February 2012

Pin It

Quebec government wins in Ethics and Religious Culture case

by Jonathan McLeod on February 28, 2012

Writing for Troy Media, the Canadian Constitution Foundation’s Derek From argues that the province of Quebec’s Ethics and Religious Culture course violates Charter of Rights’s freedom of religion section:

On February 17th, the Supreme Court of Canada (SCC) decided that the Charter’s guarantee of freedom of religion does not prevent the Quebec government from forcing children to take the ERC course. This result was easily foreseeable. For the challenge to have succeeded, the parents needed to prove that the ERC course interfered with their ability to pass their faith to their children – something the parents consider a religious duty.

The SCC’s decision did not answer whether the ERC course might violate the freedom of religion of children or teachers, and it did not inquire whether other Charter rights might be violated. The only question addressed was whether the freedom of religion of the parents was violated. This is a significant short-coming

Interestingly (perhaps), the lawyers for the parents have claimed that new evidence has come out since they first launched their challenge that would change outcome. As well, two justices expressed some reservations (FYI, this links to a French site) about the decision (though they did agree with it), worrying that the course could wind up stepping over the line.

In its young life, the course has experienced some judicial defeats, as at least one private religious school has successfully won an exemption (though that stems as much from the wording of the legislation as it does any constitutional right).

From what little I can glean about the course, I’m inclined to agree with the Supreme Court (much as I would like to admonish the Quebec governemtn for another wretched and unconstitutional piece of legislation). Of course, just because something is constitutional does not mean it’s a good idea, and this is where I think the government erred.

There is just too much room for abuse in a religion course, and to force it on everyone seems like a bad fit. You see, not only is this demanded of public and private school students, it is also demanded of home-schooled students. Currently, the Quebec government persecutes any parents who dare to remove their kids from the system and teach them at home. There’s no reason to believe that once given a new club with which to punish these parents, they won’t choose to use it.

{ 0 comments }

Pin It

Police discover penis, but no gun.

by Jonathan McLeod on February 28, 2012

A little girl draws a picture of her Dad with a gun and a 26-year-old Kitchener, Ontario, man gets stripped by police. From The Toronto Star:

Sansone said he went to pick up his three children on Wednesday and was summoned to the principal’s office, where three police officers were waiting. They said he was being charged with possession of a firearm.

He was escorted from the school, handcuffed and put in a cruiser. At the same time, other officers went to his home, where his wife and 15-month-old child were waiting for him.

They made his wife come to the police station while the other three children were taken to Family and Children’s Services to be interviewed.

At the police station, Sansone was forced to remove his clothes for a full strip search.

Several hours later, a detective apologized and said he was being released with no charges, Sansone said.

The detective told him his daughter Neaveh had drawn a picture of a man holding a gun. When a teacher asked her who the man was, the girl replied, “That’s my daddy’s. He uses it to shoot bad guys and monsters.”

It should be unbelievable, but it’s not. Maybe you guys are on to something with your 2nd Amendment. I’m pretty sure George Washington was down with shooting monsters.

{ 11 comments }

Pin It

Research vs. teaching in higher education

by Jonathan McLeod on February 27, 2012

I know we have a few academic-types around the League, so I thought I’d share this post by Frances Woolley, an Economics professor at Carleton University (Go Ravens!). In it, she asks, “why is research higher status than teaching?”

But if the actual substance of much academic research is only of intelligible to a small group of scholars, why is it accorded such high status? Why are taxpayers prepared to fund research intensive universities? Why do undergraduate students choose to attend research intensive universities, even though the “top scholars” may have little contact with undergrads?

I think this is because research output is a signal of ability. To function as a signal, an activity must have two properties. First, it must be easy to observe. Research output, like peacock feathers, is readily measurable. Publications and citations can be counted, journals can be ranked. Second, an effective signal of ability must be easier for a high ability person to produce than a low ability person. For example, jogging is an effective signal of fitness because it’s easier for fit people to jog than for out of shape people. (That strange North American habit of talking about exercise? It’s all signalling.) In the same way, research is an effective signal of ability because it’s easier for a creative person to think of novel research ideas, it’s easier for an analytical person to program a new econometric routine, and so on. 

Teaching just does not work as a signal in the same way…

 

{ 4 comments }

Pin It

Commenting policy

by Jonathan McLeod on February 27, 2012

Building off of Erik’s front page post on the League’s commenting policy, I thought it appropriate to bring it up here. I like the League’s policy, and we’ll follow it here. Like most of you, much of what drew me to the League was the quality and good faith nature of the comments, so that’s what I hope for here. If any policing needs to happen, hopefully, it’ll happen organically.

Here are a few details on how I’ll, personally, approach policing the comments:

I don’t delete comments (aside from spam). I don’t ban people. I tend to ignore trolls, jerks and nasty people. If anything especially egregious occurs, I’ll let The Powers That Be make a decision, and we’ll abide by it here. Otherwise, go to town.

{ 2 comments }

Pin It

The dangers of doomsaying

by Jonathan McLeod on February 26, 2012

The Ottawa Citizen‘s Dan Gardner has a good analysis of the way in which environmentalists have undermined their case with their extreme rhetoric:

If we fully develop Alberta’s oilsands and burn the oil they produce, we will raise the temperature measurably all over the planet. That’s the conclusion of an analysis by University of Victoria scientists Andrew Weaver and Neil Swart and published in the journal Nature.

Rather a big deal, one would think. But that’s not what we read in the media this week.

The banner headline on the front page of the Globe and Mail: “Science rides to aid of oilsands.”

Mr. Gardner’s argument is applicable to just about any public policy debate, of course, but perhaps the more important the issue, the more important it is that you don’t sabotage your own position.

{ 0 comments }

Pin It

Tim Horton’s, Anne Murray and a Canadian Civil War

by Jonathan McLeod on February 24, 2012

I know there are some strong feelings about Tim Horton’s around here, and some even stronger feelings about Anne Murray (which I totally don’t understand). So, for all of you looking for cracks in the facade of Canadian unity, I give you Anne vs. Tim:

Legendary Canadian singer Anne Murray is trying to stop construction of a wind farm near her Pugwash, N.S., summer home and that’s put her at odds with another local success story.

…

Murray, 66, is a member of the Gulf Shore Preservation Society, which opposes the project. She said she shares the association’s concern that the environmental assessment for the project that the developer filed with the provincial Environment Department is incomplete.

…

That support apparently includes Ron Joyce, one of the founders of the Tim Hortons doughnut empire, who was born nearby and owns a luxury golf course and resort near Pugwash.

“I am aware of Anne’s ongoing negative comments on wind farms,” he said in an email to the National Post. “I personally am not a supporter of her argument. [T]he world is moving forward for a better source than fossil fuels…. I see no major negatives in countries that have them.”

Okay, fine. This isn’t really important. Go back to your day.

{ 11 comments }

Pin It

“Just mail $1 to sorry Prime Minister.”

by Jonathan McLeod on February 23, 2012

There’s a bit of a scandal brewing up here. The Ottawa Citizen‘s Glen McGregor and Stephen Maher broke the story that the servers of a call centre with ties to the Conservative Party were used for misleading and potentially illegal robocalls during the last federal election:

Elections Canada launched its investigation after it was inundated with complaints about election day calls in Guelph, Ont., one of 18 ridings across the country where voters were targeted by harassing or deceptive phone messages in an apparent effort to discourage Liberal supporters from voting.

In Guelph, a riding the Conservatives hoped to take from the Liberals, voters received recorded calls pretending to be from Elections Canada, telling them their polling stations had been moved. The calls led to a chaotic scene at one polling station, and likely led some voters to give up on voting.

Postmedia News and the Ottawa Citizen have found that Elections Canada traced the calls to Racknine Inc., a small Edmonton call centre that worked for the party’s national campaign and those of at least nine Conservative candidates, including Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s own campaign in Calgary Southwest. There is no evidence that Harper’s campaign or any of the other candidates were involved in the calls.

Racknine says it was unaware its servers were being used for the fake calls.

The Tories, understandably, are trying to distance themselves from the controversy, denying any link between the robocalls and the national campaign. They did not rule out the possibility of a local campaign (or campaigner) being behind the calls.

This is only the most recent allegation of dirty pool leveled against the Conservative Party. For years, there have been allegations of exceeding election spending limits, which finally resulted in criminal charges. In December, the Tories were caught making calls in Liberal MP Irwin Cotler’s riding that implied that Mr. Cotler would soon be stepping down. The calls in Mr. Cotler’s riding broke no laws, but they definitely hurt the Conservative Party’s reputation.

Opposition parties, understandably, were full-throated in their condemnation of these acts of voter suppression. Here is NDP MP Pat Martin:

“How is this different from a bunch of goons with clubs blocking the door to a voter station as we’ve seen in third world countries or the deep south of the United States? Because the net effect is the same.”

Liberal MP John McCallum led the charge for the red team:

“I think it’s relevant the degree to which the Conservative Party had ties to this company, yes,” he said.

“We don’t have a smoking gun pointing to Stephen Harper or the Conservative Party, but we do know that these actions benefited the Conservative Party. We do know that the strategy of vote repression has been in their toolkit for some time, so there are definitely suspicions.

“I think it’s also a technique that the Conservative Party has borrowed from its Republican friends to the south, where the technique, I think, is more developed.”

You may have noticed that both MPs took swipes and America and/or the GOP. This is pretty standard operating procedure in Canada. Personally, I think it’s sad that so many Canadians think that we’re not smart enough to come up with our own dirty tricks.

The Opposition parties are right. This is a serious matter, and whomever was behind it was engaging in voter suppression. Still, as of now there is no firm evidence that the Conservative Party was behind this. If I were make a guess, I’d say that a Conservative was certainly behind it all, but it probably won’t get tied to the national campaign or to the Prime Minister. I’ll bet they’ll be able to shrug it off as some rogue agent.

Regardless, it will be interesting to see what comes of this.

{ 3 comments }

Pin It

Canadian government willing to let a man die

by Jonathan McLeod on February 23, 2012

For quite some time, it has been a standard policy of the Canadian government (stretching back before the current government) to intervene on behalf of any Canadian sentenced to death in a foreign land. For one person, though, the government’s actions are embarassingly minimal. How embarassing, you ask? The government had to have its hand slapped by the courts in order to write a meagre letter to the state of Montana:

DEER LODGE, Mont. – With the clock ticking down toward a decision on whether he lives or dies, the only Canadian on death row in the United States is expressing regret and sadness for the crimes he committed and the situation he finds himself in.

But Ronald Smith is also angry at the Canadian government for its “tepid” support of his clemency bid — support that came only after Federal Court forced Ottawa to act on Smith’s behalf.

“It bothered me,” Smith said in an interview with The Canadian Press at Montana State Prison — his home for the last 30 years.

…

Smith, originally from Red Deer, Alta., has been on death row since 1982. A drug-addicted drifter back then, Smith and an accomplice, both of them high on LSD and booze, marched Thomas Running Rabbit and Harvey Mad Man Jr. into the woods near East Glacier, Mont., and shot them in the head.

They were cold-blooded killings. Smith said he shot the men just to know how it felt to take a life and because he wanted to steal their car.

This is pretty shameful non-action by our government. No Canadian should be left twisting on death row, completely ignored by the government. Whether its Montana or Mozambique, it is the responsibility of the government to do what it reasonably can to try to save the lives of Canadian citizens.

Montana, for its part, can heed or ignore any pleas from Canada. I won’t presume to tell them how to run their justice system*, but their justice system isn’t the point. Canada’s callous indifference is.

*Who am I kidding, of course I’ll tell them how to run their justice system; I just won’t demand that they run it any particular way.

{ 4 comments }

Pin It

More reasons to hate the 1%

by Jonathan McLeod on February 22, 2012

Okay, so this could be seen as my second consecutive post that attacks the wealthy. I don’t mean to get into any sort of class warfare, but, sometimes, things just come up.

Recently, Jonathan Kay (an editor for National Post) wrote a column for Toronto Life titled, Almost Rich, that detailed the difficulties of living in Toronto on a 1%-ers salary ($196K). This prompted a pretty solid takedown (if a little mean) by Gawker’s Hamilton Nolan. Mr. Kay, who has always seemed like a stand-up columnist, offered a rather sporting response to being “Gawkified”.

I had been tempted to write about this, but, thankfully, didn’t, as Chris Tindal has written a better assessment than I probably could have:

And Kay does make some arguments to that effect. He writes that “for many Torontonians, that $10,400 [the after-tax, monthly income of someone making $196,000 a year] disappears fast.” By way of example, he points out that living in a $1.5 million house, spending $1000 on a stroller, renovating a kitchen to add granite counters and “spending a fortune on artisanal cheeses” to host a “casual” weekend gathering is really expensive. (“No shit,” replies Nolan.)

But the profiles that follow, like Kay’s examples, don’t support this argument at all. Instead we’re introduced to one man who spends $800 a month on wine in addition to his $1,000 a month on clothes. We meet a retired couple who buy a new Mercedes every three years using cash. One family of four owns a Toronto house, a cottage and two cars including a BMW while still managing to put away $20,000 a year in savings and go on an annual $7,000 vacation to an all-inclusive resort. Another family’s reported monthly expenses only came to $5,780, presumably leaving them with a $4,000 a month surplus.

Most people would agree those sound like pretty rich lifestyles, as Nolan ruthlessly and convincingly asserts, so if the point of this feature is to argue that $196,000 isn’t that rich, these are very strange examples to hold up.

Mr. Tindal notes that some of the issues at play in Mr. Kay’s columns are worthy of discussion. Unfortunately, they’re not sufficiently addressed by Mr. Kay, nor are they explored in the Gawker rant.

{ 0 comments }

Pin It

This is why people hate the 1%

by Jonathan McLeod on February 21, 2012

Woe is the lowly millionaire with nothing to do but worry about what might fill up his time:

I’m a 34-year-old father of two living in Regina. My wife and I plan to retire in eight years with a net worth of about $1.1 million. What started out as Freedom 45 has become Freedom 42 — even in a weak economy — through a combination of paying down my mortgage debt and a modest increase in my investments.

As Rhea and I consider the future for ourselves and our boys we have turned our discussions away from “if Freedom 42 is possible” to “What, exactly, are we going to do with all the extra time?’” There’s the mythical image of retirement — the perpetual holiday sitting on a hammock in the backyard, a life of travel to exotic destinations, volunteer work that will reward us in non-monetary ways and a chance for a second and completely different career. All of the above? some of the above? Which will it be?

Whatever he does, I don’t think I’ll be reading about it.

{ 12 comments }

← Previous Entries