More On Harper's Week in Atlantic Canada

Harper's visit to Atlantic Canada this past week has been a political hurricane for his party, with Harper doing most of the damage himself.

I blogged earlier about Harper's thick-witted approach to damage in Newfoundland, but the National Post adds more to the list of droppings Harper left around the region:

Newfoundland:

Harper told reporters the speed of compensation for the region largely depends on the provincial government. "The province has to start the work, and then send some of the bills to Ottawa," Harper said.

"There's a provision for advance payment. That can be done fairly quickly if we get the documentation. Sometimes it takes time, because sometimes the documentation doesn't come. But I hope we'll get on with it quickly."

Brilliant - I'm sure that people are just going to be so impressed with Harper's willingness to be constructive after a natural disaster has happened.

Nova Scotia:

Then later that afternoon, Harper let loose with a blast aimed at Nova Scotia Premier Rodney MacDonald and their ongoing battle over the Atlantic accord.

At a barbecue in the Nova Scotia riding of Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay, Harper told some 300 Tory faithful that every province was better off because of the Conservative's budget. "More money is flowing to this province and will flow in future years, for health care, for post-secondary education, for daycare spaces, for gateway and infrastructure and, yes, for equalization."

Speaking from a podium flanked by two miniature lighthouses, Harper told the crowd Nova Scotia received $100-million more in equalization in the most recent budget.

"Make no mistake, our best hope, our only hope, is that despite our differences, Conservatives stay united and work together in this province and across the country," Harper said.

Although MacDonald was at the barbeque, he was not invited to speak. The premier could not be reached for comment.

Just before the prime minister took to the podium, aides removed the flags of Canada and Nova Scotia, fueling speculation that an accord announcement may have been scuttled at the last moment.

Jeepers, talk about peeing in the pool while you're drinking from it! First, he brags (naturally to a "safe crowd") about all the wonderful things he's doing for Atlantic Canada, and then he turns around and refuses to have the flags of both Canada and Nova Scotia around while he gives this speech.

If this wasn't so pathetically childish, it might almost qualify as funny. Sadly, it's childish and stupid. I hope that Atlantic Canadians are paying close attention to the respect that Harper's bunch are paying them.

Of course, the only place he didn't completely screw up was a closed door meeting with "business leaders" in New Brunswick:

In between his controversial Newfoundland and Nova Scotia visits, Harper stopped in Moncton, N.B., for a private meeting with a group of local business leaders, in a session hosted by former Tory premier Bernard Lord. Harper met the group behind closed doors for roughly an hour.

New Brunswick, which has no offshore oil or gas industry, is Harper's best choice for adding Atlantic seats in the next election. The Conservatives currently hold three of the province's 10 House of Commons seats.

So, the only place he didn't really screw it up was in a closed door meeting hosted by his friends. This man thinks he is some kind of leader??

Dear Mayor Mills:

Please look in the mirror.

Sez Truro's Mayor:

Mayor Bill Mills is standing by the vote, saying, as a Christian, he simply could not support the request.

"God says I'm not in favour of that and I have to look at it and say, I guess I'm not either," Mills said.

The mayor said gays and lesbians already have equal opportunities and work and pension benefits, so he wonders what else they're fighting for.

Do these clowns ever look themselves in the mirror? Do they ever think about their own words? His own statement, or perhaps the debate itself in Truro is a clue for his query.

Of course, Mayor Mills goes further and makes exactly the kind of misinformed, quasi-paranoid comment that tells you oh-so much about the underlying prejudice this man harbors:

By raising the rainbow flag, he added, that might open the door for other groups.

"If I have a group of people that says pedophiles should have rights, do we raise their flag too? I don't want to lump them in with homosexuals, but that's the point, the issues, and that's my feeling.

"There doesn't seem to be standards anymore. Everything is OK, everything is a go."

Good grief. Once again we see yet another elected official open their yaps and show us all exactly how ill-informed they really are. Okay, he's a professed "Christian", big deal. Not only has he pulled out the old "gays are pedophiles" saw, he's also essentially claimed that the GLBT people are "immoral" people who have no "moral standards". While his "beliefs" may tell him this is 'truth', that doesn't make it so.

It occurs to me that this man is exactly the reason that pride events have been a part of the GLBT rights movement in the first place. He's one of the "keep it in the closet" types who sees nothing wrong with firing somebody because of who they love becoming public knowledge.

Having Your Cake and Eat It Too

In Alberta, the notion of government intervention in any "free market" is anathema. When the topic of what to do with rental apartments in Alberta's terminally out of balance real estate market was raised late last year, the governing Conservatives swore up and down that they'd never impose rent controls - after all, that would be meddling in the "open market".

Anyone who has actually lived in Alberta in the last 24 months or so has long since figured out that our entire housing marketplace is horrendously out of balance. Demand has long since outstripped what supply did exist, and landlords have been "condo-izing" existing rental units at a blinding rate, and you could count the number of new rental units constructed on the fingers of one hand. (at least in Calgary)

The oh-so-generous landlords of Alberta have gotten together and agreed to place some 1,000 units available under a rent subsidy program. Superficially, this almost seems reasonable - after all it makes a certain number of units available to low income or working poor people who cannot quite manage to break into the housing market.

The problem is that this is a "cake-and-eat-it-too" for the landlords. They still get the inflated "open market" rent for their apartment, while the tenant pays a reduced amount. So, while the landlords think that this makes them "look good", they are basically looking at a way to get at some of the $20 million the government is using for rental subsidies in Alberta.

The net effect? A few people get "low income" housing - until the subsidies run out, at least. In the meantime, except for The Mustard Seed, nobody is actually building any rental accommodations to re-balance the marketplace.

I cannot blame the landlords entirely - anytime you put $20 million on the table, some people are going to try and suck up as much as they can without doing anything material. The real problem here is a government in Edmonton so tied to the dogma of "not intervening" in the oh-so-wonderful "free market". Instead of trying to rebalance the factors in the "supply-and-demand" curve, the government is simply throwing money at the people who already hold all the cards in a marketplace that is desperately out of balance.

The Great Uniter ...

Stephen Harper's latest antic is merely another example of the man's narrow-minded partisanship. He had a golden opportunity to start building relations with Newfoundland's Premier, Danny Williams in the wake of recent flooding.

Instead, he arrives to review the damage in secret, without even so much as a phone call to Premier Williams' office.

Harper was scheduled to visit Conception Bay North and the Placentia area in eastern Newfoundland -- communities left partially flooded and heavily damaged by Chantal's strong winds and sudden deluge.

The prime minister was to meet with community leaders before touring the flooded area.

He was joined by federal Fisheries Minister Loyola Hearn, Newfoundland's representative in the cabinet and Fabian Manning, the local Tory MP.

Harper is also scheduled to appear at a business roundtable in Moncton, N.B., this afternoon.

Later, he will travel to Egerton, N.S., where he will attend a barbecue hosted by Foreign Affairs Minister Peter MacKay.

I realize that politics is a game of backstabbing and viciousness. However, Canadians must ask themselves if their Prime Minister should be a figure of unification or a figure of divisivness and petty grudges?

Reasoning That Arrives At *Gaaah*!

Once in a while, you run across a writer that seems well reasoned and thought out, and then they throw a complete monkey wrench into that impression.

Such is precisely what I found reading Julie Bindel's columns.

In particular, what drew my attention was the reasoning in this column on transsexuality.

Feminists want to rid the world of gender rules and regulations, so how is it possible to support a theory which has at its centre the notion that there is something essential and biological about the way boys and girls behave?

Oh oh ... I've read this before - when I found myself reading some of Judith Butler's essays. Like Butler, Bindel is adopting a stance that gendered behaviour is purely a social construct.

The problem with this particular line of reasoning is pretty easy to pick out - young children demonstrate gendered behaviour long before there is any significant socialization. Second, one of the most common attributes of the transsexual narrative is a knowledge that "something was wrong" from the beginning - usually among their earliest memories. Like it or not, it's hard to say that

As someone who spurned dolls and make-up as a child, I find it deeply troubling that, had I gone to one of the specialist psychiatrists while growing up and explained how I did not feel like a "real girl" (which I did not, because I wanted to be a lesbian), I could be writing this as a trans man.

At about this point, Bindel has just shot her argument out the door. This is a fairly typical problem when you attempt to apply a gay or lesbian narrative to gender identity. There's quite a distinction between gender atypical behaviour which is often part of the gay or lesbian narrative, and the transsexual experience. While some transsexuals do show strong, gender atypical behaviour, a large number adopt strongly "biological gender typical" behaviour, and live for years that way.

The second thing that Bindel vastly misconstrues is the diagnostic process itself. It is very rare indeed for a competent therapist to tell a patient "I think you are a transsexual". The reality is that the therapist's role is help the client find ways to reconcile their feelings about themselves in a constructive fashion. For some clients that may lead to transition, for others it will lead to a much different understanding of themselves.

Bindel goes further, and claims that gender reassignment surgery is "aversion therapy":

During the debate I argued that sex change surgery is modern-day aversion therapy treatment for homosexuals. The highest number of sex change operations take place in Iran, where homosexuality is punishable by death. Sex change surgery, therefore, renders gays and lesbians "heterosexual".

Using the example of Iran to justify her position is something of a red herring. I would hardly point to Iran's approach to transsexualism as exemplary of the rest of the world - and in particular the "Western European" tradition which modern psychology has its roots in. I imagine that most gender and sexuality therapists in North America and Europe would be very troubled by what is going on in Iran.

However, this underscores the muddled thinking that infects Bindel (and in many respects Butler as well). Transsexuals are not gays (or lesbians) that wish to appear straight. If that were the case, then we might expect that transsexuals would be commonly homosexual prior to transition, and apparently heterosexual afterwards. Sadly for Bindel's reasoning, this is not the case. Just as there are gay, straight and bisexual people in the population, the transsexual population shows a similar range of variability in their sexual expression post-transition. There are Male-To-Female transfolk who are straight, and some who are lesbians. (Read The Sexual Spectrum for more insight into this topic)

Sadly, like a great many people who speak out against treatment for transfolk, Ms. Bindel has started from a muddled set of premises, and derives a position that ignores both evidence and clinical reality.

In large part, both Butler and Bindel have made very fundamental assumptions in their arguments that simply do not hold up to scrutiny. By claiming that gender is essentially learned behaviour, they lose sight of the fact that we can think and feel things quite different from what we demonstrate through behaviour. To make a simple example, I am very unlikely to cry at a funeral. This doesn't mean that I do not feel sadness or loss in the circumstances, but merely that I do not show my emotions outwardly. What's to say that a Male-to-Female transsexual would not feel inwardly that they should be a woman, even though their behaviour is typically masculine? (Which is actually an amazingly common narrative)

I admire and support the feminist drive to break down artificial lines between gender roles in society. I do not believe that anybody should be put in a social straightjacket based on their physical gender. I've known men who are amazingly caring, gentle people (attributes often assumed of women), and women who are strong, competitive individuals whose business savvy and negotiating skills would put most businessMEN I know to shame. A society that encourages people to be real about themselves and their feelings is a noble goal. Oddly, I don't believe that such a society would be "transsexual-free" - because a transsexual's issue is not with mere behaviour, but with a deeper sense of identity that goes to the core of the person's identity.

Harper The Totalitarian ... What's Next?

If you are a politician in Canada, the media is a fact of life. If you are a politician in a governing party, the media is omnipresent in your life ... get used to it.

In Stephen Harper's world, though, it seems that it's okay to use police muscle to distance yourself from the media.

Okay, Harper doesn't like the media - I get that - it's quite clear to me...and has been ever since his first official hissy fit with the Parliamentary Press Corps.

However, this is another thing altogether:

"There's a time and a place for the media," a Mountie told a small knot of print reporters, making it clear the issue was not a matter of security but of communications strategy.

The unnamed officer said he was acting on orders from the PMO.

Now, a reasonable person might look and say that this is nothing more than security. But if we are talking about a security precaution, how do you explain this?

While tour bus groups freely wandered the lobby of Charlottetown's Delta Hotel, plainclothes Mounties rebuffed reporters who had convened for the Conservative party's three-day summer strategy session.

Granted, it's a strategy session - I get that. However, the Con$ are not an opposition party now, they are the governing party. While I do not believe that the media needs to be "in the room" at their strategy session, the Con$ have no business using the RCMP as hired muscle to keep the media away.

This is not the actions of a party that respects democracy, or for that matter even touches on the shores of accountability in government. This kind of heavy handedness is sending a clear message to Canadians -> "Let us do what we want, and screw you to hell" is the message.

The Harper government's approach to the Canadian media has been insulting to both the media and Canadians. It smacks of cover-ups, dishonesty and a disrespect for the Canadian voter. Using the police to enforce your will when you don't want to be held accountable for your own bad policy is the act of a wannabe dictator.

Of Due Process

Recently, we have had two fairly significant (to Canadians at least) court rulings.

The first being Conrad Black being found guilty of securities fraud.

The second happened yesterday: Felderhoff found not guilty in Bre-X.

These two cases provide an interesting insight into some misconceptions that some people have of the justice system.

Both cases are excellent examples of due process taking its course - regardless of the outcome.

Unfortunately, it seems that too many people confuse the term "charged" with "guilty":

Stan Buell, another investor who lost his Bre-X investment, founded the Small Investor Protection Association in the aftermath of the Bre-X scandal.

He calls the Bre-X fiasco "the scam of the century" and told CBC News he can't believe no one will be forced to pay for it.

Bre-X may well have been Canada's biggest swindle of the 20th Century, but that doesn't mean that there's enough concrete evidence to hold Felderhoff responsible. (One may suspect all you want, but suspicion is not proof)

Due process is essential to the proper functioning of any democracy. We all have the right to due process - the government does not have the right to detain any of us without charge and trial.

Yet, that is what the US government has done by executive fiat and the "PATRIOT Act" which effectively suspend the notion of habeas corpus in the United States.

In Canada, we have a Conservative government which has put forth amendments to our criminal code that subvert the presumption of innocence, and have created a "no-fly list" that has no due process whatsoever around it.

It's intriguing how the "law-and-order" crowd are the very people so willing to suspend the very fundamentals of that system.

There's nothing to say that Canada's securities laws need to be revisited and reviewed in light of the Bre-X scandal, but let us not lose sight of the fact that any restatement of that legislation has to be carefully considered. Too broad a brush and we will create an environment where lawsuits and accusations of fraud will happen the moment a company hits a rough quarter.