Timmy Hudak’s plan to put hardened criminals in your neighbourhood: reaction

  • The Canadian Press:  Hudak’s predecessor John Tory — now a radio talk show host — also diverged from the party position, saying forced labour is “going at the problem the wrong way.”…”If we’re going to spend the money on chain gangs, I’d rather spend the money providing courses for people because the objective really has to be — other than for the real bad apples that are going to keep offending over and over again — to try and get people who often don’t even have Grade 12 out of prison and into a job, so they might stay on the straight path,” he said during his show on Toronto radio station CFRB.”
  • Toronto Star: “…are chain gangs a practical way to deal with prisoners? Do they combat crime? Are they a cost-efficient way to clean up highways? Even Alberta says no. That province considered mandatory work gangs in the 1990s but rejected the idea. The key reason is security. Some prisoners in provincial institutions are dangerous. Do Torontonians exiting the subway at Yonge and Bloor really want to squeeze past convicted thugs scrubbing graffiti from the sidewalks?”
  • Toronto Sun: “On Thursday, the chain gang plank dropped. Hudak will require prisoners in provincial jails to work a mandatory 40-hour week, cleaning roads and so on…Do you really want violent offenders released to work in the community? Keep ’em behind bars, I say…Hudak may have an identity crisis in this election.”
  • Toronto Star: “Critics say such bumper sticker politics sound great but in reality it would be an unwieldy and costly program that would need a large number of extra guards. “I thought Tim Hudak was running for the premier of Ontario, not the governor of Alabama,” said Warren (Smokey) Thomas, president of the Ontario Public Service Employees Union…“What we have here is a failure to think an issue through,” said Bradley, paraphrasing an iconic line from the classic chain-gang movie Cool Hand Luke. “The public expects governments to keep convicted criminals who could be a danger to our society behind the high walls, behind steel bars.”
  • Toronto Star: “HUDAK’S YAWNING CREDIBILITY GAP…time to provide Ontarians with numbers that add up.”
  • Globe and Mail: “DO ONTARIANS REALLY WANT TO SEE CRIMINALS CLEANING UP THEIR PARKS?…There are good reasons no other province has gone anywhere near what Mr. Hudak is proposing…Mr. Hudak has overstepped…some of the voters he’s courting will resent him for going only for the gut, and not for the head.”
  • Barrie Examiner: “HUDAK SHOULD NOT BE A HARRIS DOPPELGANGER…As much as Tim Hudak might admire Mike Harris, the comparisons won’t help him become Ontario’s next premier.  So Hudak had better be careful with his slash-and-burn announcements.”

Team wk.com project

I’ve got an idea. I want you to get a camera and shoot some video of your friends and family – particularly women – and ask them the following question:

“What do you think of Tim Hudak’s plan to put convicts in your neighbourhood to do work?”

Then send their answers here – to comments or wkinsella@hotmail.com. I’ll put together the best answers for all of us to see.

I don’t think Timmy will like the results.


Fucked Up: David Comes To Life

SFH goes back into the studio tonight, recording our latest masterpiece, WDYHM (Why Do You Hate Me).  To get tuned up for that, I spun some Fucked Up – and then, coincidentally enough, started to read the new Spin.  Wherein the Toronto hardcore band’s ‘David Comes To Life’ LP – which is slated to be released early next month – garners nine stars out of ten.  I have been reading Spin since the start, and I can’t recall ever seeing that before.

Listen to some of what they say:

“The band’s maximalistic approach means that even the most ostensibly straightforward task — writing a collection of songs about love — becomes a huge undertaking, as evidenced by David Comes to Life, Fucked Up’s third studio album and first kinda-sorta musical. An 18-song bildungsroman that runs nearly 80 minutes, David is alarmingly caustic, disarmingly graceful, and loaded with all sorts of unnecessary lyrical twists and fake-outs. It’s one 
of the most overly complicated hard-rock records 
of the past ten years. It’s also one of the best…

That such moments orbit a nebulously structured narrative doesn’t really matter — 
a leaner, more logical band wouldn’t be anywhere near as interesting; and besides, David‘s epochal enough as it as. For years, numerous hacks — yours truly included — have been tossing around the phrase “post-hardcore” with little care, diluting an already amorphous term by throwing it at any group with speedy time signatures and a few effects pedals. Fucked Up, though, have finally provided a proper definition, with a sound that pushes hardcore out of the VFW halls and basement shows and into the arena. 
Can’t wait to see how their name looks 
on the marquee.”

I can’t wait to hear it.  In the meantime, here’s their first official video, of ‘Crooked Head.’  Epic.


The Globe and Mail’s mistake

There’s a notice about me on page two of this morning’s Globe (the sharp-eyed Norman Spector noticed it, but I didn’t).  I can’t find it online, so here is the background.  It’s a letter I sent on Tuesday to the Globe’s editor-in-chief, John Stackhouse.

Because the Globe still hasn’t acknowledged (a) they had an obligation to contact me to get my side of the story and (b) they failed to do that, I may well take the matter up with the Ontario Press Council.  I’d be interested in your collective views on that.  In the meantime, here’s the letter that gave rise to the Globe eating some humble pie this morning:

Dear Mr. Stackhouse:

I am writing in regard to a news feature authored by your Zosia Bielski.

In your May 20 edition, Ms. Bielski wrote a profile of TVO journalist Steve Paikin.  In the story, she published the following:

“Does anything, or anyone, ruffle his feathers?

The answer is yes, but even there Mr. Paikin is uncontroversial, for the thorn was Warren Kinsella. In 2009, the Liberal Party operative tried to pressure the host to “unbook” one of his guests, conservative author Kathy Shaidle, or else he would blog about it. Mr. Paikin referred Mr. Kinsella to TVO’s public relations team, a point not taken kindly by the provocateur.

“Once he goes nuclear and e-mails the [education] minister, e-mails the chairman, e-mails the CEO, suddenly now this becomes an example of a Liberal operative putting pressure on a public broadcaster to drop a guest. If we did, how the hell would that have looked – buckling to the request of somebody who basically works for [Ontario Premier] Dalton McGuinty.”

Writing on The Agenda’s blog eight days later, Mr. Paikin shed light on the tussle: “If Warren’s ultimate goal was to deprive Kathy of a ‘platform,’ his approach failed spectacularly.”

It was an uncharacteristically feisty moment for the host, who has seen “Warren” once since, “shook hands with him and said, ‘Hi, how are you?’ ”

Teflon-clad until the end, Mr. Paikin offers, “I am on speaking terms with everybody I know. Whether they’re on speaking terms with me is another question.”

My complaints are as follows:

1.  Ms. Bielski made no attempt to contact me for my side of this story, or even to provide the smallest amount of context.  Ms. Bielski would not have the excuse that she does not know how or where to contact me, as she had previously done so in 2006, when she was a reporter for the National Post.

2.  Following some awkward prose and mixed metaphors in the opening quoted passage, Ms. Bielski states that, as “a Liberal Party operative,” I sought to place pressure on Mr. Paikin to “unbook” Kathy Shaidle, whom she benignly describes as “a conservative author.”  I can state that I contacted Mr. Paikin, as well as many others at TVO, to object to the fact that the network was using tax dollars to play host to a white supremacist; as the author of two books on the subject, I felt comfortable in warning TVO about the mistake they had made.  I provided Mr.Paikin and others at TVO with information about Ms. Shaidle, comprised of cited racist statements ultimately taken from her web site: http://shaidletheracist.blogspot.com/2009/02/file-section-13-complaint-against.html.  Many other citizens wrote to TVO to similarly voice their objections.  None of them were singled out for condemnation in the way that I was, or dismissed as “a Liberal Party operative.”  Ms. Bielski’s statement is therefore erroneous in two crucial respects: one, she accepts without checking Mr. Paikin’s false statement, that I was working as “a Liberal operative” when I made my complaint; two, she accepts a benign and false description of Ms. Shaidle, one that does not permit the reader to understand why I and others complained in the first place.  (Moreover, I can add that I spoke to no politician, at any time, about my concern; I simply dealt directly with TVO, as their web site encourages viewers to do.)

3.  Mr. Paikin, when I wrote to him to state that I intended to write critically about the invitation on my web site, and the fact that TVO initially planned to pay Ms. Shaidle, dismissively replied by email and stated:  “Frankly warren, I haven’t spent any time on this yet today.”  He did not refer me to a “public relations team,” he in fact referred me to a producer, for reasons that are unclear.  In particular, the written record – which I would have been pleased to share with your reporter – will I believe show that I did not “go nuclear.”  I, like others, simply objected to TVO’s decision, and wanted to change it.  I did not, and do not, think that tax dollars should be used to assist the ambitions of racists like Ms. Shaidle.  By providing a false and uncritical platform for Mr.Paikin to “get back” at a person who had apparently irritated him, Ms. Bielski again failed the Globe’s readers, by providing a wholly erroneous characterization of events.  This could have been easily avoided, had she bothered to do the the bare minimum of reporting.

4.  Ms. Bielski goes on – and again fails to provide the slightest amount of balance – when she quotes the subject of her paean as saying my “approach failed miserably.”  She did not inquire if Ms. Shaidle was in fact paid after the public outcry, or if she has ever been invited back to TVO.  Again, she fails the paper’s readers by providing a one-sided and frankly erroneous account, and permits Mr. Paikin to grandstand and whitewash his behaviour.  Mr. Paikin is well-known for his inability to receive anything but adulation; what surprised me, at least, was the Globe’s willingness to facilitate same.

5.  Your reporter concludes this section of the piece by asserting that I – who she refers to as “Warren” in flying quotes, for reasons that are unclear but seem as dismissive as Mr. Paikin had been – met Mr. Paikin since, and shook hands with him.  I do not recall this taking place, at all, and would have told her so if she had bothered to call me.  In fact, all that I recall is Mr. Paikin’s producers asking me to go on his program, and me declining, because of the unprofessional manner in which the Shaidle case was handled.

Your reporter also dealt with me – and, more importantly, her readers – unprofessionally.  I am writing to register a formal complaint and seek a remedy from your office.  In conclusion, I also reserve the right to write about this situation in the newspaper for which I write – and which, coincidentally I am sure, is a competitor to your own.

I look forward to hearing from you at your earliest opportunity.

Sincerely,

Warren Kinsella