turningrite

I'm not a big fan of Ford as PC leader although I believe it a good thing the PC party won the recent election. But yesterday I became more a fan upon hearing that Ford pulled no punches with Trudeau on both the carbon pricing issue and the illegal/irregular migrant fiasco. Trudeau looked uncomfortable in a photo taken with Ford that appeared in this morning's Toronto Star, while Ford was smiling and looked relaxed. And one of Ford's ministers was astonishingly and refreshingly blunt in laying the blame entirely on Trudeau and his government for the migrant crisis. Ford likely realizes public opinion is mainly on his side on these matters. With more conservative governments potentially looming in Quebec and Alberta, and with the NDP holding on by its fingernails in B.C., Trudeau could face some huge challenges ahead from the country's most populous and powerful provinces. Sunny ways and colorful socks might not overcome the obstacles in his way. Good.

Too funny! Canadian PMs don't have a $700 billion (US) military machine readily at their disposal. They're lucky if they can get a few fighter planes or a large cargo plane overseas over the course of several days. I believe a U.S. president can engage in military action without obtaining congressional approval, although a military action can only be sustained over the long haul by obtaining funding from congress. A Canadian PM has nothing approaching the combined level of discretionary authority and resources available to an American president. And most of us are very happy about that.

I'm not sure the situation is the same here in Ontario. I once had my phone service (through which I also received my internet service at the time) cut for several hours by a contractor who was working for my landlord. Several other apartments in the building were similarly impacted. When I was able to contact the service provider, I was told that as the issue arose due to a planned renovation rather than an emergency the landlord had an obligation, with which it hadn't complied, to notify the service provider and the affected tenants in advance of the disruption. In the building in which I live, and presumably in rental complexes throughout the province, it's my understanding that telecom providers own and maintain the cable and fiber optic lines (the old copper telephone lines are apparently no longer being maintained) up to the point at which they enter individual apartments. The real problem in these situations, I think, is with enforcement of landlord obligations. I believe I might have been able to pursue a complaint with the Landlord and Tenant Tribunal (or whatever they call it these days) but the value of the claim would have been too small to make doing so worthwhile. A tenant advocacy representative told attendees at a tenants' meeting that tenants seldom file or pursue complaints when they have a right to do so. Most can't be bothered, I suspect, both because it's a hassle and the available compensation is so limited.

Wow, you're really stretching to come up with these examples. In the first instance, Canada participated as one of 13 countries in a NATO authorized mission. I believe the U.S. was the principal belligerent on NATO's behalf in Kosovo and Canada merely joined rather than led the effort. As for the Haitian coup d'etat in 2004, the federal government's principal role was to host a conference of stakeholders (i.e. France, the U.S., Canada and some Latin American countries) just outside Ottawa more than a year prior to the actual coup. If you read the Wikipedia entry on the coup, it's pretty clear that it was an American-led effort, noting that "Many international politicians, including members of the U.S. congress and the Jamaican Prime Minister expressed concern that the United States had interfered with Haiti's democratic process by removing Aristide with excessive force." Your examples seem to prove my point in that we became involved in these events as followers, largely as a result of our alliances. It's laughable to allege that our leaders functioned as tyrants when an accurate assessment indicates that they were mainly subservient to more powerful states, as is generally reflective of Canada's participation in international affairs. Severing our alliances would end our obligation to participate in such adventures. I don't know whether Parliament voted to authorize participation in Kosovo, or whether it should have been required to do so as we were minor participants, but in the second case there would have been no need for Parliament to be involved as Canada's role was marginal and not overtly military in nature. There's simply no comparison in either case to the egregious adventurism often undertaken by U.S. presidents.

Actually, you haven't referenced an article. You've merely inserted quotations from an article or study for which as far as I can see you provide no title or link. The text you copy in the post to which dialamah has replied raises issues and questions that are worth pondering. If Caucasian offenders tend to be the most hardened criminals, at least in generalized comparison to visible minority offenders, who are determined to be of lower risk and need as well as better educated and more likely to be employed, why then do visible minority activists continuously stress the need for great social supports for members of their communities? The conclusions in the article/study seem contrary to the standard media narrative. This morning I read a column in the Toronto Star asserting that the problems arising with Toronto's gangs emerge from a lack of subsidized housing as well as other supports, along with the obligatory nod to racism. Is this explanation, generally the standard response of the left, not the truth? Are the entrenched and most dangerous criminals actually Caucasians for whom we're simply not providing targeted programs and services, as a quotation you copy appears to suggest? Sometimes context is important, so it would be useful to be able to read the actual article or study you're discussing.

As I've argued in other posts, as the U.S. is our only natural enemy and one we couldn't stop in any case Canada has no strategic need of a military at all, other perhaps than for civil defense and patrolling our coastlines. The U.S. has engaged in military initiatives that have undermined Western security. Many see the rise of the Taliban and al Qaeda as responses to U.S. foreign and military policy. Interestingly, the U.S. backed and armed the Taliban during the years when the Soviet Union was attempting to thwart Islamic insurgencies in the region. How did that work out? And Bush II's invasion of Iraq, intended to achieve regime change, was a total disaster, ultimately contributing to the creation of ISIS/ISIL and further destabilization of the entire region. Continental Europe, in particular, is now paying a heavy price for this in its migrant crisis. You can't fault Europeans if they wonder whether the American alliance has done them more harm than good. The post WWII NATO system was set up to discourage Soviet expansionism and aggression. Since 1989, however, its usefulness has been questionable. The former Soviet-bloc countries that are now NATO members no doubt want to maintain the American security umbrella. If this is important to the U.S., these countries should negotiate their own arrangements with Washington either individually or collectively.

There certainly have been presidents who've engaged in foreign military adventurism. But Canadian Prime Ministers? Hmmm, I'll have to think hard to come up with an example.

Argus's point stands on its own. Irony is an underused rhetorical strategy these days and apparently isn't always understood or appreciated.

I too worry that correcting the damage may take a lot longer and be more difficult than many imagine. Just as Ford will have a hard time undoing Lib damage to Ontario, any government that succeeds Trudeau's crew will be in mop up mode for quite a while. And taxpayers will keep on paying. We know how this will play out.

Do you have a more constructive and/or intelligent idea to offer?

The U.S. could invade Canada in about half an hour if it really wanted to do so and there would be nothing we could do about it no matter the extent of our alliances or the size of our military budget. Nobody would come to our aid. Only international condemnation might rein in the Americans. Your last paragraph is particularly apt. This week, I listened to an American analyst point out that a large proportion of the U.S. military budget isn't used to support alliances but instead is discretionary and is used to meet specific American strategic objectives. U.S. support of NATO is a minor component of its military budget, but Trump apparently hopes his base won't figure that out. Better to bellow and look like he's being strong. The troubling part is that one has to believe Trump has his own military adventures in mind. News reports today indicate that he repeatedly raised with his advisors and others the possibility of initiating military action against Venezuela. This is truly scary and illustrates the hypocrisy in much of his rhetoric. Maybe America's allies are doing both Americans and the world a huge favor if they refuse to permit Trump sufficient budgetary flexibility to behave as an uncontrollable tyrant.

Canada should declare itself a neutral state. Two of the Western world's most stable democracies, Switzerland and Sweden, have long been neutral. Although it played an important role in WWII, Canada today has no crucial role to play in Europe. And Canada should cease all formal association with America's military aspirations and apparatus. We have only one natural enemy and one natural ally, and in each case it is the U.S. We'd be better off to operate a civil defense force and let the Americans and Europeans take care of their own interests and security concerns.

What is not true is your stated premise that "Realistic "Opportunity" for all requires everyone have the same initial conditions as well." Many people overcome the conditions of their upbringing and/or socio-economic class to become successful. It is the essence of what's called social mobility. Studies have demonstrated that social mobility is greater in some countries than in others but that doesn't negate the general principle that equality of opportunity is not contingent on equality of condition. It's easier for the privileged to get and stay ahead, but it's not impossible for the less privileged to do so. Equality of opportunity, particularly in education, is a precondition for social mobility.

I have known and/or met black people who are well-educated, have good jobs and benefited in many ways from society's advantages who believe they are victimized. I have never understood this except in the context of what's often called 'received' as opposed to experienced truth. Many ethno-racial groups have suffered some degree of stereotyping and discrimination and even within the majority population there is class discrimination against some of the less fortunate as well as against the disabled and intellectually challenged. For a lot of people, life is not always a bowl of cherries.

My own preference would be to get rid of all these declarations or, otherwise, declare them to be simply aspirational, which in the latter case would render them consistent with your approach. There's no point in Canada flagellating itself to comply with the terms of these things if they're unenforceable elsewhere. On principled grounds, we opposed the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The only states to vote against it were all Western countries with excellent or reasonably strong legal and human rights regimes of their own.

Many of the young blacks being killed in and around Toronto are born and/or raised here. The gang issues that have emerged certainly present a conundrum. Targeted policing is interpreted as being inherently racist, which hinders a prevention approach. Even though high school students in some instances reportedly indicated a preference that police officers remain within their schools, for instance, activists have at least in some cases had these community-based programs terminated. Personally, I think much of the problem in the GTA focuses specifically on subsidized housing. I'm of the view that long-term subsidized housing should be available only to seniors and the disabled. Otherwise, it generates deleterious and intergenerational impacts that appear to be intractable.

My understanding is that in many cases we treat the details of these declarations as "aspirational" rather than operational objectives. Perhaps we shouldn't sign them unless we're willing to comply with all their terms within a reasonable period of time. But we should also be able to hold other signatories to these declarations as well - and good luck with that. How many countries are fully compliant with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, for instance? Very few, if any, I suspect, and yet it's been in effect for decades. Some just informally opt out or ignore the UDHR. The Islamic countries, which consider the UDHR too Western, have created their own counter-document (i.e. the Cairo Declaration on Human Rights in Islam) as a substitute to apply to themselves. Maybe the more relevant question here is whether these sweeping declarations should exist at all?

They're both dead now, so I can't ask them to explain their thinking at the time, but you may be correct that they didn't want to be labelled as racists, or perhaps more accurately xenophobes, which seems to be the reflexively standard response when anybody points out shortcomings associated with our immigration and/or refugee programs. My point, though, is that if everybody remained calm in the face of perceived cultural or racial aggression our society might be better off. My parents had no way to prove who vandalized their car, or why, so shouting their suspicions from the rooftops wouldn't have been fair. More recently, as in the false report that a young girl was attacked for wearing a hijab, sensationalist reportage has blown divisive issues out of proportion. And I still can't get my mind around microaggressions, where supposedly we can subconsciously discriminate base on our facial expressions or tone of voice. Who comes up with this stuff, and how does it help society?

It's difficult to imagine that our laws could fully comply with all the rights and conditions stipulated in various international declarations. The most prominent of these declarations, of course, is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which in sections 22 to 27 outlines social and economic rights that would require a vast expansion of current laws and government-financed social programs even in many advanced Western countries like the U.S. and Canada. And other declarations, like the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, contain contentious provisions, including reparations, that in addition to being costly may in fact be unfair to majority populations. At the end of the day, all of these things have to be considered in relation to broader economic and political considerations.

A new Ipsos poll indicates that despite Trudeau's Trump-bump, the Conservatives lead the Liberals by 37 percent to 33 percent. The NDP trails at 21 percent. Interestingly, when drilling down into issues, the two files that are most problematic for Trudeau's crew are immigration and cost of living (i.e. affordability), where in both cases a lot more people feel federal policies are generating negative rather than positive impacts. Although an election is more than a year away, the Trudeau government's star appears to be fading. Can it recover, especially when it seems committed to the immigration and carbon pricing policies the are at the root of its unpopularity? https://globalnews.ca/news/4308765/andrew-scheer-conservative-frontrunner-trudeau-poll/

This is simply not true. It is only likely that those born into advantage will sustain that advantage, but it is not guaranteed, just as it is not guaranteed that those born into disadvantageous circumstances can't succeed. It is only more likely they won't. At the end of the day, intelligence, hard work and merit can compensate for disadvantage just as sloth, stupidity and hubris can undermine those who are born into advantage.

As Ukraine wasn't (and isn't) a NATO member, the risk of a military confrontation over Crimea was minimal.

True. But as Trump seeks to fill the SCOTUS vacancy he'll have to be aware that abortion could well derail the candidacy of any choice deemed too socially conservative. Given the polling and the fact that the Republicans want to fill the vacancy prior to the midterms, it's almost certain the Democrats will leverage the abortion issue to expose and undermine SCOTUS candidates who oppose RvW and at the same expose members of Congress who support such candidates. This is a culture war social conservatives can't easily win but can easily lose. Mitch McConnell, who's been pushing for early confirmation, has given the Democrats a big fat target to shoot at. Let's see how well they can aim.

He's denied the allegation (or is it that he just doesn't remember?), so we must believe him. Anyway, we must believe the deniers. Oh, sorry, it's the other way around. Guilty until proven innocent. Has Justin been hoist with his own petard? It's almost too amusing to contemplate. He won't resign. Principles, after all, are important for lesser people.

According to polling released in the past few days, most Americans don't want the courts to overturn RvW (see link, below). Even among partisan Republicans, support for so doing amounts only to a bare majority. It would be very politically risky for a Congress that's already held in low regard to prioritize the agenda of religiously motivated social conservatives where issues like abortion and gay rights are concerned. As for Canada, the so-con agenda is the proverbial third rail among all mainstream parties. Harper, despite his personal convictions, had to suppress the so-cons in his own party in order to achieve and hold power. There is no big push for change here, nor generally in the West for that matter. If America moves to implement the so-con agenda, it will likely remain an outlier among Western democracies. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/politico-pulse/2018/06/29/two-thirds-of-americans-dont-want-to-overturn-roe-v-wade-267641