Hugo

I don't believe either the medium or the message is the problem. Art has often contained violence and incitement to it. Shakespeare is replete with regicide, murder and war and a play such as Hamlet is as brutal as any Tarantino movie. Marx's literature contains incitements for the proletariat to rise up and violently overthrow their governments, and so on. If you believe that Tupac is responsible for cop killings, then Marx is responsible for the violence in Russia between 1917 and 1921, so what do we do about Marxist literature - ban it? The problem is nothing new. However, what is new is the concept of art as big business. It's not enough to just record music, that music has to be sold which means an advertising barrage, tours, endorsements, TV spots and so forth. It's the same with other questionable materials, for example, pornography. I don't particularly have a problem with the existence of pornography, out there, somewhere I don't know about and don't have to see. What I do have a problem with is the fact that every time I go into Blockbuster Video there are softcore movies on the bottom shelves where my young children can see them mixed in with the new releases and family movies; the fact that there are TV adverts for "college girls gone wild" and so forth in timeslots when children can view it, not to mention adults who might find it offensive; the fact that the sex shops in my town have billboards all over the place and don't have to blank out their windows. There is a particular McDonald's restaurant with a children's playground and, literally right next to it, a sex shop with mannequins in S&M gear in the window for all to see. This is the same with violence and violent images in art. I don't have a problem with its existence. I like Reservoir Dogs, I like Saving Private Ryan, and I like Black Hawk Down but I would have a heart attack if I thought that my kids (the eldest of whom is seven) were watching it or that somebody was attempting to make them watch it. That's the essence of my argument. If 50-cent wants to rap about shooting cops, let him. But should art be all about making big bucks and shoving things in people's faces? To that end, AF, we shouldn't really blame the rap artists. Freedom of expression is fine. Those who must bear the blame, in my opinion, are the record company execs who do their best to get as many people as possible to hear their music and do their best to glamourise that subculture in order to make more sales. Those are the real demons.

In my view, any document that needs to or can be subjected to social whimsy and changing society cannot truly be any kind of bill-of-rights. Human rights are supposed to be inalienable and innate to all human beings, and if the 'rights' in question can be changed and modified at the discretion of "society" they cannot be inalienable and innate. Therefore, what we are talking about here is not right, but privilege, and the question is whether or not the law should permit any one individual or group to have privilege before it. I say no. I will confess that I don't know exactly how powerful, for instance, EGALE is since they don't disclose that information. However, I will bet real money that they are one of the best-funded lobby groups in Canada. I'll also bet that there is not one single conservative or religious lobby group that can come close to the level of funding and media campaigning that EGALE has. If you have any hard facts on this, I would be interested, but it seems to me that pro-gay groups certainly get the lion's share of public and media attention. Surgery, I'd imagine. AA is ridiculous. It basically states "two wrongs make a right", i.e. in order to fix a discrimination we're going to create another one. What if, eventually, women overtook men in real incomes? What if you axed the AA programme and the trend continued - would you then create a new AA programme to penalise women? There's also the problem that AA itself creates resentment and engenders the kind of bigotry that it seeks to dispel, the fact that the people it "benefits" often end up worse off for it's interference, and the fact that AA draws attention to and exaggerates differences of gender, ethnicity etc. that we are supposed to be becoming more blind to. AA does not create a level playing field, it just tilts that field in different directions, and so in principle it is really no better than Apartheid, segregation or other officially-sanctioned bigotry. This has all been gone over in an older thread, I would revisit it.

This is true, however, homosexuals represent somewhere between 3% and 10% of the population (depending upon which study you believe) and have probably the most powerful and vocal lobbyists in the country. I think, if they were to be represented in the Charter, they should probably be represented specifically rather than falling into "other", especially as the possible consequences are so far-reaching. People with three arms are not seeking to rewrite public decency laws, change the education of Canadian children and so forth. Nobody is on an equal playing field. Maybe I'll do better in life than some people I know because I'm smart and they are stupid, but does that mean that they should be given greater opportunity than me to compensate? Should ugly men be "awarded" supermodels to date to compensate for their "disability?" No, of course not. All people should be equal before the law, and our laws should reflect how we would like our society to be. To that end, law must perpetuate the idea that everyone is equal at least before it, and let that idea permeate into the public conscious and allow it to dissipate prejudice (as it is arguably doing, just look at the strides that have been made for racial and gender equality without affirmative action). What it should not do is adopt an attitude of "two wrongs make a right" and attempt social engineering according to the vision of a half-witted Marxist Quebecois. Quite, however, it seems to me that the media tends to dwell on the mistakes of the opposition far more than on the Liberals. Yahoo.ca left the story about the Alliance MP who favoured recriminalising homosexuality up on their portal for 5 days, and the same story got a predictably hand-wringing and hysterical response from the Toronto Star. I avoid the CBC completely, however, I'd bet money that their opinion was similar, and similarly overblown. On the other hand, there didn't seem to be much media fuss over the overwhelming number of incidences of corruption that surround Jean Chretien - the Grand Auberge, the Fu brothers, private jets, mysterious meetings and loans, conflicts of interest, Conrad Black, and so forth. I'd think that a little-known MP and his views of homosexuality should be less important to the national media than numerous allegations of corruption and conflicts of interest involving the Prime Minister himself. Unless, of course, they either 1) will fall on their sword for Canadian democracy or 2) believe that a proportional system will actually benefit them.

Not at all. As I've already proven in other threads, gays had all the same rights as straights, including marriage rights. Their latest gambit is to gain privilege. For instance, they want the tax breaks and recognition of marriage and next-of-kin, however, those things exist because the law recognises that in a traditional marriage there exists an income gap between man and woman because of the raising of children. Homosexuals don't have that gap, but they still want the benefits designed to fill it - basically, they want to have their cake and eat it. Marriage allows you, as a man, to marry a woman, of marriageable age, who is not closely related to you, not already married etc. Those criteria apply to everyone. If you want to marry a man - tough. This discriminates against homosexuals in exactly the same way as it discriminates against those who want to marry 6-year-olds, those who want to marry 7 women, those who want to marry their dog, or even those who want to marry themselves (Michael Coren wrote a great column on this, using exactly the same arguments that gay rights groups use to justify marrying himself). It even discriminates against those extremely ugly and uncharismatic loners who can't find anyone who can stand their company. Now, that's all I'm going to say. We already had these arguments as to the social implications of gay marriage and you didn't have anything to rebut with, ultimately, so there is no point rehashing the whole thing in order that you be proven wrong again. You think improving a life is the same as saving it, that marrying two gays is the same as saving someone's life? Pay attention, Lost, this is a ridiculous argument.

While I don't want to enter into legal wrangling, I believe I can offer some insight into this reasoning. Guns: first off, guns don't necessarily have to kill people. Studies and FBI statistics in the USA show that where registered firearm ownership is higher, crime is lower. They also show that civilian interventions with firearms are responsible for preventing hundreds of thousands of crimes (usually burglary and theft-related crimes) every year. Thus, the guns can be shown as a trade-off. Sometimes innocents are injured or killed (but how often with a registered firearm anyway), but on the whole, legal firearms give us a safer society. Alcohol: while it has the potential to be socially devastating and mood-altering, it can also be used in moderation and without negative effects. One can enjoy a nice glass of wine with a meal without getting sloshed, in fact, when you drink a small amount with a meal you wouldn't even notice the effects. We tolerate alcohol not because we don't care about alcoholism, but because most people drink without any negative side-effects. Tobacco: while destructive to health, tobacco is not mood-altering and thus can truly be a personal choice. When under the influence of mood-altering drugs, you are not really responsible for your actions, so you are putting others at potential risk. But after someone has smoked a cigarette, they do not act any differently. Of course, passive smoking can be a problem, so we ban it in public now, however, that's not a justification for banning it altogether. You can't masturbate in public, but I don't think any serious thinker would propose outlawing it in private as well. Pot, on the other hand, has all the negative health consequences of tobacco, but is also mood-altering. Unlike alcohol, though, it's also impossible to use it in moderation: either you are stoned, or you're not. You can't have just a small joint with a meal and not feel the effects, and if you could toke without noticing anything, nobody would bother doing that anyway. Nobody does pot because they like the taste (unlike wine, beer, or even cigars), they do it to get high.

I think that's missing the point. What this says to me is that we need to take a good look at our approach to sexuality. It doesn't matter if this guy thought the girls were 18, 14 or 12, what matters is that he (and evidently, others) think it's just fine to be having sex with someone who is so much of a stranger that you can't even be certain of their age. Not that you can legislate that kind of thing, but age-of-consent laws are basically an attempt at a band-aid solution to the underlying problem, which is a social and cultural blight. This is why STDs are on the rise, especially amongst young people, this is why the teen pregnancy rate refuses to drop no matter how much money we throw into sex-ed, and this is why stories like this are becoming almost commonplace.

It's also exactly what gay people have, and have had for years. What gays are fighting for now is privilege and special treatment, and in a free and egalitarian society they shouldn't get it. This "award" from Time Canada is just a leftist sop. Do you seriously think nobody in Canada has done something more worthy of the title? That there are no scientists or doctors who have made great strides in the treatment of disease and saved lives or no firefighters who have rescued people from burning buildings at great risk to themselves? That springs to mind because my father-in-law is a firefighter and was exposed to a highly toxic substance at a chemical plant fire this year, and despite the fact that he knew that said substance had been spilt in huge quantities he went ahead and did his job anyway. He gave medical aid, along with a colleague, to an injured employee despite the near certainty that the amount of this toxic substance covering the patient would kill him too. He was hospitalised immediately following the incident and the doctors there informed him that he would die within 24 hours due to chemical exposure. Miraculously, he survived - but do you seriously believe, Lost, that a couple of homosexuals who got married deserve a "man of the year" award more than my father-in-law, who was laying down his life to try and save a total stranger?

Oh, yes, and I just read that hot on the heels of this balderdash comes Howdy Doody's plan to cancel tax credits for parents sending their children to private schools - retroactive to January 2003, of course. This moron has barely sat down in his new office and already the blunders and broken promises are beginning. I remember his TV ads - "I won't lower your taxes, but I won't raise them either." Except if you are in business, or unless you send your kids to a private school, in which case, dig deep - Dalton needs more money to give to bereaved homosexuals. Radio CFNY called him a "turd burglar" the other day and chastised Ontario for having elected him, although I remember them (hypocritically) poking fun at Ernie Eves alone before the election. It hasn't taken him long to begin alienating his former supporters, this clown will be lucky if he survives to the next election at this rate and I can't say I'm sorry. I didn't vote for him, and for those nitwits who did, well, you got what you deserved.

Chretien was a corrupt, amoral powermonger. Witness the affairs with the "loans" made to the Grand Auberge, the Fu brothers case, the TotalFinaElf connection, the Robert Black lawsuit and so on. The corrupt money-grubbing and Byzantine intrigues are seemingly endless. Martin seems determined not to bother with any house-cleaning. Little cabinet reshuffling, no investigations into allegations made against Chretien's cronies, no changes for the Senate or the Supreme Court, no electoral reform, in fact, very little reform of any kind except fiscal (and we shall see what happens to that - just look at fellow Liberal Dalton McGuinty's broken fiscal promises in Ontario). Same old Liberals. It's my opinion that the only way that party will clean up its act, is if it is firmly booted out of power by the CPC, and that may be a wake-up call to reform into a party worth voting for again. Right now, they're just a bunch of crooks and thieves.

I was recently having this debate with some friends the other day, and they asked what the point was of having a military anyway since Canada is so friendly and peaceful. To which I responded, well, take it away and you'll find out the hard way. After all, Belgium was strictly neutral in WWII and that didn't stop Hitler overrunning them and subjecting them to his tyranny. It's not just about protecting our borders. Although it is not terribly moral or courageous to leave all the work to the US, they will protect Canada against invasion since it is in their interests not to allow a foreign aggressor onto the same continent. As I said, it isn't responsible or fair to leave the US holding the baby, but in this respect we aren't in too much danger. But what we should have learnt in the post-Cold War world is that attacks can be insidious and sudden, and can target us right in our homeland. If terrorists destroy the CN tower or bomb the Skydome during a Blue Jays game, what do we do? We can ask the US to prosecute the perpetrators for us, which they may or may not do. After all, we have snubbed their foreign policy requests recently and they may decide that if Canada isn't prepared to support them, why should they lose the lives of their servicemen and precious war materiel fighting our battles? We can also leave it up to "quiet diplomacy" and the UN, which is basically to say that the problem will be ignored since diplomacy doesn't tend to work on an implacable and fanatical enemy willing to kill himself if he can take a few of us with him, and the list of the UN's failures in the prevention of terrorism and tyranny department is staggering. What this will be taken as, is a sign of weakness, and the world's terrorists will quickly assess Canada as an easy target and move in for the kill. Or we could build a military capable of doing something useful. Just a thought, but apparently one that hasn't occurred to the empty heads in our cabinet.

This is pretty insulting to American servicemen. They are trained to do a job and trained to believe that they can do that job. I would bet that none of them want to come home before their task is finished, and for them to be pulled out only having half-completed their mission is practically an accusation of cowardice. I'm sure the troops are fine. Casualties are very low, and from all I've heard they have a real sense of accomplishment. Iraqis are happy and, on the whole, want the soldiers to be there and are grateful for the fine job they've done so far. In Gulf I, the greatest disappointment was not amongst those troops sent off to fight in the desert, it was amongst those left behind. Those who were not shipped out thought of themselves as the unlucky ones. These are not Vietnam-era conscripts, they are highly trained volunteers who believe in their mission, their commanders and their country.

No, Riff, enough time has already been wasted on you. Your posts here are like your posts everywhere: unsubstantiated, self-contradictory drivel. I have already explained this to you in very clear ways, whether it is the case that you cannot understand or merely pretend not to understand is irrelevant. As to my qualifications, since I cite sources and don't expect people to take my word for things I don't need to provide them.

I can well believe it. Let's begin the exorcism. The Charter was a part of the Constitution Act of 1982 that defined a citizen's rights, that Constitution Act being an update to the Constitution Act of 1867 which gave Canada full political independence from Britain. The original 1867 Act defined the operation of Canadian government and nothing more. Yes, it was vague and a lot of Canadian government is done according to convention, however, vaguery is not the norm in law. Go and read the Criminal Code and tell me how vague it sounds to you. In four paragraphs on that point you have not actually cited any evidence to prove your argument, not that that surprises me. I invite you to do so now, but experience leads me to believe that you will decline, yet again. I already quoted you contradicting yourself. I will do it once more, and that is the last time I will do your reading for you, OK? You said: and then you said, So, first you say that courts don't bend to popular sentiment, but then you state that courts are more likely to uphold rights if society is rights-conscious. That is bending to popular sentiment, Riff. You have said that what a court is likely to do depends in large part upon social mood. Surely you jest! I just asked you why it was that your precious courts used to send abortion doctors and homosexuals to jail, and your reply was that they are more upholding of rights in a rights-conscious society! Now you are back to claiming the opposite, again! You are absolutely ridiculous. Go away, and stop wasting bandwidth.

Because the constitution is not meant to be applied to anything but the means of government, about which it is precise. Note the precision of the Charter as it applies to terms of office, and note also the section where it is stated that the Charter will not override other law, which is intended to compensate for its vagueries in allowing it to stand aside for more accurate laws. Of course, the "experts in law who put this together" knew this. That's why it is like that. The problem here is that the courts are using the Charter in a way that it should not be used and in a way that the Charter itself states that it cannot be used, which you seem to be claiming is not an abuse of judicial power. It seems obvious to everyone with half a brain, Riff. The "problem" is that once again, you were utterly wrong in your assertions. You had previously said, And then you were proven wrong, that judges do bend to the whims of the popular sentiment, to which your response was basically "so what?" So I ask you - just what on earth are you arguing exactly? What is "nonsense" is for you to have said that just a paragraph or two below your contention that courts in fact do reflect the politics of the moment. It seems to me that your specialty is self-contradiction, the accusation of which doubtless sounds familiar to you by now, after all the threads in which you have mindlessly shot down your own arguments with very little assistance from others. Once again, I'm astounded by your claims to great knowledge of a variety of complex and nuanced subjects when it seems that even correct English escapes you at anything more than a 6th-grade level. The fact that you have yet to disclose your much-vaunted qualifications leads me to believe that if they exist, they come from one of those dubious univerisites whose final exams are multiple-choice and for whom the ability to write a coherent essay is not a requirement. Anyway, once again your argument here seems to be that you are an expert, for reasons we cannot be told, because of qualifications you neither disclose nor prove, and we should take your word on everything you say when every word you do say is not only torn to shreds by other posters, it is in fact torn to shreds by you. You claim to have done a great deal of research, but so far you have only ever cited one case in your defence and you have never referred to the actual text of that case to make your point. It's not enough to claim to have done research, Riff, you actually have to prove you did it and cite it correctly - which you should know if you are, in fact, the holder of a degree in anything.

Firstly, the fact that it is not listed in s.15 has everything to do with it. A court cannot claim to be interpreting law when the legitimacy of their interpretation depends upon that law being worded differently from how it was written. Secondly, s.15 is basically a reiteration of Orwell's famous line, "All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." You see, subsection 1 forbids discrimination, except for cases listed in subsection 2 - and don't forget, if the law favours one group or person, they are discriminating against someone else. This is just another reason why the Charter has no place in a free and democratic country, it is redundant and farcical. If I'm wrong, nothing much will happen. But if you're wrong, we're on the fast track to one-party and one-man government. Does it not alarm you that Canada seems to be headed increasingly towards one-party government, with state-controlled and private media alike doing their best to marginalise and demonise all opposition, and election funding reform designed to be most supportive of the party already in power? Does it also not alarm you that by convention, the Canadian political system is being set to concentrate power so heavily in the hands of the Prime Minister? Nothing good has ever come out of one-party and one-man governments. Bearing in mind what horrible tragedies have come out of those eventualities, I am justifiably alarmed as it is becoming apparent that the same thing could very well happen here. Well, the SCC is appointed by the Prime Minister and has the power to strike down "unconstitutional" laws, the meaning of unconstitutionality apparently being very flexible. The Senate is also appointed by the Prime Minister, with the power to block or amend any Bill any number of times. The Prime Minister's party has been set by electoral funding reform to receive a greater share of money for re-election purposes. The government controls a significant sector of the media, and one that is viewed by many Canadians as a voice of reason. The Prime Minister has no limit set upon his term of office. The Prime Minister is not elected to his post by the people. And so on - and yet the leftists continue to delude themselves that it is American democracy that is on the wane and not their own.

As we all know, Chretien opposed the US-led military ouster of Saddam's regime earlier this year, and his reason for that opposition was that it was not sanctioned by the UN. However, in 1991 the UN did sanction a war to liberate Kuwait. Brian Mulroney supported this war, and Chretien, then in opposition, condemned the war and Mulroney's support of it, despite the fact that his beloved UN applauded that war. Chretien is as crooked as they come. He is very deserving of the distinction of being the only Canadian Prime Minister in history to be sued for abuse of power.

No. The example was to show you how farcical the prosecution of law would be if the laws were vague. That is why the laws are not vague, they are precisely worded. They do change law, and I already gave examples of this. Canadian courts have moved beyond simple interpretation and if you had read those cases you would know that. Oh - you think that the fact that all SC justices are nominated by the Prime Minister means they are immune to political trends? Absolute nonsense, Riff. Just look at the cases we're talking about here. Why weren't the courts protecting abortion rights before 1988? Why weren't they protecting gay marriage before 2002? Why were they sentencing gays to jail time before it was legalised instead of "fighting for minority rights" the way you claim they do? The answer is that the courts move with the political winds just as much as politicians. The courts are still upholding your "tyranny of the majority", it's just that when Canada was mostly conservative they were imprisoning abortion doctors and homosexuals, and now Canada is mostly liberal, they are granting gay marriages and abortion-on-demand. I'm talking about them because you are whining about a "tyranny of the majority", and I am illustrating to you that that is what a democracy is, and if you don't like it, why don't you try living in a tyranny of the minority and see how that suits you? You know what I recall of that thread? I recall a bunch of primary sources and expert opinions cited by myself, answered by unsubstantiated chest-beating from you on why we should all listen to you because of your conveniently unprovable qualifications. I don't think anyone else in that thread bought it. This thread is the same thing. You don't have the faintest clue what you are talking about, you don't know much about the SC and the way the judges are nominated, and you haven't read the cases you are citing. Basically, your idea is that the court system is great because they are doing what you want them to right now, although you seem to have amnesia when it comes to recalling cases 30-40 years ago when the exact same system was doing the opposite of what you would have wanted them to.

Laws are not supposed to be vague because that means they can be exploited. An example of this I gave before: say I murder you and am found guilty. I can argue that my Charter rights were violated under s.15, since the court was discriminating against me because I am a murderer. That is just stupid, and it's why laws are not vague wishy-washy documents but long and specific stipulations designed to cover as many possible situations as humanly possible. You are correct, clauses exist for amendments and that is how the law is supposed to change to reflect changes in society - by the mandate of the people and their elected representatives, not by the whim of a panel of unelected judges, and not by the Prime Minister's buddies in the unelected Senate. Democracy is the indifference of the majority towards a minority! The Liberals form the government because they got the majority of the vote. Are you in the minority who voted NDP? Tough, you get to be ruled by the Liberals anyway. Popular law requires you to wear a seat-belt in a car. Are you in the minority that doesn't like to wear a seat-belt? Tough! Buckle up or go to jail. The majority of people want smoking restricted to adults. Are you a kid who wants to smoke or an adult who wants to let him? Tough! If that kid lights up or that adult gives him cigarettes, they go to jail too. Are you in a minority that speaks Urdu but not English or French? Tough! The majority of Canadians have decided that the official languages of Canada shall be English and French. That's democracy in action, and if you feel like throwing that away I invite you to take a trip to North Korea and see how charming their society and political climate are. No, it does not. I notice that since Boydfish blew your arguments on this issue clean out of the water you've done your usual trick of dropping that thread and repositing your highly dubious theories in another, but the fact remains that the Charter was as unnecessary in principle as it was egregious in the letter in the first place and has become a vehicle for unelected judges to trample democratic principles.

See M v. H (1999) 2 S. C. R. 3. Here we have a case of the Supreme Court overstepping their boundaries, reading into the Charter what isn't there, and actually admitting to acting according to the "purpose" of s. 15 without adhering to the letter of it. That's a flagrant abuse of judicial power. If a law is felt not to represent the purpose behind it, that is a matter for Parliamentary amendment, not arbitrary judicial modification. See also Halpern et. al. v. Canada (2002). Here again we have a case of a court, in this case the Ontario Divisional Court, ruling that s.15 of the Charter was violated when, in fact, it wasn't. In the text of the case, once again, the court admits to acting in the "spirit" of the Charter rather than according to the letter of it.

Michael, that statement deserves a lot of respect, and I congratulate you on your intellectual integrity. You should also visit the thread on Sharia law, if you haven't, where the subject of the Charter and abuse of judicial power have been explored in more detail. Let me ask you, do you agree with state recognition of incestuous and polygamous unions? This is a leading question, and as I believe you are an honest and serious debater I will show you where I am going with this. There is not a single argument that can be levelled against incestuous and polygamous relationships that cannot also be levelled at homosexuality. I believe that disapproving of incest and polygamy while endorsing homosexuality is hypocritical at best. Pedophilia has been legal in Canada for 15 years already. See Bill C-15, 1988. In Canadian law, anyone under 18 is a minor, but according to the criminal code a sexual relationship between a minor of 14-18 years of age and an adult of any age is perfectly legal as long as the adult was not in a position of trust or authority to the child.

Michael, If you want to see the full text of the Charter it can be found here. Those are indeed the only groups mentioned. I don't believe there are even any plans to modify this at present, Bill C-250 adds homosexuals as a group that cannot be victimised by hate speech however, that is an amendment to the Criminal Code and not the Charter.

That's what the section they referred to actually says. You will notice that the groups mentioned do not include homosexuals or persons discriminated against because of sexual orientation. It does say that every individual has this right, however, the particulars are noted because that is what the grounds are supposed to be to make a discrimination case stick. Otherwise, if I kill you and am found guilty in court of law, I can argue that my Charter rights were violated: I was discriminated against in court because I was guilty. Nonsensical. So therefore that section is qualified, and you see that the court did not act in accordance with those qualifications, despite the fact that they claim that they did. Actually, we already have legalised pedophilia, nevermind being on the verge. The age of consent is 14, without qualification (i.e. it doesn't matter if the other party is 14 or 40). A 14-year-old is, legally, a child. They can't vote, can't drink, can't drive, can't smoke, can't get a job, can't claim welfare. All NAMBLA (and the gay rights groups that back them) wants to do is make more children into victims of that legalised pedophilia.

Question: where does it mention in the Charter that homosexuals are protected from discrimination and granted the right to marry? Answer: it doesn't say it anywhere. Liberal judges "read in" those rights and made court rulings appropriately. They defended themselves by stating that they were acting in accordance with the "spirit of the Charter" in creating a Canada free of prejudice. So, to paraphrase. The Courts acted in accordance with a non-existent law and when questioned, claimed to have read the mind of Trudeau and to know exactly what he wanted to put into the Charter but didn't, and then claimed the right to ignore the letter of the law in favour of what they feel the law should be, their feelings of what the law is trying to accomplish, and their personal vision of what Canada ought to be like. When you ask, Michael, the answer is, "it does not matter", because as far as the courts are concerned the Charter can mean anything you want it to mean. I don't think bestiality will be the first thing. My initial predictions for the deepening of the Canadian moral cesspool: NAMBLA, in conjunction with the very powerful and well-funded gay-rights umbrella organisation they are now a part of, will get involved in a high-profile court case in which they will make a defence of a pedarastic relationship. The liberal court will rule in favour of this after much crying and wringing of hands in the leftist press, public debates over what "love" is, and whether a 10-year-old has the right to be "happy" in this "fulfilling and loving relationship with an older man" and lower the age of consent (probably to 8, rough guess, since that's what NAMBLA says they are going for). Parliament will ignore the issue and leave it up to the courts.

It's not really that simple, Neal. Most of the Sahara is the territory of countries such as Algeria and Libya. It's for certain that they have no commercial enterprises capable of undertaking such a project, which means that either those $50bn have to go to the countries that will undertake the project (and I guarantee that will mean a $50bn investment for the armies and secret police of those countries and not a red cent for the project), or Western enterprise must go over there to complete the project. That latter means losses due to corruption, harassment (including theft and murder) by local warlords and government and so forth. Without protection, very few people would want to do that, and protection means troops, which increases costs astronomically, and means that you are now asking Western countries to pay probably hundreds of billions of dollars and to risk the lives and well-being of civilian contractors and military personnel to attempt a project that may not succeed and will not benefit them. Ain't gonna happen. The bottom line has little to do with it, the details are going to ground that plan before it even starts rolling down the runway. The cost and logistics involved in redistributing food that would otherwise be wasted is similarly prohibitive, and once again, as we have already seen in the Third World, most of what we send there does not end up in the hands of those who need it anyway. Without massive armed intervention and, at least in the long-term, drastic political and social restructuring of the Third World (which, I hardly need to tell you, is utterly impossible), it won't matter if you throw food in the garbage or ship it to Africa at enormous cost. Millions will still die of famine because the food won't get to where it needs to go. A miss is as good as a mile, and getting food to the right continent is just a waste of time and money if it ends up going to warlord armies instead of starving children. Regarding food shortages in our own country, I think you would be surprised by what companies already do off their own bat. The Gates Foundation (founded and run with money Bill Gates got from "corporate greed") gave $800.8m to charitable causes in 2002. But I agree that the idea is a good one, and one of the best incentives is the right for a company to advertise it's good deeds. That's hardly fair. For the government to come down like a ton of bricks on a particular industry renowned for pollution problems (e.g. the paper or textile industry) is not a good option. Large companies will be heavily hit by this, will need to put large sums into R&D to find new, clean methods which will probably mean job losses, closures and so forth. Smaller companies may just fold entirely. It is more ethical for the government to be part of the solution. I would say that a better approach would be for tax dollars to be used for research grants when said research is to be made into cleaner modes of industry. Ford revamped their Rouge plant at the cost of $2bn with the help of environmental consultants including Michigan State University. The local government, at least, should have helped with that. It benefits the environment and provides an incentive for other companies to do likewise.

s.15 is effectively useless to prevent discrimination because it is so vague. In Halpern et al v. Canada (2002) it was found that "the equality provisions of s.15 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms are violated by the common law rule that defines marriage" (taken from the text of the ruling). However, that case concerned nothing more than sexual orientation which is not listed as being protected from discrimination in the Charter. What the court actually admitted to doing was not acting according to the letter of the Charter but acting in the "spirit" they perceived to be behind it. However, you previously said: and you called me "ignorant" for believing that the courts did exactly what the courts admitted to doing in the text of the case that I cited above, which I invite you to read, since apparently you need to. So, we have a document that outlaws discrimination except to ameliorate disadvantage. It does not define disadvantage, and it does not describe what measures may be undertaken to ameliorate it. It does define the groups that are to be protected however, as we have seen, apparently those definitions are not to be taken particularly seriously. I think that's a problem. I agree that rules concerning the formation of government should be entrenched in a constitution, however, although property rights are entrenched elsewhere it would seem that, according to the case above where the Charter was used to over-ride family law, the Charter can be cited as good reason to override other laws. If an NDP or even farther left-wing government wished to abolish private property there is nothing in the Charter to stop them, and if the SC was similarly left-leaning they could defend the action of the government on the basis that the Charter does not allow property rights. If they were not, however, they would find nothing in the Charter that they could use to protect citizens from abuse by the State. I imagine that it would be impossible to bend the rules as was done in the aforementioned case, because there isn't anything in the Charter that could even be loosely interpreted as being in the spirit of defending property rights. No, that's not what I said. What the Charter does is protect an employer's right to discriminate against whites if they can make a case that it is done to ameliorate disadvantage, and given how vague the Charter is that shouldn't be too hard for a good lawyer. The scope of this is not defined. The Charter states that the Charter does not affect rights/laws defined elsewhere, but as we've seen from same-sex marriage cases in recent years that clause is apparently not to be taken seriously. For example, say I'm an employer with only white employees. I decide I want to "ameliorate disadvantage" in my company by hiring more blacks so that they can enjoy my competitive salary and benefits packages. I employ a thousand people, so to be in keeping with the proportion of blacks in the population I am going to fire 22 white employees and make sure that the 22 replacements I hire are all black. Any white applicants will be disqualified because of ethnicity. The 22 white employees I fired and any white applicants for their positions have, according to the Charter, no right to protest my action even though it was blatantly racist and discriminatory. There are laws elsewhere, as I said, to prevent this abuse but as we've seen, the Charter can be used to over-ride those laws, so those 22 employees cannot count on their rights being upheld in court if my lawyers trot out the Charter in my defence. They are independent from the political process by dint of the fact that they are appointed and not accountable. They do not follow the Charter because they are willing to read things into the Charter that are not there, and claim a breach of Charter rights where no such breach has occurred (see case cited above). In that case, admittedly, they gave Parliament 24 months to ratify their change (although in other cases they have not) but nevertheless, their change had no grounds.