Order of Canada B-list

Published in the Toronto Star of May 3, 2015

Burnishing the honour, Editorial April 27

The government is correct when it says there are “under-represented sectors” among recipients of the Order of Canada. That group includes discredited Conservative senators, media clowns and other denizens of yahoo land.

Honours must not be awarded according to geography, notoriety or a misguided notion of democracy. The purpose of any award is to recognize special achievements of deserving people, achievements that serve as inspiration for the rest of us.

The proposed affirmative action program will create a B-list of winners and the attendant dumbing down of this unique award.

The Dis-Order of Canada

Letter to the National Post, April 23, 2015

Stephen Harper intends to dumb down the Order of Canada (Order of Canada reform in budget, Apr 23). The Prime Minister is correct in his belief that certain sectors of society are under-represented such as discredited Conservative senators and inhabitants of the yahoo element. The reported feeling is that there is too much Margaret Atwood and too little Don Cherry among Order recipients.

By coincidence, elsewhere in today's National Post (Where culture wars were worth fighting), we read, "A TV-ready image is valued considerably more than any literary pedigree . . . People today go to pundit school. They learn how to be on TV as a pundit, but they don't have any substance. Intelligence has been replaced by volume."

Honours are not intended to be brought "closer to the people," as Harper asserts. Their purpose is to recognize quality achievements to which we should all aspire. Is it time to bid farewell the nobility of the Order of Canada?

Sex education. At what age?

Letter to the Toronto Star, April 21, 2015. Unpublished.

It is unfortunate when a message is answered by an attack on the messenger. Such is the case with three letter writers who disagree with protesters of the sex-ed program proposed by the Ontario government (Ignorance's last bastion, April 20). 

Rather than deal with the concerns of the reported thousands of parents, the letter writers, one of them a teacher, resort to abuse and name-calling. There may be much to commend the program. Yet it does spawn reasonable doubt, for example, as to when young children should be exposed to more mature sexual situations. 

Protests, such as that at Queen's Park recently, voice the failure to address honestly held opinion. The government should immediately undertake an educational program along with a clear message as to its purpose. The reaction might surprise. 

A new embassy in Israel

Israel is the sole nation whose purported capital city, Jerusalem, no government in the world recognizes as such. In April 1979, Opposition Leader Joe Clark announced before the Canada-Israel Committee in Toronto that, should he become Prime Minister, Canada would move its embassy to Jerusalem.

"Next year in Jerusalem," he said, "is a Jewish prayer which we intend to make a Canadian reality." In June of the same year, newly-elected Prime Minister Clark affirmed his election promise. Eighteen days later, he said the decision would be deferred "until the status of Jerusalem is clarified within a comprehensive agreement between Israel and her Arab neighbours." That has yet to happen.

This month, Stephen Harper announced the construction of a new Israeli embassy in Tel Aviv. Not even our Israel-obsessed Prime Minister dares risk the opposition that greeted Clark's error.

On occasion, reality does have its effect.

Strange law makes for doubtful citizens

An unacceptable application of the law was reported in the media today. The issue concerned five Toronto police officers convicted of obstructing justice and perjury through falsification of reports. The five received 45-day conditional sentences, that is house arrest with wide latitude for leaving home. They appealed.

Three court of appeal judges dismissed the appeal. They wrote that perjury strikes "at the very root of our justice system" and "public confidence in the honesty of the police is fundamental to the integrity of the criminal justice system."

Their decision continues, "When the perpetrators of the crime are police officers sworn to uphold the law, the objective of denunciation has heightened significance. Police offices owe a special duty to be faithful to the justice system."

Crown prosecutors asked for a three-year jail sentence.

"However," the judgement concluded, "in light of all the circumstances, particularly the passage of time . . . I would order that the operation of the sentences be stayed." In other words, the convicted walk free.

Two salient features of the court's decision: It says that the police may contravene the law and not be severely punished. One of the perpetrators is still a police officer. It also informs future perpetrators that, to receive a light sentence, delay the process as long as possible.  And who better to manipulate the law than those whose duty it is to enforce it?

Human rights commissions for fun and profit

Published in the Toronto Star:

Only history with show the correctness or otherwise of the Supreme Court's recent decision against Saguenay's recitation of a prayer before city council meetings. 

Salient in this issue is the role of the Quebec Human Rights Commission. The objector to the council prayer appealed to the commission and demanded $100,000. He was awarded $30,000 in compensatory and punitive damages.

Human rights commissions have become cash cows for the aggrieved, imagined or actual, a situation now endorsed by the Supreme Court. There are those who earn income conjuring up or creating causes of action before these tribunals, the complainant's costs borne by taxpayers. The accused must hire his own defence. 

Were there no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, one wonders how many complaints would be made to such tribunals. 

"Us" and "them"

Why are gay issues always framed as religious issues?  

What about the non-believer who does not favour gay marriage or people marching naked in public, because rightly or wrongly, he believes it against nature or for social reasons?  

Our courts and human rights tribunals operate on a winner take all basis, a "us" against "them" mentality. The result exacerbates differences of opinion and fosters the no-compromise mentality so favoured by the media. 

Diversity works both ways. What needed is clearer legislation and tribunals better trained to resolve such issues to provide accommodation for all honestly held points of view.

International petulance

Prime Minster Harper insists on parading his embarrassing incompetence on the world stage.  

Some months ago, his petulance lost him an opportunity to speak on Ukrainian human rights with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  At the recent Americas Summit, while President Obama discussed an alliance with Raul Castro, Harper refused to speak to the Cuban President. 

With such adolescent behaviour the PM forfeited face-to-face opportunities to advocate the human rights he claims to espouse. To whom does he speak of human rights, if not the offenders?  

Harper has made a career nullifying Canada's international stature. He has lowered our status as renown peacemaker.

Bureaucracy Rampant

Letter to the Toronto Star. Unpublished.

Re Riding without a bell takes toll, April 9:

A cyclist without a bell is fined and loses demerit points on her driver's licence. There is no logical connection between riding a bicycle and a licence to drive a car. Imagine two cyclists, neither with a bell, are both fined. The latter happens to have a driver's licence is doubly punished with demerit points. 

What's next? Demerit points for late payment of taxes? Demerit points for not shovelling the snow in front of our homes?  Surely someone in the bureaucracy can see the nonsense in relating two distinct situations? 

Oil and the Western World

Letter published in the Toronto Star, April 4, 2014

Re PM, NDP clash over legality of bombing March 26:

Winston Churchill advices against legal entanglements. Whether something if lawful or not is of no consequence to the victim. The question becomes: Is it right and just to bomb someone who poses scant, is any, danger?

The existence if ISIS is yet another eruption of discontent that has characterized that region of the world for more than 1,500 years. Let's be honest. If it weren't for oil, the West would ignore the Middle East.

Why are we killing?

A letter published in The National Post March 28, 2015:

Re: A Mission Worth Extending, editorial, March 25.

Your editorial presents reasons why the mission in Iraq should not be extended. It points out that during the past six months, the Islamic State of Iraq and Al-Sham has become even more barbaric. 

In other words, the bombing has done little good. Yet you endorse Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s solution to throw more gasoline on the fire. Despite increased barbarism, you deem the “mission can be judged a success.” You state unless we continue bombing, the bad situation would “spread over much of the Middle East.” Canada’s job is not to defend Israel or any other country in the region. 

You state “the threat is real.” Not to Canada. You state “the international community had to act.” What good did it do in Afghanistan? 

Western nations should stop meddling in Arab wars. It matters little whether the world buys oil from the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries or ISIS.

The Hell of War

Two pieces of related information.

I once knew an elderly woman who, during the Second World War, lived in a small German village. She told me that the locals could distinguish a German aircraft from one of the Allied air forces. They could also tell from the drone of the engines if it carried bombs.

As sometimes happened, Allied planes missed their targets and headed back to England with a full bomb load. As an aircraft would never attempt a landing with bombs aboard, the practice was to dump them in the Channel.

She told me that on one occasion they heard approaching their village a plane returning from a mission over Berlin or Frankfurt, but still carrying bombs. It flew over her village. No harm done. Over the next non-strategic village, it dropped its bombs killing some of the inhabitants.

                                                                 *   *   *

In the 1950's, my summer job was with the Air Regulations branch of the Canadian Department of Transport.  I assisted the inspectors, all of whom were veteran pilots.I learned that one of them did not drop the bombs of an aborted mission in the channel. He ordered, "As long as they land somewhere on German soil."

Modern Mediocrity

"The brand new mediocrity is more cherished than the shop worn perfection." So wrote Baltasar Gracian in his 1653 A Truthtelling Manual and the Art of Worldly Wisdom.

The Spanish Jesuit anticipated the noise that today passes as popular music, while the perfection of classical music gets pushed aside. Money interests have dumbed down any pretensions to quality still lingering in the modern soul.

An antithetical observation appears in The Austrian Achievement 1700-1800 where  Ernst Wangermann wrote: "It was for the growing number of these amateur performers, with their great thirst for emotional stimulation, that C.P.E. Bach, Haydn and Mozart wrote some of their most inspired music.  For the challenge to discover the accents of the soul . . . was the one that appealed most strongly to their own personalities and to their artistic aspirations."

Would anyone dare to so describe the concoctors of today's musical offerings?

How to Produce Home-Grown Radicals

There is much in the news lately about Canadians fleeing their native land to work and fight for the Islamic State. This reportage is rive with speculation why these young people would place themselves in harm's way.

Experts in such matters have probed deeply into this behaviour and emerged with equally deep and speculative reasons. They do not see the most salient motivations staring them in the face.

One need not be unduly sensitive or idealistic to become disaffected with a society that condones corporate greed, that is laced with pornography, that promotes people parading naked down our streets, along with worker exploitation and government insensitivity. That is what many young people witness in our secular world.

Add to this mix personal grievances --  no job, uninspiring education, aversion to war, poor counselling etc. and we have produced radicals willing to fight to destroy such a society, or build a society more in keeping with their beliefs.

All quite understandable. No experts needed.

Police Paid Leave Beyond Reason

Letter to the Toronto Star published Feb. 23, 2015

Re Peel Regional police officer convicted in car insurance scam, Feb 14:

It is beyond reason that a recently convicted police officer has been on paid leave since his arrest in the spring of 2011. That’s four years of salary at taxpayer expense.

I trust his conviction ends this nonsense, or will it continue during a protracted appeal process? There is something wrong with a legal system that permits such mischief.

One solution is to place in trust the salary of an arrested officer. If found not-guilty, he receives back pay plus interest. If convicted, the funds are returned to the taxpayer.

In the interim, the police union should cover his basic needs, or he be allowed to find alternative employment.

Charlie Hebdo and Free Speech

Letter to Toronto Star, January 28, 2015. Unpublished.

The initial reaction to the January 7 events at Charlie Hebdo has faded. We may now quietly examine the situation.

This weekly of juvenile effusions itself indulges in censorship. In 2008, the magazine published cartoons challenged as anti-Semitic. Because of the outcry, cartoonist Maurice Sinet  was asked to issue an apology. He refused and was fired.  So much for Charlie Hebdo being "on the front lines of the free-speech fight," as the Toronto Star describes this purportedly satirical publication.

We currently have a visitor trying to raise funds for the cash-strapped magazine (Canadians urged to fight against fundamentalism, Jan 27). She frames her effort as a battle against Islam which "must submit to secularism." Is it Cartesian reasoning to equate a radical element with an entire religion?

Dialogue and accommodation promote understanding, not confrontation. That's something Charlie Hebdo and its fund-raiser apparently do not understand. It is to be hoped that our visitor return to France wiser but empty handed.

Supreme Court Okays Death on Demand

On February 7, 2015, the Supreme Court of Canada jolted downwards the quality of health care in Canada. It approved death on demand. Doctors capable of aborting healthy babies would not hesitate to sign death warrants for the terminally ill, the chronically ill, the mentally ill and the disabled.

Then we have the intervention of human rights commissions and their authority to override Supreme Court decisions and parliamentary restrictions. Spurts in the floodgates are already evident in some European countries where there is currently a demand for lethal injection from a clinically depressed teenager and a healthy prisoner serving a life sentence.

Would denial violate constitutional and charter rights to equality before the law?  Restrictions were once in place against abortion on demand. Remember what our Supreme Court did in that case and what Parliament failed to do. Members of the highest court in the land are out of touch with reality (not for the first time) if they believe restrictions can work.

Too White to Woo

Letter published in the Toronto Star, January 13, 2015 

To claim that the House of Commons is too white, old and male smacks of racism, ageism and sexism.(Parliament too white, old and male, study says, Jan 3). Parliamentarians are elected for the sole purpose of representing our political views as ultimately expressed in the laws they enact. 

I do not care if my federal, provincial and municipal representatives are freckled, polka-dot Luggnaggians, so long we envision our Canada, our province, our city more or less in the same way. If they fail in that, I do my best to see them replaced by someone who does.

Let us never forget the ringing words of Martin Luther King Jr. who dreamed that one day his children would "not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character." 

Political Correctness Rampant

Letter to the Toronto Star published January 13, 2015.

To claim that the House of Commons is too white, old and male smacks of racism, ageism and sexism (Parliament too while, old and male, study says, Jan 3). Parliamentarians are elected for the sole purpose to of representing our political views as ultimately expressed in the laws they enact.

I do not care if my federal, provincial or municipal representatives are freckled, polka-dot Luggnaggians, so long as we envision our Canada, our province and our city more or less in the same way. If they fail in that, I do my best to see them replaced by someone who does.

We must never forget the ringing words of Martin Luther King Jr. who dreamed that one day his children would "not be judged by the colour of their skin, but by the content of their character."

Parting Words

"It is obvious to the whole world that a service is better than an injury, that gentleness is preferable to anger.  It only remains, therefore, to use our reason to discern the shades of goodness and badness." So wrote Voltaire in the eighteenth century.

In his television series and book, Civilization, Kenneth Clark elaborated on this theme: "I believe that order is better than chaos, creation better than destruction, I prefer gentleness to violence, forgiveness to vendetta. On the whole, I think that knowledge is preferable to ignorance, and I am sure that human sympathy is more valuable the ideology . . . I believe in courtesy, the ritual by which we avoid hurting other people's feelings by satisfying our own egos . . . Above all, I believe in the God-given genius of certain individuals, and I value a society that makes their existence possible."

Clark, nevertheless, concluded his beliefs on a note of pessimism: "One may be optimistic, but one can't exactly be joyful at the prospect before us." This was in the 1960s.

And  three decades or so later, historian Eric Hobsbawm writing of the family, social and political institutions as the foundations of civilization: "Their future is obscure. That is why, at the end of the [twentieth] century, I cannot look to the future with great optimism."