Highly-Scientific Poll™: should Prime Ministerial spouses have staff?

This has been a raging controversy, apparently, bigger even than Fort Mac and ISIS.  I know this because it was the subject-matter of two radio shows I did yesterday – the Adler-Kinsella Show on Sirius XM Canada Talks, and Evan Solomon’s show on CFRA in Ottawa.  (I’ll try and post links to those later.)

Afterwards, I figured we should do a poll on this subject, because it is so obviously gripping the nation like no other issue.  So, vote now, vote often.  This poll is accurate 21 times out of 19, etc.


[polldaddy poll=9416451]


Profiling: from next week’s Hill Times

A snippet from my column about the Ben Rhodes controversy, and the lessons that some might be able to draw from up here in the Great White North:

But the Rhodes profile in the Times is a cautionary tale for political staffers everywhere, even in far-away Ottawa, Ontario. Because, in it, Rhodes gave writer David Samuels extraordinary access – and he was extraordinarily candid. Rhodes told Samuels, on the record, that the press corps are “27-year-olds…who literally know nothing.” He called the entirety of the foreign policy establishment – including Hillary Clinton – “the Blob.” He said he had created an “echo chamber” of talking heads who say “what we [have] given them to say.” He said some of his colleagues “can’t keep a secret for two hours.” He said – and, again, this is a quote – “I don’t know anymore where I begin and Obama ends.”

Sound familiar?

Sound, say, like not a few “senior strategists” who have blown into town on the wings of someone else’s election victory, achieved unprecedented powers, and then frittered it all away with an ill-advised sit-down with someone like David Samuels?

It happens all the time. A senior staffer succumbs to the siren song of some scheming media inquisitor – You’re so influential! The bureaucracy and caucus respect you so! How did you get so close to The Leader? Was that your words I detected in that wonderful speech/policy/year-end interview? – and, inevitably, they come to profoundly regret it. The newspaper containing the profile piece thuds against their door early one morning, they shuffle to get it in their slippers, they scan it, they frown. They start frantically texting friends: “Do you think it’s bad? Does it create a problem for the boss? Should I demand a correction?”

Take my word for it, having previously taken a celebrated trip to the burn unit, myself: it’s almost always bad. It creates a problem for the boss. And a correction won’t undo the damage.

 


Can you order someone to submit to sexual assault?

Kathryn Borel says someone did just that to her.

Borel, as you probably know, was the complainant in the second Jian Ghomeshi trial, the one that had been slated to start in June. As you also undoubtedly know, that trial is not going to happen, now, because Ghomeshi agreed to apologize to Borel, who was a producer on Ghomeshi’s CBC radio show. He also agreed to stay away from her for a year.  No weapons, lots of therapy, etc.

So Borel spoke to the assembled media after the deal was done in Court. She was very articulate and effective. To me, her statement sounded like it had been lawyered, because it was pretty careful, and because it suggested an understanding of the law that had completely escaped the three previous complainants (and the Crown and the police, frankly).

But Borel said one thing that blew me away, frankly, and no one else seems to have picked up on it:

“Up until recently, I didn’t even internalize that what [Ghomeshi] was doing to my body was sexual assault. Because when I went to the CBC for help, what I received in return was a directive that, yes, he could do this and, yes, it was my job to let him. The relentless message to me from my celebrity boss and the national institution we worked for were that his whims were more important than my humanity or my dignity.”

“A directive.”

That bolded part, to me, is truly extraordinary. It must be true, too, because the CBC put the entirety of it on their web site, as seen here. They didn’t redact her statement or edit it, as they had initially done.

As a result, we can only conclude what Borel said was true – she was, in fact, “directed” by her superiors to submit to sexual assault.  That’s what she said, and CBC is not disputing it in any way.

I’m just a simple Calgary lawyer, but my questions therefore are:

  1. Who directed Borel to submit to sexual assault?
  2. Have they been disciplined by the CBC for this? Why not, if not?
  3. Are they going to be charged criminally for facilitating sexual assault? Why not, if not?

As someone whose tax dollars go to the CBC, and who pays the salaries of Borel’s anonymous bosses – who function like pimps, apparently – I would like to know who directed this woman to submit to repeated sexual assaults, please and thanks.

I suspect lots of other folks will want to know, too.

 

 

 


We grow old, we grow old

I have a son who was born 18 years ago today – his arrival prompted by a bank robbery, a garage sale, and a crazy ride in 1974 Volkswagen Beetle. (Long story.)

Eighteen years later, he has been accepted to every university he’s applied to, with scholarships to boot. He’s decided on McGill, however, which will please his grandfathers. He’s a Bernie Sanders fan, he’s agnostic, he adores Justin Trudeau, and he is a Hell of a golfer. So I gave him a Big Bertha driver, which looks like a dinner plate on a stick.

Anyway. Can’t believe 18 years have gone by. He will be running the country one day, just watch.

This has been a public service announcement by a Proud Old man.


Alternatives to Ghomeshi

Sounds like an indie band, eh? But, after this morning, I suspect many will be wondering if there was a better option in the R. v. Ghomeshi cases.

The first trial, as we all know, was a collision between (a) highly compromised complainants (b) a highly ineffective Crown and (c) a highly effective defence lawyer. The second trial, resolved today, won’t even go to trial.

Is there an alternative to this kind of a process? Everyone, I think, is unhappy about what happened in the Ghomeshi mess.

Here’s a summary of criminal ADR (alternative dispute resolution) approaches found around the globe (with edits made to the language used therein).

1. Victim-Offender Mediation Programs (VOM). Also referred to as victim-offender reconciliation programs (VORP) or victim reparation programs. In most cases, its purpose is to promote direct communication between victim and offender. Victims who participate are provided with an opportunity to ask questions, address the emotional trauma caused by the crime and its aftermath, and seek reparations.

2. Community Dispute Resolution Programmes (CDRP). CDRP seeks to dispose of relatively minor conflicts before trial.

3. Victim-offender Panels (VOP). VOP developed as a result of the rise of the victims’ rights movement, and particularly in relation to the various campaigns against drunk driving. They are used to provide the offender with an opportunity to appreciate human cost of their actions on victims and survivors. It also is aimed at decreasing the likelihood of repeat offenses.

4. Victim Assistance Programs. VOCA established the Crime Victim’s Fund, which is funded by fines that are collected from persons who have been convicted of offences in the United States (except for fines that are collected through certain environmental statues and other fines).

5. Community Crime Prevention Programs. The community crime prevention has included a plethora of activities, including media anti-drug campaigns, silent observer programs, and neighborhood dispute resolution programs.

6. Private Complaint Mediation Service (PCMS). This process provides for mediation as an alternative to the formal judicial process of handling summary-type offences.

Apart from these, there are also sentencing circles, ex-offender assistance, community service, school programs, and specialist courts. These programmes point towards a gradual shift from deterrence to reparation; they show the application of restorative justice.

What do you think, folks?


All lined up, battery brides

For reasons I do not fully ken, these two Eighties gems popped into my head this morning. I am a sucker for a weirdo bass line.

Useless facts: one guy was in both bands. Can you name him?

I interviewed XTC a million times. They are great guys.


In this week’s Hill Times: pouring gasoline on the fire

A spark neglected makes a mighty fire.

Robert Herrick, an American writer and essayist, said that.   He was an interesting fellow – a novelist, a poet, a Harvard grad, a professor at MIT. Coincidentally, Herrick was also the governor of the U.S. Virgin Islands for a time.  He was appointed to the position, but he likely knew something about politics just the same.

What would Robert Herrick think, then, about the confluence of the Fort McMurray fire and politics? What would he say was the spark that led to the fire that consumed Fort McMurray?

No one knows, of course, and nor does anyone know what caused the fire, either.  But that hasn’t stopped too many people – on both sides of the ideological divide – from assigning blame.  From pointing fingers, and recklessly accusing others.

It’s happened on the ideological Left and on the Right.

Early on, former NDP candidate Tom Moffatt posted this on Twitter: “Karmic #climatechange fire burns CDN oilsands city.”  He even added “FeelTheBern” as a hashtag.  What made Moffatt’s idiocy even more appalling was this: he is an Albertan.  He should know better, frankly.

There were others. “Burn, tar sands, burn!” wrote Edouard Dugas, in Quebec.  Dugas describes himself as a separatist and a capitalist.  He later allowed that he wanted the “tar sands” to burn – not the actual people who work there.

Another one, on Facebook: “I hope everyone gets the irony of a massive fire in the heart of big oil country.”  That came from Jim Ray in Guelph, who described himself as an “on-shore Volunteer at Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.”  Also on Facebook, Carolyn Jean Bernard, out in Cape Breton, who wrote that it was “karma” for “those satanic oil frields.” She later deleted her comments and apologized.

American news and opinion web site Slate, no less, tweeted this: “Wildfire is devastating a Canadian city, now. This is climate change.”

And then, of course, there were the comments of Green Party leader Elizabeth May herself.  On Wednesday, May was asked by reporters if the fire was linked to global warming. “Of course,” she said. “It’s due to global emissions.”

Of course. When a hellfire of criticism started to (appropriately) rain down on her, May hurriedly reversed herself.  She claimed she hadn’t been attempting to link the Fort McMurray wildfire to climate change – although everyone knew that is precisely what she had done. “No credible climate scientist would make this claim, and neither do I make this claim,” May said, in a written statement, in that way avoiding being laughed at to her face.

The Left weren’t alone in their rank stupidity, however.  Some on the Right side of the spectrum were just as stupid.

Their targets, for the most part, were Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Alberta Premier Rachel Notley.  Trudeau and Notley’s sin: one was a Liberal, the other a New Democrat.  Ipso facto, Trudeau and Notley were the arsonists.

To its credit, the conservative web site The Rebel had decided to raise money for the victims of the Fort McMurray.  Unfortunately, the rebels also declared that Notley has “money for everything else, for everyone else – but not for firefighters.”  Trudeau, meanwhile, was apparently no better: Syrian refugees, the rebels sniffed, are “a higher Liberal priority than Fort McMurray.”

One commenter on the far-Right Small Dead Animals blog therefore wrote that, after the fire,  “the Fort McMurray Somali murderers and drug dealers will get a chance to repopulate around the country for awhile.”  He went on: “if Fort McMurray was a Lebanese/Syrian port city [Trudeau’s Liberals] would have sent a warship at no cost to the foreign ‘victims’.”

Over on Twitter, biochemistry student Sean Krys expressed support for Fort McMurray, then added that “Notley is a bitch.”  There was a lot more of that, and worse.

Whenever something terrible happens, of course, there will always be those who will plumb for votes in the depths of someone else’s misery. Fort McMurray – via the echo chamber of social media – is simply the latest manifestation of that illness.

What to say, then? To me, the most appropriate response came from Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Asked about Elizabeth May’s appalling statement, Trudeau was clear.

“There have always been fires. There have always been floods. Pointing at any one incident and saying: ‘This is because of that,’ is neither helpful, nor entirely accurate. We need to separate a pattern over time from any one event. What we are focused on right now on is giving the people of Fort McMurray and the rest of Alberta the kind of support that they need right now and in the months and indeed the years to come.”

See? That’s how a Prime Minister speaks. It’s how any decent person would speak, in fact.

This May, things are hot enough as it is. We don’t need more fires set, rhetorical or otherwise.


Showboating politicos don’t put out fires

And that’s why Justin Trudeau has rightly said he won’t be heading out to Fort Mac just yet.

In my own (personal) experience, politicians need to be very, very careful about disaster-related decision-making.  Don’t listen to Central Canadian backroom advisors looking for a photo op.  Case in point.

That’s why I think this was the tweet of the day, in response to something I said, not as well.  You can’t (i) whinge about Prime Minister Selfie, Tories and Dips, and then (ii) simultaneously complain when he won’t head out to Alberta for a photo op.  You can’t suck and blow at the same time, you know?


The New York Times and the times in Fort Mac

NYT May8

Front page of yesterday’s Times.

I am a devoted reader of the New York Times.  It was via the Times, in fact, that I first learned of the Carville-Clinton war room in 1992, contacted them, and basically copied their concept in Canada.  It is the best English-language newspaper in the world, and it is the only newspaper we subscribe to anymore.

Their coverage of The Beast – the fire that has ravaged Fort McMurray and beyond – has surprised me, a bit.  On the one hand, they have accorded it prominent, daily coverage, as seen above.  Good.

On the other hand, however, they (like Slate) have published some extraordinarily ignorant things about what they themselves, just this morning, rightly called the most expensive natural disaster in Canadian history. Like this.  People were lured there by “a fat paycheque?” Really, guys? The ones now sleeping on the floor of an arena, and who only escaped with the clothes on their backs? Pretty classless, Times folks.  Not good.

Anyway. I’m like most Canadians, in recent days: Fort McMurray has left me acutely aware, and wondering, what people outside of Canada think about it all, and if they in fact care.  (It also perhaps explains why I, and many others, want to see the NBA and Dwyane Wade censured for the disrespect they’ve shown towards Canada.  We’re a bit touchy, these days.)

So, while we are appreciative that the Times is giving the story the attention it deserves – and while it is amazing that the likes of CNN are assisting in the rebuild, as seen here – a bit more sensitivity towards the nearly 90,000 victims of the fire would also be welcome, please and thanks.

(That’s the subject of this week’s Hill Times column, too, which I will post here tomorrow.)