Categories for Feature
My latest: Lametti does the right thing
Let’s give credit where credit’s due.
Namely: David Lametti’s proposed bail reforms are exceptionally good. Outstandingly good.
It was not always thus. Since he became Canada’s Minister of Justice, David Lametti has not exactly covered himself with glory. A sampling:
• He has suggested that Canada’s provinces be stripped of their constitutional authority over natural resources.
• He urged another cabinet minister to send in the Canadian Armed Forces – and a tank – to forcibly remove the Ottawa “convoy” occupiers.
• He defended Justin Trudeau’s attempts to pressure prosecutors to go easy on a Liberal Party donor facing a corruption trial.
• He has tweeted, then rescinded, about the appointment of one of his political donors to the bench. (The donor was later appointed anyway.)
Like we say: not exactly covered in glory. The former McGill law professor has always had a Stéphane Dion look to him – you know, an owly academic who doesn’t really understand politics.
But, on his proposed bail reforms, Lametti has hit the proverbial ball out of the proverbial park.
The need for the reforms is clear. Since the pandemic faded, crime has skyrocketed – and, in particular, violent crimes committed by repeat offenders. One fairly recent study found that a whopping 23 per cent of federal offenders re-offended within two years of getting released. And the number who re-offend using violence is up, as well.
The case that likely pushed Lametti to act was tragic and unforgettable: the cold-blooded murder of an OPP officer late last year. Const. Grzegorz Pierzchala was killed west of Hagersville, Ont. just after Christmas. And the alleged shooter was Randall McKenzie, who had been out on bail and under a lifetime firearms ban.
The outcry in the Pierzchala case was immediate and nationwide, and the Trudeau Liberals could not ignore it – their internal polls reportedly showed that Canadians were angry and afraid about the surge in violent crime, particularly by repeat offenders.
So Lametti acted, and this week unveiled his proposed reforms. They’re tough.
For instance, Lametti wants to create what is sometimes called “reverse-onus” bail conditions for people charged with serious violent offences involving a weapon – where that person was convicted of a similar violent offence. A “reverse onus” law is exactly what the name implies – it shifts the burden of proof onto the accused.
Lametti’s changes will also slap certain firearms offences with the reverse-onus requirement, and expand it to cases of domestic abuse.
Anticipating an avalanche of Charter challenges by criminal defence lawyers, Lametti told the media: “You are innocent until proven guilty, and this is a critically important part of our legal system. But what we’re doing for certain violent offences is changing the default position and making sure that it is only in cases where there isn’t a threat to security.”
So, in some cases, it’ll be up to repeat offenders to show why they should get bail. Not on prosecutors to show why they shouldn’t.
Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre responded by saying he’d go even further – under a government led by him, he’d completely ban bail hearings for such offenders. So, a repeat offender arrested for a new violent crime would get “jail, not bail,” he said.
That’s good gut-level politics – but it’d be unlikely to ever survive a Charter challenge. Under section seven of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, every Canadian has the right to life, liberty and security of the person “and the right not to be deprived thereof except in accordance with the principles of fundamental justice.”
Poilievre’s approach would likely get thrown out for violating fundamental justice – and then violent re-offenders would be free to re-offend.
Lametti’s approach seems to be the better one. His legislation was introduced in the House of Commons on Tuesday morning. We’ll see what happens to it next – in Commons debate, in committee, and in the Senate.
But, for now, David Lametti has done the right thing. And he deserves credit for trying.
KINSELLACAST 261: Your passport to a great show – with Kheiriddin, Belanger, Mraz, and Lilley (in spirit)! Plus: Clash, Ruts, Tim Armstrong, Specials AKA!
My latest: China’s tentacles
It’s nothing new. It’s not unique. And it’s not just something that happens in federal politics.
Chinese mauling of our democracy, and democratic institutions, that is. What has been reported in the media about the Chinese regime — that it deliberately and repeatedly sought to influence the 2019 and 2021 federal elections, and targeted a former cabinet minister for attacks — is well known.
Less known, however, are China’s attempts to do likewise at other levels of government, right across Canada.
In Vancouver, for instance, the Chinese consulate aggressively and regularly interfered in the city’s municipal election races. They’d do that using “proxies” — Manchurian candidates, in effect — grooming and deploying their shills in city election contests.
That revelation — which is fact, not conjecture — was found in a January 2022 report by the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS), which stated that the Chinese consul-general “groomed” candidates in B.C. to illicitly do Beijing’s bidding.
The report prompted the province’s premier to demand a briefing by CSIS, while Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — arguably Beijing’s best friend in the G7 — dismissed it all as “little bits and pieces of uncorroborated, unverified information.”
On that occasion, Trudeau resisted the temptation to label the CSIS report as “racist.” But Trudeau and his more obsequious MPs have used that canard on other occasions. So, too, the campaign of Olivia Chow, now seeking Toronto’s mayoralty — when asked about her relationship with Chinese front organizations.
Chow, who is usually a fair-minded person, shouldn’t ever make such an accusation. As she should know, China hasn’t just targeted federal politicians. It has sought to influence lesser levels of government, too. Even at the school board level.
That’s certainly what is alleged to happen at the level of Canada’s largest school board, the Toronto District School Board (TDSB). And reports about China’s meddling with the TDSB were followed by high-level resignations and recriminations.
As long ago as 2014, TDSB’s chair, Chris Bolton, abruptly resigned after what the Toronto Star then called “a never-ending stream of scandals” during Bolton’s tenure. “The timing of his resignation [was] questionable,” the Star reported — and China was one of those scandals.
When Bolton resigned, The Globe and Mail reported: “The news of his departure also comes just days before trustees are set to vote Wednesday on whether the TDSB should pursue its controversial partnership with the Chinese government. Mr. Bolton was the driving force behind the school board’s Confucius Institute.”
The “Institute,” which has been around for nearly two decades, has been the focus of controversy and opposition across democracies. Essentially, credible reports link the Confucius Institute to military and industrial espionage, including in Western educational institutions.
Former CSIS director Richard Fadden said that the Confucius Institute is “managed by people operating out of the embassy or consulates” and tasked with suppressing criticisms of Beijing.
After hundreds of parents signed a petition objecting to the presence of the Confucius institute in TDSB classrooms, Bolton hurriedly offered his resignation. One later report found no wrongdoing by him — but the author of the report was the TDSB itself.
Summarizing the scandals that had beset the TDSB, the Globe editorialized: “[Bolton] showed a stunning lack of judgment in striking an agreement with the Chinese government to offer Chinese language and cultural programs, subsidized and controlled by the non-democratic government in Beijing. Despite its innocuous name, the Confucius Institute functions as little more than a long arm of the Chinese state, pushing its political agenda under the guise of simple language instruction.”
And that, at the end, is the reality: China muscling into our democracy — even at the granular level of a school board. China’s regime is a multi-headed hydra, increasingly, its tentacles slinking into our institutions from coast to coast. No target is too small for Chinese manipulations, it seems.
Justin Trudeau and Olivia Chow may claim otherwise.
But they should know better.
KINSELLACAST 260: The Chong Affair – with Pierson, Mraz, Lilley! Plus: New Pornographers, Cloud Nothings, Wavves, Daddy Issues
My latest: the betrayal of the Chong family
It’s a bigger scandal.
The harm facing Michael Chong’s family, that is. And it’s arguably bigger than the Aga Khan, SNC-Lavalin and the WE “charity” scandals.
Each of those previous Trudeau government scandals was, ultimately, about money and graft. At the sordid, seamy centre of each of those was something that could be quantified with dollar signs.
Aga Khan was about a lobbyist supplying the Prime Minister of Canada with lavish gifts, contrary to every ethics rule extant. SNC-Lavalin was about Trudeau and his circle obstructing justice, and pressuring prosecutors to go easy on a Liberal Party donor facing corruption charges.
And the WE scandal, of course, was about money – hundreds of thousands of dollars – landing in the pockets of Trudeau family members, and a lucrative contract then going to WE.
So why is the Michael Chong story more of a scandal?
Forget, for a moment, that Chong is an MP, and an effective Opposition Member. At the end of the day, he is a Canadian citizen, one who – like all of us – deserves to be protected by his country’s government.
So, too, his family. It’s important to know that some of Chong’s family, on his father’s side, still live in Hong Kong. And, now, we know that the Chongs have been targeted for harassment, intimidation, and threats by the Chinese regime – which is corrupt, brutal, and regularly abuses human rights.
It is because they abuse human rights – Muslims, specifically – that Michael Chong condemned China in the House of Commons. China’s dictatorship thereafter barred the long-serving MP and former cabinet minister from travelling to China.
So what, one might say. Being reproached by China is truly a badge of honor, these days. But China went a step further, and put together a campaign of harassment, intimidation, and threats against the Chong family.
And here is where the real scandal is revealed. Justin Trudeau and some within his government knew all that. They were briefed about what China planned for the Chongs.
And Trudeau said, and did, nothing. He didn’t warn the Chongs, or try and get them out of Hong Kong.
Since the story broke in the pages of Globe and Mail, TruAnon winged monkeys have been swarming social media, actually claiming that Michael Chong wasn’t really, truly threatened because he didn’t know about the threats until he read them in a newspaper.
That is deeply dishonest, and it is idiotic. And it ignores the obvious and real scandal: that the Prime Minister of Canada knew what the Chongs were facing, and did nothing.
What if one of them had been beaten? What if one of them had been killed? What if something has, in fact, happened, and don’t even know about it yet? That is why it feels worse than any previous scandal.
Trudeau knows it is one, too. That is why he scrambled to meet with Chong on Tuesday, bringing along his ineffectual national security advisor and Canadian Security Intelligence Service director. But that meeting took place long, long after the fact. Too late.
So, we have to ask, why? Why would Trudeau not warn Michael Chong about what he knew? Was it because Chong is a Conservative who criticizes him? Perhaps.
More likely it is this: the Trudeau Foundation illicitly received thousands from a Chinese front company, to influence his decision-making. His brother, Sacha, was apparently personally involved in that “gift,” and is finally testifying on his role in Parliament on Wednesday afternoon.
So, at the end, this scandal – which is worse than all the others, because it is about human lives being placed at risk – also involves graft and money.
When investigating a scandal, follow the money, they always say.
And, every single time, it leads you back to the Trudeau family, doesn’t it?
My latest: SkyNet is active
Artificial intelligence is a benign kind of description, isn’t it? Doesn’t sound demonic at all.
So too its acronym, AI. We hear and see “AI” all the time, these days. It’s so ubiquitous, so commonplace, it just makes people shrug, now.
For an entire generation, all of us have been carrying around little machines — iPhones, whatever — that operate on the same principle as AI. In basic terms, they benignly collect information from us when we interact with them.
Except AI takes that a step further, a big step. Artificial Intelligence takes the information it collects on us to actually mimic us. To learn, to plan, to reason, to problem-solve. To, as the Oxford Dictionary people put it, “develop computer systems able to perform tasks that normally require humans.”
If that sounds to you like “machines replacing humans,” you’re right. It is. AI is about replacing humans — computer people (coders, programmers, software engineers, data analysts), media people (in advertising, content creation, technical writing, journalism), legal people (paralegals, legal assistants to start, lawyers later), people who create (artists, writers, musicians). And, of course, people who teach, people in finance and accounting, people who deal with the public.
People: if you are on the above list, AI can do what you do, but better and faster and cheaper. And, the now-anxious AI experts say, it’s not a case of you losing your job or vocation to AI, maybe.
You will.
Not surprisingly, the usual arguments in favour of this radical change are being trotted out to justify the expansion and use of AI. Efficiency, prosperity, competitiveness, productivity — and, of course, those hoary old chestnuts, “eliminating duplication” and “freeing up your time to let you do what you love.”
Except, what if what we love is what we already do?
Well, get ready. It won’t be SkyNet, as in the Terminator movie series, which foretold a world being enslaved by AI-enabled death machines. No, it’ll arguably be qualitatively worse, because it’s arriving on tiny feet.
Is it too late? Well, AI is already metastasizing at a speed that cannot (ironically) be put into words. So say the people who used to advocate for it.
Dr. Geoffrey Hinton is one. Hinton, along with two graduate students, has been working on developing Artificial Intelligence for more than two decades. At the University of Toronto, the trio essentially created what the New York Times called “the intellectual foundation for AI systems.”
Except now Dr. Hinton — who quit his job at Google so he could speak out — is saying: stop.
AI is already being used for misinformation, and soon it will be a real risk to humans with jobs. Eventually, the New York Times’ report soberly notes, “it could be a risk to humanity.”
Said Dr. Hinton to the Times: “It is hard to see how you can prevent the bad actors from using it for bad things.” For starters, he says, AI will be used to flood the Internet with faked photos, videos and information: “(We will) not be able to know what is true anymore.”
And, inevitably, people will get replaced. Sure, at the outset, menial tasks — the drudge work — will be taken over by AI. But eventually, Hinton says, “it might take away more than that.”
Can anything stop it, or even slow it down? Not at the moment. Right now, Google and Microsoft, who are more wealthy and more powerful than most nations, are in a type of arms race to perfect AI first. Scientists (Elon Musk among them, interestingly) have signed open letters warning of the risks. But few are listening.
We need to. AI isn’t just coming, it’s here. And we need to get ready.
As Musk, no less, says: “With artificial intelligence, we’re summoning the demon.”
KINSELLACAST 259: Funeral songs – Beatles, Andy Shauf, Perfume Genius, Son Volt, Scout Niblet, ‘Mats, New Order, Against Me!
My latest: NO MAGA
As in politics, as in comedy: it’s all about timing.
Take MAGA, for instance (please). The Make America Great Again movement indisputably revolutionized American politics. Possibly world politics, too.
Whether you like MAGA or not, it can’t be denied: “Make America Great Again” transformed a reality show host into the most powerful man on Earth.
And Donald Trump’s MAGA timing was perfect.
White, 50-something American men — the ones who used to run the country — were angry. They felt like they had been forgotten.
They had lost power they once had. Technological change and globalization, they believed, had cost them their jobs. Cultural change — feminism, civil rights and immigration, mainly — had left them feeling they’d lost their relevance at home and in Washington.
And economic change had cost them their way of life — their ability to provide for their families. So, circa 2016, they were angry. Really angry.
They didn’t want an experienced member of the elites anymore. They didn’t want Hillary Clinton, who they saw as the literal (and liberal) embodiment of everything they hated.
They wanted a maniac, basically, to disrupt everything. They wanted to upend every apple cart. They wanted to break everything and start over again.
Brexit came first, in June 2016, and basically was the British version of MAGA. And then, a few months later, came Donald Trump — whose red-hatted “Make America Great Again” arrived at precisely the right moment.
MAGA, as this space has suggested before, wouldn’t have worked if it had just been MAG – Make America Great. The addition of that single word, Again, is what connected Trump — a billionaire, Fifth Avenue New Yorker — to those forgotten, angry white 50-something men.
They were prepared to overlook his (many) sins and shortcomings to get back to how things used to be. So they put a man wholly unsuited for the job in the Oval Office. And Trump kept up his end of the bargain, and got to work breaking everything.
And now? Well, now, MAGA isn’t so great anymore.
NBC News released a big national poll on Wednesday. As NBC put it: “Just 24% of Americans have positive views of the movement, while 45% voice negative views … A slight majority of Republicans — 52% — view the MAGA movement positively, as well as 53% of those who define themselves as conservative.
Independents also rated the movement negatively, with just 12% viewing it positively, while 45% say they have negative views of the movement.”
And that independent segment is key. In the US, the Democrats and the Republicans each hold about a third of committed voters. So it’s that middle third, the independents, who decide who controls the White House and Congress.
And independents don’t like MAGA. Outside of their white, rural, high school-only base, MAGA lost support everywhere, with every demographic.
Why? The NBC poll doesn’t say. But it may simply be a case of timing: it’s hard to remain angry forever. And, with job growth growing, and inflation fading, the MAGA folks simply have fewer targets to shoot at.
Which is why President Joe Biden targeted MAGA in his big announcement this week — that he’s running again. Said Biden: “MAGA extremists are lining up to take bedrock freedoms away.”
Biden isn’t as popular as he should be. Trump remains the favourite of Republicans. Which presents the biggest irony of all: the Democrats may have the wrong guy, but they have the right message. And Republicans may have the right guy, but they’ve got the wrong message.
Which is MAGA. And which is the reason, more than any other, that Joe Biden is going to win.
— Kinsella has worked on the campaigns of Clinton and Biden.