Dear America

As long as you make it easy for crazy people to get guns, you will have crazy people using them on others.

You know how to stop this. But you won’t.

 

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We wish you a Bad Brains Christmas

This is probably ancient, but I only saw it this morning. My God, it’s brilliant. Charlie Brown, via the Bad Brains’ ‘Pay To Cum.’

Matt Galloway and Errol Nazareth, this is for you. Genius.


Syrian refugees, David Price and choices

Two things preyed on my mind, last night. One was news accounts like this one, describing what Syrian refugees are presently experiencing:

As winter closes in, and temperatures dip into the single digits, the refugees will be cold, hungry and prey to disease. Recently the World Food Program was forced to cut back on food vouchers. That and other cuts left mothers giving up meals to feed their kids, refugees begging in the streets and kids being pulled out of school. In desperation, people are fleeing to Europe, fuelling a crisis there. But many more are stuck, facing another winter of privation.

And then there was this:

The Boston Red Sox and AL Cy Young runner-up David Price have agreed to terms on a seven-year free-agent deal worth $217 million, a person familiar with the negotiations told The Associated Press.

The person spoke on condition of anonymity Tuesday night because the deal — the largest ever for a pitcher — is pending a physical. It is expected to be announced on Friday, the person told the AP.

Son Three and I debated – or at least discussed – this juxtaposition this morning, on the way in, listening to CBC’s Metro Morning. He’s a bit of a jock, my son, so he was able to delineate the two worlds. The baseball player world, and the Syrian refugee world.

I can’t, and I couldn’t. And don’t get me wrong: like everyone else, I had heard Price was a great addition to the Jays’ late-season roster, that he was a team leader, that he was an inspiration in the locker room, and so on. As a Red Sox fan, I’m happy to see them become a contender.

But $217 million U.S. – nearly $300 million Canadian? Seriously?

I don’t know how many Syrian refugees $300 million would sponsor, but it’s obviously a lot. And, as I said to Son Three, what angers me – what truly sickens me – is not David Price. What disgusts me are the choices we make, as a society. It’s insane: nearly $300 million to play a kids’ game, a few months out of the year. While millions of actual kids are living worse than stray dogs, over in the Middle East, year after year.

I know, I know: I’m making a false comparison. They’re different things. Apples and oranges. But that’s not how I look at the political and personal choices we make. To me, they’re always connected. They say something about us.

Anyway, you get my point (I hope). This morning we wrote a big cheque out to the good folks at Jewish Immigration Aid Services, to assist them in their noble effort to sponsor Syrian refugee families. I was connected with them by my friend Gary Gladstone. (And, to me, it is worth noting that one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Muslim Syrian refugees is a group of Jewish Canadian citizens.)

We can’t undo the David Price deal, I suppose, but we can make a different choices.

Among other things, it’s the only way to remain sane.


Ontario Ombudsman update: conduct unbecoming?

No hearing has been set in the matter – yet – but I am aware that several complaints have been made to the Law Society of Upper Canada regarding conduct and/or statements of the former Ombudsman and his underlings. The complaints relate to use of public resources, an alleged violation of an oath of office, and several statements that are possibly “unbecoming a barrister and solicitor.”

What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, as they say. If the Law Society is going to start policing the private behaviour of private individuals, well, they’re going to have to hire a lot more investigators!

They’re also going to have to prepare for the inevitability of a Law Society without any lawyers in it. When you start investigating lawyers for stuff unrelated to them being lawyers – cf. getting tipsy at a wedding, swearing at a ref at a Leafs game, having a nasty divorce – well, there’s no table limit anymore, is there?

As before, this thing is going to be quite time-consuming and expensive. Anyone who wants to contribute to the cause can do so (with my thanks) using the ‘donate” button to the left.


Michael Bate, ethical giant

From: Michael Bate <mbate57@rogers.com>Date: Wed, 6 Dec 16:55:08 -0500

To: Warren Kinsella <.ca>

Subject: 

I’m looking forward to talking to you. Just don’t want to see it mentioned in your blog. After all, we have principles to maintain, appearances to keep up. 


In this week’s Hill Times: help wanted

The worst newspaper columnist in Canada – The Writer Who Shall Not Be Named – is not impressed.

Justin Trudeau’s government, which has been governing for 26 days – not even a month! – is doing really badly, sniffs this nameless scribe. How come? “Understaffed Ottawa struggles,” declares the disapproving headline on the resulting opinion column. “As Trudeau travels.”

The horror, the horror. Justin Trudeau – who is representing the country in apparently inconsequential meetings with world leaders, as well as one with Her Majesty – isn’t paying sufficient attention to the biggest problem facing Canada, suggests The Writer Who Shall Not Be Named (TWWSNBN): namely, who will be the acting legislative assistant to the Minister of Small Business and Tourism?

Good God! It’s a veritable constitutional crisis. Just ask TWWSNBN: the scandalous understaffing issue has “cast a surreal haze” over Ottawa. Governance is accordingly moving “at a glacial pace” – and, accordingly, “Ottawa crawls.” Says he: “Settling into any sort of rhythm has been made impossible by Justin Trudeau, his chief-of-staff and others spending much of the time since his swearing-in halfway around the world at international summits.”

Ah, yes, those silly international summits, dealing with piddling issues like climate change, refugees, the international economy and what happened in Paris on Friday the 13th. I mean, who cares, really? Can’t you just see Prime Minister Trudeau, being jarred awake by his frantic spouse during the wee hours at the Commonwealth Conference in Malta?

“Justin, Justin!” says the panicked Sophie Trudeau. “This shocking neglect has gone on long enough! You must finally decide who will be the speechwriter to our nation’s Minister of Sport!”

Anyway, we kid. With the exception of TWWSNBN – who nobody really listens to, anyway – no sensible person is preoccupied with “understaffed Ottawa,” quote unquote. Three reasons.

One, Justin Trudeau is presently the most popular Prime Minister in the history of polling. His honeymoon is without end. And, despite being vexed by assorted challenges – an understandable delay in bringing over 25,000 Syrian refugees, the rote discovery that the fiscal cupboard is bare, a military policy that is out of step with our allies – Trudeau is widely seen as doing quite well.

If being “understaffed” is problematic, no one outside of Ottawa has noticed. In fact, so durable is the Liberal leader’s popularity, he can be forgiven for considering whether understaffed ministerial offices should become a permanent feature of his government.

Two, there is not much that Trudeau can do about the problem (which isn’t a problem at all). The RCMP need time to review the backgrounds of the hundreds of folks who aspire to be exempt staffers. Bankruptcies, mortgages, divorces, stock portfolios, criminal records, family and employment backgrounds: all must be carefully checked by the Mounties before anyone can be offered a permanent staff role – and certainly before they are permitted to eyeball Top Secret cabinet documents.

It’s been less than a month, folks: security and background checks take time. Despite that, Liberals like Brian Clow (Trade), Leslie Church (Heritage), Kirsten Mercer (Justice), John Brodhead (Infrastructure), Richard Maksymetz (Finance), Genevieve Hinse (Health), and Rick Theis (Indigenous Affairs) have been hired to Chief of Staff roles – and, rest assured, all are very impressive people. What needs to be done is getting done.

Thirdly and finally, there is another group of professionals who are ensuring that “understaffed Ottawa” functions quite well, thank you very much: the public service of Canada, all 257,138 of them. During the interminable national election campaign, the public service ensured that the metaphorical trains ran on time, didn’t they? And, until ministerial offices are staffed-up, the bureaucracy will continue to perform the same sort of role. It was always thus: for Chretien, for Mulroney, for Harper.

Trudeau’s government – unlike the aforementioned Harper government – does not carry with it a genetic antipathy towards public servants. The iron rule that characterized the Harper era is no more. Trudeau, like his father, favours delegating what needs to be delegated, and rightly so.

When I was a ministerial Chief of Staff in the similarly-inclined Chretien era, I liked to introduce new hires to the public servants who worked in the mail room, and the photocopying room. “Be nice to these people,” I’d say to the new hires. “They are the public service. They were here long before you arrived, and they will be here long after you are gone. They have real power, not us.”

So, fret not, Writer Who Shall Not Be Named. Trudeau – who hasn’t even been on the job for month – is seen as doing rather well by most Canadians. The RCMP are moving as quickly as they can, in an era when security obviously should not be rushed. And – when all else fails – Canada’s public service, widely-regarded as the finest in the world, are still there to pick up the slack.

Life will go on, even in Ottawa.

(And, soon enough, a breathless nation will finally learn who will be the legislative assistant to the Minister of Small Business and Tourism.)


Vast left-wing conspiracy, exposed

Like no less than Carol (public servants are acting like “teenaged groupies”) Goar and others, I was profoundly uncomfortable with the greeting that the public servants at Foreign Affairs gave the new Liberal government. It was widely written about, as here.

Now, courtesy of Hillary Clinton’s errant emails, we learn this:

“I was a little astonished at how openly the career folks at the foreign and assistance ministries disliked their new political masters and wanted us to convince them not to cut Haiti,” said Tom Adams, in a May 2012 e-mail forwarded to Clinton and released Monday.

“In my many years here I have never seen such open disloyalty with a change of administrations. Although the political appointees told me there was no need to have the Secretary talk to Baird about Haiti, the senior career folks, on the margins, implored me to have this done.”

You can debate whether it was appropriate for public servants at the former DFAIT to behave in this way. But one thing you can’t debate: the Foreign Affairs folks have given the Conservatives fundraising and rhetorical fodder for the next four years – and they have painted a big target on their backs, too. Dumb.