May

13

Dumb or Dumber

May 13, 2008 | Leave a Comment

John McCain is perfectly willing to pander. He is bright enough to know that the certainty on global warming is a crock so he says “climate change”; he is smart enough to know the “food crisis” is a crock but he also knows it will gain him some votes. So he panders. So does Hilly and so does Obama.

I’ve got no candidate in the US Presidential election. I know who I don’t want to win…all of them.

As in Canada, every US candidate is hugging the center line. Might work; but it is not leadership and our world needs real leadership.

May

13

Settled Law?

May 13, 2008 | 9 Comments

Ezra now has a copy of the Department of Justice’s brief against Marc Lemire’s constitutional challenge mounted against s.13. Personally I was not terribly impressed with Lemire’s challenge in the first place largely because it was drafted before the excesses and the illegalities of the CHRC’s investigative techniques had come to light. Ezra clobbers the feds for relying on rather out of date left wing American legal scholarship for which he is to be commended.

However the main thrust of the fed’s position is that the constitutionality of s.13 was decided in the Taylor case determined 18 years ago. And that is worrying. Not because the Taylor case can be distinguished on its facts - as it can be. And not because it is older - older cases are vital to the development of a constitutional jurisprudence. No, what is worrying about the feds’ position is that they seem to believe that in constitutional law challenging apparently settled law is, to use the feds phrase, “an abuse of process.”

Canadian Charter jurisprudence is only a few decades old. It will take at least another fifty years to develop the case law which will throughly define how cases may be brought and the circumstances in which a prior decision of the Court may be overturned or distinguished. However, the thrust of the fed’s brief seems to be that, regardless of shifting circumstances, changed legislation, altered facts and a different legal and cultural milieu, any decision of the Supreme Court of Canada on the constitutionality of a particular section of a statute is written in stone and cannot be altered.

This position would put paid to the development of any but the crudest sort of black letter constitutional jurisprudence as it would effectively prohibit decided cases from being creatively revisited. As with so much concerning the CHRC, the legal position of the Department of Justice is simply hamfisted when it tries to say that re-examining a constitutional decision made in a significantly different context is an abuse of process. Taylor may well have been rightly decided however suggesting otherwise is a constitutional argument not an abuse of process.

May

12

Israelis rumoured to be hitting Beirut…Reuters has pix

May 12, 2008 | Leave a Comment

Israeli strike on Beirutclick to see hyperbaric bomb

May

12

The Future

May 12, 2008 | 2 Comments

18 minutes of your life. Malcolm Gladwell (who could have a career as a stand-up). Spaghetti sauce.

via Bob Lefsetz who runs it about music. But it is a very much bigger point.

May

12

CHRC = CSIS…Yeah, Right

May 12, 2008 | 8 Comments

Ezra has the latest idiocy from the divine Ms. Blight (the CHRC’s most recent lawyer) with respect to disclosure in the Lemire case:

The disclosure materials which were disclosed in a less-redacted form yesterday, were re-redacted taking into account the following principles:

1. Names of individuals employed by the Commission at an below the level of Manager are to be redacted…

2. With respect to individuals outside the Commission and as a general rule, information identifying an individual’s name and coordinates is to be redacted… letter to parties, ezra levant

Ezra does an excellent job dissecting the legal lunacy which underlies this totally inadequate, far too late, partial disclosure. In fact his blog entry could form the basis of the decision of the Federal Court judge when he tosses the decision in Lemire into the legal round file on judicial review.

But what I find fascinating is how Ms. Blight’s letter illustrates how the CHRC sees itself. Various leftie commentators have suggested that the CHRC is a great example of an alternative dispute resolution structure which saves the aggrieved and, indeed, the accused, from the full rigors of the Court system. A sort of landlord/tenant alternative adjudication process: rough but cheap justice.

I fear that this cheery view is belied by Ms. Blight and the entire conduct of the Lemire matter. The CHRC seems to see itself as a poor man’s CSIS full of agents whose identities need to remain state secrets and whose investigation techniques cannot be disclosed in the interest of public security. (They actually made that claim under the Canada Evidence Act earlier in this farce.)

Now, we need to be clear about a couple of things: nowhere in Ms. Blight’s letter does she provide a statutory basis for the CHRC’s claimed right to withhold information. In the normal course, where evidence is being withheld, a lawyer would cite a section of, say, the Canada Evidence Act under which the agency is purporting to act. Not our Ms. Blight. Nope, she just flat out refuses to name names and Lemire et al are just going to have to take her word for it that she has this power. (I see an appearance in Federal Court in Ms. Blight’s future.)

Second, as Ezra points out, the CHRT’s own rules as well as the rules of natural justice and a great deal of administrative law jurisprudence, require, save in truly exceptional circumstances, full disclosure of all relevant documents. Not disclosure of bits and pieces of relevant documents, not disclosure of randomly redacted documents…full disclosure.

So what could possess Ms. Blight to ignore several centuries of jurisprudence, natural justice and the CHRT’s own rules?

My guess is that the fearless (well actually terrified) neo-Nazi hunters at the CHRC have confused themselves with the real agents at CSIS. They have somehow convinced themselves that they deserve the special immunities we grant the people who risk their lives protecting the security of Canadians against actual threats. Rather than understanding their purely bureaucratic function, a total lack of managerial competence and proper supervision have led to these cowboys thinking they really are secret agents.

Now I have many issues with the conduct of CSIS but I have no doubt at all that confronting Islamic extremists, Sikh separatists or Tamil Tigers requires a genuine capacity to run agents undercover and to employ investigative techniques wholly at odds with, for example, the techniques used by police forces. Revealing the undercover agents or the techniques could result in the death of those agents or of innocent Canadians or of people abroad. Moreover, CSIS has significant, accountable management systems in place and direct, political, oversight.

The CHRC’s s. 13 investigations - and I use the term loosely - are about people (often the investigators themselves) posting unpleasant things on the internet. That’s it. No airliners being blown up, no beheadings, no suicide bombers.

Ms. Blight is demanding CSIS level protection for a bunch of internet busybodies whose conduct may very well have been, in itself illegal. It does not take much imagination to figure out why she is trying this on: the CHRC realizes that its “no rules” regime will not bear even the lightest scrutiny. So it sending Ms. Blight out to try to shut down the show before the illegalities and the CHRC arrogance and incompetence are exposed.

Too late boys, much, much too late.

May

11

Unbelievable

May 11, 2008 | 6 Comments

You will remember that the CHRT did not have a court reporter present during the proceeding in which the conduct of the CHRC investigators was under scrutiny. Which meant that the respondent and various commentators have been relying on hand transcribed versions of the hearing. Well, Ezra now has a beautiful transcript pf Warman v Lemire which was made available to a journalist by a CHRC official who was trying to spin the story.

Now, contrary to Ezra’s account the used of a digital recording which is then transcribed was not a special, for this hearing only, matter. Rather it is supposed to become routine for CHRT hearings.

What is outrageous is that the CHRC apparently got the transcript and then did not tell anyone it was available.

This is simply corrupt. For the government to make a transcript and then use it for public relations purposes rather than making it available to the parties is utterly unfair. As Ezra points out, if a prosecutor in a real court tried a stunt like this the judge might well toss the case as the conduct is so patently unfair.

This is one more reason that the full circumstances, procedures and personnel surrounding s. 13 investigations must be investigated by a judge. It is not just the Lemire matter any longer: there is a culture of corruption and procedural perversion at the CHRC which has tainted every one of its s. 13 prosecutions. Each needs to be re-opened.

May

9

Burma needs help NOW

May 9, 2008 | 5 Comments

Last night’s warning came as it emerged that 17 Britons, including ex-pats and backpackers, were still missing.

Sources said 200,000 people were already dead or dying.

But the figure could rise to HALF A MILLION through disease and hunger if the nation’s hardline army rulers continue to block aid for the devastated lowlands of the Irrawaddy Delta. the sun

The Burmese people have rather little to do with their Chinese supported, monk killing, military dictatorship. The ones who are still alive after the devastating cyclone need help. From us. Now.

It looks like there is a chance to save several hundred thousand people. The nasty Americans are already involved. Canada should be too.

May

9

Yikes, even Babble is grabbing a clue

May 9, 2008 | 4 Comments

Go read this thread at Babble.

Intelligent comments, support for the idea of free speech…yikes.

May

9

Come Hither….

May 9, 2008 | 12 Comments

bed

“I offer to have sex with Neve Campbell.”

EBD on May 9, 2008 10:59 am in my comments on the Lying Jackal offering to debate Mark Steyn.

My commentors are way funnier than I am.

May

8

How it should happen

May 8, 2008 | 6 Comments

To Steyn’s credit, he may have offered the first olive branch when he said as I was closing the show, “would you guys like to go for dinner?” One of the lawyers immediately said, “No!” They may not have broken bread, but they did continue the dialogue.

What became clear is that the rancor that started the evening was gone by the end of it. We’re now trying to see whether we can bring all four participants back some time towards the end of the month, in hopes of having a somewhat calmer discussion about the actual arguments in Steyn’s book. We didn’t get to much of that last night because so much time was taken up with questions about whether Maclean’s was practising good journalism or not. steve paikin

No legal bullshit, no complaints…a conversation.

The Socks are learning a lesson which, if they have the wit to get it, will stand them in good stead in Canada. The lesson is simply this - I can disagree with you but I can still want to have you sit down to dinner. That is civilized. The Socks have a choice, be civilized or be the butt of thousands of jokes and slurs as to their understanding of the law, of Canada and, frankly, of good manners.

Whether it is on TVO or before the SCC, the Socks will learn their manners and how a civilized disagreement is carried out. If they do not they are not worth having in Canada. For fun and fury - without the obligation to be polite or civilized - there are plenty of Islamic Republics which will be more congenial.