Archive Page 2

22
May

Canadian Federal Elections: Why and What

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Canadian Politics and Politics

They may not have received as much attention as Osama bin Laden’s death, but the Canadian federal elections have spawned no shortage of commentary. As expected, the Conservatives emerged victorious. However, contrary to some predictions, Stephen Harper won with a majority government this time. Another surprise: the NDP, under Jack Layton, is now the official Opposition. Although the NDP has been elected at the provincial level before – Ontario, for example, had an NDP government from 1990 to 1995 – on the federal scene it has been basically relegated to the sidelines. Other shocker: the once-mighty Liberals have now fallen to third place. Not so unusual, on the other hand, is the mere one seat obtained by the Green Party (by their leader Elizabeth May) and the absence of any seats whatsoever by the various independent candidates and fringe parties, such as the Christian Heritage Party.

 

Perhaps more important than the “what” is the “why” these elections turned out the way they did. First, the Conservative victory. It may be that despite the Bruce Carson and Bev Oda/KAIROS scandals, Canadians felt that the Tories were the best choice available or, from a more negative angle, the least of three or possibly more evils. Under the leadership of Finance Minister Jim Flaherty, for instance, Canada managed to weather the economic recession relatively smoothly, at least compared to other nations like Portugal, Ireland or Greece. While the above-mentioned scandals may have dissuaded some Canadians from casting their ballots for Harper, many of these people may have simply abstained from voting altogether, thereby failing to give any advantage to the various non-Conservative parties.

 

I also attribute Stephen Harper’s win partly to the fact that Canadians refused to fall for the scare tactics engineered by the Conservatives’ opponents. One such tactic was the attempt to portray the Tories as reactionary Bible thumpers bent on banning abortion and keeping women barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen. This effort began well before the recent elections. A few years ago, one left-leaning website featured a picture of Gerri Santoro, an American woman who died from an illegal abortion in 1964, lying dead in a motel room, as if to portray what Canadian women would face if Harper remained at the helm. Leaving aside the fact that the most egregious violations of women’s reproductive rights in recent years took place not in a right-wing God-bothering theocracy but in a left-wing officially atheistic state, Communist Romania, where not only abortion but contraception was banned, Harper himself has stated that he has no plans to re-open the abortion issue. Critics have countered that he did raise the matter by failing to include abortion in a federal package for maternal health care in the Third World. But declining to finance a procedure can’t be equated to legally prohibiting it. As an analogy, no government in Canada would stop me from getting breast implants, but no government would pay for them either other than in the case of a mastectomy. Finally, Harper’s supposed pro-life sympathies are belied by anti-choice groups’ characterization of the Prime Minister as “pro-abortion.”

 

The huge sea change in this election was the Liberals’ descent to third place, behind the Conservatives and NDP. Some would sum up the reason for the Liberals’ seeming downfall in two words: Michael Ignatieff. However great an intellectual/author/broadcaster Ignatieff might be, he simply lacked the charisma to win the Canadian public’s favour as a future Prime Minister. The other side of the Liberals’ defeat was of course the rise of the NDP. Part of the NDP’s newfound success stemmed from the support it received in Quebec, where it managed to supplant the Bloc Quebecois in all but a few ridings. Quebec’s turn to the party of Layton was not especially surprising to me, as Quebecers have long held left-wing views on social and economic matters. I also wonder whether some people who might have otherwise voted for the Liberals chose the NDP out of a belief that the latter party has at least had the courage to stand by their principles (many of which, by the way, I do not personally share) while the Liberals in contrast seem to define themselves solely by their status as non-Conservatives.

 

I have to admit that I did not vote in this election. There was no party with which I felt 100% comfortable casting my ballot for, so I simply abstained. Nonetheless, I’m not necessarily displeased by the results of this election. I suppose that if I were forced to vote for one particular party, it would be the Conservatives. Yet the idea of the NDP as a counterbalance to the Conservatives doesn’t strike me as a bad scenario either. At the very least, the outcome of this election could have been worse.

09
Apr

Race Mixing and Westernization in Latin America and the Philippines

By Emilia Liz 0 Comments
Categories: Uncategorized

In his book Race and Ethnicity, Belgian sociologist Pierre van den Berghe compares the impact of European colonization on Africa and the Americas. While the former largely retained its original character despite being under European rule, the latter ended up with a predominantly Western culture. As well, race mixing was widespread in the New World but occurred on a much smaller scale in Africa, with the exception of South Africa’s Cape Province. The amount of acculturation and miscegenation moreover did not depend on whether the European power in question took an “assimilationist” approach, as France, Spain and Portugal did, or a “racialist” one, as did Britain and the Netherlands. At the end of the day, the Americas are a “cultural extension of Europe,” whereas Africa is not.

The same observation can be made of Latin America [1] and the Philippines. Though both were under Spain’s control for roughly three centuries, Latin America essentially adopted a Western (Iberian) culture as a result of colonization while the Philippines remained more or less as it had been before the conquest. Similarly, miscegenation between the conquered and conquerors took place extensively in the former region but was fairly negligible in the latter. To paraphrase van den Berghe, Latin America is a cultural extension of Spain; the Philippines is not.

This is not to say that the Philippines was not influenced by three hundred years of Spanish rule. Among Spain’s legacies to the islands were Castilian [2] loan words to the local languages, Spanish personal names of the inhabitants, and perhaps most importantly, Roman Catholicism, today the religion of over 80% of Filipinos. (When it comes to being good Catholics, the Filipinos may have beaten their former colonial masters and the latter’s overseas descendants at their own game. Several years ago the international newswires reported on Father Ener Glotario, a priest in Barranquilla, Colombia who refused to give communion to scantily clad female parishioners. I couldn’t help thinking how much easier Father Glotario’s life would have been if he were stationed in the Philippines, where the women, unlike their Western sisters, generally eschew miniskirts, midriff-baring tops and short shorts.) Yet the Philippines’ status as an Asian country is undisputed not only geographically but also culturally.

In fact, the example of the Philippines provides a powerful counterweight to claims by left- and right-wing ideologues alike that Latin America is not Western and that its “soul” is Indian rather than European. If such were the case, the counter argument might go, why did the region not end up like the Philippines, whose people were conquered by Spain but nonetheless kept their own languages and cultural traditions?

One of the most striking differences between Latin America and the Philippines today lies in the racial composition of their inhabitants. Mestizos [3] form the bulk of Latin America’s population. By contrast, most Filipinos are of indigenous Malay stock, and individuals of mixed Spanish-Malay descent are relatively rare.

What accounted for the low rate of miscegenation between Spaniards and natives in the Philippines? Certainly not a lack of desire by either party. Even clerics succumbed. Spanish chronicler Sinibaldo de Mas attempted to explain why so many Spanish priests in the Philippines broke their vows of celibacy: “The offense is most excusable, especially in young and healthy men placed in the torrid zone… The garb of the native women is very seductive; and the girls, far from being unattainable, consider themselves lucky to attract the attention of the curate, and their mother, father, and relatives share in that sentiment. What virtue and stoicism does not the friar need to possess!” (The good de Mas is perhaps a little too quick to blame the “girls” and their attire for his compatriots’ lust. More likely, the women’s eagerness to couple with curates stemmed from the higher social status that mixed race children in colonial — and according to some sources, modern — Philippines enjoyed compared to their unmixed native counterparts. In addition, I suspect Spanish priests’ fall into temptation was due less to the native women’s “garb” than to the fact that, as Pierre van den Berghe writes in his book Human Family Systems: An Evolutionary View, “celibacy, however saintly, goes against most people’s grain.”)

The main reason for the dearth of Spanish-Filipino mestizos was that few Spaniards ventured to the Philippines. The voyage from Spain to the islands was considerably long. Before the construction of the Panama Canal, it involved going around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean. The Philippines in addition lacked natural resources like gold and silver that the Americas had and that might have convinced large numbers of Spaniards to migrate there (indeed, at one point the scarcity of potential riches led Spain to consider abandoning the islands). According to de Mas, in some Philippine villages the friar and/or the mayor were the only white residents.

Whatever the cause, the low incidence of race mixing in the Philippines effectively stopped that country from going down the path of Hispanicization. The offspring of Spanish men and Filipino women [4] may have adopted the culture of their fathers — some mixed race families in the Philippines still speak Spanish among themselves, for instance — but ultimately there were simply not enough Spanish mestizos in the country to have much of an effect on Philippine culture as a whole. Mestizos in Latin America conversely came to constitute the largest racial category in the region, so as a group they managed to maintain and promote the Spanish language and culture.

One giveaway to Latin America’s “Westernness” is the fact that the majority of the population speaks Spanish, not an indigenous language or even a Creole, as their mother tongue. On the other hand, it has been estimated that even at the height of Spanish domination only 10% of Filipinos were able to speak the language of their masters, and undoubtedly fewer still learned it as a mother tongue. And while the Americans who took over the islands in 1898 were much more successful in teaching their Filipino subjects English than the Spaniards were in teaching their language, the reality is that English in the Philippines is a lingua franca and an administrative medium rather than a mother tongue. Neither the Americans nor the Spaniards managed to eradicate the islands’ Asian character.

Going back to van den Berghe’s argument, the example of the Philippines and Latin America shows that regions colonized by the same power may nevertheless turn out quite differently. It also shows how miscegenation can change the course of history. Despite Spain’s assimilationist approach and occasional “successes” in the Philippines (such as religious conversion), the Spaniards failed to acculturate the islands to any significant degree. Spain’s conquest of Latin America on the other hand transformed that region into a part of the Western world. As van den Berghe explains with regard to Africa and the Americas, differences in the Philippines and Latin America themselves rather than racial attitudes on the part of the colonizer were responsible for the different outcomes of European rule in the two regions.

(1) For the purpose of this essay, Latin America will refer only to the Spanish-speaking part of the region.

(2) The term “Castilian” refers to the official language of Spain (as opposed to regional dialects and languages like Galician and Catalan).

(3) Though the term “mestizo” literally means “mixed” in Spanish, for the purpose of this essay the term will refer to individuals of mixed Spanish and Native American descent in the Latin American context and to those of mixed Spanish and Filipino Malay origin in the Philippines.

(4) The opposite combination was virtually non-existent, as even fewer Spanish women than men traveled to the islands.

03
Apr

Quotable: Lending Money to Family and Friends

By Cynapse 0 Comments
Categories: Economics and Quotable

My mom and dad advised me never to lend money to friends and family. Give it freely as a gift and never expect to get it back or don’t give it at all. Money ruins more relationships than anything else.

–Chilina Kennedy

29
Mar

The Limits of Barbarism: Jason Kenney and Honour Killings

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: Canadian Politics and Politics

Jason Kenney is no stranger to controversy. As an MP in 2005, he said that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry – to a member of the opposite sex. As Minister of Citizenship and Immigration, in 2009 he imposed a visa requirement on Czechs and Mexicans who wished to visit Canada, a measure that irked immigrant rights advocates as well as tourist operators who worried the measure would hurt their business. Later that same year, he inserted a phrase in the Discover Canada guide for new immigrants which also created a small firestorm. The guide stated that while Canada welcomed immigrants, it did not tolerate “barbaric cultural practices” such as female genital mutilation or honour killings.

 

That statement remains in the recently updated version of Discover Canada. This time, however, the words seem to have caught the eye of Liberal MP Justin Trudeau (son of the late Prime Minister). On a radio talk show, Trudeau took exception to the expression “barbaric” on the grounds that such strong language had no place in a government document and created a barrier between “us” (i.e. mainstream Canadians) and “them” (i.e. immigrants). “Absolutely unacceptable” would have been better, according to Trudeau.

 

Reaction was swift to follow. Kenney’s office said they made no apology for letting immigrant women know their rights. The Minister himself noted that statements like Justin Trudeau’s “undermine public support for multiculturalism” and refused to accept the Liberal MP’s later apology. Conservative MP Shelly Glover demanded that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff remove Trudeau from his post. Interestingly, NDP Immigration Critic Olivia Chow appeared to take Kenney’s side in the matter, declaring that honour killings were indeed barbaric and that the Discover Canada guide had every right to make that clear. Meanwhile, Ignatieff merely opined that “There’s no such thing as an ‘honour’ killing… only killing, and it’s a crime everywhere.”

 

Outside political circles, the controversy continued to rage. Commenting on a Toronto Sun article about the Kenney-Trudeau debate, one reader accused Justin Trudeau of tolerating the murder of women in the name of multiculturalism. On the other side of the ledger, Kenney and his supporters were slapped with the “r” word – racism. Ottawa Citizen columnist Dan Gardner described Kenney’s rebuttal to Trudeau as part of the Conservatives’ strategy of “he who is not with me is against me.” There was, in short, a great deal of hysteria, and voices of moderation were drowned out or shouted down.

 

As with all hot-button issues – abortion, military intervention in Afghanistan, and so on and so forth – the “barbaric” brouhaha is another case in which arguments on both sides have grains of truth but a lot of distortions as well. Many of those who objected to Jason Kenney’s use of the term “barbaric” appeared unwilling to face the fact that honour killing (that is, the murder of a woman by relatives for having “dishonoured” the family by anything from having pre- or extramarital sex to wearing make-up or suggestive clothing) has no equivalent in mainstream Canadian society. Traditionally in Canada, the treatment of wayward women by their families has consisted of ostracism or disinheritance – not homicide. But good luck in trying to point this out to some of the so-called multiculturalists. For example, when I remarked on a website accusing Kenney of ignoring the abuse of underage girls in Bountiful, British Columbia that no woman in Bountiful had ever been killed, the moderator informed me that I thought domestic violence was an exclusively Muslim problem. I replied that not only had I not even mentioned the word “Muslim” but that the most sexually, physically and emotionally abusive boyfriend I had ever had was a – drum roll – White Christian. Even so, I was reprimanded for my “prejudices.” I soon gave up on the conversation, as it was like holding a rational discussion with a Creationist convinced that the Earth came into being 6,000 years ago.

 

On the other hand, some (small “c”) conservatives – not Kenney himself – engage in their own half-truths as well. For instance, many insist that honour killing is a “Muslim thing.” This is partially true: a number of honour killings have taken place in countries with an Islamic majority as well as among Muslims in Western nations, including Canada (famous example: Aqsa Parvez). Even here at home, however, such murders, or attempted murders, have also been reported among Sikhs and Hindus, like a Sikh woman in British Columbia who was killed by her father for dating a White man or a Sri Lankan girl in Toronto whose father tried to run her down with his van because she was involved with a man of another caste. Some right-wingers also lump in with “honour killings” acts that would more properly be called crimes of passion. One such crime of passion was the murder of Aasiya Hassan by her husband, a television executive in Buffalo, New York, after she told him she wanted a divorce. Though Muzzamil Hassan’s motives and actions do not seem that dramatically different from, say, those of Windsor, Ontario physician Dr. Marc Daniel, who fatally stabbed his ex-wife at the hospital where they worked, the former man’s Islamic religion immediately caused his deed to be slotted in the honour killing category.

 

Still, I have to admit that the Left’s – with exceptions of course, like Olivia Chow – approach to honour killings bothers me more than that of the right. Some supposedly progressive commentators have even expressed sympathy for “honour killers.” For instance, Toronto Star columnist Jim Coyle said that rather than condemnation, the parents of Aqsa Parvez, the Mississauga teen killed by her father and brother allegedly for refusing to wear the hijab, deserve “all the comfort they can get” in their troubled time. Their only fault, according to Coyle, was “caring too much of what other people thought.” Conservative commentator Ezra Levant immediately shot back and asked whether Coyle would have commiserated with Karla Homolka over the death of her sister Tammy. A better question, in my view: would Coyle have had even a glimmer of sympathy for a white-bread Anglo-Saxon man I knew who disowned his daughter for marrying a Black man? While genuine racism undoubtedly played a role in my acquaintance’s reaction to his daughter’s marriage, he very likely was motivated as well by “What would the neighbours say?” My semi-educated guess is that no, Coyle would not have had any sympathy for this man – even though the man did not, as far as I know, even try to physically assault his daughter.

 

Finally, people like Jim Coyle, or even those who deny the essential truths about honour killing (that it doesn’t occur in mainstream North American society, for example), make me wonder whether the Left is really the friend of women it has always purported to be. At times it seems that their solidarity with women gets short shrift when it clashes with other tenets, like a misguided notion of multiculturalism. I am not even saying this out of self-interest: the victims of honour killing are not White women like me or my family members but some of the “women of colour” that multiculturalists and other leftists claim to defend.

 

Jason Kenney has won the public opinion battle so far, at least for now. But we can be sure more is yet to come.

13
Mar

Innovative Movements in the Social Financial World

By Glass Frog 0 Comments
Categories: Business and Economics

The UK is preparing to launch its first Social Stock Exchange (SSE). Following those already in place in Brazil and Portugal, the system will provide a new source of funding for social initiatives. So far, founders Mark Campanale, a former fund manager, and Pradeep Jethi, a former new product development manager at the London Stock Exchange, raised £1.2m of the £2million they need to establish the stock exchange.

The stock exchanged is not aimed at large companies active in CSR; it is aimed at smaller companies that operate specifically for a social purpose. They are mature companies that need funding for growth and expansion. Start-up companies are not eligible. Campanale and Jethi hope that the SSE will attract investment from long-term, patient and strategic investors like pension funds, who might not typically have had contact with these types of businesses. (More reading on the SSE)

Meanwhile, other innovative movements in the financial world are targeting start-up businesses. A couple years ago in the UK, a company called Social Finance, headed by former Dresdner Kleinwort banker David Hutchison, launched the world’s first social impact bonds. The British government is currently testing the use of these bonds. Last month, the U.S. government decided to do the same, putting forth $100m across seven pilot programs under the name pay for success bonds. The idea is that private firms (usually philanthropic foundations) will pay the costs of a program in its early years and if they achieve a pre-determined set of measurable social outcomes, the government will pay back the money invested, plus a bonus. If the program fails, taxpayers pay nothing. So the bonds are not like ‘bonds’ in the traditional sense, but rather, are more like equity investments. The bonds aim to motivate entities to only introduce initiatives that have a good chance of thriving, and to ensure such programs are successful, in hopes of securing future private funding. (More reading on social impact bonds)

>>Continue Reading at GlassFrog

26
Feb

I’m Brazilian, for God’s sake!

By PedroSilva 0 Comments
Categories: Society

Translated by Emilia Liz Murphy

Last Saturday a Canadian friend called me asking for some advice about fixing his computer. The problem was very simple, and I resolved it within five minutes. I stayed at his house for a while, talking to him and his wife, and when I was leaving, they both said “Gracias, muchas gracias!”

Smiling, I responded in French.

This couple is very nice. He is a contractor (a person who works in civil construction, somewhat like a mason, but he is also a plumber and electrician). I don’t know what his wife does; I have never asked. I met them through a mutual friend.

When I met him, the first thing he said to me was “Hola cómo estás!” I then responded in French – or in English; I don’t remember – and at that time I said I didn’t speak Spanish, even though I have studied it. Then, as a good Brazilian, I explained that Brazil is the only country in the Americas whose official language is Portuguese, and I talked about a whole litany of things, historical matters, etcetera.

On the second, third, and fourth time we met, he again complimented me in Spanish, and I always responded in French. One day I even taught him the correct words in Portuguese, but it had no effect. This continued until at some point I started answering him in Spanish as well.

Last Saturday, the story repeated itself, but in a more humorous vein. We were at a party at house of a friend of my wife’s, and a guest, on noting that we were not Canadian, started speaking to us in Spanish. I responded in English, and he got a frightened look on his face, as if he had committed a gaffe. Then he asked me in English where we were from. When I responded that we were Brazilian, he said, “So, no Spanish?” I said, “No, we speak Portuguese.” From then on the conversation focused on Brazil.

These were not the only occasions in which a Canadian, Quebecois or not, spoke to me in Spanish, and it won’t be the last. In the end, they want to be nice and show their openness to people from other countries.

What the heck is South America; aren’t you a Mexican?

Be prepared to hear all kind of absurdities when you are there. The typical Canadian has no notion of history or geography the way we do – well, I’m speaking from experience and from the studies I’ve done. For many people, there is no difference between the Americas. For others, south of the Rio Grande there is only a vast and immense territory called… Mexico. I’ve been asked whether Brazil shares a border with Mexico.

Many people also believe that outside the Canada-US axis there are only Mexico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic, places where most Canadians spend their summer vacations.

In the end, be prepared. You will be surprised.
Continue reading ‘I’m Brazilian, for God’s sake!’

20
Feb

The Kirpan: Yea or Nay?

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: Canadian Politics

Religion, sometimes considered a spent force in Canadian society, has recently reared its head again. This time it is not one of the Abrahamic faiths (Christianity, Islam and Judaism) but an Indian-derived one: Sikhism. The incident began in January when a group of four Sikhs was denied entry to the Quebec National Assembly because they refused to surrender their kirpans, the ceremonial daggers that Sikhs are required to carry on their persons at all times. The grounds for the decision to bar the four was ostensibly security, but perhaps Parti Quebecois MLA Louise Beaudoin voiced the real reason when she stated, “Multiculturalism may be a Canadian value, but it is not a Quebec value.”

Reaction was swift to follow. Sikh groups and their advocates pointed out that in 2006 the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the kirpan as an article of faith, not a weapon, and the wearing of the kirpan as part of Sikhs’ freedom of religion under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The word “racism” was thrown around a great deal. On the other side of the argument, the Bloc Quebecois called for a ban on the kirpan in federal Parliament. Some commentators insisted that when in Canada, Sikhs should do as the Canadians do – that is, put away their kirpans. One reader of the Globe and Mail remarked sarcastically that as a person of Scottish descent he should be able to carry the “dubh,” a traditional Scottish knife worn along with the kilt, wherever and whenever he pleased.

The irony of the whole affair was that the four above-mentioned Sikhs were going to the National Assembly to take part in a debate to defend Muslim women’s right to wear the niqab, or burqa, in Quebec government facilities. Addressing both the niqab and the kirpan, Rogers TV OMNI News personality Zuhair Kashmeri (a Muslim) wondered aloud whether we would soon see crosses being burnt outside mosques and Gurdwaras (Sikh places of worship). But is the kirpan debate really a Christian/conservative/White versus non-Christian/liberal/minority issue?

Considering the political parties of those names, it’s difficult to say that we’re looking at a purely Liberal pro-kirpan/Conservative anti-kirpan picture. Just last week, for example, the Quebec Liberal Party voted with their separatist foes on a motion to prohibit the ceremonial dagger in that province’s National Assembly. At the federal level, Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney, a Conservative, defended Sikhs’ right to carry the kirpan, describing the matter as a “non-issue” that was resolved by the 2006 Supreme Court decision.  It should be mentioned that Minister Kenney has not always been so “tolerant” of immigrant groups’ traditions: in the 2009 Citizenship Guide he stated that Canada’s welcoming of newcomers did not extend to “barbaric” practices like honour killings, spousal abuse and female genital mutilation. Nor are the Bloc and Parti Quebecois necessarily right-wing. The current leader of the former party, Gilles Duceppe, was once a trade union negotiator, while as governing power in Quebec the Parti Quebecois promoted universal day care – an anathema to right-wing ideologues who feel women should be barefoot, pregnant and in the kitchen.

Furthermore, despite Kashmeri’s talk of burning crosses outside mosques and gurdwaras, there is no indication that the ban on the kirpan was motivated by a desire to keep Canada “Christian.” The Quebec separatist movement – at least that which evolved during the Quiet Revolution of the 1960s and which spawned the Parti and Bloc – was never religious. In fact, the late separatist leader Rene Levesque was an agnostic, and Catholicism did not form the basis of the movement’s concept of Quebec as a society distinct from the rest of Canada.  Similarly, Sikhism does not seem to be a target of Christian fundamentalists: if any non-Christian religion is, it’s Islam, even though in terms of their attitudes towards women’s rights, homosexuality and the death penalty Christian and Muslim fundamentalist views often overlap.

Finally, the idea of the kirpan as a White Christian versus minority non-Christian issue is literally brought to its heels by a letter from Ron Banerjee of the group Canadian Hindu Advocacy. Praising the Quebec National Assembly’s decision not to admit the four Sikhs carrying kirpans, Banerjee states openly that the ceremonial dagger is indeed a weapon and that it has been used as such right here in Canada. He goes on to attack the niqab and hijab (headscarf worn by Muslim women) as well as the Sikh turban. Banerjee then contrasts Muslims and Sikhs’ insistence on wearing such attire with Hindus and Jews’ harmonious transition into Canadian society, calling the latter two communities’ traditions as “conducive to democracy.”

I’m not convinced by everything in Banerjee’s letter. There have been “culture clashes” between Jews and Hindus on one hand and mainstream Canadian society on the other. In a case in Montreal, a Hasidic Jewish synagogue demanded that a nearby YMCA tint the windows of its exercise room to prevent congregation members from seeing scantily clad women inside.  Similarly in Toronto some discussion took place regarding Hindus scattering their loved ones’ ashes in rivers – though Hindu leaders declared their willingness to work with authorities and though the matter was settled peacefully without much fanfare.  It is also true that Sikhs and Hindus have always had an uneasy relationship, both in India itself and overseas.  Still, the fact that a non-white non-Christian voiced his opposition to a Sikh tradition in such stark terms casts strong doubt on the notion of kirpan foes as a bunch of “redneck Reformers.”

I personally don’t have strong opinions on the kirpan either way. Religious freedom – which also includes the freedom not to practise any religion at all – is important; hearing the story of a friend from the former Soviet Union who was prohibited from entering a church makes me appreciate my ability to go, or not go, to any place of worship I want. On the other hand, religious freedom is not absolute. Sometimes it should take a back seat to other values. For example, courts have ordered children of Christian Scientists to receive medical treatment against their parents’ wishes. Security is another value that in some cases should trump religious freedom. For example, an argument for banning the burqa could be made if it became widely used by criminals to conceal their identity.

In the case of the kirpan, is it really a safety risk, as security personnel at the Quebec National Assembly claimed?  Perhaps on one hand its proponents have underplayed its potential for harm while its opponents have overblown its dangers. The kirpan has indeed been used as a weapon. On the other hand, so have everything from glass bottles (which would make me armed and dangerous when I entered a building with a bag of beer bottles I’d collected to return to the Beer Store for ten cents), pens and even the innocent hairpin. I’m not sure whether security is an adequate justification for banning the kirpan in the Legislature.

I don’t have too many problems with the 2006 ruling declaring the kirpan an article of faith. However, I also have to accept the Quebec Legislature’s right to bar the kirpan from their premises. The reality is that multiculturalism as practised in Anglophone Canada has never been well-accepted in Quebec. Nonetheless, I find the Bloc Quebecois’ demand to prohibit the kirpan in the House of Commons a bit arrogant. That is not to say that a ban on the kirpan in federal Parliament should be totally excluded in future; it’s just that I don’t think it should come from a party that doesn’t believe in a united Canada in the first place.

So far I’m satisfied with the status quo vis-à-vis the kirpan: permitted in the Legislature in Ottawa and that of the Anglophone provinces and prohibited in the Quebec National Assembly. This status quo, and my feelings on the matter, could change. I would be interested in hearing my readers’ opinion on this issue.

27
Dec

Render unto Caesar? The Canadian Taxpayers Federation

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: Economics



Taxes and those who collect them have never been popular. The Beatles, for example, had a song “Taxman,” one of the most memorable lines of which was “If you take a walk, I’ll tax your feet.” As social critic Jim Goad said in his book The Redneck Manifesto, even the “wimpy, peace-loving” Beatles sang about the evil taxman. In the 1980s comedy series Diff’rent Strokes, the character Willis explains to his brother Arnold that, “The IRA are the Irish terrorists. The IRS [Internal Revenue Service] are the American terrorists.”

Now, however, some people are not content to simply sing or joke about the evils of revenue collection. Here in Canada, we have seen the emergence of an organization called the Canadian Taxpayers Federation (CTF). It is headed by a gentleman named Kevin Gaudet, who writes columns for a number of community newspapers and occasionally appears on radio talk shows. The Canadian Taxpayers Federation describes itself as a “citizen’s advocacy group dedicated to lower taxes, less waste and accountable government.” It has a website, www.taxpayer.com, and in the past published a newsletter in print. I have to admit the newsletter is an interesting read and, unlike much social commentary, is actually humorous. For instance, did you know that one of the first revenue rebels in history was Lady Godiva, whose husband promised to lower the municipal taxes if she rode naked through the town on horseback? After she took him up on his dare, the taxes went down. (In her use of nudity as a form of social protest, the good lady appears to have pre-dated the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals by nearly a millennium.)

The goal of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is to, by their own admission, promote more responsible use of our tax dollars and, if necessary, collect less of them in the first place. Some of the subjects discussed on their site include political leaders’ salaries, government funding for institutions like hospitals, schools and public television stations, and spending on prisoners – all of which and whom they feel receive too much money from government coffers and, ultimately, our pocketbooks. The Federation recently reported a victory in helping end Old Age Security (OAS) and Guaranteed Income Supplement (GIS) payments to federal prison inmates like serial killer Clifford Olson.

They also ask why, for example, the people of Regina, Saskatchewan should be required to shell out money to repair the City’s Mosaic Stadium when the private sector could very well pick up the tab.

Needless to say, the CTF hasn’t been immune from criticism. They have often been portrayed as mere mouthpieces of the Canadian right. On one hand, a number of past and present Federation members have belonged to or worked for the Conservative and other right-wing political parties. The current CEO, Kevin Gaudet, served as Director of Opposition Research for Reform Party leader Preston Manning, while one of its former heads was Jason Kenney, now Citizenship and Immigration Minister under Stephen Harper. On the other hand, it’s perhaps a bit simplistic to dismiss the CTF as Tory toadies. The Federation has after all criticized Conservative administrations. A past issue of the CTF newsletter described the Ralph Klein regime as “my big fat Alberta government,” presumably in reference to its members’ bloated salaries.

Other critics imply that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation are against public financing of essential social services. In an article entitled “Top 100 reasons why I don’t take the Canadian Taxpayers Federation seriously,” a site owner calling himself “BCerinToronto” bashed the group for protesting federal funding to among other things the Canadian Television Fund and Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. He ends by telling the CTF to “leave the sick children alone.”

Personally, while I am sympathetic to the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s concerns and while it is probably true that our various governments waste money on many useless endeavours (such as the Canadian Television Fund), my emphasis would be on “less waste” and “accountable government” rather than necessarily “lower taxes.” I don’t mind paying taxes for legitimate social services like hospitals or educational institutions. However, what we hand over to the government should be used efficiently so that we get the best performance for our money.

Take the above-mentioned Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. I was a patient there nearly four years ago when I gave birth to my daughter. The nurse attending me was rude, both to me and to my mother; incompetent (she gave me contradictory and potentially dangerous advice); and utterly useless. So I would say yes, let’s fund Sunnybrook, but let’s also ensure that employees like the nurse in question – who by the way is not doing charitable work; as a recipient of my tax dollars she’s actually working for me – either shape up or ship out, so to speak.

So unlike Willis in Diff’rent Strokes, I don’t believe the Canada Revenue Agency (our equivalent to the IRS) are the Canadian terrorists. We do have an obligation in a democratic society to “render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.” But we should make sure of what exactly it is we owe to Caesar and that Caesar is actually rendering it back to us to the best of his abilities.

06
Nov

Naheed Nenshi and the New Canada

By Emilia Liz 6 Comments
Categories: Canadian Politics, Politics and Society

October 18, 2010 was a historic day in the eyes of many Canadians: Canada elected its first Muslim mayor. The mayor-elect in question is Naheed Nenshi of Calgary, a Muslim of South Asian descent. Nenshi, who was born to parents who had fled Tanzania, a country in East Africa to which many South Asians migrated when both regions were under British rule, won 40% of the popular vote following his ‘Purple Revolution’ campaign.

For a large number of people, Nenshi’s victory was indeed a revolution. Indo-Canadian television station OMNI News, for example, compared it to the election of President Barack Obama in the United States two years earlier. OMNI commentator Zuhair Kashmeri saw Nenshi’s win as a sign that mayoralty in Canada was no longer the exclusive domain of White Anglo-Saxon Protestants. Among the general Canadian population, some suggested that the election of a Muslim mayor in Calgary meant that Alberta might not be the redneck haven it was often portrayed as being. Others noted the irony in the victory of Nenshi in the supposed backwoods of Alberta versus that of (White) right-wing candidate Rob Ford in the reputed bastion of multiculturalism Toronto.

While I understand the South Asian community’s elation, I would like to make my own clarifications. With all due respect to Mr. Nenshi and to Calgary, being elected mayor of a city can’t be equated to becoming president of an entire nation. Canada furthermore has had, and has, non-White mayors. They include Niagara-on-the-Lake Mayor Art Viola, who is of Filipino descent, and the Lebanese-Canadian Mayor of Windsor, Ontario Eddie Francis (note: I personally find it somewhat curious that Arabs are classified as ‘minorities’ by the Canadian government even though many of them – such as dear Mr. Francis himself – are physically indistinguishable from Greeks or Southern Italians). However, Nenshi’s Muslim faith causes him to stand out in a way that Viola and Francis do not. Both Francis and Viola are Catholic. Perhaps Filipinos and Lebanese Christians are Westernized enough to be seen as mainstream: after all, how ‘exotic’ can someone with the name of Art or Eddie be?

Naheed Nenshi’s religion has sparked commentary. Some have wondered darkly whether he might try to impose sharia law on his constituents. This possibility seems fairly remote. For one, Nenshi belongs to a moderate branch of Islam, the Ismailis. Ismaili women, for instance, are allowed to marry non-Muslim men, whereas women in mainstream Islam are not (though Muslim men can wed Christian or Jewish women). Secondly, even if Nenshi were an Islamic fundamentalist intent on bringing sharia to Calgary, as mayor his power to do so would be limited, just as that of Toronto’s Rob Ford – who has been quoted as saying that marriage should be exclusively between a man and woman – to ban same-sex marriage would be.

Finally, what does Naheed Nenshi’s election as mayor tell us about Canadian society in general? Does it mean that racism in this country is a thing of the past? I would say no. On the other hand, Canada does appear to have come a long way, so to speak, from the days when prejudice against groups ranging from the Irish to Ukrainians to Jews to Chinese to Japanese abounded. Also, should a candidate’s faith (or lack thereof) be a factor in deciding whether or not to vote for him or her? Again, I would answer in the negative, unless of course he or she were going to attempt to impose it on others – which Nenshi shows no intention of doing. In the end, all we can hope for is that Nenshi will govern the city and serve the people of Calgary well.

15
Sep

Is the War Over? Reflections on Iraq

By Emilia Liz 2 Comments
Categories: Politics and World Politics

Is the war over?  President Barack Obama is reportedly pulling the US troops out of Iraq after more than seven years on the battlefield. Polls show that the American public’s support for the invasion of Iraq has declined during this time – though of course some of the non-supporters opposed the war from the beginning and did not “convert” to the other side. As someone who is part American myself (my mother is from Wisconsin ), I have always been against the war, albeit as an isolationist rather than a pacifist. However oppressive Saddam Hussein may have been towards his own people, he posed no threat to the United States . His much-feared (and much-doubted) stockpile of nuclear weapons never materialized. Hence the premise for the war was based on a non-reality at best and a deliberate falsehood at worst. Nor were Hussein’s alleged links to al-Qaeda or other Islamic fundamentalist groups ever proven; for one thing, religion did not play any part in his government.

Watching the military endeavour in Iraq was painful at times: the mistreatment of prisoners of war and the spectre of young men – and some young women – returning to the United States physically or, perhaps even worse, psychologically damaged by the fighting come to mind as prime examples. In coldly materialistic terms, the war has ended up costing an enormous amount of money. And for what, I wonder: a country halfway around the world that really had nothing to do with the US and the everyday lives of ordinary Americans.

On the other hand, I’m not totally comfortable with the anti-war faction. It was to a certain degree taken over by those who saw the war as a Western imperialist venture. For instance, in The Walrus magazine commentator Tariq Ali described the abuse of Iraqi detainees by American forces as “Western civilization at its rawest.” A reader cleverly pointed out afterwards in a letter to the editor that many Western nations, including the United States ’ NAFTA partners Canada and Mexico , declined to join the war effort. Likewise, one pacifist website accused the Roman Catholic Church of not speaking out as loudly against the war as they do against abortion because Iraqi children were not “White” – a curious leap of logic given that the Catholic Church condemned US intervention in Iraq from the very start. Unfortunately, the anti-colonialist kooks diminished the anti-war movement’s credibility.

To conclude, I hope this war is really over. I am proud as a Canadian that Canada never took part in it – no matter how much Stephen Harper was accused of being a Bush toady, he made no move to send Canadian troops to Iraq . And fingers crossed that the troops will come home once and for all.

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