CANADIEN

US and Canadian lawmakers who have seen classified US information on Maher Arar have said that there was nothing incriminating in there. Even after an internal US government inquiry has stated that it did nothing wrong when sending Arar to Syria, the Inspector-General of the Department of Homeland Security states that new evidence raise the possibility laws were broken. And Arar was shipped to Syria, a country well known for its use of torture, with a list of questions the US Government wanted him to answer...

You got one thing right... it's about hatred. But I for one know that I am not part of leafless family... one has to be English-speaking (and francophobe0, white (and xenophobe) and heterosexual (and homophobe) to qualify as a person.

Our governments have a legal (constitutional) responsibility to protect the life, security and liberty of each and everyone of us. But, while there can be arguments as to whether or not "safe houses" is the way to protect the life and security of addicts who use them, how to best protect their life and security is a matter of law-making, not law interpretation. Unless it can be demonstrated that the federall government is wilfully neglecting the life and security of the clinic's clients, there is no basis to the claim that it is violating their constutitional rights.

Our governments have a legal (constitutional) responsibility to protect the life, security and liberty of each and everyone of us. But, while there can be arguments as to whether or not "safe houses" is the way to protect the life and security of addicts who use them, how to best protect their life and security is a matter of law-making, not law interpretation. Unless it can be demonstrated that the federall government is wilfully neglecting the life and security of the clinic's clients, there is no basis to the claim that it is violating their constutitional rights.

I forgot... right and wrong are concepts you ignore on purpose. And Canada has admitted its role in Arar's ordeal... does not mitigate one bit the US's government own responsibility. I would ask what makes Arar's case so special to YOU that you will ignore facts because they point to wrongdoings But you would a conscience to even get that. You're on ignore.

IN BC's world, the US government can do no wrong.

I for one would think of English as a global language. That being said, there are not that many countries abandoning their own language for it

No amount of your total personal lack of morality will change the fact that an innocent man was tortured and that the US Government wanted it to happen.

The Canadian government does not do torture, that's why he was not sent back here

Being held in a rat-infested cell aand beaten regularly in an attempt to obtain confession of alleged terrorist acts IS torture. The US Government did not ship Arar to Syria because they suspected him of having skipped military service over there. It shipped him there because it expected the Syrian authorities to do its dirty work for him.

Looks like the US Government may finally get to the TRUTH a Canadian inquiry got to... that maher Arar, a CANADIAN citizen, was detained by the US Government, then deported to Syria where he was tortured, even though he had committed NO crime. That our security apparatus first bungled its job by fingering Arar, then engaged in a smear campaign against him upon his return. And that there is very good likehood that the US sent him to Syria because they expected he would be tortured.

What kind of English would be the norm is Ontario was "officially English" is just one aspect of the issue. It would be interesting to see what those promoting an officially English Ontario have in mind in terms of access to education in French, signage legislation, use of languages other than English by the government. I for one does not want an English version of that pile of manure aka as Quebec language laws implemented in Ontario, but forgive me if I think that some of those who call those laws racist would not hesitate one second to bring something similar to my province in order to "protect English" against an unexistent threat.

Let's forget the fact that the Russell by-law, although wrong, is no more a violation of freedom of expression that the Toronto by-law mandating that cab drivers be able to speak English to their clients. (I for one, would have love to see some businesses start to post signs in French only just to witness our resident francophobe's reaction). Let's forget the irony of seeing a known francophobe, xenophobe and homophobe use the word Nazi all the time. Nah, let's marvel instead at the twisted logic that sees a by-law that does not violates anybody's right, passed by a democratically elected city council, and that is within the powers of the city council to pass being labelle as seditious, allegedly because some citizens may choose to defy it. Does not look like the definition of sedition in any English (or French) dictionnary I know. Must be a new definition, that reads something like "sedition = anything that runs contrary to the sacred principle that the Frenchies are inferiors". BTW: Yes Leafless, I am back. And yes, I still don't waste my time reading any of your francophobic, xenophobic or homophobbic drivel.

Mario Dumont is nothing more than a little demagogue who plays the "us vs them" card to get votes.

My comments on the language legislation come from hearing from people from Quebec. And I am not talking about 5 or 10 here. Most of the comments I've heard about the "need to strenghtenlanguage laws" came from those outside Montreal. As for the Taylor-Bouchard circus, Radio-Canada had enough of it on the late-night news. And the bulk of the "there's too many of them", "they are taking our jobs" and other non-sense was said at the hearings OUTSIDE of Montreal. This is not a comment about big city people vs small city and rural people, but a comment about those who have been in contact with immigrants vs those who hav had limited contact with them. At least the better and the worse was aired in public.

Let's we forget... that there is nobody west of the Ottawa river who ever complains about headscarves, or turbans, or multiculturalism... or are childish enough to misspell Quebec on purpose.

I would not go that far, but the fact is a lot of te push for tougher language laws iss liekly to come from the regions, where English would not be of a preserce anyway.

The CSIS is not above the law, and it to needs to be accountable. Secret can be secret even when our spy agency is audited.

It's not a study. These two guys were commissioned by the provincial government about 15 months ago to go across the province and hear what people had to say about "reasonnable accommodation" towards immigrants. One of the two commissioners, Charles Taylor, is an English-speaking McGill Univeristy philosophy professor, one of the world's top political philosophers. The other one is Gérard Bouchard, an historian. For the most part of 1987, they held public hearings throughout the province. They've heard it all. The tolerant people, the misinformed, the ignorants, the plain racists and the complete idiots (like the guy who denounced... fluor in the water ) were able to tell in public what their counterpart in the rest of the country only say in private... or on the Web. At time it looked like a circus, at time the commissioners got angry at some of the c*ap they heard. And interestingly enough the wrose was heard in the "regions", where there are few immigrants, instead of Montreal where one would expect the tensions to be the worse.

Hear Hear

Even in the case of CSIS, the ombudsman office could look at allegations of wrongdoing while subjected to security requirements.

Even in the case of CSIS, the ombudsman office could look at allegations of wrongdoing while subjected to security requirements.

Democracy without the rule of law (that is, the notion that none, even legislators, are above the law) and protection for everyone's rights is nothing more than a dictatorship of the majority. As for the argument that the judges are making law... Indeed they are - one of the foundations of common law is court decisions establishing binding legal precedents. In this case, though, judges are INTERPRETING the law, that is measuring it against the mandatory yardstick that is the Constitution. Some times it is very easy (elections must be every five years or less), in other cases it is not (what constitutes discrimination). It is especially in those cases that I would rather see an independent judiciary determine what is constitutional or not instead of the Parliament making that decision on the laws they voted on. Nobody would suggest that hockey teams make up their own rules as they step on the ice, but rather expect referees to interpret the rules; why would it be different when it comes to issues regarding how we govern ourselves and what rights we enjoy?

Each generation interprets rights in a different way, whether there is a constitutional framework or not. The two advantages of a constitutional framework (a Charter here, or the US Bill of Rights) are that: a) rights acknowledged under that framework are a lot more difficult to take back a court decision is (at least in theory) based on a legal analysis of the issue at hand, while a parliamentary decision is more often than not based on what will get the most votes. To compare SSM with a "cause célèbre" in the US, there is no way the writers of the 14th Amendment meant for "equal protection before the law" to include integrated schools and railway cars. Yet the Supreme Court read it so in 1954. Had they deferred to the Legislatures of Southern States, desegregation would still be the norm today.