Sorry, we're all out of health care.

Contributed by Tasia Alexopoulos

 

The latest in the long line of Conservative cut backs is one that I don't think a lot of us saw coming.  National Defense, Health Canada, the CBC, Federal Penitentiaries. There have been a lot of surprising cuts in their quest to cut almost $5 billion in spending.

The Harper Conservatives are making cuts to the Interim Health Program, which provides "limited, temporary, taxpayer-funded coverage of health-care benefits to protected persons, including resettled refugees; refugee claimants; and certain other groups who are not eligible for provincial or territorial health insurance." The newly reformed program, which comes into effect June 30 2012, effectively ends supplemental health-care benefits, makes medications and immunizations available only in the case where there is a risk to public health or safety, and will provide health care coverage for services and products that are of an urgent nature. (you can read the entire news release here)

Jason Kenney, Immigration Minister, said in his press release that the government does not "want to ask Canadians to pay for benefits for protected persons and refugee claimants that are more generous than what they are entitled to themselves.” He's talking about dental and eye care, two things that are absolutely essential to health and are not covered by Canadian public health care.

According to Minister Kenney, this reform will also take the "incentive" away from people who "may be considering filing an unfounded refugee claim in Canada" and will "allow us to protect public health and safety, ensure that tax dollars are spent wisely and defend the integrity of our immigration system all at the same time." The cuts will save a projected $100 million dollars over the course of five years.

Because people flee to Canada to get eyeglasses, Minister Kenney, and applying for and waiting on a refugee claim is a walk in the park."There just isn't affordable treatment for cavities in my nation, I think I'll make an unfounded refugee claim in Canada!"

Does Jason Kenney really think that Canadians are so stupid that they'll fall for this? Trying to whip up fear over a "wave of refugees" flooding the country to abuse our health care system because of our "lax" immigration and refugee policy is completely ridiculous and unfounded. Canada accepts about 38% of its refugee claims. He's making it sound like people who are waiting on a refugee claim decision are basically on vacation, which is insane. Many people attempting refugee status live in constant fear of being deported, are homeless or living in shelters, have little to no money, no family, no support, don't speak english, face extreme barriers to education and health care, not to mention being the victims of crimes here in Canada.

What makes the least amount of sense(and most sense, considering the we're talking about the Conservative government)is that a decision that makes such an enormous impact on women and children seeking refuge could be made so lightly. The United Nations Refugee Agency estimates that about 47% of 21 million refugees and displaced persons are women and children constitute about 44% but both are heavily underrepresented in accepted claims. 

Canada is a signatory of the 1951 UN Convention of the Status of Refugees and until 1993 did not have a set of guidelines for dealing with gender-based claims. Because the Convention arose during the post-World War II and was heavily influenced by the Cold War it reflects very specific concerns: protecting individuals from state persecution based on their personal beliefs or identity.  Defining refugees so specifically led to the "traditional view of the asylum seeker as male" and "narrow and rigid interpretations of what constitutes persecution(Valji, Hunt, Moffett, Agenda 55 2003). Women were often overlooked or left out in favour of individual male asylum seekers, and specific persecutions that women faced due to their gender were left completely out of the equation. Understandings of gender based violence and discrimination is much more sophisticated now, but women still experience the refugee claims system much differently then men do.

Conflict and war are also much different now than they were in the 1950s and it is not always the State that people need to be protected from. People can claim refugee status for many different reasons now: race, religion, political opinion, nationality, or membership in a particular social group(such as women) or a particular sexual orientation. There are also persons in need of protection whose removal to their own country would result in a danger of torture, a risk to their life, or a risk of cruel and unusual treatment and punishment.

Despite this progress, many people are denied and sent back to their countries of origin. Even though there are guidelines for assessing cases that are not traditional, the system still depends on employees to pay attention to said guidelines and carry them out fairly. 

According to a study by Constance MacIntosh on the Canadian Refugee system, between 2004-2009 of the 135 refugee claims brought by women based on domestic violence and abuse, 98% were denied by the adjudicator. From 2005-2008 100% of refugee claims based on domestic violence were denied. The majority of the decisions were made based on women being unable to prove that their home countries could not (or would not) protect them from further abuse.

MacIntosh writes:  "These decisions—that women were lying about their experience, or else that their state could in fact protect them—paint a picture that contradicts the trends identified by international bodies who study violence against women. For example, the United Nations General Assembly’s 2006 assessment was that the “most common form of violence experienced by women globally is intimate partner violence”  and that “it is clear that violence against women remains a devastating reality in all parts of the world, and the implementation of international and regional standards to eradicate such violence is therefore an urgent priority.” The UN essentially identifies domestic violence as a worldwide crisis that is being perpetuated by the failure of states to take effective action."

Upon judicial review, 44% of those decisions were deemed not reasonable. This extremely high rejection rate indicates that the Refugee Protection Division adjudicators were not properly considering or adhering to a set of Gender Guidelines that were drafted by the Chairperson of the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB), which were designed to help in the decision-making where gender-based claims have been made.

For five years, almost 100% of women seeking asylum due to domestic violence were rejected and sent back to dangerous situations, where many of them are killed or face more violence for having left at all. This is in direct opposition to the Gender Guidelines that Canada has pledged to utilize. This means some people are just not doing their jobs properly.

Women and children also experience, in most cases, a heightened risk of being sexually exploited (especially in conflict or war zones). We now understand that rape has been used as a systemic tool of war and is not, as previously thought, just a symptom of conflict. Women and children(boys and girls) are often kidnapped or taken by military or rebel forces and used for sexual and physical labour.

Women also seek asylum based on personal safety issues such as forced marriage, threats of murder or disfigurement based on their sexuality or sexual identity. There has been an increase in people from Mexico seeking asylum due to drug wars in the country. A report that came out in March concluded that "as a result of government strategy, violence has escalated to levels previously unknown in Mexico, with policemen, soldiers, drug dealers and an increasing number of innocent people being killed every day." Homicides of women in Mexico are so rampant that they even have their own Wikipedia page.  Despite this,  Mexican asylum seekers are very often denied and had an 82.9% rejection rate in 2011. 

These are the women who wait in Canada for their claims decision, these are the women and children(and men) who receive basic health care on our tax dollar.  The people who may get to see an eye doctor if they understand how to access that system, or maybe get to have painful dental problems taken care of. As a signatory of UN Conventions and as a nation that has pledged to try to help refugees, Canada has a responsibility to ensure that people who are waiting are treated humanely. If Canada doesn't want to treat refugees like human beings, then we should stop accepting refugees at all. 

Why is Jason Kenney demonizing the people who are most helpless? Maybe he should be focusing on corruption in his Department instead. Remember Steven Ellis? The immigration adjudicator(and former city councillor) who told his claimant that she would be accepted if she performed sexual favours on him? He got 18 months in prison for his crime. Or what about Diane Serre, a Citizenship and Immigration manager was was "running a for profit business by accepting bribes and gifts in exchange for fast-tracking immigration." The people entrusted with making sure the immigration and refugee process runs smoothly, fairly, and legally are taking bribes and trading refugee status for sexual favours.

This isn't just a cut to save money. This is one part of the Harper Conservatives drive to make it practically impossible to immigrate or get refugee status in this country. The government introduced Bill C-31 in February which, if pushed through, will allow claimants to be "further invalidated, criminalized and endangered. The burden of the bill’s impact will fall on women, queer- and trans-identifying individuals and their families, and those fleeing from "safe" countries that are Canada's trade partners."

Bill C-31 would force refugee hearings to be expedited to 15 days, down from the previous 2-3 months. Meaning that within 15 days of arriving, refugees have to find shelter, legal counsel, interpreters, and "prepare to deliver their personal stories of hardship, loss, trauma and violence before an Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) member at their first hearing, all in an unfamiliar environment and language."

The Bill also penalizes people who arrive in Canada through irregular process, otherwise known as "illegal", despite the fact that those people are most likely to be in desperate need of safety from persecution.  This doesn't take into account that many people who arrive in Canada illegally are unaware that they are doing so, and are promised a safe route to Canada in exchange for money. In most cases these people are forced to travel in extremely dangerous quarters and often will die before they reach their destination either from starvation, dehydration, or drowning.

Most hideously, Bill C- 31 doesn't contain a clause to prevent minors from being detained and imprisoned in Canada and can be separated from their families for any amount of time. 

So Minister Kenney wants Canadians to believe that he's saving our money for us, that Canadians don't want to spend their hard earned tax dollars on refugees and (more so) that we shouldn't have to. But this cut is really just another example of why so many of us were scared of a Conservative majority. Do Canadians really want to have an immigration/refugee system more akin to that of the United States'? Do we , on one hand, give lovely private health insurance policies to bureaucrats with our tax dollars but on the other hand we want to deny the neediest people in the world the basic human right to health care? We pay for Stephen Harper's $45'000 trip to New York City, his Broadway tickets and baseball games. And Bev Oda, well the first thing out of her mouth during any diplomatic trip apparently is "MAKE IT RAIN!" We pay for Oda's limousines and luxury hotel stays, but Jason Kenney doesn't think we should have to pay to have refugee children immunized?

A Canada that doesn't support basic human rights is not a Canada that I can be proud of and I just won't accept that it reflects what tax payers want. Does hoarding our resources so that we can spend them on fighter jets later on make us a better nation in the eyes of the Conservatives? When we as a country contribute to many of the reasons that people are refugees in the first place, we have to take responsibility for it. We have to remain compassionate and clear headed, not fearful and prone to scapegoating. I don't mind paying taxes so that people who have nothing, who are trying to find safety in Canada, can have a bit of health care while they wait. But, I guess the Conservatives would like us to believe that other taxpayers would rather spend that extra $100 million over five years on the fanciest glasses of orange juice for the most useless politicians. Jason Kenney can say he is "defending the integrity of our immigration system" all he wants, but every day that man sits as Immigration Minister is another day of corruption and regression.

"Has the human spirit fallen so much in the last 2400 years?"

hans, as usual, brilliant.

Jason Kenny and the Conservatives Write Bad Fiction

"As the boatload of refugees pulled into the harbour, there was one young boy who was particularly eager for a glimpse of this land toward which they had spent weeks journeying. He’d lost several relatives, including a younger brother, in the turmoil before they fled their homeland – due to poverty and disease, mostly – and all that was left of his little family was crammed aboard this filthy vessel.

A distant relative of his mother’s had apparently settled here several years earlier, and on this all their hopes were pinned. His father was a failed merchant: everything he’d tried his hand at had gone bankrupt in the economic collapse of their homeland. Penniless, destitute, poor, hungry and bedraggled, their slim hope lay in being accepted to this land they were sailing into. Of course, sharing that hope were the hundreds of equally poor refugees crammed into the hold or on the ramshackle boats accompanying them.

The young refugee’s name? John A. MacDonald.

As we all know, little John did survive, and indeed thrived. Although his family stayed poor and his father’s efforts continued to meet failure, MacDonald became an infamous lawyer by defending American terrorists who had participated in the ongoing US efforts to destabilize the government of then-British Upper Canada. Despite his efforts, they were mostly executed with barely an excuse for a trial, but at least one of them gave MacDonald all the money in his pockets, as a token of gratitude that MacDonald had had the courage to speak up and defend these almost universally reviled American terrorists. This recognition helped him in becoming the first prime minister of Canada and getting his face on the 10-dollar bill.

Of course, had Stephen Harper and the Conservative government - the very party MacDonald played a role in creating – been in power when he sailed into the harbor as a refugee from Scotland’s economic collapse, he would probably not even have been permitted to stay. He would have been publicly demeaned and reviled, treated like a criminal, and then been sent home at gunpoint, probably to die in the land he had fled. So much for Confederation.

That’s only one of two tragic ironies reflected in the Conservatives’ increasingly elitist, racist response to the arrival of a boatload of Tamil refugees in British Columbia about three weeks ago.

The other tragic irony lies in the public apology Stephen Harper issued to the Chinese community in 2006, over the Canadian government’s turn-of-the-century anti-Chinese-immigration policy. While that apology was the product of long, hard and admirable work on the part of the Chinese-Canadian community, the Conservative actions demonstrate just how hollow and hypocritical their apology really was, and how much they didn’t really mean it.

Let’s talk about the Chinese head tax apology, for a moment. In the 1880s, the Canadian Pacific Railway was under construction. Over 15,000 Chinese were invited to Canada to build it (and then paid a fraction of what the white Canadian workers were paid). Canada became, naturally enough, a place of interest for both the Chinese working on the railroad, as well as many other Chinese who saw the ads or heard about it through relatives.

The Canadian government panicked at the thought that the Chinese workers it was exploiting in near slavery conditions might actually decide to stay in Canada, and even bring their families, and so it began charging a $500 head tax to Chinese seeking to settle here. The federal government collected close to $2 billion in today’s money from these mostly poor Chinese immigrants. The goal, of course, was to deter Chinese immigrants from coming to Canada (the government, meanwhile, continued to encourage white immigrants from across the other sea – in Europe – to come. No head tax if they were white.). This only ended when the Canadian government banned Chinese immigration entirely in the early 1920s. In the 1980s, descendants of these Chinese began a movement to make the federal government issue an apology for its terrible and racist treatment of Chinese immigrants. In 2006, Stephen Harper finally issued that apology. Let us quote briefly from that apology.

---

Stephen Harper: “...a group of people - who only sought to build a better life...these immigrants made the difficult decision to leave their families behind in order to pursue opportunities in a country halfway around the world they called “gold mountain”. Canada turned its back...in an attempt to deter immigration...

And while Canadian courts have ruled that...immigration prohibition, were legally authorized, we fully accept the moral responsibility to acknowledge these shameful polices of our past. For over six decades, these race-based measures...were implemented with deliberation by the Canadian state. This was a grave injustice, and one we are morally obligated to acknowledge...

And even though this...lies far in our past, we feel compelled to right this historic wrong for the simple reason that it is the decent thing to do, a characteristic to be found at the core of the Canadian soul. Mr. Speaker, in closing, let me assure the House that this government will continually strive to ensure that similar unjust practices are never allowed to happen again. We have the collective responsibility to build a country based firmly on the notion of equality of opportunity, regardless of one’s race or ethnic origin. Our deep sorrow over the racist actions of our past will nourish our unwavering commitment to build a better future...

Clearly, the sorrow was neither deep enough nor the commitment unwavering enough to prevent them from using the arrival of a boatload of Sri Lankan (Tamil) refugees in August as an opportunity to talk rough, act tough and – just like they did with the Chinese 100 years ago - claim they had to “send a message” to refugees the world over – to stay away from Canada.

And this week, Canada’s Minister Responsible For Keeping Foreign People Out (aka ‘Immigration’, aka Jason Kenney) is attending a meeting in Europe which has been described as “part of a widening fight against human trafficking and bogus asylum seekers” .

Now I’m generally a fan of good science fiction, but not when it gets accidentally labeled as government policy. “Bogus asylum seekers”? There’s nothing bogus about it – they’re trying to seek asylum. That’s why the Tamil refugees risked their lives to cross the ocean in a leaky boat. Whether or not Canada gives them asylum, is up to the Canadian government to decide. But...bogus? What’s that supposed to mean exactly? That when they’re offered asylum they’ll turn around and say “Haha! Fooled you!” and then go back home?

A far more likely interpretation is that *they’re* not the bogus ones. Instead, the bogus ones are the Conservative government (and, yes, their allies in other countries which are also trying to keep foreigners out of their respective countries) who don’t want to admit that they really just want to keep foreigners out. After all, that smacks of racism. So instead, a fictional language is created which describes refugees as “victims of human trafficking” and asylum seekers who have no money as “bogus”.

The Tamils who arrived in Vancouver were not forced by anybody to board that boat. Except, perhaps, the Sri Lankan government which bombed their villages and killed tens of thousands of innocent civilians as part of a decades-old civil war, and which is still keeping thousands of them in what have been described by some observers as concentration camps. But, since the Canadian government supports the Sri Lankan government which bombed and slaughtered tens of thousands of its own civilians during the recent civil war...the asylum seekers become “bogus”.

But the sci-fi language doesn’t stop there. When Jason Kenney isn’t describing them as “victims of human trafficking”, he’s describing them as “queue-jumpers” who are trying to butt in line ahead of other refugees. Well, which is it, Jason? Are they the victims of slave-driving human traffickers? Or are they trying to skip the line? Again, I *like* good science fiction. I *don’t* like contradictions and plot holes.

And that doesn’t even address the question of how exactly a refugee or asylum-seeker becomes a “queue-jumper”. I mean, when you’re fleeing an army of tanks and jet bombers that are trying to annihilate your village, what sort of line are you supposed to wait in and not get killed? It’s sort of like suggesting that if your house is being broken into, you should expect the cops to wait until they’ve dealt with all the phone calls they received earlier in the day, before they come to stop the burglars trying to knock your door down. Plot holes, Jason. Plot holes.

And yes, certainly, there are a lot of bad human traffickers in the world. And we need to stop them. But we don’t do that by vilifying the victims. When a group of hapless seniors loses money due to internet or phone fraud, we pursue and prosecute the fraud ring. We don’t march the seniors into big black tents, interrogate them at gunpoint and propose new laws to restrict the ability of seniors to have bank accounts. We don’t call it “Canadian generosity” when we give them back the money that was stolen from them.

This is getting sort of long, isn’t it? Well, it’s cuz bad writing makes me angry and if anybody writes bad, it’s Mr. Jason Kenney.

Okay, so we’ve deconstructed his seriously bad story. What’s the alternative? Open up all our borders and let all the refugees come pouring in?

Well...actually why not?(note my far more skilled segue-way here. Yes you can borrow this technique Jason. See I’m not your enemy.)

Of course, whenever I suggest that we should just...stop freaking out about the arrival of 500 refugees in a country of 35 million which could actually hold a couple billion...the response tends to be something along the lines of: “What?! But if we just opened our borders...we’d be overrun!!”

Uhm...well okay. Really? Like...where? Have you ever BEEN to the Northwest Territories? Or even most of Ontario? And seen all the big empty places there? Are you really THAT worried that we’ll be overrun by people who will knock on your door asking to sleep on your sofa and who will eat all the food in the groceries? If refugees arrive, we will grow more food and that will make more jobs. We will build more houses for them and that too will make more jobs and maybe those refugees will get some of those jobs and then they’ll pay taxes and pay for the services they use and then we’ll all have a lot more interesting people in the country and a lot more jobs and a lot more restaurants and call me naïve but I sort of like the idea. Irrational fear is a good plot technique and all, but...I want more jobs and restaurants more.

And we should be able to deal by now with this irrational fear that the world will end if we let people who arrive here stay here – regardless of how they came. After all, we’ve dealt with lots of other irrational fears. We’ve learnt that Europeans can marry Africans and the world doesn’t end. We’ve learnt that women can marry men or men can marry men or women can marry women or people who aren’t even decided whether they’re men or women can marry each other...and the world doesn’t end. In fact, people don’t even have to get married, and the world doesn’t end! People can eat fish on Fridays, or pork on Sundays, or beer on Tuesdays, and the world doesn’t end. More to the point, people who don’t eat fish on Fridays can live next door to people who don’t eat pork on any days and across the street from people who do drink beer on every days, and the world doesn’t end. Win for the world!

We’ve learnt that lots of things we thought might cause the world to end, don’t actually cause the world to end, and that’s a really good thing. And one of those things that won’t cause the world to end...is people who show up here, being allowed to stay here like all the rest of us. The next time somebody says to you [usually in a lowered, breathless voice of panic] “but if we let everybody who comes here as a refugee stay...everything would fall apart!” just repeat to yourself the mantra “fish.pork.beer. world goes on.” And then take a deep breath and realize everything will be fine.

Of course, the fear is nothing new. Before the industrial revolution, in many European countries, cities adopted policies banning migration from one city to the next – within the same country. The fear was exactly the same as today: that if people born in one city were allowed to settle in their neighbouring city, the world would end. It would disrupt the flow of city life, the city would become uncontrollable, it would lose its way of doing things, it would become overrun by crime and vice, and so on and so forth. If people suggested allowing free movement between cities, others would laugh at them. Needless to say, the last laugh was on the laughers: today, the idea of restricting migration between cities within the same country is – unless you’re living somewhere like North Korea – utterly unthinkable. The thought of disaster ensuing if families from Winnipeg were allowed to move to Vancouver, is utterly laughable. Yet that was the logic – a logic of irrational fear – which motivated politicians 500 years ago. And it is no different – and no less ridiculous – than the logic of fear motivating the politicians of today in their efforts to control migration between countries.

Stephen Harper has lately been engaging in an equally bizarre little extension of this dance – pledging to preemptively track down refugees in their home countries and ports and prevent them from ever leaving those countries to come to Canada. Well, unless this is an oddly inspired plan to post Canadian imperial garrisons in third world ports around the world (you never quite know, with the Conservatives), that’s an equally flawed and pointless bit of posturing.

Mind you, international action DOES have an important place in all this. The fact that refugees are coming to Canada reflects, if anything, the failure of our own government on the international stage. Take the Tamil refugees, for instance. Last summer, thousands of people blocked highways here in Toronto pleading with the federal government to speak out against the slaughter being directed against the Tamil minority ethnic group in Sri Lanka. For weeks, the Sri Lankan government bombed and slaughtered Tamil communities and the Canadian government looked the other way and let them do it, without making the slightest effort to bring an end to the fighting and save the tens of thousands of innocent families that were being slaughtered. Even today, international observers are not permitted to collect information to find out exactly what happened – and in some cases, what is still happening. And Canada’s government remains silent, hiding in the sand. The poverty and desperation of Tamil refugees was caused, in part, by our own government’s silence. If the Canadian government starts assuming, for once, a responsible role on the international stage, then perhaps it will be able to contribute to the building of a better world, and it will no longer be necessary for everyone to feel they need to come to Canada to find it.

2400 years ago, in ancient Athens, the Athenian general and leader Pericles gave a famous speech following a battle where thousands of Greek soldiers had died defending their city against an invading foreign army. Far from using the opportunity to turn Athenians against foreigners, he showed that the courage which led to their victory, demanded no less than the courage to open their borders, fearlessly, to the world:

"The Athens that I have celebrated is only what the heroism of these and their like have made her...We throw open our city to the world, and never by alien acts exclude foreigners from any opportunity of learning or observing, even though the eyes of an enemy may occasionally profit by our liberality.”

The message, 2400 years ago, rings even clearer today: “People might take advantage of us if we’re too open and liberal? Big deal! The benefits we will gain from our openness far outweigh any advantage some few might take of us. And if we’re too afraid of our country’s fragility to have the courage to test it against the demands of the world, then what’s the worth of us, anyhow?”

Has the human spirit fallen so much in the last 2400 years?

We have a choice to make: whether we will hide behind walls of fear and act like the cowardly neighbourhood miser who pretends he doesn’t hear the neighbours knocking on his door to ask for help; or whether we will keep faith with the generations of Canadians who came before us, and welcome with open arms those who have come to build the Canada of tomorrow.

Addendum: A final word, for Newfoundland and Labrador. This shameful situation demonstrates more clearly than ever why it is so vital for us to take up our own self-government once again on the international stage. As a Republic, we will have the right to control our own immigration once again – and we can avoid the shame of being lumped in with this sort of Harper-driven racist fear-mongering. The need for immigration is vital to Newfoundland and Labrador. We need doctors, craftspersons, professionals of all sorts. Not only will they fill the vital gaps we’re struggling with in our infrastructure, but their presence will create even more jobs – which Newfoundlanders forced into exile will be able to return home to fill as well. Since Confederation we’ve seen our communities emptied and forcibly relocated, we’ve seen our population shrink, we’ve seen our services suffer. There’s only one solution: to repopulate the Spotted Island’s (RIP: 1970) and Open Bay’s (RIP: 1965) and Tikoralak Island’s (RIP: 1970) and over 600 other communities that now lie abandoned and overgrown. As a nation the majority of whose population are descended from “illegal migrants” (who settled here in defiance of British no-settlement laws 400 years ago), we’re uniquely positioned to recognize the hypocrisy of laws that try to control who can live where. If the majority of our ancestors had obeyed those laws, we would not be here today. And now, once again, our future hinges on overcoming the racist and exclusionary barriers that another colonial power – Canada – has imposed on us. Some nations seek independence in the pursuit of some illusory racial purity. Our Republic *must* be founded on the opposite ideal – that our independence reflects, honours and upholds the freedom of movement for all peoples, and guarantees them the same freedoms in whose name thousands of poor fishers settled here, in total defiance of the law, to help build the Newfoundland of today."

"jason kenny, you ain't no alexander the great"

if you haven't heard george galloway's speech yet, you should click HERE and listen to it.

galloway is right, by banning him from canada and trying to censor what he might say and what his audience might learn jason kenny has only increased the number of people who will go to great lengths to protect galloway's right to speak and their own right to listen.

it's amazing to me that jason kenny can do something so "not credible" and not even have to justify his decision. you can't censor with impunity, or at least you shouldn't able to.

as galloway puts it in his speech:

"are you too cowardly to face the public and defend your views and the way you are betraying all that was great about canada, all the values that canada represented in the world."

kenny is cowardly. unfortunately, even cowardly politicians have the power to do sneaky and regressive things unless the public calls them on it.

i think the public did call kenny on this one and the number of people who tuned in to watch galloway's speech via the internet proves that kenny's days of getting away with this bullshit are numbered.

we think you a hater...

one of my friends sent me a link to a really great article written by rick salutin over at rabble about the accusation that israeli apartheid week(and its organizers, and those involved and attending events) are anti-semitic.

i was only able to attend the last event of the week: Turtle Island, South Africa to Palestine: The Struggle Continues, where Mike Krebs and Ronnie Kasrils discussed struggles for indigenous peoples in canada and the anti-apartheid movement in south africa in the context of israeli apartheid policy.

what i saw were deeply engaged and passionate people who had extensive knowledge of a complicated and complex issue--a knowledge and a passion that those accusing them of anti-semitism don't seem to possess.

these are people who welcome questions and dialogue, who have sacrificed so much to raise awareness and protect their and others right to hold events like this.

unlike the organizers and participants of IAW, Jason Kenny or Michael Ignatieff simply painted the entire week as a series of hate crimes without attending a single event themselves.

yet again we see the liberals and the conservatives align to show themselves as cowards and idiots who might as well be members of the same party.

prorogueing parliament, denying the coalition government's democratic right to govern, trying to push a sneaky budget that punishes students/allocates funding in a totally inappropriate way, a budget that makes it harder for women to access pay equity legislation, repressing student and labour movements and introducing dangerous legislation that undermines the right to strike, and using the economic crisis as justification for all of this are just a few examples of what we can continue to look forward to under the new liberal/conservative coalition.

and now this. calling israeli apartheid week anti-semitic is dangerous because it makes critique of israel's state policy off limits and as rick salutin writes at the end of his article critique of israel is important "because Israel is now a state among nations and must be held to account, not absolved for fear of igniting a new Holocaust"



""
Israel, apartheid, anti-Semites

by rick salutin

What is the sound of one side condemning? It's the media rendering of Israel Apartheid Week, now under way. B'nai Brith ran full-page newspaper ads asking universities to "prevent" it and the attendant "anti-Semitism on campus." There were no ads from organizers, so we didn't hear them being anti-Semitic in their own words -- or denying the charge.

Here's the Toronto Star's Rosie DiManno: "That detestable, despicable annual campus hate-fest ... Jew-bashing cloaked in self-righteousness ... students who don't recognize racism when they're spewing it."

I don't know if she meant to be ironic, spewing hate at the spewers. But I've talked with friends, Jewish and non, about these claims. They're disturbed, they don't want to witness the rise of a new horror. Here's my take.

Cabinet minister Jason Kenney calls Israel Apartheid Week "a systematic effort to delegitimize the democratic homeland of the Jewish people" by linking it to racism, a line virtually mouthed by Opposition Leader Michael Ignatieff. That is way too cute. Any "settler state," such as Canada, which took someone else's land, can be seen as illegitimate. But it's an abstract point. "Apartheid" became widely used in this context only when Israel began building what came to be called an apartheid wall, looming over Palestinians, sequestering more land, cutting them off from each other.

The usage grew as Israel expanded settlements, built Israeli-only roads and set up checkpoints so Palestinians would at best be left with "Bantustans," such as those that apartheid South Africa offered blacks, rather than a true state of their own. A small but real Palestinian state would be accepted by almost everyone. The Arab League has offered peace in return for Israel just leaving the West Bank. Even Hamas has a (nuanced) position on living with Israel. You can look it up.

What of the "new anti-Semitism" that Jason Kenney says is "based on the notion that the Jews alone have no right to a homeland"? Well, who are these new anti-Semites? I never see names or quotations. Canada has always had anti-Semites, but they've felt no need to hide their hate behind a screen of anti-Israel criticism. Think of David Ahenakew. A cartoon banned from hallways at the University of Ottawa showed a helicopter marked Israel rocketing a kid in Gaza holding a teddy bear. It's crude, but that's cartooning. There's no anti-Semitism in it. A front-page National Post cartoon showing CUPE Ontario's Sid Ryan offering David Ahenakew a job was far more scurrilous. No one can say Sid Ryan embraces anti-Semites, though he criticizes Israel strongly. Opposition to Israel seems well delineated from anti-Semitism to me.

Most of the specifics come down to shouts at protests. As in: "Cries of 'Die, Jew' and 'Get the hell off campus' were heard." The Canadian Jewish Congress's Bernie Farber says he's "never" seen it this bad "on the streets of Toronto and university campuses." Well, I spend lots of time on streets in Toronto and it doesn't look like Kristallnacht to me. But wait, that's glib. It's these images that scare my friends: They evoke Nazi Germany. I know that.

But Nazi Germany wasn't about name-calling and group hate. Those will persist, perhaps always. The Holocaust occurred largely because anti-Semitism was historically rooted and respectable there: religiously, socially, intellectually, politically. Writers and politicians were proudly anti-Semitic. Here, anti-Semitism is unacceptable in all those ways. This whole debate proves it. We should be glad for that, and keep it in perspective.

Why does perspective matter? Because Israel is now a state among nations and must be held to account, not absolved for fear of igniting a new Holocaust. Israel Apartheid Week should be gauged on its critique of its subject, not anathematized due to shadows and terrors from another time.""