Politics

No abortion in Canada’s G8 maternal health plan

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CBC News – Canada – No abortion in Canada’s G8 maternal health plan.

The Harper government is in a minority position. Lucky for all of us who remember the fifties and early sixties – the backroom abortions, the deaths, the infections and resultant infertility, the pregnant thirteen-year-olds. what happens if they achieve a majority next time?

They are prepared to condemn women in the third world to much worse than went on here years ago, but after all, they’re  “prepared to talk about family planning.”  No sense that multiple imposed pregnancies break down maternal health, lead to early mortality for women and children left motherless. No sense that is only when the number of children are controlled that women are able to contribute to the economy. No understanding that women drive the micro-economies in the third world as well as managing the family.

Family planning: make the itinerant trucker in Africa use condoms; keep his hands off other women in his travels; support the family he leaves behind; buy the contraceptives for his wife; indeed believe that contraception is allowed by his god. Good luck with that.

The Harper government appears to believe that they have a mandate from the Canadian people to take us backwards. After all, if they think that is the right thing to do internationally, won’t they have to do the same here? This has always been the hidden agenda of the Conservative Party and their fundamentalist supporters, the ones who think that their view of morality is the only one, and should be imposed on the rest of the world.

Abortion is a choice that women and young girls should have. Remember the pregnant eight-year-old rape victim in South America, denied abortion, because her life is less valuable than her embryo. Remember her when you vote next time. Remember them all. This link takes you to a Wikipedia entry of youngest mothers. Please note the incidence of rape, and remember that countless others are unknown. Or dead.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_youngest_birth_mothers

Masks Off.

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CBC News – Nova Scotia – Masks off at G8 protest: rally leader.

Some time ago I wrote about the Black Bloc, and those who cover their faces during protests. The CBC reports today that the organizers of a rally at the G8 in Halifax are going maskless, or at least asking those who show up  masked to take them off. A good step forward, I say.

Nature or Politics

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One modest belch, endless green moralizing – The Globe and Mail.

Brendan O’Neill writing in the Globe and Mail this morning expresses the opinion that the crisis in the sky resulted from  the EU’s usual risk-avoiding reaction.

I’ve heard that same opinion about the recent pandemic: too much hype, too much money spent, not a “real” pandemic. Tell that t0 the people who languished in emergency rooms or intensive care units, or who watched their children die. I admit those events happen in any regular flu season as well. But if no immunizations had taken place, and the population had developed wide-spread illness, and the subsequent bacterial infections, would that have been serious enough?

The same journalists who suggest the government over-reacted would have been the ones to call it to account if  one plane had fallen from the sky, its engines clogged with volcanic dust. It was the airplane manufacturing firms that wrote the specs and  manuals. Were their cautions to be disregarded?

The pandemic is over; the skies are clearing; tragedies averted or farce?

Pardoned sex offenders evade record checks due to tighter privacy – The Globe and Mail

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Pardoned sex offenders evade record checks due to tighter privacy – The Globe and Mail.

This article suggests that the government has tightened the privacy act to such an extent that only the person involved can give permission for the record to be released. So it should work like this: Mr. X wants to work as a hockey coach in September. He applies for his police check in August, giving permission to release the contents of any record found. But when the records are searched, he has no record, because that 2 years for child sexual abuse has been pardoned and that record is not released, at least not without his permission. So it would seem that there is no protection. Clearly if the RCMP are just following the directives, then the legislation has to be looked at again.

Deep in this article is a reference to a Real Time Identification Program of automated finger-printing that would decrease the current 120-day  waiting period. According to the article the RCMP is working on a Real Time Identification Program.

The website for the RCMP is clear that this system all ready exists and is in use daily by police services for their routine work. The system requires that the fingerprints being checked are in electronic format.

In order to get a police background check,for a civilian, a full set of fingerprints must be provided. If these can be done electronically at the local police station, the checking time is dramatically reduced. Reduced, that is,  until there is a hit on a criminal record. If a criminal record is found, checking can extend over 120 days.

It seems to me, that if an individual wishes to have a police background check done, the first step should be to review the steps of the process on the RCMP website. The directions are clear. Making sure that the fingerprints are sent electronically should reduce the wait time.

Health Care

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The Americans have finally passed a health care bill. Two important provisions: No one can be denied health care for a pre-existing condition; no one is dependent on keeping a particular job in order to keep health care.
No doubt the big insurers are worried about having to take on all these sick people. They certainly can cut into the profit margin.
Up to now, the US has been unique amongst developed nations in not providing health insurance for all its citizens. I hope the people in the middle class, the ones who formed the millions without health care, remember on voting day in November who it was that wanted to condemn them to bankruptcy in the face of catastrophic or long term chronic illness.
The saddest sign I saw at the protests to the bill was held by an elderly woman. “Hands off our Medicare” it read. Spreading fear amongst the vulnerable is a deplorable political tactic, not unique to those south of the border.
Our current government is “getting tough on youth crime” at a time when youth crime is falling. They want to be able to send 14 year olds to adult prisons. I think they’ve never actually talked to a teenager, or raised a child to adulthood.

CBC News – Politics – Contraception an ‘option’ in maternal health plan

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CBC News – Politics – Contraception an ‘option’ in maternal health plan.

These people still don’t get it. Contraception should not be an option. It is too important in the health of young women everywhere, especially in the developing world.
And apparently “family planning” is the Conservative code word for abortion. At least the Minister says no family planning, and Harper says yes to contraception as an option but no abortion debate. Yet more back pedalling today. Either they are incapable of thinking through their ideas, or they believe they can put “spin” on these issues and we won’t notice.

Retirement looms. One more week until the last day for patients, the 29th of March. I’ve been cleaning out financial files. Who knew how much there was to keep. The rule, according to our accountant is to keep seven years of records. I’m up to 6 banker’s boxes and counting.

Fundamentalist Harper and failure to save women’s lives

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CBC News – Money – 10 myths about taxes and filing.

It’s tax time and the CBC has been helpful, publishing a list of myths. Some of them are very old news, but there’s new information too. Worth the read.
I see the Harper government doesn’t think that supporting contraception and abortion rights saves lives. I guess the only lives worth saving are those of embryos.The lives of the women who die in childbirth or its complications, of which there are millions around the world, don’t count. The lives of women who are condemned to repeated pregnancies, without pause, ending up dying at what is by our standard a very young age, don’t count either. Stephen Harper tries very hard to convince us that he’s at the centre of the political spectrum. This sort of pandering to the most fundamental of his supporters shows again that he is not.
Shame on him. Shame on us if he’s elected again.

Medical Isotopes

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Precious medical isotopes could be shipped overseas – The Globe and Mail.

The people who are charged with fixing the reactors are working 24/7 to get them up an running to ensure that the global supply of isotopes returns to normal. I presume they know they are not working long hours and double shifts for the citizens of Canada, but for their company, which will then send off the products to the global market. Quite a deal the government or AECL or both made this time.
In 2008, on the Harper watch, funding was cut off to the scientists working to get the two Maple reactors on line. I am told that it is possible to fix whatever is the problem with “a few lines of code”, but the work has to be funded.

Why are they patching up the old, and why did they mothball the new technology? The article tells us that the Minister in charge of the file, Christian Paradis, referred question to the AECL management. Of course he did. Why take ownership of a problem that might bring backlash from citizens – patients – waiting for tests of their cancers, or heart disease, or renal failure, who may have to wait until the global market, and Canada with it, has an adequate amount of isotope? The global market didn’t supply the millions to fix the reactor, Canada did.

Publishing is on my mind again, as Write Words Inc. is planning to bring Murderous Roots out in a print on domand edition. Details to follow as they come to me.

Just an old boys appointment

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Critics blast ‘dead-of-night’ rights appointment – The Globe and Mail.

I don’t know enough about Mr. Latulippe to know if he is going to destroy Rights and Democracy, as Mr. Ignatieff is quoted as saying; however, it doesn’t look all that good. Three senior managers fired, a late night appointment, a disregard for the controversial nature of the appointee who apparently has strong opinions on the immigration of people who are Muslim, buddy of the responsible Minister: all make for very bad “optics”. Perhaps the throne speech and the controversy over the lyrics to O’Canada were supposed to overshadow this item. I didn’t know much about the agency, but there is a very good website.

About the lyrics, I have been listening to “all thy sons command” all my life. Recently I and many others have been singing “all of us command.” Anyone have a problem with that? I understand the lyrics were changed at the time of the first world war as part of a recruiting drive. Along with the income tax, we were stuck with them.
But changing them should not be a major focus of this parliament. We are at war; we have just started to come out of economic turbulence; we have a huge deficit, uncushioned by the savings that Paul Martin had set aside for just such an eventuality( the Harper government spent them to buy our votes ie lowering the taxes).

True Tory Colours

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Immigration Minister pulled gay rights from citizenship guide, documents show – The Globe and Mail.

It’s not just that Jason Kenney, the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration pulled a section of the study guide for immigrants that details Canada’s gay rights legislation. He did that, according to the Globe article over the objections of senior staff memebers. That’s what we expect from him.

It’s not just that now people who immigrate from countries where homosexuality is a crime, will have no idea that they are coming, or could come to a country where “There’s no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation.”.

It’s far worse than that, in my opinion. It points to a continuing, under the radar,  fundamentalist religious agenda in this government.

It’s far wore than that. Jason Kenney has tried to change who we are by ministerial decree, without  regard for the wishes of Parliament, the decisions of the Supreme Court, or the decent behaviour of most Canadians.

Through the actions of this minister and by his own prorogation of Parliament, Stephen Harper is showing Canadians his contempt for our institutions, for all he wrapped himself in the flag in Vancouver.