black car were possible suspects at the moment [the Police officer] decided to commence his investigation of [the complainant]."

Yes, the police investigate all situations matching a certain description.

For having acted reasonably, officer and Police Department were ordered to pay the complainant $40,000 in damages.  In the usual gobbledegook of this feel-good tribunal, she described the event as "harrowing" and injurious "to dignity, feelings, and self-respect". That hoary language is right out of the utopian playbook and is used to justify pre-determined decisions, and without a whiff of due process. One wonders if Adjudicator Reaume considers it "harrowing" for an individual police officer to approach a possibly armed man.

How do these people come up with such awards? Had the suspect been a Caucasian in a white car, and someone fitting that description was similarly investigated, would lawyer Reaume endorse a payout of $40,000? Would there be any payout at all?

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal merits its public perception as a cash cow for the easily offended.

The Ontario Human Rights Tribunal contorts logic in it worship of political correctness. When referring to the complainant's race, the Tribunal's news release capitalized the word Black, yet not in the judgement.

A copy of this post was sent to the drafter of said news release, Afroze Edwards, OHRC Senior Communications Officer (afrozre.edwards@ohrc.on.ca).

On July 20, 2012, I received a letter from Paul Richards, Correspondence Coordinator, Communications & Issues Management. (Yes, that's his title.) His verbatim reply: "Thank you for your interest in the work of the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC); the OHRC was involved in the case and support the decision of the Human Rights Tribunal. Thank you for contacting the OHRC."

"Page turner" is not a compliment

Publishers and book reviewers believe that describing a book as a "page turner" is to compliment the author. It may be intended as such. In fact, it is the opposite. The term implies reader dissatisfaction with the page currently in focus. It implies the reader wants to get to the last page as quickly as possible. Book reviewers too often describe a book as "a quick read." The author would hardly be flattered.

 "Yet how many people there are who read as though some prize awaited them when they turned the last page! They do not wish to read a book; they want to have read it -- no matter how. The prize they seek is to have done with the book at hand." -- Robertson Davies in A Voice from the Attic.

One of the publishers in a writer's market guides suggests works in which 10,000 words might be read in forty minutes. I doubt anyone reading a (good) book at that pace will get the message, feel the style or revel in the vocabulary and sentence structure of the work. Needless to say, few best-sellers are blessed with these characteristics. They are the page turners.

Are good books designed to be read as quickly as possible? Or intended by the author to offer ideas, thoughts and observations worth mulling over? The page should be turned only in the hope of continuing the intellectual adventure. A book should be read with the same care with which the author wrote it.

Woody Allen described the results of a speed-reading course. "They taught us to read down the centre of the page. I read War and Peace in an hour. It was about Russia."

Regardless of the subject matter, a good book deserves attention, an honest perusal, and a mind-stretching thought. Such a book can be read only with pencil in hand. The readily erasable marks indicate important passages, excellent turns of phrase, or valuable insights. After the last page is turned, these markings are reviewed, and the noteworthy ones indexed on the inside back cover, or on a separate sheet of paper.

One finishes A Voice from the Attic with unbounded desire to preserve such incisive turns of phrase as: a strongly developed sense of grievance; a victim of an unresolved mental quirk; injustice collectors; creeps like a stain through the fabric of their lives; filled with undigested anger; gnawing on the bone of contentment. Each idea to be relished, no page turner, this book.

François, Duc de la Rochefoucauld, composer of maxims and epigrams wrote, "I am fond of all kinds of reading, especially where there is something to train the mind and toughen the soul. Above all, I find very great enjoyment  in sharing my reading with an intelligent person. In doing so one can continually reflect upon what is being read, and such reflections form the basis of the most delightful and profitable conversation."

Rochefoucauld and Davies would have had great conversations. Perhaps they are.

Bureaucracy vs Family

Email to The National Post, May 29, 2012. Unpublished.

Re Teachers oppose parents taking kids from sex ed, May 29:

This report illustrates once again what's wrong with our school system.  The bureaucrats and teachers increasingly want to intrude in other people's business, in this case, the family's business of sex education. 

Teaching must return to the basics of reading, language, writing, arithmetic, history and other core subjects. If a teacher is no good, or the principal unable to maintain discipline, parents should be able to demand better or pull their children from that school.

In this particular report, the teachers' union of Manitoba wants the government to make it a crime for parents to take their children from classes, regardless of subject or quality of teaching. They Nazi-tinged demand is motivated, not for concern of their students, but for their personal good -- the need to maintain a certain level of attendance to protect their pay. So they demand forced attendance, regardless of how or what they are pushing down young throats.

The next step in this bureaucratization of education is to criminalize homeschooling. It's already happened in Sweden, Norway and Germany where it was introduced by the Nazis. 

Parents must have more say in the education of their children, the bureaucrats less.

Weightless in Britain

As youngsters, we referred to the comedy duo of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy as Fat and Skinny. Of the team of Bud Abbot and Lou Costello, everyone described the latter as the Fat One. Of the Dean Martin and Gerry Lewis twosome, Lewis was known as the goofy-looking guy. All these performers capitalized handsomely on their physical features.

For the latest example of a legitimate concern on the verge of going wrong, we have a report of the British Parliament, Reflections on Body Image. Some honourable members want it declared  a hate crime to describe a person as "obese" or even to draw attention to a person's weight. An All Party Parliamentary Group on Body Image has recommended criminalization of "appearance-based discrimination".

Much of the report was based on the fact that more than 50 per cent of the population have a negative body image. That statistic from the U.K. Centre for Appearance Research. The Centre also states that 20 per cent have been victimized because of their weight.

A key person involved with the report suggested that doctors should refrain from telling patients they have excess weight. "If they don't feel overweight, and there are no health indications, what's the problem?" she asked. Studies have consistently shown that overweight people underestimate how fat they really are.

It is to be hoped that, before any legislation is enacted, a more realistic view of body image will prevail.

Historical "racism"

 
An email to Toronto Star. Published on line May 14, 2012.

Re Refugee bill returns to the bad old days, May 7:

This report speaks of "legally-sanctioned racism" and of Canada returning "to the days when racism and xenophobia were part of our official immigration policy".  This opinion is an example of presentism, that is, judging former times by today's supposedly superior standards. 

At one time, majority feeling, as reflected in government policy, was that English-speaking immigrants were favoured because of their easier and less expensive assimilation into Canadian life. At another time, only farmers were admitted, because that's what the young nation then needed.

This feeling and policy continued well into the 1960s. Today, it is hyperbole to speak of "toxins that are poisoning our country".  The word racism trips off the tongue too lightly in contemporary discourse.

Our immigration policy exists for the sole benefit of Canada. That said, we are obliged to show some leniency towards the downtrodden, the refugees and others rendered desolate by events beyond their control. Such leniency must be tempered by economic conditions and our ability to absorb more newcomers.


This report also leaves the impression that only Japanese were confined to internment camps during the Second World War. Two immigrants on our street in downtown Toronto were whisked away by the police. They joined other Germans and Italians placed in internment camps for the duration of the war. Little has been said about the economic hardship caused to their families. To my knowledge, they have not even asked for an apology.

Women Exploited

Tired of all that advice about losing weight?  In the mid-1990s, Sassy magazine gave 13 reasons not to diet.  The magazine for young women stated boldly: Starving yourself is complete and total lunacy.  Dieting makes you boring.  You'll gain it back, anyway. 

The "evil diet industry" is unregulated and has no legal obligation to prove its products work, the magazine pointed out.  The promise of liberation through weight loss is false.  Today's barbie-doll worship does much harm to girls and young women. 

Unnatural mannequins, computer-altered photographs, anorexic models, all create a false ideal.  Marilyn Monroe, sex goddess of the 1960s, would today be considered too large by the fashion industry.  It wants us to believe the ideal shapes are thin, thinner and thinest.

Unfortunately, too many young women believe this nonsense.  They look into the mirror, imagine their bodies much larger than they really are, and lose their self-confidence.  Naomi Wolf alerted us to this mischief in her book The Beauty Myth.  She tells how the industry's creation of a mythical, perfect body has taught young women and girls to hate their bodies.  This self-loathing leads to eating disorders and depression.

As a first line of defence, every woman should read Gloria Steinem's Revolution from Within.  The book's argument is that too many of our systems of authority undermine women's opinion of themselves.  People in this condition are ready victims for unproven products and services.  As Steinem says it: "Liberation begins with the nurturing of self-esteem."

Charter of Rights Adulation

On the something anniversary of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, editorial writers, columnists and guest writers virtually salivated when celebrating the benefits rendered by this document. None mentioned blatant abuses. My April 16, 2012 email to The Globe and Mail. Unpublished.

It may be well and good that other nations copy our Charter of Rights and Freedoms as extolled by seemingly endless editorial writers, retired judges and commentators  However, any export of this document must include the caution:"Contents subject to extreme abuse."

One need only examine the Charter's Ontario offspring with its over-reaching tendencies and questionable results  such as --  A UFO cult declared a religion thereby transforming a breach of contract into a more lucrative case of religious discrimination.  A coffee shop owner ordered to pay $15,000 to a disruptive customer on whom he cast a racial slur, the order forcing him out of business.  An Ottawa lawyer created a cottage industry pursuing racists on the Internet.  A hockey association ordered to pay $18,000 to a family for failure to provide adequate dressing room facilities.

The Ontario Superior Court ordered a re-hearing of a case where a business owner was ordered by the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal to pay $36,000 to a dismissed employee. Immediately following the decision, the Commission obtained a writ of seizure ordering the sheriff to sell the business operator's home to enforce the payment. On appeal, the Court said it was "simply not possible to logically follow the pathway taken by the adjudicator."  Had the accused not had the funds to appeal, she would have lost her home. And so on, across Canada, the tax-supported abuse continues.

Human rights tribunals are cash cows for the aggrieved, real or imagined. Countries importing our Charter must be so warned.

Bullying -- Special Pleading?

Letter to the Toronto Star. Published April 27, 2012

Re Put our kids before politics, editorial, April 21:

This editorial fails to mention the legislation to which it refers. I presume reference is to Bill 13, an Act to amend the Education Act with respect to bullying and other matters.  

Although the proposed amendment speaks to being "inclusive for all people, including LGBTTIQ," a careful reading leaves the impression its main, if not sole, purpose is for this sub-minority. 

Most bullying occurs because of body image -- the over-weight kid, the skinny one, the one with a skin problem, the awkward one who can't catch a ball or run fast, and so on. This major cause of bullying isn't even mentioned in Bill 13.

This leaves the impression the proposed legislation is the result of special pleading on behalf of the LGBTTIQ constituency. If not, why is it not all inclusive?

In 2006, the Toronto District School Board conducted a survey to determine the causes of bullying. The most cited reason was "body image" (38% in Grades 7 and 8) and (27 % in Grades 9 to 12), followed by "grades" (17%), "marks" (12%); "language"(7%) in all grades,"gender, religion and income" (5% or lower).  The issue of gay bullying did not register in the study. Source: The National Post, May 29, 2012.

This is reinforced by a 2012 report to the U.K. parliament which noted that more than half the British public suffered from a negative body image.  Evidence presented to a special parliamentary group suggested that appearance is the greatest cause of bullying in school.

The Olympics Extravaganza, London 2012

The Olympic-branding police will be out in full force.

The Guardian reports that London games organizers will be checking every bathroom in every Olympic venue. They are empowered to remove or tape over manufacturers' logos even on soap dispensers, wash basins and toilets. Athletes will not be able to tweet home the brand name of the cornflakes consumed that morning, nor mention the drinking Pepsi, or post a video message from rooms in the athletes' village. Coca Cola is the main soft drink sponsor. Pubs will be banned from posting signs such as: "Watch the London games on our big screen."

These are some of the results of the most stringent restrictions ever put in place to protect sponsors' brands and broadcasting rights. It affects every athlete, ticket holder and business in the entire United Kingdom. All this while 82 per cent of Brits believe the Games will not do them any good.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) demands its own rules. It requires host governments to enact specific legislation to protect games sponsors and IOC "rights". A breach of these rules is a criminal offence.

In a curious twist, a survey of Tweeters found that Nike (a non-sponsor) is the brand most associated with the Games, instead of Adidas, which paid big money for official rights.

So offensive has the rights game become that, at the 2010 World Cup, 36 Dutch women were ejected from a match for wearing orange dresses, in what organizers deemed an ambush campaign by the beer company Bavaria whose symbol is women in orange dresses.

One report claims there is good reason for these Olympic restrictions. Any shortfall in sponsorship must be made up by the British taxpayer. The IOC has stacked the deck. The only losers may be British citizens who was not consulted if they wanted the Games in the first place. Given Olympic history, the taxpayer loses no matter what.

As Guardian columnist Simon Jenkins put it: "The Olympics have become an Orwellian parody of what happens when a world agency blackmails a government aching for prestige into spending without limit."

Toronto Star and the Bible

On April 4, 2012, the Toronto Star reported the banning of the distribution to Grade Five students of the Gideon Bible. The overly-sensitive School Trustees feared reprisals for their decision. According to that newspaper, complaints to the trustees constituted "hate mail." The newspaper gave no examples. It printed three letters in support of the trustees, none against. Mine was excluded. In the interests of fair comment, occasionally absent in that Toronto daily, my unpublished letter:

The Star's headline writer went over the top on this one (Bible ban at schools sparks hate mail, Apr. 9). None of the reported examples of disagreement with the Bluewater District School Board's decision to ban distribution the Gideon bible even remotely qualifies as "hate mail".

Every enlightened educator recognizes the Bible as a vital part of Western World history. Even an atheist, if he deems himself learned, must be familiar with it. One cannot grasp the basis of the English language without it. One cannot learn the reasons for Western progress and the freedoms we enjoy (compared to the non-Christian world) without a knowledge of the history of the Bible.

What do school trustees fear in such education? What does the Toronto Star fear?

Profit from Drunkenness

Earlier posts on this blog may have given the impression that the mischief of human rights commissions is a recent aberration and confined to Ontario and Alberta. Here's one from the Canadian Human Rights Commission.

In 1991, the Commission ordered Canadian National to rehire FN, who had been dismissed in March 1985 for repeated absences due to drunkenness. The Commission said that CN had discriminated against him on the basis of a disability -- his drinking.

FN's supervisors first noticed his problem in 1984, and referred him to Alcoholics Anonymous. He attended  two or three AA meetings, became absent from work more than usual, and had an accident with a company car, an incident he attempted to cover up.

Even then, he was not fired, but suspended, and sent to two drug-dependency programs. He refused to participate in follow-up counselling and AA sessions. CN dismissed him, saying he had not seriously attempted rehabilitation.

Unmoved by CN's efforts to accommodate Mr. N's "disability," the Canadian Human Rights Commission held the company had no right to fire him, and ordered he be re-hired with six-years' back wages.

Fortunately, the Federal Court of Canada would have none of this mischief. It overturned the Commission's judgement.

What if a small business had hired FN, and lacked the resources to launch an appeal? It would likely have been forced into bankruptcy. Human rights tribunals too often miss the big picture.

Laws, Courts and Bureaucracies

Letter to the National Post.

Father De Souza has pinned the tail squarely on the bureaucratic donkey (Who watches the watchmen, Mar. 16). When bureaucracies, such as police or prosecutors, are strengthened, citizen rights are weakened. Rights laws are zero-sum game. What you give to one must be taken from another. And the Government's new crime bill takes a great deal away from citizens, legally and financially.

I especially enjoyed the phrase "the bureaucracy that wears gowns and carries guns." The rule of law is a nebulous concept ultimately enforced at the point of a gun. It's legalized violence.

Toronto police are the highest paid in Canada, if not the world, yet its members slip from one blunder to blunder. Witness some of their behaviour during the G20 -- mischief that is slowly becoming class-action lawsuits for which citizens will pay.

Witness the shortage of judges and courts (a situation exacerbated by the new crime bill) which ensures the justice will be delayed and therefore denied. Such delays have already set miscreants free to inflict more mayhem on the public.

We do not obey the law because it is the law. Laws change every day. No one I know reads the Criminal Code to see what they can do that day. Law-abiding? No. To the extent law reflects human behaviour, to that extent it is citizen-abiding.

Aristotle put it this way -- a person capable of only following rules is a natural slave. Is the Government turning us into slaves?

Public Documents are Public Property

Unpublished letter to the National Post.

Re Judge allows Toews to find out who viewed his divorce papers, Mar. 8:

A Winnipeg judge apparently saw nothing amiss in granting Public Safety Minister Vic Toews permission to learn the names of people who have viewed his publicly available divorce papers.

The good judge deemed it unfair that personal matters might be revealed "at the whim of any passerby." But that's what happens with public documents. Any serious objection should inspire him to demand that such documents be sealed from public view.

Big Brother is lurking if a citizen must identify himself and have his name recorded simply to view a public document.

The next frightful step may force libraries to disclosed the names of borrowers of certain books. Reading a book about terrorism, or how to make a bomb, or how to do robo-calls, may soon lead to one's home being raided.

Bureaucrats and Politicians Attack Basic Values

Government intervention into more and more aspects of our lives must be challenged as an attack on basic values. Here are some reasons why.

Bertrand Russell -- "The fight for freedom is not won by any mere change in our economic system. It is to be won only by constant resistance to the tyranny of officials."

Phillip, Duke of Edinburgh -- Once you start involving governments,"you immediately begin to involve political philosophies and attitudes of all sorts and all sorts of difficulties that are much more easily avoided if you have something which is voluntarily financed."

Former Ontario Education Minister Thomas Wells -- "There is in many respects a waning confidence in the effectiveness of public education. In elementary education, the most public voiced concern is with the basics -- what many parents and others often call the Three Rs."

The Law Must Earn Respect

Society is in poor shape when citizens, such as in a recent incident involving homeschooling in Alberta, are ordered by law to “honour and respect” the law.

Carve this in stone: Those who enact, enforce or interpret law receive only such respect as is commanded by their performance, not by what they demand.

The situation becomes toxic when families in Quebec must fight for the obvious -- that they, the family, not the government or the courts, are the primary teachers of their children.

The Supreme Court of Canada recently approved the soft totalitarianism of a Quebec law conferring on the government exclusive rights of religious education. These same Supremos claim to uphold religious freedom. In the crunch, they have wilted when called on to defend that freedom.

It's time for a revolution to limit the power of anyone in authority -- political, bureaucratic or judicial -- to clearly stated basics. Governmental intrusion into education must be limited to setting standard tests in core subjects. Activist judges must be reined in, along with empire-building bureaucrats.

To realize a revolution, laws that refer to human rights, diversity, multiculturalism, and other vague notions of how society should operate, must be re-written The re-write will contain strict limits as to interpretation and manipulation by the troika -- politicians, officials and judges, especially our activist Supreme Court. The Russian troika is a carriage powered by three horses, but controlled by one driver. In Canada, that driver must be the people.

Light occasional shines in dark places. The Alberta Human Rights Act gives parents the option of removing children from classes dealing with religion, sexuality, or sexual orientation without academic penalty, something the Supremes denied Quebec citizens. The bad news is that Alberta's appointed Premier, under the influence of radical elements of the province's teacher union, wants to relieve parents of that right.

We can only hope that one day a streak of enlightenment will penetrate the darkness of the Quebec government and the Supreme Court of Canada. It will not happen voluntarily. On occasion, noses must be pushed into the mud of reality. Such a challenge now confronts us.


Sidebar. "... Ontario's provincial judicial appointments system scores much better than the federal system, which is still heavily tainted by political partisanship and conspicuously lacking in transparency." --- Jacob Ziegel, law professor emeritus, University of Toronto. (The National Post, March 7, 2012)

I Was Only Obeying Orders

Big Brother is today bigger than in George Orwell's day.

Gregg Bereznick, Superintendent of Education at Waterloo Region District School Board, claims for his bureaucracy the status of "co-parent" with real parents. Unless these empire-builders are reeled in their claim to full parental rights is not far off.

Such loss of parental rights has occurred in Sweden and Germany. There, the state has scooped children from their families because the parents preferred homeschooling -- an illegal act in those countries.

The issue in Ontario is about a child at school who drew a picture of her father shooting monsters. An over-zealous teacher complained.The bureaucracy descended with jack books. The father was arrested, strip searched, and threatened with being charged with possession of an illegal weapon. His children and pregnant wife were forced into child services custody. Finally, getting around to searching this family's home, police found a transparent plastic toy that shoots small plastic BBs, and available in the toy section of most department stores.

In answer to an interviewer's question whether he was satisfied with what happened, Bereznick replied, “We do work hand in hand with these families because we co-parent …”

No, Mr. B. bureaucrats do not "co-parent." They do no kind of parenting whatsoever.

If the child had drawn Bereznick or Dalton McGuinty holding a gun, would they have been similarly molested, abused and insulted? If the law permits this mischief, the law is a bigger ass than we ever feared.

I too was only obeying orders, explained Alison Scott, executive director of Family and Child Services for the Waterloo Region “I do not see any need for our agency to apologize for fulfilling our mandated responsibility.”

All this follows on the heels of the decision of the Ottawa Nine (the Supreme Court of Canada) allowing the state to indoctrinate Quebec children against family wishes and traditions.

Big Brother is not only alive and well in Canada, but growing to fearsome proportions. And it's all according to the rule of law (enshrined by lawyers in the Charter of Rights) which states we must obey the law simply because it is the law, not whether it is good or bad for society.

Foreign Issues Have No Place in Canadian Politics

On March 01, 2010, the Toronto Star quoted Harbans Jandali, president of the Ontario Sikh and Gurdwara Council: "Unless they make amends quickly, the Liberals will definitely lose this community's votes." He was reacting to Premier Dalton McGuinty's 30-minute meeting with Kamal Nath, a minister in the Indian government, in Toronto to speak to the Canada-India Business Council.

Sikhs allege that Nath abetted riots in which more than 3,000 Sikhs were killed -- riots in reaction to the 1984 assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi by her Sikh bodyguards. I sent a copy of this letter to the Sikh Council. No reply. The Star did not publish it:

Re Sikh leaders promise to make McGuinty pay, March 24, 2010

I hope the president of the Ontario Sikh and Gurdwara Council was misquoted when he threatened to make an event in India an issue in an Ontario election. Otherwise, it means that when I cast my ballot over such matters as education, health care, social welfare etc., my vote will be cancelled because of an incident in a distant land with no relevance to Ontario.

My parents came to Toronto in the 1920s. Not once did they talk of the politics of their native Austria. They did not force us to learn German, or wear the costumes of their homeland. They always voted for what they thought best for Toronto, for Ontario, for Canada, not for Austria. All they wanted was to blend into their chosen culture. It is to be hoped later waves of immigrants do likewise.