Stephen Blaney has confirmed that the government will table a bill next week to enhance CSIS’ powers to better combat terrorism, in order to enhance cooperation with our Five Eyes allies, and to enhance the anonymity for CSIS informants. Never mind that the Supreme Court ruled that those sources already have adequate protections, and the fact that the lawyer for Mohamed Harkat warns that the inability to cross-examine this kind of testimony is dangerous. Former Privacy Commissioner Chantal Bernier also warns that rushing into these kinds of changes could have longer-term human rights consequences. But terrorists!
Tag Archives: Euthanasia
Roundup: The SCC hears the assisted suicide case
The Supreme Court of Canada heard the arguments in the assisted suicide case yesterday, where the BC Civil Liberties Association’s disabled lawyer smashed the arguments of disability groups warning of a “slippery slope,” where the government put forward arguments in favour of a blanket ban that the Justices could scarcely believe, and the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada’s lawyer made specious comparisons to capital punishment. In all, it was a fascinating day at the Court, and we’ll see what decision comes down in a few months’ time. Carissima Mathen gives her recap and analysis to Power Play here.
Roundup: Mulcair offers $15/day childcare
The NDP announced their national childcare plan, promising $15/day spaces across the country, with $5 billion over eight years intended to create 370,00 spaces by 2018-19, and one million spaces after the eight years, with the federal government paying 60 percent of the tab, the provinces 40 percent. The Liberals, of course, are pointing out that there would have been a similar programme a decade ago had the NDP not sided with the Conservatives to bring down the Martin government, as they had already done the hard part of negotiating deals with the provinces – something a hypothetical future NDP government would have to start over from scratch in a different fiscal reality. They also don’t think the maths work out in terms of per-space funds. The Conservatives are making doom sounds about the universal child benefit, which the NDP say they’re going to maintain, putting that much more of a hole in the fiscal picture. It’s not seen as a model that benefits all families, and there are better models of getting more women into the workforce using existing federal tax deductions that could be tweaked. Economist Stephen Gordon re-upped a previous post of his with regards to the problems with the Quebec model and how it tends to fail both vertical and horizontal equality tests, and also responds to some of the critics he’s heard from all yesterday.
My TL is full of people saying K-12 is free and universal, so why not daycare? Or post-secondary education? Here's why: (1/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
There is a public good argument for K-12: democracy benefits from a citizenry w basic literacy/numeracy and certain common knowledge (2/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
Outside of disadvantaged children, am unaware of any extra benefits daycare provides. (My reading of @kevinmilligan's point.) (3/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
PSE is specialised training, and gains largely captured by student. Public good argument is weak. (4/n)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
If you want to make daycare and/or PSE obligatory (WHY??) then you are free to use the K-12 analogy. Then make the case for it. (5/5)
— Stephen Gordon (@stephenfgordon) October 14, 2014
Roundup: Assisted suicide heads to the SCC
With the Supreme Court challenge to assisted suicide laws heading to the Supreme Court tomorrow, here’s a look at some of the other countries’ laws in that regard. Carissima Mathen gives us a primer on the assisted suicide case going before the Supreme Court this week.
Roundup: An emergency debate, such as it was
The Commons had their “emergency debate” on the situation in Iraq last night, using debate loosely, of course. After all, “debate” these days tends to largely mean reading monotonous speeches into the record that were all pre-written and don’t actually debate what has already been said. The NDP hammered away at demanding a vote on deployment, never mind that military deployment is a Crown prerogative and thus not subject to a vote, and in fact, shouldn’t be because it launders the prerogative and the accountability. But if Mulcair wants to give Harper political cover so that he can, in the future, say that the Commons decided on the matter and that they are culpable when things go wrong because there was a vote, well, it makes it kind of awkward for the opposition, no? It’s part of Responsible Government – the Commons has given the government the authority to govern, and if they don’t like it, then they can withdraw confidence. Voting to “make decisions” is not actually their role – accountability is. The NDP were also childishly mocking the Liberals for largely not being there for the debate – except that they only got two speaking slots the whole night, which they used near the beginning, and as we’ve established that it’s not a real debate, it does seem fairly pointless to have a bunch of people there to simply endure repetitive prepared speeches – and make no mistake, they are repetitive – with no real ability to respond or add to what’s been said. But this is the state of our parliament these days.
Roundup: Proposing a premium holiday
Given that the government’s EI tax credit actually has the perverse incentive to fire employees or reduce wages instead of hiring new staff as was intended, Justin Trudeau offered up a different solution yesterday, which is to offer employers a two-year holiday on paying the EI premiums of new staff. One wonders why he just doesn’t suggest setting the rate at the break-even rate in the actuarial report, which is a mere 0.02 percent above what the government’s “tax credit” effectively reduces it to, but would be across the board, but hey, he’s putting ideas on the table, right?
Roundup: NATO spending commitments
As that NATO summit gets set to get underway in Wales, it looks like the face-saving final communiqué will state that the 2 percent of GDP on defence spending that they hope members will achieve will simply be “aspirational,” since it’s not going to happen with some members like Canada (which would essentially doubling our current defence budget). Stephen Saideman explores why it’s wrong for NATO to focus solely on the spending levels of member countries than it is on capabilities. It also sounds like NATO members are going to discuss making cyberwarfare as much of a threat to member nations as bombs, which is quite true of the modern era. It also sounds like the attention will be split between the threats posed by Russia and ISIS. Michael Den Tandt notes that while Harper keeps sounding tough, there is no escaping that the Canadian Forces are badly under-resourced – possibly as bad as the “Decade of Darkness” – and we can’t have it both ways of doing good work on the cheap. Katie Englehart has more on the broader context of the situation here.
@Murray_Brewster yep 1% of Canadian interoperable, reliable participation >> 2% plus Greece unreliable, sit at home effort
— Steve Saideman (@smsaideman) September 3, 2014
Roundup: The threat of Twitter pabulum
The Language Commissioner’s look into whether or not John Baird’s personal Twitter Machine account constitutes government business and thus possessing a greater emphasis on bilingualism is opening a can of worms, especially because it invites little more than scripted tweets that bureaucrats go through approvals to write rather than the kinds of spontaneous communications that we can now get with ministers that we otherwise can’t. If we clamp down on this medium, we really are dooming ourselves into a political discourse full of nothing but bland pabulum for all time.
Roundup: 18 causes of a disaster
The Transportation Safety Board’s final report into the Lac-Mégantic disaster was released yesterday, and it was pretty damning when it comes to the responsibility that Transport Canada bears for not doing their audits or following up on it with a rail line that was found to be deficient in its compliance several times. (Video recreation of the disaster here). In the end, they came up with 18 different reasons for the disaster, that had one of them been addressed properly, things could have wound up differently. Part of the problem remains the lack of a proper safety culture, which has been criticized by no less than the Auditor General and a Senate committee report, and yet we’re not really seeing movement on it quickly enough. Paul Wells notes the government’s weak response, and asks about just what kind of responsibility they are going to take.
Roundup: Quebec’s “death with dignity” complications
It’s not really a surprise that the federal government is saying that Quebec’s “death with dignity” law is a violation of the Criminal Code, and will likely be challenged in court. That was kind of the point of the way the Quebec law was structured, however – to fit under the rubric of the provincial responsibility of healthcare so as to not trigger the Criminal Code, but it will likely take the Supreme Court to determine if they can justifiably do so. The Supreme Court is already set to hear a case regarding overturning the ban on physician-assisted suicide, so by the time the Quebec law hits the courts, there may already be new jurisprudence that will help to change the calculus around it. And yes, all parties are divided on the issue. Predictably, opponents of the law insist that euthanasia cannot be medical care, and want more palliative care instead. Administrative law professor Paul Daly puts this new law in the context of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling on a case involving judicial discretion, and how prosecutorial may wind up filling the gap between the Quebec law and any decision to charge anyone who makes use of it.