THIS must be why so many people are leaving Canada | National Post

Having trouble meeting people? UN says Canada’s laws on free association ‘harsh’

(Meanwhile, REAL human rights abuses are ignored: http://www.campaignlifecoalition.com/index.php?p=Anti-bullying_Bill_13)

Tristin Hopper Jun 21, 2012 – 10:45 PM ET | Last Updated: Jun 22, 2012 11:44 AM ET

FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP/Getty Images files

Maina Kiai also levelled criticism on the Swiss Canton of Geneva, where the UN’s human rights body is located.

For the second time in a week, a United Nations official has listed Canada alongside illiberal regimes as a prominent violator of basic rights and freedoms.

Speaking on Wednesday before the UN’s human rights council, UN special rapporteur Maina Kiai listed Canada — along with Belarus, Ethiopia, the Russian Federation and Jordan — as countries where “the laws are particularly harsh in terms of restricting the freedom of association.” Mr. Kiai was specifically referring to Quebec’s recently passed Bill 78. The law — passed last month in response to unruly, ongoing street marches protesting tuition increases — requires demonstrators to give police eight hours’ notice before a protest.

Mr. Kiai also levelled criticism on the Swiss Canton of Geneva, where the UN’s human rights body is located. In March, following a referendum, Geneva enacted a law imposing fines of up to $107,000 on organizers who allow their protests to descend into violence.

The risk to freedom of expression “cuts right across the world and there’s no country exempt from them,” said Mr. Kiai, adding that “there’s no way I will pick and choose which countries I will pay attention to.”

If the brutal and oppressive regime of Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko is equal to Canadian and Swiss democracy, people may conclude that maybe he’s not so bad after all

The comments came just two days after Navi Pillay, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, addressing the same council, called the Quebec bill an “alarming” move to restrict freedom of assembly. That prompted condemnation from Quebec premier Jean Charest and Federal Foreign Minister John Baird. “Quebec is a very democratic place, subject to the rule of law,” said Mr. Baird, noting that Bill 78 can be challenged before a court.

By failing to do her “due diligence” on the Quebec situation, Ms. Pillay “wasted a valuable opportunity to further focus on true human rights abuses,” Elissa Golberg, Canada’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva, told the UN Human Rights Council on Monday.

“Too often at the UN, a doctrine of political correctness compounded by pressure from powerful blocs of states leads to jaywalkers being treated the same as rapists and murderers,” said Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, in a statement Thursday.

Targeting Quebec’s protest laws do not promote higher human rights standards, but the “opposite,” said the Montreal-born Mr. Neuer. “If the brutal and oppressive regime of Belarus dictator Alexander Lukashenko is equal to Canadian and Swiss democracy, people may conclude that maybe he’s not so bad after all,” he said.

Both Mr. Kiai and Ms. Pillay’s comments were made before a human rights council notorious for a rotating membership that includes prominent human rights abusers such as China, Cuba and Saudi Arabia. Since its creation in 2006, the Council has directed more than half of its resolutions against Israel.

In May, the same UN Council sponsored a Canadian visit by Olivier De Schutter, the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food. After an eleven-day tour of Canada — his first to a developed country — Mr. De Schutter said Canada should drop its “self-righteous” attitude and own up to a severe food insecurity problem.

Speaking to Postmedia, the special rapporteur also blasted Canada’s “appallingly poor” record of taking UN human-rights bodies seriously.

20 June, 2012

THIS is the problem with the Canadian Charter of Rights: "Reasonable Limits" (a repost from the National Post)

“. . . and guess who gets to determine “reasonable!”

Karen Selick: The language police come to Ontario

Karen Selick Jun 20, 2012 – 7:00 AM ET | Last Updated: Jun 19, 2012 3:38 PM ET

Blair Gable/Reuters

The wish of some Ontario francophones to live in a fantasy world regarding the importance of the French language outweighs their neighbours’ Charter right to freedom of expression — according to the Ontario Court of Appeal.

Okay, okay — that’s not quite how the court put it. But that is nevertheless the essence of last week’s decision in the case of Jean-Serge Brisson and Howard Galganov against Russell Township.

Four years ago, 70% of the commercial signs outside businesses in Russell Township (a municipality of about 15,000 people near Ottawa) were bilingual. For a group of francophone zealots, 70% wasn’t enough. They entreated town council to make bilingual signs mandatory for all businesses.

The proposal was highly controversial among both anglophones and francophones. Two local chambers of commerce opposed it. A committee struck by council recommended against it. Nevertheless, council passed the by-law by a 3-2 vote, requiring all new exterior commercial signs to be bilingual, with the dimension and style of lettering being identical in French and English.

Jean-Serge Brisson owns a radiator repair shop in Russell. Despite being fully bilingual, Brisson erected a non-compliant sign, with his business name solely in English and his services listed solely in French. Brisson then challenged the by-law, together with bilingual anglophone Howard Galganov (who had posted a sign written entirely in English).

The two were slapped down by Justice Métivier of the Superior Court of Justice in a 2010 judgment that I described in an article back then as “disturbingly illogical”. Unfortunately, last week’s decision from the Ontario Court of Appeal was not much better.

The Court of Appeal did at least correct one error made by the lower court: It correctly held that the bylaw violated citizens’ rights to freedom of expression under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Freedom of expression includes the right not to express oneself in a particular language. “Freedom consists in an absence of compulsion,” they wrote, quoting the Supreme Court of Canada.

But then, astonishingly, they said the violation was justified under Section 1 of the Charter — the section that allows governments to violate fundamental freedoms if the violations are “reasonable limits … demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”

The appellate court seemed completely hoodwinked by evidence that confused the behaviour of free citizens acting voluntarily with the behaviour of dragooned citizens acting under state coercion. For instance, the court accepted the expert opinion of a bureaucrat with the Eastern Ontario French School Board to the effect that “the by-law indicates that the French language has value in the community outside of schools and family life.”

Nonsense. When the francophones of Russell henceforth see business signs in both official languages, they will no longer know whether anyone inside can actually talk to them in French. They will no longer know whether the “bienvenue” genuinely welcomes them, or is merely an artifact of coercion forced upon an unwilling — and possibly resentful — anglophone or allophone. Anyone who accepts this as an indication that French is either valued by the sign’s proprietor or valuable in communicating with him is accepting an illusion — a fraud — manufactured by Russell’s town council. The inference that French is valued by businesses could not validly be drawn unless businesses chose voluntarily to use that language.

Another expert gave his opinion that the by-law is a “symbolic recognition of the equality of the French and English languages and cultures.” Symbolic indeed. Symbolic and false.

The truth is — and the court had these facts before them — that the use of the French language at home in Eastern Ontario decreased from 23.8% of the population in 1971, to a mere 15.6% in 2006. If the francophone population themselves lack the motivation or wherewithal to keep their numbers up, why should other people be coerced into maintaining the illusion of parity for them? Is phony symbolism really an important enough objective to override a freedom so important to Canadians that it is enshrined in our constitution?

Also absent from the decision was any explanation of how the by-law, which would force Brisson to add English to his mostly French sign, achieves the goal of promoting or preserving the French language. Charter jurisprudence requires that Section 1 overrides be rationally connected to their objective, but this connection can only be described as irrational.

The decision contains other leaps of illogic too numerous to discuss here. One can only hope that Brisson and Galganov will be able to mount an appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, and that the SCC will place greater value on a constitutional freedom than on a charade designed to mollify some busybodies’ wounded pride.

National Post

Karen Selick is the litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which intervened in this case to support freedom of expression.

30 May, 2012

Repost From NP | Barbara Kay

Barbara Kay: If this is war, the millennials don’t have a chance

Barbara Kay May 30, 2012 – 6:30 AM ET | Last Updated: May 30, 2012 10:34 AM ET

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

An Occupy protester pours lighter fluid on a garbage can fire during a May Day demonstration in Oakland, Calif. And these guys wonder why they can’t find jobs.

We were dining at a good bistro. The waiter — early 20s — accidentally knocked a glass of water onto my lap. Suppressing annoyance, I was summoning a gracious smile to acknowledge his forthcoming apology when instead he chirped, “It’s okay, stuff happens.” Stung, I responded, “You’re unclear on the concept. You’re supposed to say ‘I’m sorry,’ and I’m supposed to say ‘It’s okay, stuff happens.’ ”

Our narrowed eyes locked: the Senior and the Millennial (a.k.a Gen Y or Echo Boomers). I was thinking: Your teflon complacency comes from a lifetime of helicopter parents and teachers ensuring you were failure-proofed to protect your precious self-esteem. He was probably thinking: Why aren’t you dead yet so I can get a decent job and afford the meal I’m serving you.

He would have a point.

We’re witnessing an unprecedented generational social tussle. In 1950, people my age were doddering retirees. Today, we’re healthier longer, enjoying still-productive lives. By clinging to our jobs, or starting new ones, we’re blocking the natural economic pipeline. Yet we’re also hanging on to our untenably expensive government benefits, because politicians genuflect before our massive voting numbers, not to mention our tendency to vote in higher proportions than the already far less numerous 18-34s.

But I have a point too. Cossetted, self-satisfied millennials lack humility and competitive drive. They think real life will echo their easy ride through high school and the artificially inflated grades they got for their dumbed-down university courses. An October 2011 National Report Card on Youth Financial Literacy polled 3,000 recent high school grads on their expectations. More than 70% erroneously assumed they’d own their own home in 10 years. The average respondent over-estimated his future earnings by 300%.

In his new book, Beyond Age Rage: How the boomers and seniors are solving the war of the generations, marketing maven and ZoomerMedia vice-president David Cravit deconstructs our unique demographic moment, as the culturally dominant boomers continue to re-order the world millennials are inheriting.

If this were a real war, millennials wouldn’t have a prayer. Oldies’ greatest fear — realistically — is outliving their money, because many boomers didn’t save for their retirement as previous generations did. They won’t cede their entitlements willingly. Almost a third have no savings, almost a quarter are $50,000 in debt upon retirement. Some are supporting aged parents. Many have to work, many more who are financially secure just want to work, and most are surprisingly adaptive. The number of self-employed Canadian 55-plus “BoomerPreneurs” doubled between 1990-2008.

Millennials — unrealistic, under-adaptive, often debt-burdened and, unlike the Boomers in 1967 (when the median age was 27, not 42, as today), are coming of age in hard economic times. They’re mad as hell, venting on websites. “Why won’t the Baby Boomers step aside?” rants one. Response: “Because many of us are too busy supporting our college graduate kids who won’t shop at Walmart … and BTW, you are NOT getting my job, Crybaby.”

Cravit’s evenhanded analysis is evidence-based, but one occasionally senses his irritation with millennials’ immaturity. In one chapter, for example, he compares the goals-focused sobriety of the Tea Party movement (70% boomers and seniors) with the feelings-drenched, violence-prone Occupy movement (70% under 39).

To illustrate his point — and to hilarious effect — Cravit contrasts the Tea Party website, a model of on-message clarity detailing principles and practical strategies, with the inchoate, juvenile Toronto Occupy website: “[We are] fed up with the current political and economic systems in this nation and all over the world. … We have not yet put out a unified message but be sure it will come.”

Cravit attributes the Tea Party’s success to boomer perseverance and a strong work ethic. He attributes Occupy’s failure to their education, which “put[s] a premium on rewards detached from results.” He recognizes that because of boomer guilt amongst cultural elites, “the meme of boomer selfishness and greed will likely overcome the meme of millennial immaturity and dysfunction” in the media. Indeed, we’ve witnessed exactly this joust played out in these pages over Quebec’s endless street protests. But Cravit also predicts that boomers will win in the marketplace.

The book concludes optimistically. It’s an unusual war where the victors refuse to let the losers lose, offering generous shelter, sustenance and mentorship to the vanquished. But that’s what is happening. Cravit’s elaboration on the boomers’ “Marshall plan” for their vulnerable progeny shows that it isn’t the nanny state, but spontaneous kinship altruism — plus, hopefully, a practical revamp of a superannuated university system — that will ensure that Canada’s presently unlucky millennials land on their feet.