Media
After months of making the news only with our various communicable
diseases--SARS, mad cow and West Nile--we're now getting
world famous for our cutting-edge laws on gay marriage and
legalized drugs. The Bush conservatives are repulsed by our
depravity. My friends in New York and San Francisco have
been quietly inquiring about applying for citizenship.
And Canadians have been eating it up, filling the newspapers
with giddy articles about our independence. "You're
not the boss of us, George," Jim Coyle wrote in the
Toronto Star . "So much for nice; we're getting
interesting," wrote
conservative columnist William Thorsell in the Globe and
Mail . Polls are showing that it's not just that Canadians
are becoming more forward-looking and groovier, it's also
that the United States is lurching backward, retrenching
into more conservative values. According to Canada's summer
bestseller, Fire and Ice: The United States, Canada and
the Myth of Converging Values , by pollster Michael Adams,
Americans between the ages of 18 and 29 are twice as likely
to worry
about crime, "moral decline" and ethnic conflict
as their Canadian counterparts .
****
June 24, 2003 - BC's Police Complaint Commissioner has agreed
to review the case of a Mi'kmaq man, 40 year old Frank Paul
who died in a Vancouver alley five years ago after being
left there by city police, who had earlier taken him into
custody.
Police complaint commissioner Dirk Ryneveld released a copy
of a police videotape depicting the last day in the life
of Frank Joseph Paul, the New Brunswick Mi'Kmaq man who died
in a Vancouver East End alley in the early morning hours
of December 6, 1998.
A news release from the Police Complaint Commissioner said, "After
being removed from the Vancouver Police jail in rain-soaked
clothing, Paul was placed in an alley by a member of the
Vancouver Police Department. He died shortly afterwards of
hypothermia. No public hearing, inquest or public inquiry
was held regarding this matter. Paul's death gained public
attention last year during testimony before the legislative
special review committee, which was reviewing the police
complaint process in British Columbia."
The Police Complaint Commissioner said he determined that
the exceptional circumstances of this case warranted re-opening
it. He viewed the videotape depicting Paul's physical condition
at the time he was brought to the police jail and his apparent
inability to care for himself when transported to the alley,
where he was later found dead.
Also read The
Cold, Wet Death of Frank Joseph Paul by Reed
Eurchuk in the Republic from May, 2002.
****
For here is a minister whose action, while
lacking in criminal intent, compromised an investigation
into one of the central complaints about the industry, namely
the way escapements of farmed fish threaten wild stocks.
Mr. van Dongen, for his part, conceded
that he'd been guilty of "misjudgment." But he insisted it
was a "spur of the moment" thing, something he'd blurted
over the telephone without another thought.
Almost like an instinctive reaction, one
might speculate: "Fish farming company . . . friend . . .
tell them everything!"
The once and future fisheries minister
also argued that he hadn't realized he wasn't supposed to
reveal the results of the investigation to the company under
investigation. "It was my lack of understanding of the process," he
explained.
Thus, the van Dongen defense: Not crooked.
Not totally in bed with the industry. Just ignorant.
Which was apparently just enough to win
back his post as a cabinet minister in Gordon Campbell's
government.
****
Alliance Leader Stephen Harper describes
Jean Chrétien's stance as "gutless, embarrassing
and cowardly," while Alberta Premier Ralph Klein writes
to the U.S. ambassador to Canada, saying that "the president
and your nation have exemplified leadership. This leadership
has earned the deepest respect of many, many Albertans. "
The anti-Canadians are always looking
for the worst, celebrating Canada's failures, whether real
or perceived. The National Post, the most virulent
right-wing newspaper in Canadian history, is rife with anti-Canadianism.
The paper's editorial policy has been described as "Canada
sucks," never missing a chance to point out its "inadequacies."
They see the "brain drain" not
as a worldwide phenomenon (ask India about the impact of
losing their best people to America), but solely as evidence
of Canada's undesirability versus the U.S.
Try as it might, the Post's search
for a Canadian link to the 9/11 terrorist attacks did not
yield any results.
Harper and his party are another bastion
of anti-Canadianism.
Their toadyism toward America is only
barely outmatched by their disdain for Canada.
Remember, Harper is a "national" leader
who once said that "Canada appears content to become
a second-tier socialistic country, boasting ever more loudly
about its economy and social services to mask its second-rate
status ..."
****
Canada's networks are another step removed
from compromise and generally offer more diverse viewpoints
than the rest. The lesson is to not rely on one source --
especially CNN -- for your war viewing.
On the home front more perceptual weaselry
was advanced yesterday by the Canadian Alliance, relentlessly
pounding the war drums.
Leader Stephen Harper accused Jean Chretien
of "embarrassing us" by not endorsing Bush unilateralism.
Was Harper talking about the Alliance, or Canada?
Must be the Alliance, for 66 per
cent of Canadians back Chretien's call. The House then went
on to handily defeat an Alliance motion endorsing the invasion.
Harper and Stockwell Day put it about
that Canada has abandoned its southern neighbour, an argument
also advanced by U.S. Ambassador Paul Cellucci and Hockey
Night in Canada foghorn Don Cherry.
Codswallop. Canada has not "abandoned" America,
it has disagreed with the sole superpower's disturbing trend
to unilateral decision-making on the world stage.
This is much more complicated than "Bush
good, Saddam bad." Of course the Iraqi dictator is bad,
real bad -- like a lot of other nasty leaders around the
world.
Perhaps we should start a fund to buy Harper
and Stockwell Day one way tickets to Texas. Don Cherry can
stay though; he's a blowhard but at least he is entertaining.
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