Do as I say; not as I do

No, I'm not going to slag David Suzuki or Al Gore today. This one is for Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin who as the National Post editorial notes (Don't Speak), seems to have no problem speaking from a political stance but abhors any such influence in the Justice system.

Speaking Thursday to the Empire Club in Toronto, Chief Justice Beverley McLachlin bemoaned what she said was the increasing inability of ordinary Canadians to seek justice in the courts, primarily because of the high cost and long waits.

Litigation is, of course, a costly and time-consuming burden. But we doubt that this unfortunate fact has changed much over the years. Taking a case to trial, then all the way through the various layers of appeal, has always been an expensive, drawn-out process -- which is why most litigation tends to end with a negotiated settlement. But even if we accept Judge McLachlin's contention that the situation has deteriorated of late, her remarks -- coming as they do on the heels of the Conservative government cutting two major sources of funding for litigious interest groups -- gives the appearance that the chief justice may be taking a political stance.

The Post is of course referring to Conservatives cuts to the Court Challenges Program and the Status of Women department, both of which serve a largely left-wing agenda. They obviously feel that judges should keep their political opinions to themselves. I agree.

Lawyer Karen Sellick had an interesting opinion piece in the Post on Tuesday (Judicious Compensation). Her contention appears to be that the system is flawed due to a fixed salary system, which removes the incentive to increase productivity .

She is concerned that the current system not only encourages slackers, but also something far worse:

But there's another risk, too. With financial motivation gone, it will be the ideologues among the judiciary who will tend to step forward and seed the law reports with their decisions. They have other motivations besides money -- the ambition to move up the judicial ladder into appellate courts, or the desire to influence the direction of the law in accordance with some ideological agenda.

So it's not just the selection process that tends to politicize the judiciary. The compensation system does it, too.

She goes on to offer a remedy:

There is a solution to this problem. It's to allow opposing litigants to jointly select their judge, with judges being paid according to time worked. Only unbiased judges would get many cases, and we wouldn't need political pre-screening of applicants because judges would be screened daily by those requiring their services.

So unless things change, we will continue to enable a powerful system of slackers who are only encouraged to become productive if they have a political agenda to enforce. This is their motivation; notwithstanding the odd one who may actually possess a modicum of integrity.

Not a pretty picture for the future of Canadian society.

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With that, I'll sign off for a few days. I have a pile of reading to catch up on.

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Update: Interesting Counterpoint by David Asper. Thoughts?

Rant Aggregator

Today's post is a compilation of rants from MSM which caught my eye.


Greg Weston takes Stephane Dion's English pronunciation to task in Pardon, Monsieur Dion? "Liberal Leader's Shaky English Could Make Him French Toast in the Next Election". I would suggest possibly milquetoast as well.


Roy Leishman of the LFP - "Judicial Activists Know No Restrain." Roy rants about the Ontario Court of Appeal's self-proclaimed right to define the Canadian family and asks why our legislated officials seemingly have no opinion or objection.

Strange indeed...

Oh yeah! I know why, Roy! Christina Blizzard found them - They're at home counting their 25% raises!!!

- and saying see ya in March, suckers.

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Update: Kate does her take on the Weston article - A Way with Words: Found in Translation.

Read the comments. One of her readers starts talking about "Borat Dion". Too funny.

Afternoon Update: I don't know how I missed this one this morning! Lorrie Goldstein has another column on the Kyoto debacle (More Kyoto Crimes):

The news for Canadian taxpayers and consumers only gets worse. Even if we were to meet our Kyoto targets for 2012, which would have a huge negative impact on our economy because we're now 35% behind, it won't matter.

China, India and the U.S. -- none of them restricted by Kyoto -- are planning to build more than 850 new coal-fired energy plants over the next few years. China alone is planning 562. (Burning coal emits more greenhouse gas, linked to global warming, than oil or natural gas, the world's two other major fossil fuels.)

BTW, still an excellent debate going on a few threads ago.


Since this is somewhat of a dog's breakfast today, I'm going to include a short excerpt from a great letter by a geologist in Saturday's Financial Post in response to Peter Foster's Jan. 9 column, "Climate Action Would be Suicidal".

Reviving catastrophism

"...Also, for your information, there was a fascinating paper that appeared in the Geological Association of Canada journal, last year I think, demonstrating that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide appear to follow increases in temperature, not precede them! I doubt you'll hear the great wizard, Dr. David Suzuki, catastrophist extraordinaire, speaking much about that.

Finally, as if any other proofs of the earth's incredible self-buffering and self-regulating capacity were required, how about the fact that as this winter has been so mild, the burning of fossil fuels for heating as gone way down and so has the consequent emissions of carbon dioxide. Presto. Problem solved! Avrom Howard, Thornhill, Ont. "

Well, that might be oversimplifying things a bit.

Weinreb's Worth the Read

If you get a moment, check out Arthur Weinreb at Canada Free Press. His columns are always entertaining, witty and informative even though you may not always agree with his point of view.

Arthur recently contacted me regarding my post on the Plight of the Disadvantaged Two-Parent Child. He said he loved my coined term "parentally disadvantaged" and wanted to use it in a future column, which he has in fact done with his usual tongue-in-cheek flair.


I enjoyed this part:

The lower court dismissed her application. While sympathetic to the lesbian partner's plight, the judge came up with the silly notion that judges are supposed to interpret the law and not legislate.

The decision was reversed on appeal. The Court of Appeal found that the CLRA was outdated. Having come into force in the 1970s after a study by the Law Reform Commission of Ontario, the Act just didn't take today's realities into account (these realities being no doubt that when it comes to families, anything goes).

So true!


His January 9 column talks about the pitfalls of multiculturalism - The Liberals' "Secret Agenda".


This column is more serious but still relentlessly sardonic:

Canada should not be thought of as a real country because it was founded by that segment of society that it is perfectly permissible to discriminate against -- white males. We should play down the fact that we are a country because it will inevitably lead to tribalism. The Liberals are on a course to destroy whatever is left of our collective identity and culture by replacing it with multiculturalism where our culture consists of everyone else's culture (except that of Canadians).

I agree with Arthur. We are so busy trying not to offend and be politically correct, that we have lost any notion of who we are as a collective entity. We are a nation of solitudes.

Oligarchy of Judges Runs Canada

At least that's what David Warren seems to be suggesting in today's Ottawa Citizen (A Straight Line to Polygamy):

The people of Canada are entirely excluded from this power loop by judges who, as our Supreme Court chief justice, Beverley McLachlin, is happy to explain, must never be tainted by electoral politics, even to the degree of being approved by Parliament. Nor, as she has also patiently explained, must they be restricted to interpreting the law as they receive it. Nor, I would think, would she make them accountable to God (though she has yet to rule expressly on that issue). No, they are a law unto themselves.

The word for this is "oligarchy" -- where a faction, in this case of judges, rules a country and writes the laws at its own pleasure. Canada previously aspired to "democracy," in which the people wrote their own laws, through a Parliament they elected and a government they could replace.

He cites the recent Ontario Court of Appeal "Three Parent" decision as the natural next step to polygamy being legalized. I would argue that it already is, inasmuch as it has never been challenged. It is only still listed as a criminal offence for "feel-good" purposes.


Warren finishes with the following warning:

Wake up, gentle reader. If you don't want polygamy in Canada, you had better start making a loud noise. For the internal enemies of our civilization have laid all the groundwork for this coup de grace.

Sorry, David. I think it's already too late.

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Meanwhile, in Sweden of all places, a judge has rejected two lesbian women’s attempts to adopt their partner’s biological child!!!

Well at least Canada is forward thinking, even if the rest of the world lives in a time warp.

Please remain in your seat

When the Ontario Court of Appeal recently decided that some Ontario children are allowed to have more than two names under the category of 'parent' on their birth certificates, I attempted to refrain from using the slippery slope argument; mainly because it is so overdone.

However after reading an article by Barrister and Solicitor Iain Benson, who is the Centre for Cultural Renewal’s Executive Director, I have come to the conclusion that the 'slippery slope' argument is not only used too often; it is also false. Canadian society is actually in a free-fall not unlike one of those stomach-churning rides at Canada's Wonderland, the 'Drop-Zone'.

The judicial activism that eventually caused same-sex marriage to be enshrined in Canadian law ignored concerns such as those voiced by Benson:

During the arguments in the various “same-sex marriage” cases (in which the writer had some involvement as counsel), one of the points made by counsel for the Inter-faith coalition for the family was this. Once you eradicate the male/female nature of marriage as it has been historically understood, there is really no reason why the numbers of people in a “marriage” should matter.

This is the familiar argument that polygamy will naturally follow same-sex marriage. Here's why I think he's right:

In other words, once two men or two women can be married to each other because they wish such recognition (and if the biological aspects related to children are deemed, as happened in these cases, to be irrelevant), what logic is there anymore in restricting marriage to just two people? In fact, it was argued that, logically, if “sexual orientation” is the basis for same-sex marriage and “bi-sexuality” is a sexual orientation, then a marriage involving bi-sexuals must logically involve more than two people since their very sexual identity involves more than just a heterosexual orientation, an orientation that, as the logic went with same-sex claims, has a right to expression. What is sauce for the homosexual goose is, as it were, also sauce for the bi-sexual gander. As it happens, this argument, slightly ahead of its time, was one that the courts dealt with by ignoring it completely.

The relevance of the point has just come home, but, like many strategic litigation strategies these days, in a rather round about way. In a January 2, 2007 decision the Ontario Court of Appeal determined that a child does not just have a father and a mother as parents but can, in fact, have a third party, in this case the lesbian partner of the mother, as another parent. Thus the case is known as the “three parents” case.

If we are to recognize the legitimacy of bi-sexual 'rights' in Canadian society, then it follows that these folks may require more than one partner to be able to properly express their sexuality and therefore marriage with multiple partners must be allowed.

Polygamy has never been prosecuted in Canada because in fact it is legally impossible to do so. How can you prosecute a community of people cohabiting and sharing partners, child rearing and so forth in a society that allows Swingers' clubs, 'equal' marriage, and more than two names on a birth certificate? Also, from a Freedom of Religion point of view it would never stand up in court. The only way that the legal system can attack is through proof of abuse.

Let's just cut out the nonsense and strike polygamy off the books. If you have a law on the books but you never use it, what's the point? It becomes meaningless.

So buckle up, close your eyes and enjoy that ride down. It's gonna be a gut-wrencher.

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More at Rempelia Prime - Buoying the Bishop of Bountiful.

Ted Byfield (Calgary Sun) - Family structure takes another hit.

Spink about it - Slippery Slope or Society's Freefall?

The Plight of the Disadvantaged Two-Parent Child

The landmark Ontario Court of Appeal decision has ruled that kids can now have more than two legal parents.

So how is this fair to the ones with just two or one or none? Won't there be some one-upping in the schoolyard? ("I've got a daddy and two mommies! Nah, nah, nah-nah-hah! How many do you have?")

Aren't these kids going to get more birthday and Christmas presents than all the other kids? Won't they get more attention and love? Somehow it doesn't seem fair to the others.

I recommend that we form some kind of bureaucratic body to ensure the rights of the parentally-disadvantaged. We need to ensure that these children do not feel socially marginalized.

Perhaps a Foster Extra-Parent Foundation. Something along the line of Big Brothers and Big Sisters, but with a lot more money thrown at it by the taxpayer. I'm sure there's a government boondoggle out there somewhere ready to take up the cause.

Maybe it would give the Court Challenges Program folks something to do.

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Update: Call for Federal Marriage Commission. (This is all beginning to sound oddly familiar. Ontario courts legislate social changes; government puts the seal of approval on it.)