Category Archives: Decision Canada 2019

Taxpayer vs Citizen | Responding to Right Wing Propaganda

May 28, 2019#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Canada, Decision Canada 2019, News, Politics, Thought for the DayRaymond Tomlin

Taxes

The suffering hero of our times is, we are told, the tormented taxpayer.

Conservative politicians mount campaigns to protect the taxpayer, editorial writers evaluate politicians and their policies on whether they will increase or decrease the “burden” to taxpayers, and some self-described taxpayers have formed faux, corporate-funded organizations to plead their cause & lament their plight. Thus, you have the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.

Nobel prize winning author Toni Morrison, in her New York apartment. Photo | Tim Knox

At a speaking engagement, a few years back, at a New Yorker festival, Pulitzer Prize winning American novelist, essayist, editor, teacher and professor emeritus at Princeton University, Toni Morrison, offered insightful commentary on topics about race, gender, writing, and other issues. One particular observation made by Ms. Morrison was quite memorable …

The complexity of the so-called individual that’s been praised for decades in America somehow has narrowed itself to the ‘me’. When I was a young girl we were called citizens — American citizens. We were second-class citizens, but that was the word. In the 50s and 60s they started calling us consumers. So we did — consume. Now they don’t use those words any more — it’s the American taxpayer, and those are different attitudes.

The phrase “taxpayer’s money” is almost always propaganda — that must be rejected and resisted by all of us who support progressive politics.A better phrase is “public money”.

So, why do so few in the news media, if any at all in these times of corporate-owned media, refuse to use the term public money, replacing it instead with the far from benign word taxpayer?

Public money is the property of the entire public, not of taxpayers.

Taxes are a way to pool our resources and develop common infrastructure that can have a positive impact on us all. They build our roads and bridges, pay for our police and firefighters, our system of justice, offer support for raising children and contribute to reducing child poverty, provide income security and housing for people who are in need, contribute to foreign aid, and help to ensure our environment is clean and safe. All of these things are much cheaper and effective when we pay for them collectively.

The taxes paid by previous generations benefits us today, and the taxes we pay hopefully act to benefit the generations of tomorrow.

David Brooks. Toronto-born American centre-right, self-described “moderate centrist” political pundit and cultural commentator who writes for The New York Times

In 2016, New York Times columnist and PBS political commentator David Brooks wrote about the difference between taxpayers and citizens …

You can be a taxpayer or you can be a citizen. If you’re a taxpayer your role in the country is defined by your economic and legal status. Your primary identity is individual. You’re perfectly within your rights to do everything you legally can to look after your self-interest.The problem with the taxpayer mentality is that you end up serving your individual interest short term but soiling the nest you need to be happy in over the long term.

A healthy nation isn’t just an atomized mass of individual economic and legal units. A nation is a web of giving and getting. You give to your job, and your employer gives to you. You give to your neighbourhood, and your neighbourhood gives to you. You give to your government, and your government gives to you.

If you orient everything around individual self-interest, you end up ripping the web of giving and receiving. Neighbours can’t trust neighbours. Individuals can’t trust their institutions, and they certainly can’t trust their government. Everything that is not explicitly prohibited is permissible. Everybody winds up suspicious and defensive and competitive. You wind up alone at 3 a.m. miserably tweeting out at your enemies.

And this is exactly the atomized mentality that is corroding North America.

Years ago, David Foster Wallace put it more gently …

“It may sound reactionary, I know. But we can all feel it. We’ve changed the way we think of ourselves as citizens. We don’t think of ourselves as citizens in the old sense of being small parts of something larger and infinitely more important to which we have serious responsibilities. We do still think of ourselves as citizens in the sense of being beneficiaries — we’re actually conscious of our rights as citizens and our nation’s responsibilities to us and ensuring we get our share of the American pie.”

This is where the Canadian Taxpayers Federation comes in, a shady, secretly-funded (who are, in fact, funded by right wing elements within Canada’s corporate culture), unrepresentative organization that sells itself as a populist “citizens advocacy group” looking to cut waste and ensure accountability in government, when such couldn’t be further from the truth.

Larry Haiven, a professor in the faculty of management at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, says most of CTF’s stances on issues — and particularly their relentless calls to lower taxes — are …

“the most simplistic garbage. It assumes that nothing that is purchased with our taxes is of any use for us. Despite CTF’s anti-tax, spending-is-out-of-control rhetoric, taxes are lower now than they’ve been in decades, leaving governments struggling to provide essential services.

Provinces and the federal government have been cutting taxes frenetically, frantically, for the past 25 years. Governments across Canada are taking in about $250 billion less than they did 15 years ago. You have to weigh that against everything the Taxpayers Federation says.”

Yet night in, night out the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is given a platform on the corporate-owned and operated evening news, with folks on Shaw-owned Global TV, anchors like Chris Gailus and Sophie Liu, and Bell Media CTV Vancouver hosts Scott Roberts and Mi-Jung Lee fulfilling their supplicant role as handmaidens to their corporate bosses & not on our side.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation media presence is truly remarkable when you consider it has a membership of five people.

You read that correctly: five.

Writes Dougald Lamont for CBC News Manitoba …

This might come as a surprise, but the Canadian Taxpayers Federation is not now, nor has it ever been, a grassroots, member-based organization where anyone can pay $10 to sign up (or sign up free) and have a say in how the organization is run.

Instead, it has supporters — about 90,000 of them, who, like followers on Facebook, can like, comment, answer surveys and make donations, but they have no actual say in how the organization is run.

While the CTF’s mandate is to hold elected officials to account, who holds the CTF’s five members to account? Each other. Who decides who else can become a member? They do. It should be no surprise that the Canadian Taxpayers Federation has, as a result, faced accusations of being an Astroturf organization — a fake grassroots organization.

Writing in The Tyee, journalist David J. Climenhaga says the following …

Right-wing billionaires Charles and David Koch are among the funders of the international Atlas Network, a Canadian Taxpayers Federation partner. Photo credit: DonkeyHotey.

“The Canadian Taxpayers Federation,” writes Climenhaga, “a self-described non-partisan tax watchdog and taxpayer advocacy group once headed by Alberta Premier Jason Kenney, has always been tight-lipped about the sources of its own funding and support. This may be mildly ironic, given its vocal demands for transparency in government policy.”

Since the 1980’s and the rise of the Koch brothers in the U.S. and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation in Canada, there has been a deliberate effort to reframe citizens as “taxpayers” and public spending as “taxpayers’ money,” as if taxpayers are shareholders. CBC’s Dougald Lamont writes …

Journalists and politicians in every political party routinely use these terms without considering that this framing is anti-democratic. That is because politicians are elected by citizens, not just taxpayers. The word “taxpayer” is not in the constitution; the word “citizen” is.

All citizens are equal. Taxpayers are not.

It is self-evident that you can contribute to the economy and society without paying taxes. Many citizens don’t pay income taxes, notably children, the working poor and a few millionaires and billionaires. Charities, churches and places of faith are all tax-exempt.

Defining taxpayers as the only people who matter has real and serious consequences for policy. It is not a politically neutral position: it is a radical right-wing ideology that drives inequality by making the rich richer while neglecting the poor.

That is why the Canadian Taxpayers Federation’s real membership of five people matters, as does its ideology. We don’t have to care what they think, but we should be clear on just where they are coming from.

So the next time you hear British Columbia’s new wicked witch of the west, CTF spokesperson Kris Sims, blathering on your TV about how your “taxpayer dollars” are being wasted, remember: Kris Sims and the Canadian Taxpayers Federation could give a damn about you as a citizen of the province of British Columbia, and could care even less about what our provincial government is doing to alleviate child poverty, build urgent care centres to serve the 780,000 British Columbians without a family doctor, build truly affordable housing for seniors and working people across the vast expanse of our province, create affordable $10-a-day child care for working families, while funding our public safety and justice, education, transportation and infrastructure, agriculture and fisheries, climate action and environment, social development and poverty reduction, indigenous relations and reconciliation, and jobs, training, trade and technology ministries of government to better serve your interests, and the interests of your family, your neighbours, your co-workers, and your friends.

And while you’re at it, ignore Kris Sims when you see her next on your TV!

Disinhibition, Coarseness & Social Cantagion In The Age of Trump

May 27, 2019#VanPoli Civic Politics, BC Politics, Decision Canada 2019, News, Politics, Vancouver, VanRamblingsRaymond Tomlin

Two centuries ago, a wave of suicides swept across Europe as if the very act of suicide was somehow infectious.
Shortly before their untimely deaths, many of the suicide victims had come into contact with Johann von Goethe’s tragic tale The Sorrows of Young Werther, in which the hero, Werther, himself commits suicide. In an attempt to stem what was seen as a rising tide of imitative suicides, anxious authorities banned the book in several regions across Europe.
During the two hundred years that have followed the publication and subsequent censorship of Goethe’s novel, social scientific research has largely confirmed the thesis that affect, attitudes, beliefs and behaviour can indeed spread through populations as if they were somehow infectious.
Simple exposure sometimes appears to be a sufficient condition for social transmission to occur. This is social contagion theory; that sociocultural phenomena can spread through and leap between people like outbreaks of measles or chicken pox rather than through a process of rational choice.
The online disinhibition effect is a term used to describe the lowering of psychological restraints, a seeming inability to regulate our behaviors in an online social environment leading to reduced behavioural inhibitions online, and a negating of normative behavioural boundaries while in cyberspace, resulting in destructive interpersonal behaviors while using social media.
Welcome to the Age of Trump, the age of unreason and disinformation, of Russian bots and the spreading of racial hatred, the targeting of minority populations as “the other”, the rise of anti-Semitism, rampant cynicism, misplaced anger, isolation and the breakdown of contemporary society.

Germany to fight anti-Semitism. Children learn about Holocaust at Berlin Jewish school.

On Saturday, May 25th, Felix Klein, the German government’s anti-Semitism commissioner, told the Funke media group …

“I cannot advise Jews to wear the kippah everywhere in Germany. Jews should think twice before wearing the traditional kippah skullcap in public arising from a recent and sustained rise in attacks against Jews.

Anti-Semitism has always existed in Germany, but in this new era of social dysfunction, brought on in some measure by the odious conduct of the U.S. President, anti-Semitism is now showing its ugly face more openly.

There is no question that the rise in social disinhibition and coarseness has played a role in the worsening situation we’re currently experiencing in Europe. The internet and social media have also strongly contributed to this — and also to the continuous attacks on our culture of remembrance.

The word Jew as an insult was not common in my time when I went to school. Now, in the early part of the 21st century, it is and it’s even an insult at schools where there are no Jews, where there are no Jewish students. So that is a growing concern and of course we have to develop strategies to counter that, in Germany and across Europe.”

Toxic disinhibition, an empathy deficit, the absence of restraint — and online, anonymity, invisibility and intermittent, unfledged asynchronous communication are far from benign in their impacts, not only on social discourse, but at the ballot box and in each and every one of our lives, where increasingly otherwise good people live without conscience, informed social awareness, and their role in the social collective we call Canada.

The 2016 American election was one of the ugliest elections in the history of the United States. Hillary Clinton was continually subject to unwarranted attacks, and daily demonized online. Not a day went by in the lead up to the November 8, 2016 U.S. election when I didn’t find myself outraged at the “sharing” — by a broad range of people on the left with whom I had worked over many years — of Russian bot disinformation, and misogynist commentary about the “war-mongering” U.S. Senator & Secretary of State.
Speaking at a Liberal fundraiser in Toronto last October, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told those who were gathered at the Danforth Music Hall the upcoming federal election would be the ugliest election in Canadian history.

“We are now looking at perhaps what will be the most divisive and negative and nasty political campaign in Canada’s history,” Trudeau said. “I can tell you, we will do the same thing we did in 2015: No personal attacks, strong differentiation on issues of policy. I will not engage in personal attacks and none of our team will either.

A positive, compelling message that brings people together, that refuses the politics of personal attacks, that refuses the politics of division of scare tactics — whether it’s snitch lines or hijab attacks — that kind of approach that Stephen Harper tried does not work.

Once you’ve gone and divided and angered people in order to get elected it becomes very difficult afterward to pull them together in a way that actually allows us to solve the challenges that we need to solve. To run on division and fear and easy populism makes it harder to do the good things that must be the central purpose of why we run for office.”

Make no mistake, with $65 million in corporate funds already in the kitty for the federal Conservative party to wage their 2019 electoral campaign, with a lesser $41 million available to the Trudeau Liberals, and a paltry $5 million and $3 million, respectively, for Jagmeet Singh’s New Democratic Party of Canada and Elizabeth May’s Green Party of Canada, Andrew Scheer’s far right-of-centre social Conservative party is ready to wage that nasty, ugly campaign Justin Trudeau has talked about to crowds across Canada who have gathered to hear our Prime Minister.

Fight to Defeat Coarseness, Social Contagion, Disinhibition & Isolation
As Canadians, we can do our part by keeping our online discourse respectful, sticking to the facts, not sharing or retweeting the disinformation that will surely be provided by the Russian bots invading our social media, by joining the Greens, the New Democrats or the federal Liberal party, to donate time and money, to work on the campaigns of the socially progressive candidates we support, to staff the candidates’ offices, to go door knocking, gather with others in burmashaves in neighbourhoods, across our city and in Metro Vancouver — and make a difference, fight for inclusion & have a positive impact on the outcome of the election, in order that diversity, climate action, transit, infrastructure, affordable housing, continued subsidy funding of housing co-ops, preservation of our coasts, and preservation of the Canada Child Benefit introduced by the Trudeau government in 2016 that has served to reduce child poverty in Canada by 40%, or 300,000 children, since its introduction only three short years ago, will remain atop the political agenda in Canadian federal governance.

Decision Canada | Is Jody Wilson-Raybould a Canadian Quisling?

May 2, 2019Decision Canada 2019, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

Alexandra Morton, featured in Twyla Roscovich’s documentary, Salmon Confidential, is a Canadian American marine biologist best known for her 30-year study of wild killer whales in the Broughton Archipelago in British Columbia. Since the 1990s, her work has shifted toward the study of the impact of salmon farming on Canadian wild salmon.

Some years ago when attending the annual press conference for the Vancouver International Film Festival fall film fest, upon entering the Vancity Theatre, my young lefty feminist friend (at the time a VIFF film traffic co-ordinator), the multi-talented Selina Crammond — who at present is the hard-working, year-round Director of Programming at DOXA, Vancouver’s spectacular homegrown documentary film festival, which kicks off tomorrow, by the way! — approached me the moment I walked through the open doors to the theatre, excitedly stating to me, “Raymond, you’ve got to see Twyla Roscovich’s documentary, Salmon Confidential, it’s the best doc at VIFF this year!” (there is nothing more in life that I like than having my interests taken care of by women of conscience — and, let me tell you, Selina has long kept me on the political straight and narrow, reinforcing always the principled way I must conduct the affairs of my life).

From a political perspective, what struck me most about about the issues uncovered in Salmon Confidential was that the Stephen Harper government, aided by the Christy Clark government had muzzled scientists for both levels of government, and rather than address the problems that were destroying the salmon population along British Columbia’s coast, accepted significant amounts of money from the fish farming industry in exchange for not acting to remedy a problem that was destroying the wildlife ocean population along British Columbia’s once pristine coast.
What does the above recitation on the failure of government have to do with the headline of today’s VanRamblings post? Simple.
Who we elect to power in Ottawa, and across the water in Victoria, has a dramatic effect on the environment, on the livability of our towns and cities, and on our coast — and arising from the plangent work of Jody Wilson-Raybould this past four months, uninformed, apolitical Canadians would appear to be on the brink of re-installing (this time) a far-right Andrew Scheer-led government in Ottawa, which like all far right governments will move legislation to protect the interests of Big Oil and their corporate donors, at the expense of the preservation of our planet, and the quality and viability of the economic lives of the vast majority of Canadians.
In early January of this year, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s popularity was at an all-time high, supported by 56% of Canadians (15% more than his Liberal Party), with the Conservative Party’s Andrew Scheer stuck back at 28%, the same as his party (the base of the Conservative party is redolent of the Trump base, or as Hillary Clinton referred to them, “the deplorables”), with the NDP at 15%, Elizabeth May’s Greens at 8%, and Maxime Bernier’s People’s Party and the Bloc Québécois tied at 4%.
As of earlier this week with the publication of the Léger poll …

Just 27% of respondents said they’d vote for Trudeau’s Liberals — 13 points behind Scheer’s front-running Conservatives, who, at 40%, were in the range needed to win a majority of seats in the House of Commons.

The Tories led in every region except Québec, where the Liberals enjoyed an eight-point lead with 31% support; the Conservatives and Bloc Québécois were tied at 23 per cent.

Nationally, the NDP had 12% support, one point ahead of the Greens; Maxime Bernier’s fledgling People’s Party of Canada registered just 3%.

Now, we’re still about six months out from the federal election (Monday, October 21st), but it ain’t lookin’ good for those us who give a good galldarn about the environment, about transit, affordable housing, diversity, Canada’s policy on refugees and immigrants, and in British Columbia, our dwindling salmon stock and the viability of our coastal waters.

A great deal has been written about Jody Wilson-Raybould running to become our next Prime Minister. “Saint Jody,” people across the nation have written, “We want Jody as our next Prime Minister. We need a person of principle at the helm of our government.”
‘Ceptin, one thing.
Jody Wilson-Raybould doesn’t speak French. Not a word — showed absolutely no interest in learning Canada’s “other” official language when in Ottawa, the mother tongue of 7.2 million Canadians (that’d be 20.6% of Canada’s population), and the millions more for whom French is a fluent second language. In 2019 or beyond, what is the possibility that a majority of Canadians would vote for a unilingual English-speaking Prime Minister? And what would be the divisive Trumpian impact, if Canadians were to cast their ballot for a unilingual English Jody Wilson-Raybould as Prime Minister (at the head of the Green Party? — watch your back, Elizabeth May)?

Vidkun Quisling (on the left, above) was a Norwegian military officer and politician who nominally headed the government of Norway during the occupation of the country by Nazi Germany during World War II. The derogatory term “quisling” is usually meant to mean “traitor” or collaborator. He was shot for treason after the war.

As we wrote above, four months ago, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was sitting pretty in the polls, and well on his way to re-election. Sunny ways had carried the day. In early May 2019, his political prospects would appear to be foundering. How did this change of circumstance occur?
A well-respected commenter, a former, much-beloved and admired elected official and Professor Emeritus in UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning, wrote on VanRamblings’ Facebook timeline yesterday the following about Canada’s former Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould, “A team player at her worst who played gender politics, who perceived herself to be ‘not answerable to the PM’, and figured she could act out.”
As this series about Jody Wilson-Raybould draws to a close, let us review Ms. Wilson-Raybould’s conduct over the past four months …

Following the resignation of Treasury Board President Scott Brison, Prime Minister Trudeau announced a Cabinet shuffle on Monday, January 14. In the week prior to the shuffle, Mr. Trudeau met with Jody Wilson-Raybould to tell her he was moving her to a newly-created, senior portfolio, where she would become the new Minister of Indigenous Affairs, allowing her free reign to redefine the state and nature of the relationship of Canada’s indigenous peoples to the federal government. Ms. Wilson-Raybould refused Mr. Trudeau’s assignment. One of VanRamblings’ correspondents wrote yesterday, “He should have fired her right then and there.” Instead, Ms. Wilson-Raybould accepted the post of Minister of Veterans Affairs. On February 12th, Ms. Wilson-Raybould resigned from her Ministerial post.

1. In leaking to the Globe and Mail the alleged PMO efforts to intervene in the SNC-Lavalin case while still a Cabinet Minister, one would have to ask, “Where would be the integrity in that?” And although she says she felt inappropriately “pressured” to suspend the criminal proceedings against SNC-Lavalin and instead have the firm pay a fine, the “pressure” turned out to be just 10 meetings and 11 phone calls over a four-month period. Some pressure! Importantly, at the end of the day she was still allowed to make the decision on SNC-Lavalin.

2. Following her resignation from Cabinet, Jody Wilson-Raybould accused the Prime Minister and PMO staff of “interference” on the SNC-Lavalin file, in the process creating a constitutional crisis that carried through the two succeeding months.

3. On March 6th, Ms. Wilson-Raybould said “Trudeau’s offer of Indigenous Services was like asking Nelson Mandela to administer apartheid,” going on to state, “My fear and disappointment is that despite sounding the alarm providing advice, pushing and challenging, sharing perspectives of lived Indigenous experience, providing a lens into the reality of being Indigenous, the federal government has fallen back once again to a pattern of trying to ‘manage the problem’ with Indigenous Peoples. In my view it is never appropriate or proper to have as a goal managing the challenges and the byproducts of colonialism. The goal must be to right the wrongs, to address the wrongs, to change patterns, transform the foundations and all that we do must be framed to achieve these goals.”
Subsequently, the nine remaining indigenous members of the Liberal caucus publicly expressed support for the Prime Minister, stating that “over the course of the past four years, Canada has seen a generational restorative change in the relations of Canada’s indigenous people’s to the federal government. We fundamentally disagree with Ms. Wilson-Raybould’s construction of the government’s accomplishments over the course of the past four years — or as Ms. Wilson-Raybould has stated, lack of accomplishments — in re-defining the relationship of Canada’s aboriginal peoples to the state.”

4. Ms. Wilson-Raybould has made the story about herself and has displayed no concern that she threw her fellow Liberals MPs under the bus, many of whom will lose their seats and their jobs because of her damning testimony against Trudeau and members of the PMO, and ongoing, vengeful conduct towards the Prime Minister.

5. As Attorney-General, Ms. Wilson-Raybould sought to appoint a conservative justice of Manitoba’s Queen’s Bench into the position of Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, an entreaty that was soundly rejected by the Prime Minister.

6. During her tenure as Attorney General, Jody Wilson-Raybould failed to appoint Supreme Court justices to fill the 48 vacancies on Canada’s high courts in the provinces and territories across Canada, and for her term as AG was consistently called out for failing to do so, all the while impeding the judicial process and the rights of Canadians to a timely hearing of charges leveled against them by the state, and arising from the Jordan ruling of the Supreme Court of Canada (mandating a maximum 30-month period for a case to be heard by Supreme Court justices in the provinces and territories), the creation of a circumstance that resulted in tens of thousands of cases being stayed or dismissed, with the courts having to release accused murderers, rapists, child sex offenders, and the worst of the worst among Canada’s criminal element.
Further, Ms. Wilson-Raybould failed to reverse the mandatory minimums legislation brought in by the Harper government, as stipulated as a priority in the mandate letter she was given by the Prime Minister upon being appointed Attorney General, on November 4, 2015.

7. Over the course of the past four months, Ms. Wilson-Raybould has turned to retired Supreme Court Justice Thomas Cromwell, long the most conservative member of Canada’s Supreme Court, for advice and counsel, refusing from the outset to meet with her fellow British Columbian, lecturer at UBC’s Law School when Ms. Wilson-Raybould was enrolled in the university’s law school programme, the retired Honourable former Chief Justice of the Canadian Supreme Court, Beverly McLachlin.

Again we ask, is Jody Wilson-Raybould a quisling? In substance and effect, has Ms. Wilson-Raybould’s public conduct this past four months, and longer, been at the behest of members of the Conservative Party of Canada? Have members of the Opposition directed or had a hand in Ms. Wilson-Raybould’s public statements about the Prime Minister, and the Liberal Party?

From the outset, journalists have asked, and politicos have wondered, “What is Jody Wilson-Raybould’s endgame?”
The answer to that would appear abundantly clear to anyone with open eyes, and to be perfectly frank would seem to be the only logical conclusion one could draw from Jody Wilson-Raybould’s public conduct over the course of the past four months: destroy the reputation of the Prime Minister and important members of the PMO staff, bury the prospects of the re-election of her (now former) Liberal caucus members so deep under the ground that they’ll never see the light of day again, paint herself as Canada’s new patron saint of principled Canadian politics, as Saint Jody the Saviour of All That is Right and True, and bide her time til the day when she can place her name forward as a candidate to become Prime Minister of Canada.
History may be unkind to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — but there is no question that in the fullness of time, Jody Wilson-Raybould will not fare well, and 100 years from now her contribution to Canadian politics will be viewed as self-serving, destructive, disloyal and utterly at variance with the interests of Canada’s indigenous population, and the people of Canada.

Don't miss Part 1 of the series on former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould's fitness for office

Don't miss Part 2 of the series on former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould's fitness for office

Don't miss Part 3 of the series on former Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould's fitness for office

Decision Canada | Consult. Ask Questions. Listen. Decide.

May 1, 2019Decision Canada 2019, PoliticsRaymond Tomlin

That good looking man you see above is David Eby, member of the British Columbia legislature representing the riding of Vancouver Point Grey, the province’s Attorney General and Minister of Justice, otherwise known as the man for whom sleep is a foreign concept, and the hardest working member of the British Columbia New Democratic Party government.

Kasari Govender, West Coast LEAF (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund)

At present, West Coast LEAF (Women’s Legal Education and Action Fund) Executive Director Kasari Govender is acting as co-counsel on a suit filed against Mr. Eby, as B.C.’s Attorney General, on behalf of the Single Mothers’ Alliance BC. Ms. Govender is currently arguing in the British Columbia Supreme Court that B.C.’s legal aid scheme violates the Canadian Constitution by failing to provide adequate support for vulnerable women and their children fleeing violent relationships.
Meanwhile, the Trial Lawyers Association of British Columbia argues that “years of underfunding and shifting political priorities have taken their toll on the range and quality of legal aid services, and especially on the people who need them. One of the fundamental problems is that legal aid has been starved for funding for many years by successive governments, and there’s been a lot of political interference in legal aid over the years.”

Try to imagine, if you will, what it must be like for David Eby, father, husband, feminist, and outstanding person of principal and integrity to be sued by one of his valued and cherished constituents (Ms. Govender), and the oversight body of which he has long been a member. Imagine how many conversations Mr. Eby has had with the Premier, members of his caucus, members of the Cabinet, the lobbyists in Victoria working on behalf of both of the above mentioned advocacy organizations, staff in his Victoria office, his constituents, women’s advocacy organizations, and a myriad of other advocacy organizations, as he works to develop a plan to once again return proper funding to legal aid in the province of British Columbia.
And try to imagine, as well, David Eby running to the press to decry “interference” by Premier John Horgan or his Chief of Staff, Geoff Meggs, or Finance Minister Carole James, or even B.C. Liberal party leader Andrew Wilkinson, for encroaching on the autonomy of the office of the Attorney General by dint of simply speaking to him on a matter, when all each sought to do was bring a new and perhaps compelling perspective to an issue before the Attorney General for consideration, with a chuffed Mr. Eby subsequently painting himself in a 2000-word published screed on his BC NDP MLA website, calling out his colleagues in the BC NDP as miscreants, he as the only principled elected official in the BC New Democratic Party provincial government, on the side of God and all that is right and proper.
Perhaps you don’t know David Eby, but we’re here to tell you that the above untoward scenario would never unfold. Mr. Eby simply has too much integrity and grit to ever allow such a discordant circumstance to occur.

From everything Canadians have read this past three months, and according to the woman herself, former federal Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould would consider the ‘par for the course’ interactions David Eby takes for granted daily as part of the business of being the province’s Attorney General, as interference with her autonomy.

As we pointed out in yesterday’s column, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and members of the PMO proposed that Ms. Wilson-Raybould meet with the most distinguished lawyer in Canada, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, the Honourable Beverley McLachlin, she refused. “Interference” with her autonomy, don’thca know.

Clayton Ruby, civil rights advocate, and one of Canada’s most well-respected lawyers

Clayton C. Ruby is one of Canada’s leading lawyers, an outspoken proponent of freedom of the press, and a prominent member of the environmental community, who specializes in criminal, constitutional, administrative and civil rights law, who has devoted his professional career to ensuring that those who are underprivileged and those who face discrimination are given equal access to the legal system of this country, in an April 12th article in The Star, wrote …

I think I know what advice she (Wilson-Raybould) might have gotten from McLachlin. And that explains why she didn’t want, and never accepted, that offer of legal advice.

She would have been told that over the last number of years the courts of Canada, including the Supreme Court of Canada, have pretty consistently been striking down mandatory minimum penalties in criminal sentencing because they give a judge no choice about the sentence. The law under which anyone is punished must allow sufficient discretion by the trial judge to give justice to offenders.

The law that would apply to SNC-Lavalin if they were convicted provides … no discretion to lower the 10-year prohibition on bidding for government contracts in Canada …

Mr. Ruby goes on to argue that the penalty of a 10-year ban “would be cruel and unusual and a violation of section 12 of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and be deemed to be disproportionate.”
Yet, then Attorney General Jody Wilson-Raybould demanded her ‘autonomy’ be respected, refused to consult, asked no one any questions on the state and impact of the law concerning mandatory minimum sentencing, refused to listen to outside advice, and set about to make her decision to proceed with a prosecution of SNC Lavalin as a “matter of principle” — when in fact there was little or no chance that SNC Lavalin would be convicted, or that the case would even make it to court — which is to say, the matter would be settled out of court, with severe and proper penalty for SNC Lavalin.
Arising from Wilson-Raybould’s intransigence, our government is in crisis.

Brian Greenspan, well-respected criminal defence attorney, graduate of Osgoode Hall

In a well-reasoned article written by past president of the Criminal Lawyers’ Association and founding chair of the Canadian Council of Criminal Defence Lawyers, Brian Greenspan (pictured above), and published in the Globe and Mail on April 17th, Mr. Greenspan argues that Jody Wilson-Raybould did not understand her role as Attorney General and Minister of Justice …

In a free and democratic society, the prosecutorial function does not operate in a vacuum, in isolation and immune from debate, discussion and, indeed, persuasion. Isolation breeds tyranny. Access to justice requires those who administer justice to be accessible, to be open to advocacy on behalf of clients and causes. Advocacy in the adversarial process does not undermine independence. In fact, the public interest is best served by ensuring that the decision-maker has meaningfully examined the conflicting positions and has been exposed to a comprehensive review of all relevant considerations.

Mr. Greenspan goes on to argue …

An Attorney General can receive vigorous advocacy and remain objective — her objectivity can most assuredly withstand collegial conversations with government colleagues and bureaucrats, in which they share their views and opinions on the merits of a prosecution. Thoughtful reconsideration and sober second thoughts do not threaten the independence of the Attorney General, nor do they jeopardize the integrity of our justice system.

Ms. Wilson-Raybould has expressed the position that any intervention by the Attorney General with the decision of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) would have been automatically suspect, and that it would risk calling into question prosecutorial independence and the rule of law. The DPP, in fact, fulfills her responsibility under and on behalf of the Attorney General, and the act which governs her authority empowers the Attorney General to assume carriage of a prosecution or to direct the director. The Attorney General’s power to superintend prosecutions is an important aspect of our system. The former Attorney General treated the DPP as essentially unreviewable. Politically accountable oversight in ensuring that the public interest is properly taken into account isn’t anathema to the rule of law. The Attorney General’s power to superintend prosecutions is an integral part of our justice system.

VanRamblings will allow Mr. Greenspan’s words to ring in your ears.

The above testimony concludes VanRamblings’ three-part series on how Jody Wilson-Raybould failed Canadians, threw our government into an unnecessary, untenable and divisive constitutional crisis, did not fulfill her mandate, and failed to properly administer Canada’s justice system.
VanRamblings will publish a wrap-up column on the series tomorrow, where we will ask as we did yesterday, “Is Jody Wilson-Raybould a quisling?”
For now, we’ll leave you with the following re-creation of a conversation between Prime Minister Justin Pierre James Trudeau, and JWR aka Puglaas …