Canada ranks last in freedom of information: study – The Globe and Mail.
You knew this, didn’t you? Harper had a lot to say about freedom of information before he was elected. Now that’s it his government’s information, suddenly we have no access compared to other democracies, and we’re the go-to guys on how not to implement freedom of information acts.
It’s embarrassing, that’s what it is. And a little frightening. What is it they don’t want us to know?
Geoffrey York in the Globe and Mail, writing about South Africa:
The government of President Jacob Zuma is being accused of harassing the media, failing to improve the lives of the poor, and favouring its own cronies in dubious business deals.
Lawrence Martin also in the Globe and Mail:
Last year, as revealed by The Canadian Press, Prime Minister Stephen Harper lunched in New York with Roger Ailes, president of Fox News, and Rupert Murdoch, who owns it. Kory Teneycke, Mr. Harper’s former spokesman, was also present at the unannounced event.
Mr. Teneycke later became the point man for Quebecor’s Pierre Karl Péladeau in his effort to create a right-wing television network modelled along the lines of Fox News. The new network is a high priority for Mr. Harper, for whom controlling the message has always been – witness his government vetting program – of paramount importance.
In this regard, he scored a fantastic coup when Mr. Teneycke became head, courtesy of Mr. Péladeau, of Sun Media’s political coverage. It’s not every day that a prime minister sees his one-time spokesperson taking control of a giant media chain’s coverage of his government.
Now, I don’t think Mr. Harper is an idiot on the level of Mr. Zuma, who until lately denied the problem AIDS presents in his country. But I do think Harper’s overweaning desire to control almost everything, is becoming hard for him to disguise. Remember at the beginning, when he decided to protect himself from the hurly-burly of the scrum by hiding in a basement room of the Parliament, with selected members of the media present and taking only pre-vetted and few questions. Now he will have a whole network to lob easy questions at him and allow him to distort the facts with impunity.
The rot started with his success in proroguing Parliament, continued with the whole census debacle and recently found a respected Mountie out the door because of his support, along with all the rest of this country’s police, of the long gun registry.
It’s his agenda, his take on what the women of the world need, his belief that we don’t need facts on which to base decisions. How does he tolerate a man like Stockwell Day in his cabinet, with his prattling about “unreported crime” as an excuse for more and bigger jails? I begin to be concerned about what new crimes will soon be announced and how long free expression can survive.
Writing:
Last week and this I have been proof-reading the galley for my new book. This exercise leaves me with a renewed respect for all those who read and correct the millions—it must be millions— of words written every day.
Gardening:
The long spring and hot, humid summer are ending with what seems to be an early autumn. The swallows are making practice flights; the black squirrel is driving the dog crazy with his aerial foraging in oak tree; the brown-eyed susans are making a spectacular show with their mounds of intense gold and black. What does it all mean? A heavy, snow-laden lengthy winter? Our autumn will end with a stay in the south of Spain.
Books
I’ve been reading Frances Mayles A Year in the World. She and her husband took our trip, first to Madrid, then to Seville and on to Ronda. I hope some of the restaurants and tapas bars she writes about are still open. Spain is having a tough time economically this year.
Sakineh
Her fate was supposed to be decided on August, but so far—nothing. the British Government has called in the Iranian ambassador to express its deep concern. I hope it expressed the full horror of civilized nations at the barbaric crime Iran is perpetrating on its citizens, and particularly this woman and the fourteen co-condemned, waiting out the tattered remains of their lives in that foul prison.
Please sign the petition at http://freesakineh.org
The Guardian reports this morning that the deaths by stoning of the (mainly) women in Iran’s prisons are being quietly change to death by hanging. The article, goes on to remind us of the appalling state of justice in that Republic. The cases include that of a fifteen year old child bride, accused of her elderly husband of adultery, condemned not only to die by stoning but also to live for three years under that sentence because she was not yet eighteen. What a mockery.
Meanwhile Sakineh herself is tortured into reading a “confession” on television. Her lawyer is now in Norway, having been arrested in Turkey and offered safe haven in that country of EU officials intervened in Turkey. He of course can and is speaking to the press.
Please keep up the pressure on Iran. Sign the petition at http://freesakineh.org/
Ottawa Notebook – The Globe and Mail.
The census, still in the news. Earlier this week Tony Clement complained that he felt all alone in the census fight, with so many groups against him. Apparently he thinks he is the only one with revealed truth on this issue.
Then, the government, throwing a bone to Quebec, moves questions on language to the short form, because they couldn’t be assured of accurate data in a voluntary long form! Now do these people actually ever listen to themselves?
Writing
I spent an entire morning this week talking to Sean, at Microsoft for Word for Mac about a strange problem with my manuscript. All the quotation marks were reversed. Sean couldn’t solve the problem for me and finally, I did a manual review and changed them all. As to the service from that department, it was great. Two phone calls back, the first to give me an update on the progress, and two days later to tell me that despite their best efforts there didn’t seem to be a solution.
Now comes the slogging part of writing — reviewing the galley proofs.
Canada’s stat crunchers join census fight – The Globe and Mail.
One week until the new census goes to press. One can see the strategy the government is employing. It is clear they – being he, Harper – thinks that if they hold on, beat the drumbeat of the jail time problem, until it is too late to change the census, it will all just go away, become yesterday’s news.
The problem is that often works for them. Who will remember that the rights of the citizens of Toronto and elsewhere were trampled during the G20 fiasco?
Who will remember that Harper refused to include abortion in his women’s health initiative?
I think it’s important to remember these events. The pattern of authoritarian behaviour worsens over time as governments become more entrenched. Without an accurate census and without the comparison to before, the government will be able to tell us what it wishes, with no facts to confuse us.
The census is about fact. It should be saved. Why on earth don’t they just remove the jail time penalty and leave it as mandatory, with a fine for refusing?
Kandahar airbase was attacked today. What about that leaked information on the war? How much truth is there in in what we have been told? Or is it more government manipulation?
It has been an unusual week. The conflict over the census, which cost a good man his job and lost the services of that same career civil servant to the government, has spread to interprovincial affairs, with most of the provinces weighing in on the side of keeping the long form the way it is, minus the threatened jail time. Today Jack Layton wants to sit down with the PM and work out a compromise. John Ibbitson in the Globe talks about Tony Clement “defending a false fact”. All along I thought there were no false facts, just facts and non-facts.
The Conservative government has been unable to say “we made a mistake” for all these long years they have been in government. Since they imported Guy Giorno, a former Mike Harris staffer, the attitude of the government seems to me to have become more hard-nosed, and certainly more small-c conservative. I suppose he’s on Harper’s wavelength or Harper on his. Things didn’t go well with Harris originally and I sure don’t like the retread.
The news from Iran is bleak. No word on Sakineh and now her lawyer has disappeared, his wife and brother-in-law held without legal representation. Add your voice, sign the petition. http://freesakineh.org/
datalibre.ca · Uses of Census Long-form data – Question Justification.
Harper’s census push months in the making – The Globe and Mail.
The controversy re the long form census continues. The link from datalibra details the various uses for the information in the long form. Kempton, in his blog laments the waste of all the previous censuses. The next point in the graph will be missing, he says.
The Globe and Mail reporter Michael Valpy interviews Harper’s thesis advisor, and he suggests the decision is ideologically driven by a “libertarian philosophy.”
Jane Tabor in the Ottawa Citizen says if you want libertarians, look to the seniors and they are angry over the decision and have no trouble with the privacy issue. The link to her column follows: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/ottawa-notebook/retirees-wary-of-tory-census-move/article1651910/
A CARP conducted poll show the Tories slipping an amazing 10 points among their members, who are among the usually stalwart Tory voters.
I recall that my mother, who lived to almost 85, had trouble with the census in any form, not because of the questions, or the government having the information, but because it was a neighbour acting as census taker. She objected to someone in the community knowing her business. That doesn’t seem to be an issue for CARP members.
In medicine, samples have to be representative of the population being studied. If too many drop out, the study is invalid. I think we need the mandatory count so we can be sure of our information, and decisions based on it. Facts, not philosophy.
The government says only the elite object to their ant-democratic action. Elite is code word for educated, I think, coming as the comment did on the heels of a statement by 100 professors against the prorogue. So let’s do the math. In 2007, university completion rates for those 24 to 64 was 24.6%. Almost 51% of the population had post-secondary qualifications, trade, college or university. The percentage of people who objected strongly to the Conservative action was 58%. So, does that mean that only uneducated people support the Conservative action? Or is there a strong objection in all segments of the population.
I think the Canadian people know when their leaders don’t respect them, and I think that is what is happening now. Elite, indeed. It doesn’t take a university degree to understand when a leader is hiding from the people paid to question him and his policies. The people will hold him to account as they did Brian Mulroney.
writingthoughts 