#liberal party of quebec

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Godbout Plans To Reform Quebec Prison System," Montreal Star. January 18, 1940. Page 3. ---- Premier Plans Legislation To Separate Hardened Criminals From Offenders Against Game and Liquor Laws ---- COMPLETE reorganization of the provincial prison system, with classification of prisoners, according to their records and the possibility of helping them to return to freedom as useful citizens, was forecast this morning by Premier Adelard Godbout, when interviewed at the Windsor Hotel.

Mr. Godbout said that he had always been of opinion that the existing prison system did not offer a guarantee of humanity and proper chance for the moral and material rehabilitation of the prisoners. He said that the system of keeping under the same roof hardened criminals with those whose May Head Prisons only crime had been to violate the fish and game laws, or the regulations of the Quebec Liquor Commission, had always appeared to him unfair and even inhuman.

OLD PROJECT RECALLED Some years ago, the then Premier, Hon. L. A. Taschereau, at his request, had initiated a law authorizing the Government to place released prisoners on farms so that they might familiarize themselves gradually with civil life. Mr. Godbout said that he aimed higher.

There was no reason, he said, why delinquents under the fish and game laws, or whose crime was the selling of liquor without license, who are otherwise, honest citizens, should be imprisoned with thieves and murderers.

This could be prevented by a better classification of prisons and prisoners and their administration by a superintendent or commissioner. His Government had under study a plan for the above reform that would come before the House at the coming session, in legislation form.

When asked who had been considered for the new post, the Premier said the present commissioner of provincial police, Lt. Col. P. A. Piuze, would probably be the choice of the Government. Mr. Godbout expressed the opinion that Colonel Pluze because of his experience, would be well qualified to carry on the work.

LAW TO BE REVAMPED Though Mr. Godbout was not very definite as to this point, it is Inferred from what he said this morning that the old Taschereau law, mentioned above, would be altered to meet the Government's Ideas about the prison system of the Province.

Prisoners would be classified so as to prevent the contamination by hardened criminals and by the establishment of special colonies liberated prisoners would be helped towards rehabilitation in society. When questioned as to the successor of Commissioner Piuze, of the provincial police, Mr. Godbout said that no appointment had yet been decided upon. Among the candidates to the succession persistently mentioned. Is Marcel Gaboury. K.C., one of the Crown Attorneys of the district of Montreal. As deputy commissioner, the appointment of Louis Jargaille, former chief of detectives of the province, is considered certain.

Col. P. A. Piuze Premier Godbout intimated this morning that Colonel Piuze, now head of the Provincial Police would be superintendent of prisons under the reform plan to be brought before the Legislature this year.

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Also tonight.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Canada's privatised shadow civil service

PJ O’Rourke once quipped that “The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.” But conservative parties have unlikely allies in the project to discredit public service: neoliberal “centrist” parties, like Canada’s Liberal Party.

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/31/mckinsey-and-canada/#comment-dit-beltway-bandits-en-canadien

The Liberals have become embroiled in a series of scandals over the explosion of lucrative, secretive private contracts awarded to high-flying consultancy firms who charge hundreds of times more than public sector employees to do laughably bad work.

Front and centre in the scandal, is, of course, McKinsey, consligieri to opioid barons, murdering Saudi princes, and other unsavoury types. McKinsey was brought in to “consult” on strategy for the Business Development Bank of Canada (BDC), a Crown corporation that gives loans to Canadian businesses.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/business-development-bank-canada-hudon-mckinsey-1.6720914

While there, McKinsey performed as per usual, veering from the farcical to the grotesquely wasteful. Most visible was the decision to spend $320,000 on a livecast fireside chat between BDC president Isabelle Hudon and a former Muchmusic VJ that was transmitted to all BDC employees, which featured Hudon and the host discussing a shopping trip they’d taken together in Paris.

Meanwhile, BDC has been hemorrhaging top people, which leaving the organisation with many holes in its leadership — the kind of thing that would pose an impediment to its lofty goals of substantially increasing the support it gives to businesses run by women, First Nations people and people of color.

Hudon — a Trudeau appointee — vowed to “start from scratch” when she took over the organisation, but then went ahead and did what her predecessors had done: hired outside consultants who billed outrageous sums to repurpose anodyne slide-decks full of useless, generic advice, or unrealistic advice that no one could turn into actual policy. They also sucked up BDC employees’ time with endless interviews.

The BDC has (reluctantly) disclosed $4.9m in contracts to McKinsey. The CBC also learned that Hudon parachuted several cronies from her previous job at Sun Life into top roles in the organisation, and that BDC had reneged on promised promotions for many long-term staffers. Hudon also repeatedly flew a chauffeur across the country from Montreal to BC to drive her around.

In Quebec, premier François Legault hired an army of McKinsey consultants at $35,000 per day to advise him on covid strategy, for a total bill of $8.6m. McKinsey’s contract with the province stipulated that they wouldn’t have to disclose their other clients, even in the event that they had conflicts of interest:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/caq-legault-mckinsey-pandemic-consulting-1.6602374

The contract was kept secret, as was the long-running, $38m contract between McKinsey and the Hydro Quebec power authority:

https://ici.radio-canada.ca/nouvelle/1927738/mckinsey-hydro-quebec-consultants-barrages-affaires

Most of the bad press McKinsey gets revolves around the evil advice it gives — like when it advised opioid companies to pay cash bonuses to pharma distributors for every death-by-overdose in their territory (no, I’m not making this up):

https://pluralistic.net/2022/06/30/mckinsey-mafia/#everybody-must-get-stoned

But these rare moments of competence should be understood in the broader context in which McKinsey isn’t evil, they are merely utterly, totally fucking useless. The 2022 French Senate report on McKinsey really digs into this:

http://www.senat.fr/commission/enquete/2021_influence_des_cabinets_de_conseil_prives.html

They find that a quarter of the work McKinsey turned in was “unacceptable or barely acceptable in quality.” This is in line with the overall tenor of work performed by consultants. For example, when it came to giant Capgemini, the French Senate found that the work it provided was “of near-zero added value, indeed sometimes counterproductive.”

And yet, despite the expense and “near-zero added value,” hiring outside consultants is a reflex for neoliberal centrist leaders. Trudeau has presided over a massive expansion of the Canadian government’s reliance on outside consultants:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-liberals-spend-billions-more-on-outsourced-contracts-since-taking/

After campaigning on a promise to reduce outside consultancy, the Trudeau administration increased consultant spending by 40%, to $11.8 billion. This shadow civil service is not just more expensive and less competent that the real civil service — it is also far more opaque, able to fend off open records requests with vague gestures towards “trade secrecy.”

Since 2015, McKinsey has raked in $101.4m in federal contracts, even as the civil service has been starved of pay. Meanwhile, federal departments insist that they need to “protect Canada’s economic interests” by not disclosing outside contracts, and list their total spend at $0.00.

https://nationalpost.com/news/outsourcing-contracts-mckinsey-billions

The Professional Institute of the Public Service of Canada estimates that between 2011–21, the Canadian government squandered $18b on outside IT contracting that could have been performed by public servants. In 2022, the Government of Canada spent $2.3b on outsource IT contracts, while the wage bill for its own IT staff came in at $1.85b.

It’s not like these outside IT contractors are good at their jobs, either. The most notorious example is the ArriveCAN covid-tracking app for travellers, the contract for which was awarded to GCstrategies, a two-person shop in Ottawa, who promptly turned around and outsourced it to KPMG and other contractors, whom they billed to the government at $1,000–1,500/day, raking off 15–30% in commissions.

For months, the origins of the ArriveCAN app were a mystery, with the government insisting that the details of the contractors involved were “confidential.” But ArriveCAN was such a steaming pile of shit, and so many travellers (a population more likely to be well-off and politically connected than the median Canadian) had to deal with it, that eventually the truth came out.

The ArriveCAN scandal is ongoing — just last year, it cost the Canadian public $54m:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-arrivecan-subcontractors-multinationals/

Trudeau’s Liberals didn’t invent outsourcing high-stakes IT projects to incompetent grifters. Under Conservative PM Stephen Harper, Canada paid IBM to build Phoenix, an utterly defective payroll system for federal employees that stole millions from civil servants, bringing government to a virtual standstill. Thus far, the Government of Canada — which paid IBM $309m to develop Phoenix, as a “cost savings measure” — has paid $506m in damages to make good on Phoenix’s errors:

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-ottawa-paid-out-400-million-in-phoenix-pay-compensation-to-federal/

The Liberals didn’t invent Phoenix — but they did deploy it, after campaigning on the wastefulness and incompetence of the Tories’ outsourcing bonanza. And after Phoenix crashed and burned, the Liberals increased outsourcing spending.

All of this is well-crystallized in last week’s Canadaland discussion between Jesse Brown and Nora Loreto:

https://www.canadaland.com/podcast/853-the-indulgent-consultant/

And on his Substack, Paul Wells proposes that the Senate — a largely ornamental institution in Canadian politics — is the unlikely check of last resort on the Liberals’ fetish for outsourcing:

There are former deputy ministers at the federal and provincial levels, secretaries to cabinet, a former Clerk of the Privy Council, a former chief of staff to a prime minister. A lot of them can remember the days when big decisions weren’t farmed out to firms that make their founders rich and are spared the rigours of accountability for their counsel. Surely some of them would like to shine a light?

https://paulwells.substack.com/p/shine-a-brighter-light-on-contract?

Image: Sam (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Canadian_House_of_Commons.jpg

Presidencia de la República Mexicana (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Justin_Trudeau_June_2016.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[Image ID: The legislative chamber of Canada's House of Commons; behind the speaker's chair, the back wall has been replaced by an enormous $100 bill. The portrait on the $100 bill has been replaced with an unflattering, braying picture of Justin Trudeau. The Bank of Canada legend across the top of the note has been replaced by the McKinsey and Company wordmark.]

[vincentreproches]

Les vraies affaires...

[ghost-hawk]

Canadian politics being what they are, I support the bloc Quebecois in it's decision to ask for justin Trudeau to stand down from office, however I ask that bloc Quebecois to take into consideration that the NDP has been taking steps to improving the relations with the indigenous communities more than past elected officials.

If the elections are to continue without Justin Trudeau I hope that all parties continue towards a future recognizing the needs of all Canadians including the native American indigenous.

While I voted for Justin Trudeau into office, I can understand if other Canadians are unhappy with him.

[reasonsforhope]

"In short: Nine million Canadian women of reproductive age will have the full cost of their contraception covered as part of a major health care reform, the government says.

The reform includes the most widely used contraceptive methods, such as IUDs, contraceptive pills, hormonal implants and the day after pill.

What's next? The government must still win the approval of Canada's provinces, which administer health care."

"Canada will cover the full cost of contraception for women, the government says as it highlights the first part of a major health care reform.

The government will pay for the most widely used contraceptive methods, such as IUDs, contraceptive pills, hormonal implants or the day after pill, for the nine million Canadian women of reproductive age, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said on Sunday at a press conference in a pharmacy in Toronto.

"Women should be free to choose the contraceptives they need without cost getting in the way. So, we're making contraceptives free," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on X, formerly Twitter.

The announcement fleshes out the first part of a bill unveiled in February that, once completed, would mark the biggest expansion of Canada's publicly funded health care system in decades.

This new regime will also cover the cost of diabetes medication for some 3.7 million Canadians.

The cost of the new system and timing of the launch have not been announced...

The government must now win the approval of Canada's provinces, which actually administer health care, for this new system. Alberta and Quebec have already said they would opt out.

The pharmacare plan — as it is called locally — follows protracted negotiations between Mr Trudeau's Liberal minority government and a small leftist faction in parliament.

The New Democratic Party agreed to prop up the Liberals until the fall of 2025, on the condition that the government immediately launch the drug program."

-via ABC News Australia, March 31, 2024

[zvaigzdelasas]

[CBC is Canadian State Funded Media]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Wednesday senior bureaucrats are reviewing the Deschenes Commission report — a 1980s-era independent inquiry that looked at alleged Nazi war criminals in Canada — with an eye to making more of it public. Governor General Mary Simon also said today Rideau Hall is sorry for honouring Peter Savaryn — a former chancellor of the University of Alberta who served in the same Nazi unit as Yaroslav Hunka — with the Order of Canada [in 1987].[...]

The vice-regal office is also examining the Golden and Diamond Jubilee medals previously awarded to Savaryn, who also served as president of the Ukrainian World Congress, a group that represents the Ukrainian diaspora.[...] The first [part of the report], which included recommendations to make it easier to extradite war criminals, was released publicly. The second was marked secret and the names of alleged Nazis in Canada were never released. Jewish groups, including B'nai Brith and the Friends of Simon Wiesenthal Centre (FSWC), have said the second part should be unredacted and disclosed publicly so that Canadians can learn more about the country's shameful history of admitting an untold number of Nazi collaborators after the Second World War.[...]

"There are top public servants looking very carefully into the issue, including digging into the archives," Trudeau told reporters. "We're going to make recommendations."

Reports suggest as many as 2,000 Ukrainian members of Hitler's Waffen-SS were admitted to Canada after the war — after some British prodding. The commission said the number is likely lower than that.[...]

Quebec Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said it's a delicate issue because the government doesn't want to "bring pain to a lot of Eastern European communities." Hunka, for example, has framed his war service as a fight for Ukrainian independence. The unit he fought for, the 1st Galician division, is also memorialized by Ukrainian expatriate groups at different sites across the country.[...]

The Deschenes report has also concluded that allegations of war crimes committed by this division have "never been substantiated."

That finding conflicts with what the post-war, Allies-led Nuremberg trials concluded about SS units like that one.[...]

"We have to recognize we have a horrible past with Nazi war criminals. We opened our country to people after the war in a way that made it easier to come if you were a Nazi than if you were a Jew," Housefather said.[...]

Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman, the party's deputy leader, said Canadians need to know more about the country's "dark history" of "letting Nazis through the door to live here in peace and security." Lantsman represents the Toronto-area riding of Thornhill, a riding with one of the country's largest Jewish communities. In an interview with CBC News, Lantsman said the party supports revisiting the Deschenes report and its findings in some way.[...]

Asked if it might be too painful for some communities to revisit alleged Second World War-era crimes, Lantsman said "history is painful but that doesn't mean we don't need to reckon with it."[...]

Quebec Conservative MP Gérard Deltell, Poilievre's environment critic, said Wednesday he's not open to revisiting the issue right now.[...]

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh said he supports releasing the commission's report.

4 Oct 23

[coochiequeens]

Canada, WTF? Part I

By Reduxx Team November 13, 2024

The trial of a man charged with murdering his wife and two young sons has begun this week, with the accused now claiming to identify as transgender. Mohamad Al Ballouz, 38, is charged with the second-degree murder of his wife, Synthia Bussières, and the first-degree murders of their two sons, aged just 5 and 2 years old. Ballouz has now adopted the name Levana Ballouz, and has been referred to as a “woman” by Canadian press.

In September of 2022, firefighters attended Ballouz’ 12th floor condo in Brossard, Quebec in response to an apparent house fire. Inside, they found Synthia Bussières, her body riddled with stab wounds, laying on a bed next to her two children. Ballouz had lodged himself between Bussiéres and the children, and a small bonfire of household items had been lit next to the mattress.

Synthia Bussières and her two children.

All four were rushed to the hospital, but Bussières and her children died. Ballouz, who was also injured, had reportedly consumed dishwashing liquid in an apparent suicide attempt, but he was placed under arrest after being treated. Ballouz has no previous criminal history.

While the details of the case, including any potential motive, are still unclear, Bussières’ mother has come forward to reveal that her daughter appeared increasingly troubled in the two years leading up to the murder.

“She had been with this man for 12 years, but in the last two years, she had changed. I didn’t recognize her anymore,” Sylvie Guertin told Les 2 Rives in September of 2023. She also said that she had seen Bussières in the weeks before her death, and had observed that her daughter looked frail.

“In August [of 2022], I saw that something was wrong, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t want to look like the mother who gets involved in something that doesn’t concern her,” Guertin said. “I thought she had lost weight.”

Ballouz’s trial began on Monday, but during the proceedings it was learned that he now identifies as a “woman” named Levana Ballouz. During his hearings, he appeared in court wearing a blonde, curly wig and nail polish. He is reportedly representing himself after firing his two criminal defense lawyers, both of whom were considered to be among the best in Quebec.

According to CBC, the prosecution had to “warn” the jury that several witnesses would refer to Ballouz as a man to preempt any concerns about “disrespect.” Prior to the start of the trial, no previous news coverage had documented that Ballouz was expressing a change in his self-perceived “gender identity,” suggesting his claim of being transgender was extremely recent.

Canadian media outlets are respecting Ballouz’ new identity, with multiple articles covering the trial referring to Ballouz as a “woman” or by using feminine pronouns.

While the trial is expected to last at least 10 more weeks, if Ballouz is found guilty and criminally responsible, he would be entitled to request housing in a women’s prison.

Largely due to the efforts of the��governing Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau, the category of “gender identity” was made a protected characteristic after it was added to the Canadian Human Rights Act via a controversial piece of legislation known as Bill C-16. The amendments granted men access to single-sex female spaces like washrooms, changing rooms, prisons, and rape shelters on the basis of their identity.

While the Canadian government claimed the bill had been assessed for its impact on women prior to approval, it has refused to release any details of the assessment’s findings. In 2020, a copy of the assessment was given to journalist Anna Slatz via an Access To Information Request but was 96% redacted.

Since Bill C-16 was enacted in 2017, a number of violent and sexually depraved male inmates have been transferred to women’s prisons across Canada.

As previously reported by Reduxx, one egregious example includes a trans-identified male who raped an infant before being transferred to a women’s prison.

Tara Desousa, also known as Adam Laboucan, sexually assaulted a three-month-old baby boy in Quesnel, British Columbia in 1997. The infant was so brutally injured by the attack that he had to be flown to Vancouver, 410 miles away, to undergo reconstructive surgery. After declaring a transgender status, Desousa was transferred to the Fraser Valley Institution for Women, where he is one of multiple trans-identified males with a history of sexual violence at the facility. Desousa is designated a “dangerous offender” and is considered such a risk to public safety that he is serving an indeterminate prison sentence.

[whencyclopedia]

Embattled Nation: Canada's Wartime Election of 1917

In the midst of one of the most turbulent periods in Canada’s history, Patrice Dutil and David Mackenzie delve into what they deem as the most significant and tumultuous elections since confederation. Their work, 'Embattled Nation: Canada’s Wartime Election of 1917 ', meticulously explores the 1917 election between Conservative leader Sir Robert Borden and the Liberal opposition of Sir Wilfred Laurier.  

Patrice Dutil and David MacKenzie provide a detailed and well-researched account of Canada's political and social landscape during World War I, focusing on the 1917 election and the issue of conscription. The book is commendable for its extensive use of evidence and meticulous documentation of events, offering readers a thorough understanding of the period's complexities. Their use of diary entries and personal accounts from Borden, Laurier, and those around them gives a sense of authenticity to the events being described. The book also provides a thorough context for the period with extensive maps, statistics, election information, and statistics of the war effort that effectively paint the scene of 1917. Finally, this book helpfully contextualizes the existing linguistic and cultural divides between French and English Canada which would aid readers greatly in future discussions.

However, despite its solid evidentiary foundation, the book falls short in convincingly arguing that the 1917 election was the most contentious in Canadian history and that it nearly saw the collapse of the confederation. The authors emphasize the deep divisions between English and French Canadians and describe how conscription became a central and divisive issue. Yet, they also acknowledge that there was majority support for the Union government and conscription, which complicates their argument about the election nearly breaking up the country.

Portraying the election as a moment that almost led to the dissolution of Canada seems somewhat overstated. While the authors provide ample evidence of French-Canadian opposition and the resulting social unrest, they do not fully reconcile this with the broader national support for the Union government and the conscription policy. This oversight weakens their central thesis about the election's unparalleled contentiousness. While it is true that perhaps this election did deepen the divide between French and English Canada, it did not do so to the extent to which one could say that the country was near collapse, at least not with the way this book presented its evidence.

While it is true, by the provided evidence, that much of French Canada vehemently opposed conscription, they did not oppose the country as a whole, with a referendum to succeed, having only marginal support and never actually making it to a vote on the Quebec parliamentary floor. There were indeed protests and riots during the time. Still, they were fed by feelings of alienation and betrayal by the Borden government, not the Confederation, with Laurie receiving much support from French Canada. It is accurate to say that both the Liberal and Conservative governments were almost torn apart, yet, in the end, both parties survived relatively unscathed under the united leadership of Laurier and Borden, respectively.

Patrice Dutil is a Professor in Toronto Metropolitan University's Politics and Public Administration Department while David Mackenzie is a Professor in the university's History Department. Overall, Embattled Nation is a valuable resource for understanding the political dynamics of wartime Canada and the cultural rift between English and French Canadians. It provides an often unexplored context to the First World War in Canada, giving insight into the French-English divide, one of Canada's most prevailing conflicts. To understand the impacts of the First World War on Canada, one must first understand how the war impacted the home front. However, its assertion that the 1917 election was the most divisive in Canadian history could have been more convincingly articulated, given the authors' admissions of widespread support for the Union government and conscription from a majority part of the Country. Perhaps refining the thesis to focus more on the French-English connection rather than the election itself with an increased focus on the protests and riots would make for an overall more convincing argument. Meanwhile, it is accurate to say that the 1917 election was pushed by issues surrounding conscription; the election itself was fairly unanimous thanks to the political maneuvering by the Borden government. With more focus on those aspects and a closer examination of the reactions to said maneuverings, the argument that this period in Canadian history was the most tumultuous becomes more evident and more convincing.

Continue reading...

[st-just]

hi I like your blog. I have a question that may be too personal so no hard feelings if you don't answer but could you talk a little bit about more about what you like/don't like about Halifax? im considering Dalhousie for grad school but have never been! and would like to have as much information about where I might spend the next 2 years of my life. thank you!

Oh sure! Though like, it depends on where you're coming from? Everything here is very relative. And also I'm absolutely certain I will forget numemrous vital things, do ask followup questions.

Most important thing is that the housing market is horrifying - the city's population started booming during COVID and the zoning and construction is only really starting to catch up now. Especially within walking distance of Dal getting a place to live at anything approaching affordable is going to be vicious. (This has unsurprisingly coincided with a large uptick in homelessness. Unremarkable to walk by a tent in a corner of some public park now).

Relatedly, the bus system is like - okay I'm not sure it's notably bad for a mid-sized-ish north american city, but it's damn sure not any better. You can get by bussing around on the peninsula, anywhere beyond 20 minute drives turn into 40-60 minute rides.

You will not have a family doctor, figure out the nearest walk-in clinic you can use for anything non-emergency.

The city's economy runs on some combination of students, tourists, sailors and soldiers. There are as many bars as you might expect (had the most per capita in the country for a while, don't know if we still do). Some of them are actually very good!

Relatedly, weed and liquor are both only legally sold by the crown corporation monopoly and a few weird specialty places.

None of them are massive, but there is a very nice amount of parkland and green space scattered throughout the city. The public (botanical) gardens are really beautiful in the spring-summer, and most are well-maintained (they just renovated and expanded the outdoor pool on the city Commons last year, even).

The waterfront has been thoroughly gentrified for the cruise ships over the course of my lifetime, but it's all still open to the public and grabbing one of the armchairs or hammocks to read in during the summer is lovely.

Provincially the government is the most thoroughly domesticated/red tory party in the country (they fairly literally ran to the left of the liberals). Full of corrupt backslapping, constantly getting into pissing matches with the municipal government, will probably govern for the next decade.

For reasons that I assume are downstream of all the students and having the closest thing to a regional theater scene east of Quebec, the whole city is IME very queer-friendly. For reasons I absolutely not understand, pride is in August here.

The public library system is basically the only part of the municipal government I think anyone involved should be unequivocally proud of, but it is great.

I don't really know the crime stats offhand but like, I left my apartment door unlocked probably 7 times in 10 through all of undergrad and it never bit me in the ass?

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"L'hon. Oscar Drouin chez les femmes libérales," Le Soleil. May 3, 1943. Page 3. ---- L'hon. OSCAR DROUIN, ministre des Affaires municipales, du Commerce et de l'Industrie, a rendu visite, hier soir, à l'Association des Femmes libérales de Québec-Est qui tenait une réunion spéciale à Habitant Inn. (Photo du "Soleil")

[allthecanadianpolitics]

That support won't come cheap, the Quebec-based Bloc said, and the sovereigntist party led by Yves-François Blanchet has already drawn up a list of demands. In an interview ahead of the opening of Monday's party caucus retreat in the Outaouais region, Bloc House Leader Alain Therrien said his party is happy to regain its balance of power. "Our objectives remain the same, but the means to get there will be much easier," Therrien said. "We will negotiate and seek gains for Quebec … our balance of power has improved, that's for sure." He called the situation a "window of opportunity" now that the Liberals are truly a minority government after New Democratic Party Leader Jagmeet Singh tore up the confidence and supply deal between the two parties last week, leaving the Bloc with an opening.

Continue Reading

Tagging: @newsfromstolenland

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The "religious liberty" angle for overturning the overturning of Dobbs

Frank Wilhoit’s definition of “conservativism” remains a classic:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

Conservativism is, in other words, the opposite of the rule of law, which is the idea that the law applies equally to all. Many of America’s most predictably weird moments live in the tension between the rule of law and the conservative’s demand to be protected — but not bound — by the law.

Think of the Republican women of Florida whose full-throated support for the perfomatively cruel and bigoted policies of Ron Desantis turned to howls of outrage when the governor signed a law “overhauling alimony” (for “overhauling,” read “eliminating”):

https://www.orlandoweekly.com/news/this-is-a-death-sentence-for-me-florida-republican-women-say-they-will-switch-parties-after-desantis-approves-alimony-law-34563230

This is real leopards-eating-people’s-faces-party stuff, and it’s the only source of mirth in an otherwise grim situation.

But out of the culture-war bullshit backfires, none is so sweet and delicious as the religious liberty self-own. You see, under the rule of law, if some special consideration is owed to a group due to religious liberty, that means all religions. Of course, Wilhoit-drunk conservatives imagine that “religious liberty” is a synonym for Christian liberty, and that other groups will never demand the same carve outs.

Remember when Louisiana decided spend tax dollars to fund “religious” schools under a charter school program, only to discover — to their Islamaphobic horror — that this would allow Muslim schools to get public subsidies, too?

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/louisiana_n_1593995

(They could have tried the Quebec gambit, where hijabs and yarmulkes are classed as “religious” and therefore banned for public servants and publicly owned premises, while crosses are treated as “cultural” and therefore exempted — that’s some primo Wilhoitism right there)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-francois-legault-crucifix-religious-symbols-1.4858757

The Satanic Temple has perfected the art of hoisting religious liberty on its own petard. Are you a state lawmaker hoping to put a giant Ten Commandments on the statehouse lawn? Go ahead, have some religious liberty — just don’t be surprised when the Satanic Temple shows up to put a giant statue of Baphomet next to it:

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/17/639726472/satanic-temple-protests-ten-commandments-monument-with-goat-headed-statue

Wanna put a Christmas tree in the state capitol building? Sure, but there’s gonna be a Satanic winter festival display right next to it:

https://katv.com/news/offbeat/satanic-temple-display-installed-at-illinois-capitol-next-to-nativity-scene-menorah-decorations-snake-serpent-satanic-temple-springfield-christmas-tree

And now we come to Dobbs, and the cowardly, illegitimate Supreme Court’s cowardly, illegitimate overturning of Roe v Wade, a move that was immediately followed by “red” states implementing total, or near-total bans on abortion:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/15/paid-medical-disinformation/#crisis-pregnancy-centers

These same states are hotbeds of “religious liberty” nonsense. In about a dozen of these states, Jews, Christians, and Satanists are filing “religious liberty” challenges to the abortion ban. In Indiana, the Hoosier Jews For Choice have joined with other religious groups in a class action, to argue that the “religious freedom” law that Mike Pence signed as governor protects their right to an abortion:

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/06/21/legal-strategy-that-could-topple-abortion-bans-00102468

Their case builds on precedents from the covid lockdowns, like decisions that said that if secular exceptions to lockdown rules or vaccine mandates existed, then states had to also allow religious exemptions. That opens the door for religious exemptions to abortion bans — if there’s a secular rule that permits abortion in the instance of incest or rape, then faith-based exceptions must be permitted, too.

Some of the challenges to abortion rules seek to carve out religious exemptions, but others seek to overturn the abortion rules altogether, because the lawmakers who passed them explicitly justified them in the name of fusing Christian “values” with secular law, a First Amendment no-no.

As Rabbi James Bennett told Politico’s Alice Ollstein: “They’re entitled to their interpretation of when life begins, but they’re not entitled to have the exclusive one.”

In Florida, a group of Jewish, Buddhist, Episcopalian, Universalists and United Church clerics are challenging the “aiding and abetting” law because it restricts the things they can say from the pulpit — a classic religious liberty gambit.

Kentucky’s challenge comes from three Jewish women whose faith holds that life begins “with the first breath.” Lead plaintiff Lisa Sobel described how Kentucky’s law bars her from seeking IVF treatment, because she could face criminal charges for “discarding non-viable embryos” created during the process.

Then there’s the Satanic Temple, in court in Texas, Idaho and Indiana. The Satanists say that abortion is a religious ritual, and argue that the state can’t limit their access to it.

These challenges all rest on state religious liberty laws. What will happen when some or all of these reach the Supreme Court? It’s a risky gambit. This is the court that upheld Trump’s Muslim ban and the right of a Christian baker to refuse to bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple. It’s a court that loves Wilhoit’s “in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.”

It’s a court that’s so Wilhoit-drunk, it’s willing to grant religious liberty to bigots who worry about imaginary same-sex couples:

https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-gay-marriage-website-real-straight-man-supreme-court

But in the meantime, the bigots and religious maniacs who want to preserve “religious liberty” while banning abortion are walking a fine line. The Becket Fund, which funded the Hobby Lobby case (establishing that religious maniacs can deny health care to their employees if their imaginary friends object), has filed a brief in one case arguing that the religious convictions of people arguing for a right to abortion aren’t really sincere in their beliefs:

https://becketnewsite.s3.amazonaws.com/20230118184008/Individual-Members-v.-Anonymous-Planitiff-Amicus-Brief.pdf

This is quite a line for Becket to have crossed — religious liberty trufans hate it when courts demand that people seeking religious exemptions prove that their beliefs are sincerely held.

Not only is Becket throwing its opposition to “sincerely held belief” tests under the bus, they’re doing so for nothing. Jewish religious texts clearly state that life begins at the first breath, and that the life of a pregnant person takes precedence over the life of the fetus in their uterus.

The kicker in Ollstein’s great article comes in the last paragraph, delivered by Columbia Law’s Elizabeth Reiner Platt, who runs the Law, Rights, and Religion Project:

The idea of reproductive rights as a religious liberty issue is absolutely not something that came from lawyers. It’s how faith communities themselves have been talking about their approach to reproductive rights for literally decades.

The Clarion Science Fiction Writers’ Workshop (I’m a grad, instructor and board member) is having its fundraiser auction to help defray tuition. I’ve donated a “Tuckerization” — the right to name a character in a future novel:

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/clarion-sf-fantasy-writers-workshop-23-campaign/#/

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/11/wilhoitism/#hoosier-jews

[Image ID: Moses parting the Red Sea. On the seabed is revealed a Planned Parenthood clinic.]

Image: Nina Paley (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moses-Splits-Sea_by_Nina_Paley.jpg

CC0 1.0 https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/deed.en

 — 

Kristina D.C. Hoeppner (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/4nitsirk/40406966752/

CC BY-SA 2.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/

[vincentreproches]

Vieux demain

[nokingsonlyfooles]

Sometimes, it's the little nonsensical annoyances...

There are definitely more important things than this going on, and I'm not going to do much good by pointing it out, but I might as well express the thoughts so I can try to lay them to rest.

This:

...is absurd. Some Taiwanese venture capitalist asshole was annoyed that some white business assholes in Quebec are remixing boba tea, which he loves, and is his culture, and cannot be improved without due deference to its originators. To address his grievance, perhaps he'd like to fund some more authentic boba tea, made by the folks in the image above.

Depending on their personal behaviour and business practices, which I am not aware of, I wish all the boba tea makers the best. I love boba tea and NO, MORE BOBA TEA PLACES WITHIN WALKING DISTANCE THAN I HAVE FINGERS IS NOT ENOUGH. I NEED MORE!

Fuck, I want boba tea.

But I digress. To experience offence in this particular fashion over this particular item, you need to stop learning and switch off your brain at the point where Taiwan invented the boba tea. Where did the tea and tapioca, and milk and sugar come from? Don't worry about it. We gotta stop right here, or this story will get real complex, and I'm not comfortable with that level of complexity, so let's pass our judgment and say no more about it. Boba tea belongs to Taiwan!

Chat, ya gotta realize, mainland China was not interested in diluting its tea with so much milk and sugar that it doesn't taste like tea anymore. That would've been kookie-dooks. The British Empire had to steal it and fuck it up. Then Taiwan stole it back and fucked it up more (according to Wikipedia, via the Dutch in the 17th century). And tapioca is a staple starch from the Americas. "Refined into a juice, gelled into cute little pearls, and served with tea and sugar" is not an Indigenous American serving suggestion. I don't see Taiwan adding a label to every boba tea giving due deference to cassava-loving Americans, nor expressing humility about their use of it not being an improvement.

It's not that I need Taiwan to do this. I just want to see this train of thought followed to its logical conclusion. If you're saying these assholes in Quebec shouldn't be fucking with Taiwan's boba tea, you're also saying those assholes in Taiwan shouldn't have fucked with America's tapioca - and that's terrible. Of COURSE they should've fucked with the tapioca, it is delicious! And if it turns out it's more delicious with fizzies or liquor in it, we're gonna drink that, too, no matter who came up with it. This is how food works. Copying the good ideas off a nearby culture is not evil, not in and of itself. Butter-chicken pizza is not evil, it is spectacular.

I want my boba tea. I don't need a label specifying that it resulted from an intersection of five separate colonizing empires (China, Britain, the Netherlands, Spain, and Japan), the colonization of Taiwan, mass political imprisonments and executions, and the genocide of the Americas. It's very interesting to know that, but mentioning it right when I'm about to slork up my tea would make me choke - pointlessly, I think. Everything is like that. The machine I'm using to write this is like that, the clothes I wear are like that, the language I speak is like that. Nothing is without sin. It can't be put back the way it was, all we can do is try to mitigate it as best we can.

Is refusing to fund some guys with new tea additives because they wounded your nationalist pride (which seems to exist in somewhat of a context-free void) anything more than Neo-liberal capitalist wanking behaviour? Maybe the Chinese-American company will do better and the Quebecois one won't, but that's not justice for any of the injured parties, that's just marketing. Buying shit is not an effective means of reparations or political speech. There is no ethical boba tea under capitalism. I don't have the spoons to research and consume the Least Problematic Beverage, and if you do, I think they'd be better spent on literally anything else.

Mr. Dragon's Den, I have a brick you can use. Go damage property like a real protester or just sit down and drink your tea. Feel free to appropriate whatever cultures you prefer for your toppings.