The Debate

Escalating health costs hasn't been a matter brought up as a concern by any of the leaders of Canada's political parties during this 2011 general election, but on the other hand, Canada's health care system hasn't been entirely ignored. The NDP leader, Jack Layton, has been flaying the issue; not the costs involved with ensuring the continued feasibility of universal care, but laments about its perceived inadequacies.

It's one of those hot-button issues none of the party leaders really want to delve into in great detail, because in the details there are looming problems. Governments at every level have been throwing in increasing financial support to desperately attempt to shorten wait times. Drug costs, once identified as the single most costly item in health care, have latterly assumed somewhat less of a burden with pharmaceuticals' lapsed patents.

But as the country ages and the population becomes more weighted with its elderly demographic, the health care system will be put to an increasingly difficult test. It's a grim scenario no one really wants to tackle; it's in the league of items too serious to reflect upon during the course of an election campaign when quick and easy items can be addressed for maximum effect.

Now David Dodge, formerly governor of the Bank of Canada has forecasted some of the problems inherent in the groaning health care public non-debate in a report titled Chronic Healthcare Spending Disease. Universal health care is expensive, and costs are steadily rising. They could continue rising, according to Mr. Doge, to represent 19% of the national economy in two decades.

The current levels of available universality can only be maintained in the future with the imposition of new taxes, or the curtailing of services; neither being appealing solutions. Other options include a form of co-payment by individuals for services received; de-listing services to be paid for by consumers or private insurance suppliers; development of privately funded systems for those able and willing to pay.

Goodbye universality.

Even Mr. Dodge balks at those 'options'. "The Canadian public will not live with denial of service. We cannot do that again." Cutbacks in spending and services would be suicide for any political party that might suggest it, and worse for any party in government that would initiate them. Even at a time of restraint, even at a time of a huge national deficit and debt.

We value our health and the services attendant on them far too greatly.

The issue is one that a resounding 40% of Canadians place ahead of the economy and jobs as issues of importance to them. And, because it is such a vital issue, it may be one of the items taken seriously and addressed one-by-one by the leaders during their nationally televised debate. Because whoever assumes the Prime Ministership will be anticipating the 2014 federal-provincial accord renewal.

So with these concerns in mind, it really boggles that same mind to read that Gerald Savoie, former chief executive of the Montfort Hospital in Ottawa - actually a minor-league hospital in comparison with The Ottawa Hospital and its campuses - retired since 2009, last year received in his retirement $557,622, and is 'entitled' to the same for the current year. The hospital board agreed to these payouts as part of his contract.

Now isn't that rather rich? Under the agreement between Mr. Savoie and the hospital board, although the man will not have actively worked for the hospital for the past two years, he is considered to have 'earned' the handsome sum of $1.15-million as an entitled payout. In contrast, Ottawa Hospital chief executive Dr. Jack Kitts earned $642,071 in 2010, for actively executing the administration of the much larger hospital complex.

Dr. Rob Roberts as president of the University of Ottawa Heart Institute earned $612,037. These rich salaries represent the absolute top end of the highest-earning provincial civil servants in the National Capital. How can the Montfort's board of directors possibly justify glad-handing $1.15-million to a former chief executive?

Might this represent an anomaly or a symptom of the expense-malaise that afflicts the entire system?

Student Prerogatives

A vociferous, outraged group of sanctimonious students dedicated to their vision of social justice on the international scene busy on campus at Carleton University to highlight their disgust with Israel through their committed action as Students Against Israeli Apartheid. Wholly focused on one small country encircled by other, hostile countries.

Where, since its birth 60 years ago, it has had to contend with wars of conquest and obliteration which all failed, and then violent and bloody terrorist attacks on its citizens. The State has distinguished itself by insisting on its universal right to existence, and upon its major focus, that of a homeland and a haven for the world's Jewish populations.

To protect itself and its people it has been forced by circumstances it cannot control to police its borders. And to mount a protective ring of its military around the Palestinian Territories from whence violent opposition to its existence emanates from various terrorist militias. While at the same time attempting to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinian Authority.

These students have no interest in protesting the situation in Zimbabwe, in Sudan, in Somalia, in Democratic Republic of Congo, in Ivory Coast, in Kenya, where dictatorial regimes violate their peoples' rights and those of their neighbours. They evince no interest in the tyrannical autocracies of the Middle East. China's internal affairs, and Burma's and North Korea hold no interest for them.

They are entirely invested in expressing their passionate hatred for Zionist Israel, the Jewish homeland. And they insist that it is their right to zealously confront Carleton's executive administration, to debate with them their demand that the university divest all money from companies they claim to be doing business with Israel; a total boycott and nothing less.

The university's administrators had little option but to cancel a scheduled meeting of their board of governors because 200 unruly students yelled, chanted and shouted slogans about democracy in the process of blocking access to the meeting site. They were outraged that the administration invited them to select representatives from among their numbers to attend the meeting, that the chamber designated could not accommodate all of them.

"Unfortunately, the student demonstrators would not allow a number of the board members to get through [the crowd] to attend the meeting", explained a university spokesman. Which effectively forced the cancellation of the meeting. A spokesman for the SAIA student group claimed the meeting represented an "illegitimate process", since all the students were unable to attend the meeting due to fire code regulations.

The university's offer to permit a self-selected representative number of the student group was rejected. And as they rejected the conciliatory offer, the group threatened that if not every student who wished to attend the meeting was enabled to, then "hundreds" would gather to "disrupt" the meeting. Which was what occurred.

"There is no way we can allow the university to be run by threats. When you get to the point where you have groups of students telling the administration, 'We intend to disrupt your operations', that's frustrating because it interferes with people's efforts to focus their energies on making Carleton the best place it can be for students" explained an administration spokesperson.

How's that for understatement, for mealy-mouthed convention? An administration fearful of once again facing an inconvenient confrontation by obstreperous and bullying students, certain of their entitlement as progressive social arbiters of justice in their ideological war to position the university's affairs to suit their political agenda.

Victim Surcharge

Those little news items and updates that appear now and then in the newspapers are so revealing, yet so irritatingly opaque do arrest one's attention. Little details such as a court order to a vicious criminal that he must pay a trifling reparation being ignored. Reparation in the sense that, as a result of his dreadful crimes a fine has been imposed, payable to a group that defends victims' rights.

And this man had many victims. Some paid the ultimate price for having innocently elicited his notice. Others paid a price that they will live with forever, in terms of horrible memories and the trauma that results from the actions that caused those memories being lived and relived incessantly throughout their lives.

There was a time when debts to society were seen as a responsibility of the immediate family of the debtor if he/she did not pay them. It was a matter of honour, and obligation to society. Obviously, no one any longer assumes responsibility in the same way as honour once demanded it be done. The issue at hand here is that of a once-respectable and -honoured man who conducted himself with psychotic brutality.

Former high-flying Col. Russell Williams whose long career in the Canadian air force culminated in his being targeted for elite military office. A man who scrupulously discharged his official duties with distinction, and went on to spread terror in Ontario communities through his deadly predatory escapades. Events so thoroughly shocking they still make the news.

The news he garnered as a murderer, while commander of CFB Trenton base besmirched an honourable profession. His odious predations on young girls, his vicious rapes of vulnerable women whom he stalked and tortured, and his murder of two young women certainly set him apart as a psychopathic brute.

Sentenced to life in prison, he still receives his military pension, which is considerable. Ordered by the judge who sentenced him to pay $8,000 into a fund for Ottawa Victim Services, it seems with the busy life he now leads, to have eluded his attention. Drawing attention to the remorse he must be reeling under for the tragedies he foisted on innocent families.

"This is a guy who probably is never going to walk out of prison again, so he doesn't have much to lose", said Steve Sullivan, executive director of Ottawa Victim Services. "If an offender is choosing not to pay when he can, it raises questions about how remorseful he is and how aware he is of the harm he has caused."

The man did have a reputedly secure and mutually loving marriage. His wife is now suing for divorce, and seeking to distance herself from this monster, formerly her beloved. She is actively attempting, through her lawyers, to legally hold no financial responsibilities toward one of her husband's victims, suing him for compensation for the unspeakable.

Remorse and conscience and a sense of responsibility can be called upon to spur people who have been involved, however tangentially, in tragedies. Is it too far-fetched for the man's now-estranged wife to offer to pay that $8,000 to the victims' fund as a gesture of compassion for her husband's victims and the sad plight of those still living?

Questions, no answers.

Mind-Boggled Homicide

Unforgivable, yet we find excuses for such people. That they are victims of their own cravings. That they cannot control their needs. We fail to view them as the threats that they really are. They are living, breathing time bombs. And from time to time one of them creates an explosion that maims or kills an innocent among us.

A woman out drinking, determined to do what she has always done, satisfy her need by intoxicating herself beyond physical and mental normalcy. When the bar owner, recognizing her state of intoxication takes it personally and offers to drive her to her destination, she spurns the offer and drives off on her own.

Beside her another bottle of wine. She is a repeat offender. Her license was suspended. But Samira Daoud felt entitled to drink herself close to insensibility, to clamber into her pickup truck, more drinks surrounding her which she would pick up at her leisure, while careening in the dark around the rural stretches of roadways within the City of Ottawa.

Truly bad fortune had a young man of sixteen cycling as he always did, back home from work. Where this woman who had already caused other drivers on the road to swerve out of her way, and who had crashed over a median, decided to do a U-turn and slammed into the back of Alex Hayes' bicycle with such violence that he was thrown 39 metres into an adjoining ditch.

Where he remained, his lifeless body discovered three hours later. His bicycle sitting on the roadway, utterly mangled. Alex Hayes' parents would wait for him to arrive home, as usual. And they would wait in vain. They will never again hear their boy's laughter, watch him grow, have the pleasure of his company.

Police were alerted to reports of someone driving haphazardly, repeatedly crossing over onto the opposite lane, and the truck, now heavily damaged, was forced to a stop, hitting the front bumper of a police cruiser. The police officer noted her reeking breath and witnessed empty beer cans littered in the truck cab.

She offered sex to him in exchange for her release. Of the three breath samples taken at the police station, the first registered three times the legal limit of 80, at 259 milligrams alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood. She insisted she hadn't hit anyone on the road. She did admit to being drunk.

Her criminal record lists various alcohol-and-driving offences. That all occurred last fall. The Crown prosecutor during her trial is asking for up to 10 years in prison on the charge of impaired driving causing death, to which she has pleaded guilty. But she did apologize. For what that is worth.

"I did not know your son", she told Alex Hayes' mother. "But I know Alexander will be carried in my heart, just as he will be in yours." Well, not quite. Not nearly in the same way. And her expression of remorse, understandably, means nothing whatever to Alex Hayes' mother. She is bereft of her child.

Her child's killer may serve a few years' sentence in prison, and then she will be free to resume her life. One that she has horribly mangled, just as she did the boy's bicycle. Ironically, according to Daoud's sister, another sister had been killed by a drunk driver in Ethiopia.

How much sense does that make?

Archaeology and Human Habitation

People in Ottawa are once again impassioned about the fate of a wooded area that is slated to be developed for housing. The Ottawa Valley is about as green as it gets and all those forested and wetland areas are vitally important for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is the health of the environment and those living within that environment, human beings included.

The Ottawa area has seen a number of encroachments on forested areas, including the greenbelt surrounding the City of Ottawa.

Growth in population numbers, more working people determined to own their own homes, and homes that are less expensive in suburban areas than closer in to the city, let alone within the city proper, propel that growth in new housing starts, and the clearing of tracts of forested land. The City of Ottawa has given its approval, and so has the Ontario Ministry that overlooks and gives permission to new developments.

A contested area in Kanata, an already approved building site, is being held up to a kind of social ransom by nearby residents who resent that their urban forest is set to be disturbed, to be extinguished and the animals that live there and the wonderful recreational opportunities that have been available to them are to be replaced by more housing. The tedium of it all. More than that, though, it is destructive to the natural environment.

And as such, it destroys something deep and meaningful for us all, our close and appreciative proximity to nature. But as populations increase this is what happens. The people who live in the areas of Kanata and who appreciate their homes and their proximity to nature that is being disturbed once again are living on land that was once comparable what they're attempting so strenuously now to protect.

They have their homes built on formerly forested areas, but at the time their homes were built there was no one there to protest the gradual disappearance of yet another valued forested area. And now, in their desperation to prevail, they have enlisted the support of archaeologists. One who is convinced he has found an important area representing pre-European-contact artefacts at the Beaver Pond Forest site.

Artefacts in fact that are so elemental in nature as to have presumably seen use once at most, as a handy means of achieving something. Artefacts, meaning stone, quartz, with a sharp edge that might have been used to scrape something down, then discarded. Just as any casual visitor to the area, curious about something might have used a shard of stone. And of course just about anywhere one looks or digs it is likely that a primitive human once existed.

Another, more seasoned archaeologist after having carefully undertaken extensive digs in the very same area reached the conclusion that there was nothing whatever of archaeological value to be found: "We found nothing prehistoric, even though it would have been interesting, actually, and a lot less trouble for me, to have found something", he said.

The "expedient" tools may be nothing more than a figment of someone's hopeful imagination; a minuscule proportion of those "tools" may have been 'modified' for use, the others simply picked up as is, and used briefly, then discarded. One needs a great deal of fervent imagination in this case. And all for the prevention of uprooting a lovely green, live-giving swath of trees and animal habitation.

To give way to human habitation. On the other hand, in Fort Erie, Ontario, in a working gravel pit already well known to paleontologists as a prime area for fossils of extinct primitive organisms, a near-perfect 417-million-year-old fossil of a creature resembling an ancient scorpion has been found. The quarry, despite its reputation, has never been closed down.

We are forever discovering indications of our predecessors, both human and other types of organisms, but life at the present goes on, as it must. We should preserve what we can and what is needed and feasible, and use common sense to resign ourselves to the fact that what is needed at the present time and for the future to support our human populations be done and be done with it.

Arbitration of Justice

Lawyers defending the indefensible, which is to say low-down, degraded, morally-challenged societal predators somehow always try to portray their clients as not entirely responsible for the carnage they mount. Victims of brutal assaults somehow must be responsible for what has occurred to them. They were, after all, in the wrong place at the right time. Or might that be the right place at the wrong time?

Ewan Lyttle, representing Yonis Awais Hassan, the driver of a car who with a 17-year-old accomplice who cannot be named under the Youth Justice Act, has argued that a woman whom the two robbed is herself responsible for the injury to her brain caused by the reckless driving that resulted when the driver attempted to dislodge the woman hanging on to the youth who took possession of a piece of jewellery she had advertised for sale.

In 2009, the two drove to a home in Orleans with the intention of stealing a diamond and sapphire bracelet that the woman had advertised on the UsedOttawa.com website. Things proceeded not quite according to plan when the woman, seeing her bracelet being taken without payment, chased the youth to the car and began "scratching and fighting" for re-possession of her property.

The driver claims to have panicked, and sped away, eyes on the road ahead, paying no attention to the fact that the woman was clinging to the youth seated in the car, demanding the return of her property. The lawyer for the defence of the two youths insisted that Hassan was not entirely blaming the victim for her misfortune, but that her actions were "legally relevant", to become a factor in sentencing.

The idea being that when Ontario Court Justice Lise Maisonneuve comes to the business of sentencing Hassan for aggravated assault and robbery, in February, this be taken into account. The victim having on her part recounted to Justice Maisonneuve her thoughts of suicide, living with a fractured skull as a result of the robbery and assault.

Her own lawyer has argued it was simply unfeasible that Hassan would be unaware that the woman was hanging on to the passenger as he sped recklessly away. "The impact on the victim and her family has been "catastrophic", she argued, feeling a jail sentence of 18 months to 2 years to be appropriate.

This is the judge, however, whose Ontario court roster is one replete with instances of seemingly excusing intolerable conduct on the part of predators and perpetrators; appearing to the interested onlooker on the basis of reports in the media, to be expressing compassion for the violators, while seeming to dismiss the agony of the victims.

And the attorney for the defence has argued that Hassan, who nobly aspires to becoming a youth worker co-operated nicely with police post-arrest, and should therefore receive no more than a 90-day jail sentence served on weekends, followed by probation.

All hail slick, conscienceless lawyers and their penitent clients, appearing before kindly, understanding arbiters of justice.

Guilty of Impaired Driving, Guilty of Manslaughter

Yet again, a highly respected member of society, a woman whose husband is the head of a Christian denomination church, and whose members hold them in high esteem, is also a woman whose chosen entitlements have done grave, irreparable harm to society. This woman chose to imbibe alcohol, and then to drive her vehicle. In the company of another woman, she drove recklessly, under the influence of alcohol, struck a 16-year-old cyclist on his way home after his evening shift at a local grocery, and killed him.

She then kept driving, eluding her further responsibility to make an attempt to determine whether the boy who had been struck required help and medical attention. Her lawyer, however, insisted she had no knowledge of having struck the boy. She had driven on with her friend beside her, 'unaware' she had struck anyone with her vehicle which, in her inebriated state had become a lethal weapon.

She doubtless still has her defenders, those who will find excuses for her dreadful choices. Possibly because they would do the very same thing; drink and drive.

But the boy she hit with her vehicle on a rural stretch of Bank Street on September 9 can never recover his life. His family will have memories of the boy they loved all too briefly. They will live out their lives of pain, trying to stop themselves from imagining what life might have been like for him, with him, as he passed milestones of maturity and achievement in his future that was not to be.

What is even more shocking about this dreadfully fateful occurrence, is that the woman, Samira Mohamed Daoud, has had previous impaired-driving convictions.

A victim-impact statement from 16-year-old Alex Hayes' family will be entered at the sentencing hearing, along with other facts. Because she has pleaded guilty to impaired driving causing death, the original charges of manslaughter, possession of a stolen vehicle, leaving the scene of a collision and driving with a blood-alcohol level over the legal limit will likely be withdrawn.

This woman had been arrested kilometres from the crash site, when the truck she was driving broke down. She was driving with a suspended license, relating to her previous impaired-driving conviction. The young boy's body was discovered after midnight, along with his destroyed bicycle, three hours after Daoud was arrested.

Is it too much to hope that this woman will face a penalty commensurate with her crime?

Passing Judgement

Roger Clement passed righteous judgement on society, and now society has returned the compliment. Ontario Court Justice Celynne Dorval summed up the attitude to justice in this particular case quite neatly, on behalf of the social contract and the citizens that respect it. Roger Clement of his own free will and arrogant decision-making violently disrupted what we as a society like to take for granted: peace and security.

In condemning the society of which he was an integral part, as a one-time and long-time federal civil servant, he chose to demonstrate in no uncertain terms just how he wished to divorce himself from the rest of society. He was described by friends as a 'generous man and principled humanitarian', but this generous man forsook his principled humanitarianism for violence in righteous indignation and bitter disagreement with this society.

His reasoned discourse as an anarchist was not sufficiently attended to by society disinterested in his message, so he resorted to shock tactics, an act of arson, resulting in the victory of a video and a statement much in the manner of terrorists who explain their suicide-murder pact with Islamism by such explanatory videos, justifying their actions and praising themselves as martyrs to their cause.

"Crimes of urban intimidation infringe on the rights of the majority" Justice Dorval informed Mr. Clement. He still does not, however, consider his action a crime but a legitimate protest. Obvious in his anguish over facing a four-year-prison term, reduced to three and a half years taking into account the months he has already spent incarcerated since his arrest following the $1.6-million blaze destroying the Royal Bank branch on Bank Street in May.

Mr. Clement complains that taxpayer-funded incarceration reflecting his judicial punishment for planning and carrying out a terror attack in Ottawa to highlight his malcontent-group's disaffection with society is money wasted. The ideological manifesto he authored, the pride of showmanship in posting it along with the arson video, speaks about his values, rejected by society.

Events such as the Vancouver Olympics and the G8 and G20 summits in Toronto were characterized by Mr. Clement and his colleagues-in-anarchy as assaultive acts against the citizens of the country. Many other people were of the opinion that massive amounts of public funding could be better spent on social housing, but they expressed their opinion in peaceful ways, not through violently subversive acts of sabotage.

It did not enhance the judge's opinion of him that he could manage only to utter regret for any 'inconvenience' his shockingly violent act caused. Not regret for the violence itself, nor the reasoning that led to it, nor his leadership role in the act. His pride would not permit that admission of wrong-doing, reflecting his continued commitment to his original course of action.

He will now have ample time to contemplate those values that led him to the conclusion that society needed his action to serve as a wake-up call to heed his message.

Goring Oxes

When someone's rights are being trampled on and corrective action is being undertaken as a result, it's inevitable that someone else, notably those doing the trampling to begin with, agonize that their rights are being trampled. Just can't please everyone.

But this is a matter that transcends pleasing everyone. It's a matter of supporting the security agencies that Canadians depend upon for our safety and security, while at the same time expecting that those engaged in the safety-and-security component of civil society recognize their obligations to respecting the safety and security of those whom they are tasked to protect.

Kind of circuitous reasoning, but reasonable nonetheless.

Police agencies are given certain powers of authority that are regulated by law to ensure that they uphold the very laws that they are tasked with enforcing. It's basic human nature that when people are empowered, given authority over others, they feel entitled and elevated and when a uniform is added to the equation, some of the representatives who have been inducted into safety and security have problems remembering their responsibilities to the public and to the laws that they uphold.

We can take comfort, as a general public, in believing, with good reason, that most police and security personnel know the functionality of acting within certain boundaries, both for themselves and for the purpose of acting in good faith for the wider protection of the public in recognition of lawful legislation and constitutional rights and freedoms.

The soft underbelly of society, those who are social misfits, the troublemakers, those engaged in illicit, in unethical or immoral behaviours try the patience of police and often are treated in a manner that ordinary law-abiding citizens are not. This is not supposed to happen, but it does and no one is under any illusions that it does not.

Racial profiling is also not really blessed by the authorities but it is inevitable, that it takes place when identifiable representatives of demographics that represent a disproportionate number of lawbreakers present themselves in suspicious circumstances. Or even in ordinary circumstances, which seems unfair and unjust, but it is difficult to work against human nature which through experience finds itself utilizing tried-and-true identification methods.

In the wake of a number of high-profile abusive arrests of citizens by police in Ottawa in Toronto and out West, where police have taken it upon themselves to be judge and executioner, not merely arresting agents, but also brutal oppressors, traumatizing and violently harming people, a pall of public censure has fallen over the police as the public is scandalized by videos clearly demonstrating police brutality.

And when the chiefs of police admit that they too are upset by these clear instances of police overstepping the boundaries of their office, the police unions join the fray.

The public is astute enough and appreciative enough of police and the service they offer to society, placing themselves in danger often enough in the pursuit of their activities to protect the public, to make distinctions between the majority and an unfortunate minority of malefactors in uniform.

Low morale among police forces when such instances of a small number of their members behaving badly is understandable. Investigations are launched and the police feel embattled and their efforts unappreciated. It is when police unions become involved and impugn the impressions left by judges as in the case of Stacy Bonds and Justice Richard Lajoie, that matters tend to get out of hand.

The unions may be less than pleased with Chief Vern White, but he has been a credit to the Ottawa Police Force and to the city at large. There are times when those in authority should be left to their devices, and the unions should sit back and wait matters out to their conclusion, and this is one of them.

Versional Incompatibility

If there are two individuals involved in a dispute there are always two versions of what caused the dispute and how it accelerated and the manner in which it proceeded, let alone its conclusion. Even when people are in accord when they've been twinned in an occurrence that hasn't been unpleasant, their recall of events will be nuanced variously; that which one person remembers clearly will be recalled quite differently by the other person.

It is human nature to observe and to commit to memory and to recall in an idiosyncratic manner.

And of course it is also human nature to viscerally recall what reflects well upon yourself and badly upon your adversary. So there is little surprise in learning, through news reports, of two quite different versions of events in the incident that took place at the Ottawa airport on May 11, 2009 when a verbal altercation deteriorated into a physical confrontation between an Ottawa police officer, Shyldon Safruk and a cabbie, Sami Aldoboni.

Immediately post-event sympathy went with Mr. Aldoboni, who had the support of his peers present at the time and witness to the event, because of the manner in which the proceedings had been reported. And because Mr. Aldoboni had sustained an injury which caused him to suffer not only pain, but a lapse in his ability to carry on with his profession until his wound healed. And also because Mr. Aldoboni's story clearly identified Mr. Safruk as an aggressor.

However, the trial that resulted from the event revealed some very interesting details that were not previously known. There was a video that clearly demonstrated Mr. Aldoboni to have been as much an aggressor as Mr. Safruk. There was also a witness, a colleague of Mr. Aldoboni's who testified that Mr. Aldoboni had initiated physical contact. And there was Mr. Aldoboni's own testimony before Justice Radley-Walters which demonstrated his propensity to twisting the truth.

"This clear attempt to mislead the court impacts negatively on Mr. Aldoboni's credibility and reliability", Ontario Court Justice Grant Radley-Walters stated when Mr. Aldoboni was caught in an outright falsification of the truth. He had denied responding to an insulting gesture that Mr. Safruk offered when he had almost been run off the road by Mr. Aldoboni's cab on the Airport Parkway.

The off-duty policeman, Constable Shyldon Safruk, was, in fact, acting in self-defence when he responded to a "sweeping" punch levelled against him by Mr. Aldoboni. It was the action of committing to that "sweeping punch" that led Mr. Aldoboni to fall to the ground, injuring his wrist, arm and fingers; a natural correlation to a fall of the kind Mr. Aldoboni sustained.

The injuries he had attributed to Mr. Safruk's physical violence were in fact, self-inflicted.

So it is just as well that Justice Radley-Walters found Constable Safruk not guilty. All the more so since he stated he found the driver's claims of brutality by the off-duty policeman to be laced with lies, well contradicted by surveillance video. Although the court of public opinion was firmly on Mr. Aldoboni's side immediately post-incident, it appears now that justice has been done.

Courage and Character

Glad I'm a woman. Would have to think twice about being happy if I were a black woman, though. As though being a woman isn't enough of a punishment in a male-centered world. I remember when I was a young girl - and that was an awfully long time ago - wondering what it would be like to be a boy, and then making an effort to walk like a boy, and to be tough like a boy. It felt good for a while, and then it got boring and I missed being a girl so I reverted to femaledom.

Only a few years later I met a boy, was friends with him for years, and still am. Wish all men were like him. But then, if they were, what would make him so outstandingly different to me? People are imbued with their own idiosyncrasies, their inborn and inherited and nurtured and acquired characteristics. And biases, and perspectives. And talents and propensities. And then there's the darker side of character; those who are sociopaths, for example.

Those are the kinds of people - either male or female - that should be kept out of certain professions. Especially those who slop over from sociopathy into psychopathy. They make life a misery for everyone else. They're the bullies on the block, in the schoolyard, at the workplace. And although their humanity is often called into question, as long as they don't slip over the edge into the infliction of violence upon others, they take their place in society.

One might think that police forces have good reason to be especially vigilant that they do not afford entry to these types of personalities within their ranks. But one also supposes that it is not always readily apparent when screening appropriate candidates, to distinguish personalities that may at some future date unleash their venomous attitudes and physical abuse on the public.

Stacy Bonds, a 27-year-old woman on her way home on foot from a late-night party, was accosted by Ottawa police in 2008. A lone woman out walking alone in the wee hours of the morning might be encouraged to see police in evidence, assuring her safety. But these police had other thoughts; they stopped her to determine whether there was anything amiss about her being there; whether she posed some kind of threat.

Just a young woman walking on her own on Rideau Street, a main downtown Ottawa thoroughfare, on her way home. She identified herself, they ran her name, found nothing untoward and indicated she could proceed. She had the audacity to back up and ask why they had stopped her to begin with. Authority does not take well to being questioned. They arrested her. For public intoxication.

Took her in to the police station, where she was exposed to a scenario straight out of a Kafka novel. None of it made any sense, which was probably what made it all the more terrifying. She was physically manhandled, and sexually probed. The only time she attempted to defend herself was when a male officer slide his hand inside her pants toward her inner thigh.

And that's when she was slammed to the floor, her shirt and bra cut off her body, and after another few physical slugs for good measure, left in a prison cell half naked for almost four hours. That certainly taught her a lesson. Uppity young black women go around assuming police are there to ensure their security at their own risk.

Her human rights were violated, she was humiliated and left to wonder what kind of world she inhabited and had taken for granted. And she was charged with public drunkenness and assaulting a police officer. The public prosecutor was adamant that she was charged for good reason, even though a video was available illuminating the entire disgraceful scenario.

The charges against her were put into intelligent focus by Justice Richard Lajoie, who reached the conclusion that she had been assaulted, her dignity abraded unconscionably, and there was no justice in this young woman having had to undergo such a dreadful ordeal. If adversity is good for building character, it looks as though Stacy Bonds has an abundance of super-charged character.

Leaving Ottawa Police Chief Vern White with a deplorable mess he will have to clear up. Clearly, the offending police officers, particularly Sgt. Steve Desjourdy who has been seriously implicated in previous human rights offences against women, has no place on the Ottawa police force.

Are You Gay? Transgendered? Lesbian? Confused?

The Ottawa-Carleton District School Board's director of education, Barrie Hammond claims "We don't want to offend people", but it would appear there will be quite a few people who may indeed be offended. On behalf of their children, on their own part; being asked presumptuous, fairly intimate questions so that the Board, ostensibly, can be sensitized to the range of young people represented within its jurisdiction, and act on that knowledge.

The purpose of which is not clearly defined. Is this motivated by recent news coverage of the discomfiting situation that young people whose gender orientation or presumed orientation has caused them problems with their peers in various jurisdictions? Problems that have arisen that have been the result of insensitivity and boorish behaviour on the part of their peers, causing anguish to young men and women whose unconventional gender attraction is sneered at by those in the mainstream?

It is amazing in a sense, that even while society in general has come around to accepting that there are some people for whom what is considered normal opposite-gender attractions holds no allure. Society which once shunned, held in contempt and threatened those whose orientation was toward others of the same gender, is now comfortable in accepting that differences exist and they are legitimate, and natural for some.

Yet children, who are so often thought of as being less condemnatory in nature, and more open-minded, are often the cruelest in labelling people as inferior or strange or 'weird' because of their orientation. Part and parcel of the bullying phenomenon that exists wherever people tend to congregate, and school, at every level, is where that occurs most commonly.

Yet, even if, as is being planned by the School Board, intrusive questionnaires relating to home life, religious affiliation and sexual orientation will become routine, and it is anticipated that most people will agree to filling out the questions - although there will be no compulsion placed upon people to do so - what can the compiled results render?

Greater sensitivity to the obvious needs of those emotionally affected by being isolated through perceived differences? It does seem, in this multifarious society that we live in, with so many variations in family structures, values and priorities, that these matters are private and most people would prefer they be kept that way.

It's hard not to anticipate a lot of resistance to this initiative. It might be well-meaning, but the very nature of its intrusiveness and busy-bodying interference may spell its death-knell as a useful tool.

Ottawa Court Roster - Justice Meted

Ontario Court Justice Lise Maisonneuve is one very busy, actively engaged, philosophically ingrained and jurisprudence-dedicated individual. Ottawa is indeed honoured to have one such as she so deeply steeped in the niceties of the law and the social conditions in which we live among
one another, along with the predilection of some segments of society to make life miserable for others.

An acquired wisdom of balancing the need for society to file its lawful grievances and for an adjudicator to examine evidence and circumstances, resulting in a useful remediating solution.

Sitting in a courtroom day after day must be a particularly dreary experience. Witnessing a long succession of problems surfacing one after another, as prime indication that all is not quite well in the state of human society.

As the dregs of the community are brought forward, from their holding cells where they have been incarcerated temporarily to ensure that polite society is shielded from their further predations. To stand, one after another, the sorry lot, to plead their case of extenuating circumstances causing them to 'act out'.

If disobedient children can be excused for their continual bouts of violently disruptive lash-back at adult authority, then why cannot socially immature sociopathic elements of society whose so often sadly inadequate childhoods can be seen as deserving of forgiveness of the occasional society-afflictive disorderly conduct?

Ottawans can be assured that their safety and security is a top priority with the police and with our judicial system, meting out sentences reflective of the severity of criminal acts.

In one day's newspaper reportage alone, a veritable stew of cases; the criminal offenders and their defence lawyers pleading mercy, and the victims, whose message of having been afflicted beyond human endurance, the presiding judge must balance to achieve a moderating influence; to satisfy the offended and the penitent.

For the offenders are always penitent; we know that because their lawyers assure us this is so. And the offended, whose lives will never be the same, rarely recognize justice when it is astutely and honourably presented on their behalf.

"Unbelievable", was the aghast response of a volunteer at an area ice rink who had been left permanently brain-damaged by what the presiding judge described a "callous, senseless and cowardly" attack. And the presiding judge sentenced 20-year-old Said Muddei to 3-1/2 years in prison.

While Douglas Beardshaw, at age 43, a father of two children, now relies on a cane to assist his perambulation. A beer bottle smashed over his head, then struck with a heavy object on his skull. Pre-warned that the thug who resented his drunken behaviour at a public rink, had a knife and knew how to use it, before mounting the relentless attack.

An onlooker who came to Mr. Beardshaw's aid hit with a shovel, shattering his orbital bone, knocking out a front tooth, kicked and stomped upon. "The level of violence inflicted on these two individuals by this group is atrocious and aggravating", said Judge Maisonneuve. "It is important the sentence clearly sends a message to our community that this type of violence will not be tolerated." Rejecting the Crown's recommendation of 4 to 6 years' prison time.

Rehabilitation and reintegration into society are considerations of deterrence in the sentencing of youthful offenders.Therefore, with eight months' credit for time served in detention, the remorseful Muddei has three years years left to serve. His accomplices, 17 year-olds, found guilty also of aggravated assault, sentenced to 20 months; one scheduled for early release and several weeks of open custody and community supervision; the other 8-1/2 months of open custody and community supervision.

Whew, what a relief when the penalty is commensurate with the crime. There's more.

A 17-year-old fantasizing violent rapes, sentenced to 2 years' probation for what Judge Maisonneuve spoke of as a "terrifying" intent to sexually assault women out walking their dogs at night in a local dog-walking park. He carried a backpack with yellow nylon rope, duct tape, sex toys, padlock and chins, lubricant and condoms. And he stalked three startled, fearful women in an hour and a half. Who obviously did not appreciate his very thoughtfully prepared backpack.

The wishful intent was never brought to fruition; the usefulness of cellphones and 911 calls cannot be over-emphasized. Ontario Court Justice Lise Maisonneuve saw fit to reject Crown arguments for 6 to 12 months in a group home, and opted instead for probation, counselling and treatment, banishment from Conroy Pit and not to effect communication with the women he had stalked. A psychiatric assessment found the youth at worst a moderate risk to re-offend. Until he does.

More? Try this on: Ontario Court Justice Lise Maisonneuve, while deploring the actions of a diagnosed pedophile, a retired OPP officer who sexually abused a 3-year-old girl on separate occasions, sentenced him to an additional 90 days, after permitting the offender 2-for-1 credit for almost 3 months of confinement in pre-sentence custody. The Judge felt additional jail time would be more difficult for the 27-year veteran to serve than the 'average offender'.

John Bateman, 70 years of age, whom wisdom appeared to have escaped in his sunset years, despite a lifetime of 'serving and protecting' the community as a member of the Ontario Provincial Police, was found to be usefully remorseful, admitting he was wrong to abuse a child. He was felt, by the presiding magistrate, to represent as a low risk for re-offending. Which will assist the assaulted child to adjust to her future, immeasurably.

And then there's the case of the 49-year-old man who befriended a disabled wheelchair-bound woman, 78, for whom he did odd jobs, and whom he embezzled out of thousands. Richard Dean Broome also pleaded guilty to defrauding a 70-year-old man who lived in the same apartment building as he. Ontario Court Justice Lise Maisonneuve ordered Broome to pay back $10,000 to each of his victims. And, oops, no criminal penalties will impact upon him if he perchance, does not give monetary restitution as ordered.

That's it folks. No, no it isn't! There's another one, honestly there is.

An Ottawa woman who suffered the misfortune of being dragged by a car driven by a 17-year-old man answering her advertisement for the sale of an emerald and diamond bracelet. He grabbed the jewellery and fled with it, and she hung on to the departing vehicle. Her life will never be the same, having suffered a traumatic brain injury, fractured sinus wall, arm injury and broken teeth, clinging to the car. Until the teen slammed the door on her arms, and she fell.

"I get very emotional. I can't sleep at night", the woman confessed to Ontario Court Justice Lise Maisonneuve during the sentencing hearing. The defence lawyer assured the judge that the teen is so remorseful his "heart breaks" whenever he thinks of how seriously the woman was injured during his little escapade. He even planned to write a letter of apology to the victim. The lawyer recommended two years' probation since time in a group home might set his future back.

Sentencing awaits.

A Notable Personage

In her official photograph as the first female mayor of Ottawa, Charlotte Whitton looks, to put it rather uncharitably, formidable, grim, unmovable, lacking in humour and empathy. Well, that is what meets the eye, and not a particularly critical eye, prepared enough to give a little leeway to the formality of the likeness and the sobriety of the topic. After all, her time and place was not a particularly welcoming one for women in the public eye.

She was said to have been a very good mayor of the capital city of Canada, and she was reputed to have been energetically involved in a whole range of good-works projects. A responsible citizen of the day, one who had the eyes and ears of the public upon her public maneuverings. Her work on behalf of the welfare of children in Canadian society, in helping to launch through her directorship, the Canadian Council on Child Welfare, in which she was involved for two decades is remarkable in itself.

That was well over a half-century earlier. A time when ethnic minorities knew their place within Canada, for they were relatively few in number, geographically localized, and not held in particularly high esteem. The founding nations, English and French, were the dominant and the privileged in society. Looking askew at the presence of foreign elements, particularly racialist in their attitudes as visible minorities being of obviously lesser stock.

On the other hand, one needn't have been particularly 'visible' in the sense of looking all that different from the majority population. Jews might have been held to be Caucasian [close genetically to the Armenians], but they were still well, Jews. And virtually everyone knew what that meant. And Charlotte Whitton, being a person of her time, heartily subscribed to the inferiority and implied sinister presence of Jews mingling in polite society.

Now, celebrated as an individual of the greatest integrity, a person of great personal accomplishments to which the country owes much, the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada has recommended that Parks Canada give designation of this remarkable woman as a 'person of national historical significance'. In fact, she has already been designated in that manner, having been cited in various publications as a rabid anti-Semite.

This is a label that once read, Jews never forget. But others do, since it hardly concerns them. Little wonder then that the nomination sponsors 'had no idea' of this dark aspect of her character.

Concerned with child welfare reforms, she was hugely instrumental in her bigoted insistence that Canada not accept a desperate boatload of Jewish refugee orphans, and in the end, thanks to her exceptionally vigorous denunciations and rigorous denials, the hundreds of orphans perished along with other Jewish refugees whom Canada would not deign to accept lest they perilously soil Canadian values by their presence.

After the war, when it became abundantly clear that Nazi Germany's success rate in extinguishing Jewish lives included many that could have been saved, inclusive of those thousand Jewish orphans, her singular role in sending them to their certain deaths rather than risk having them become Canadian citizens, never seemed to trouble her conscience. She was a creature of her times beyond extraordinary.

A million Jewish children died in fascist Germany's extermination camps, alongside five times that number of adult Jews. The Jews that Canada's then-Prime Minister Mackenzie King and his executive crew denied entry to Canada, alongside Charlotte Whitton's denied-entry Jewish orphans represented a fragment of those who perished. But they might have lived, had Canada's concerns of "none is too many" not overridden humanitarian need.

Ms. Whitton's sterling work on behalf of her city, her country and its institutions had been recognized and she was bemedalled by an Order of Canada and later elevated to Commander of the British Empire. Well done. Recognition of a life well lived. More or less. Far less than it might have been, impacting so hugely on the lives and the deaths of the world's abandoned.

Honour her memory further? Hardly.

"Sweet, and Loving"

"He is not a a bad guy. In fact, he is very sweet and loving and will often help others. He just never had anyone he could rely on and he did what he knew to survive."

"He has basically become the father of my children. He doesn't want to leave us. We've been together since my daughter was one month old."

Sweet and loving are wonderful personal characteristics. Violent and abusive most definitely are not. If and when they co-exist in someone's character, it is obvious that the violent, abusive side authorizes itself on occasion to subdue the sweet and loving component of that personality. Most people can be sweet and loving when the occasion calls for those emotions to be brought into play. Most people are capable of restraining their violent impulses.

This is called civility, it is a symbol of social and emotional maturity. But then, even among those in arrested adolescence, who often act out, violence does not necessarily ensue. Most normal people are capable of restraining their brutal impulses. Most men do not beat other men and stab them. Most men do not kick and beat a legally blind woman to the extent that she would require brain surgery, aside from suffering a broken rib and collapsed lung.

This man did those things. "The assault on his last victim is indicative of the dangerousness (sic) he poses to the Canadian public at large", noted immigration official Julie Stock in her inadmissibility report on Somali-born Abadir Ali, now on the track to deportation to war-torn Somalia. A landed resident of Canada who has racked up five adult criminal convictions, two of which represent violent assaults.

The immigration official concluded that there was nothing she could detect in the record that might even hint at the potential for rehabilitation. And the Federal Court of Canada has upheld that deportation order. Now the problem is the manner in which he will be conveyed back to Somalia. To a country whose language and customs are entirely unknown to him. So it is claimed.

He arrived in Canada in the custody of a step-mother, at the age of 8. He is now 26 years of age, having lived the greater part of his life in Canada. Most eight-year-olds are at ease in their native language, how could this man not be familiar with the language spoken to him until he reached Canada at age 8? His language skills may be rusty, but at 8 years of age, social custom and language would have been well engrained.

But he has had ample opportunity to become a good citizen, and he failed abysmally. He is to be deported. Which will ensure that the single mother of two young children who is a child and youth worker, whose intimate relationship with Abadir Ali has spanned three years, will bemoan the loss of this "sweet and funny and very caring person".

That caring person might have thought to have a care to conduct himself in a decent manner toward everyone. He did not. People are the authors of their own misfortune. We are all capable of exercising free will, and we do. This man had the capacity to become a decent human being, he chose not to.

Canada is not morally or legally obliged to retain within this country individuals who are violently abusive, have amassed a criminal record and who constitute a harm to others.

The Value of Self-Help

Canada has proclaimed itself a champion of Haiti, determined to assist that vastly underprivileged country to haul itself into the 21st Century, to a place and time where its people can look toward the future with some degree of confidence that they will no longer be left behind by misfortune and ill governance. The Government of Canada, like governments all over the world, look upon the social-political-structural failure of Haiti with true regret.

And Canada, like many other countries of the world has responded generously to Haiti's need for assistance, particularly after the devastating earthquake that took the country's infrastructure back to its beginnings, killed far too many innocents, and made millions homeless. Canada has invested quite a lot of its treasury in Haiti, along with its hopes that through its humanitarian efforts the country will sooner, rather than later, achieve some measure of success.

Canada's current Governor General, a Haitian-Canadian, has accepted a United Nations post as overseer of a UN mission to help with Haiti reconstruction. And the many Haitian-Canadians living in Canada continue to have hope that their original country may eventually become more than an unfortunate footnote in the Western Hemisphere. Now, news surfaces that we may be aiding Haiti in ways never quite imagined.

A former employee of the City of Ottawa has become newsworthy in the nation's capital.
Accused of stealing over a million dollars from a charitable organization she was employed with. This is a woman in whom trust was placed to be invested in the smooth operation of a charity for the care and oversight of people incapable of caring for themselves.

She migrated with her family to Canada from Haiti when she was 17, lives now with her mother and her own 17-year-old daughter in her very own $530,000 home.

Yolande Knight, formerly director of finance for Total Communication Environment, an agency funded by the province to provide care to roughly 90 adults with disabilities, has been charged with fraud, theft, breach of trust, forgery and possession of the proceeds of crime for using corporate credit cards to pay for personal purchases over an eight-year period.

An audit in 2009 disclosed the fraud, where a total of $1,114,827.40 appeared to have been misappropriated. The city-issued credit cards this trusted employee used to pay for hairdressers, gym memberships, groceries, gas, clothes and landscaping for her home, along with airline tickets and limousine rentals enabled her to live a peculiarly inappropriate lifestyle. Yet she still appears to be in debt to the tune of $500,000.

Much of the avails of her ill-doing appears to have been transferred to her boyfriend, Rene St.Fort. Mr. St.Fort, another Haitian-Canadian, was found guilty in 2002 of fraud over $5,000 and sentenced to a year and a half in prison, having defrauded Canadian banks. And now, Mr.St.Fort is the head of the National Reform Party of Haiti, though still residing in Canada.

Mr. St.Fort was not the sole beneficiary of Ms. Knight's largesse, for Mr. St.Fort's brother and three other men also received wire money transfers. "The accused was identified in sending 12 transfers resulting in suspicious transaction reports being generated under the Proceeds of Crime Money Laundering and Terrorist financing Act", the court was informed.

Ms. Knight's lawyer, Jean Claude Dubuisson, argues "She has no criminal record. She's been living in Canada since she was 17 years old", insisting she be seen as eligible for bail and does not represent a flight risk. And the sitting judge, Justice of the Peace Beverly Souliere, in the laudable spirit of of open-minded fairness pointed out that the court hadn't heard Ms. Knight's "side of the story".

That side obviously being that people who migrate to Canada from underprivileged countries are not expected to behave in accordance with the same ethical and moral codes that compel other Canadians.

Censorious!

Life is unfailingly rife with little surprises and disappointments. Just when you think you've read the portents and all signs lead to an explicable conclusion, and you've reacted with the aplomb of one who knows the true picture, along comes a correction and you're left with mouth agape.

As, for example, a contentious issue respecting freedom of expression in a country that prides itself on its status as a democracy where such freedoms are guaranteed.

We do slip, from time to time, to expressing our outrage at certain personalities whose outrageous performances on the speaking circuit insult our intelligence and our values, and then we're yanked back to the reality that allowing bigoted racists and rabid ideologues is part of that freedom.

Damn.

We have the freedom to respond to their allegations, assertions, slanders and bigotry. When they reveal themselves to be viciously malignant, having unleashed their hateful bile, the intelligent among us - and we hope they are legion - then have good reason to be confirmed in their rightful bias against the miserable hate-mongering we so deplore.

And when it comes to speaking out in favour of allowing public figures to speak their incendiary invective against ethnic, religious or ideological groups whose status is protected by law in the country, we're still in the accepting phases of allowing dissent, because it is legal, even though it grates against our sensibilities.

Double-Damn!

And then it is revealed that one of the arbiters of freedoms and rights within the Constitution, one who has experienced high office in governmental hierarchical ministries - and was himself a purported candidate for the office of prime minister, now serving as president of an academic institution - relieved himself of an amazing helping of hateful bile, in the process of hoping to deny a speaking engagement to a controversial lecturer.

"Ann Counter is a mean-spirited, small-minded, foul-mouthed poltroon... 'the loud mouth that bespeaks the vacant mind'. She is an ill-informed and deeply offensive shill for a profoundly shallow and ignorant view of the world. She is a malignancy on the body politic. She is a disgrace to the broadcasting industry and a leading example of the dramatic decline in the quality of public discourse in recent times."

Now, how is that for character assassination, and righteous denunciation. Taking the initiative to advise and inform a subordinate academic within the institution where this woman was invited to speak, of one's personal, scathing opinion of that speaker's style adversarial to reason, and her intention of increasing racial-religious tension - in the name of free speech.

So read her the riot act. Her insolent and irony-laden, quasi-insulting, rather amusing take on a popularly-discussed issue within society must be restrained, for we have laws in this country, do we not?

And this March 2010 directive by University of Ottawa President Allan Rock, to his vice-president academic and provost, Francois Houle, leaves us speechless with dismay, disappointment and disbelief.

The Agony of Rejection

As opposed, say, to the righteousness of entitlement.

The self-obsession of people who seem to think that they are admirable in some very signal ways, comes to the forefront when they are challenged by reality. And reality is that small children have their place. In a playground. At home with their adoring parents and extended family. Strolling through a park in a baby carriage. At the pediatrician's office, ensuring their health status is above par. Being read to, from the age of three months.

Three months. That's a quite young child. Well, proud parents do read to their children at that age. No doubt feeling that intelligence seeps through every pore of their child's being, and reading the Financial Post to a child will prepare him/her for high finance and big bucks. How droll. Parents do like to be stopped by strangers asking to see the little darling's face, because people do enjoy seeing children of all ages. At area parks, strolling about with their parents.

Decidedly not at upscale restaurants. Or not-so-upscale eateries. Where people like to get away, relax, enjoy an evening meal untrammelled by the presence of children. There are always fast-food places where kids are in their element. Those parents who have higher aspirations for their children, to haul them off to more notable dining places should take steps to teach them the wisdom of being seen and not heard.

Alas, a three-month-old will be heard.

But in the case of John Taylor, chef and operator of Domus Cafe at ByWard Market, and the newly-opened Taylor's Genuine Wine and Food Bar, a trendy new restaurant on Bank Street, and his wife and business partner, they've run afoul of pretentious aspirations for a three-month-old child on the part of its parents and proud aunties. Whose idea to celebrate a birthday was for them all to assemble at the new wine/food bar and inaugurate it as a baby park.

Your heart simply goes out to such people, exemplary citizens sensitively cognizant of the rights of others to peace and serenity in the upscale atmosphere of a new wine/food bar whose celebrated (in Ottawa, anyway) chef proposes to give another area of town a taste of exquisite dining opportunities. They will countenance the presence of young children at Domus, but at the wine/food bar? not so much.

Come at lunch time, please do, but dinner? kindly reconsider. Such an insult, having their rights trampled by a restaurant owner who has in mind all the complicated nuances of an infant present where space does not lend itself, nor do the activities of the wait staff, let alone the customers for whom eating out in this divine new atmosphere reflects an escape from the home brood.

But for Sisters Triest and Joey Rathwell and Ruth Gard, proud mother of little Jackson Gard, this is a travesty, an injustice, an insult, their rights trampled. Cue the Ontario Human Rights Tribunal. Really. There is much satisfaction in high dudgeon and low umbrage. It's newsworthy. It merits a full colour photo of three attractive women with soulful expressions edging toward smiling spite, baby between them.

How dare the proprietors of a private restaurant such as Taylor's Genuine Wine and Food Bar, invite them to reconsider their desire to foist the presence of a baby upon the restaurant and its clients? How dare they recommend a lunch date when what they aspired to was a dinner date in full regalia of extended family of five, plus baby in a in a 'car seat' resting on a restaurant chair, included in the celebrations?

The restaurant, according to its owners, is meant to be an "adult place". They have no ill will toward children. But do feel that reasonable people can understand their position, and not wish to infringe upon the rights of others. Say, for example, other parents of children who have arranged for babysitters to tend to their offspring to give them the freedom to get out for the evening, one of relaxation and freedom from children's demands.

All the accommodating recommendations made by the restaurant's owners, inclusive of picking up the dinner tab should it be agreed that the child would be left in the care of a baby-sitter, failed to soothe the hurt feelings of those whose plans have gone awry. "That's not going to fly", said one of the sisters. After all, it's a matter of dignity, of human rights.

And so they will impose upon this restaurateur-couple the obligation under the current law as it pertains to the operation of Human Rights Commissions, the necessity to defend themselves. It will cost them tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees, and the smug sisters will have their tab picked up by the taxpayers.

You just don't fool around with peoples' human rights, and think you can get away with it.

Flapping The Accountability Bird

It's like that wonderfully majestic goose that looks so great in flight, and good too waddling along the greensward. But its odious leavings, well that's another matter entirely. Not just in Canada where the Canada Goose leaves unwanted heaps of guano; in the U.S. where the birds are extremely unpopular for that very reason, they're called "Canadian geese". So, um, where to start?

Auditor General Sheila Fraser, wrapping up her official stint, in an idle speculative moment of harmlessly shallow thought, ventured the opinion that it might be a good idea, after a long hiatus where no audits have been performed on MP accounts, to have a look. As a parting gesture, a good-will gesture, just to cement her already-admirable reputation for no-nonsense, practical, down-to-earth, getting the job done.

Accountability is where it's at. And Canada Goose-types are notoriously unaccountable, they just do not give a damn where they toilet themselves. Other Canadian representatives do; they are admirably discreet. Our esteemed Members of Parliament, elected by the public taxpayer and installed in Parliament to do the bidding of the electors are privy to handsome expense accounts.

Is it too much to ask where the money goes? Oh yes, we know, in a broad, generalized way where the money goes, notionally. But it's those devilish details that evoke such curiosity in us. After all, the ordinary Canadian is held accountable for his/her earnings, and taxed so that needed public services can be implemented, and the House of Commons can seethe with incivility.

It's just a little thing, after all, isn't it? Why the frantic denials? No one is holding any distinguished politician in the House to any standards we're not ourselves prepared to observe. Don't think so, anyway. And here is Auditor General Sheila Fraser, without doubt the most trusted public servant on record, confessing she hadn't meant by her musing, to use a magnifying lens on MPs' expenses.

In a more broad, generalized manner she meant to do a "performance" audit. Which might, or might not have led to a more intensive expense review of MP accounts. She was interested in contracting, human resource management, management of information technology and security in the House of Commons. So she could assure Canadians we're getting our money's-worth.

Instead, she came up against a blank wall of denial. Fearful denial. When that kind of defensive attitude surfaces it's just natural that people looking in from the outside think: uh-oh, what's going on here? Who is trying to hide what, and why? So, why the panic running off in all directions?

Why not have had the good grace to hear out Sheila Fraser's proposal? Troubled conscience?

"It was never suggested that it would be an audit of MPs or MPs' expenses, and certainly never, never an audit or any kind of assessment of MPs' performance", she explained. So now, look where jumping to conclusions gets you, hmmm? The public is suddenly wary, offended and disgruntled over the reaction of MPs to the very idea that an audit need be done on their expenses.

Conservatives to the rescue! They are prepared to offer a "proposal" to opposition parties in an effort to come to an agreeable working arrangement respecting MPs' expense audit. A compromise that just might work for everyone concerned; Members of Parliament, that amorphous, audit-averse nest of squawkers. And the dear, departing Auditor General.

So good on them! Transparency is what it's all about, hey! Eh?

Falun Dafa Day in Ottawa

Wotta guy, the mayor of Ottawa. None quite like him. In so many ways, none of which particularly impress in a positive manner. His election proceedings left much to be desired. His electioneering promise was one that might have helped elect him but like Dalton McGuinty's promise of holding down taxes, there was no chance in hell he could accomplish that. His awkward performance as the chief elected officer of the municipality has been a sad comedy of errors.

But he did come back latterly from a tour of China launched as a 'business mission' feeling pretty good about himself. Wined and dined by the mayor of Beijing, meeting and glad-handing with other counterparts; Chinese mayors who somehow manage the affairs of cities huge magnitudes of size over the population of Ottawa, with problems Canadians don't have to face, coming to an arrangement with this guy.

China is, of course, an important country, a huge geography comprised of a whopping population speaking many languages, representing many cultures. Canada's politics, culture, society and concerns are simple in comparison to the excruciating pitfalls that face official Beijing. Administering a country of that geographical immensity and population size, facing ongoing problems relating to poverty, unemployment, environmental degradation, crime and clan and religious/cultural differences is enormously difficult.

There are those within Canada who claim that we are ourselves guilty of some level of human-rights offences. But it is China that squats relentlessly on portions of a geography not truly its own, that stamps down hard on religions it does not officially recognize, that imprisons and tortures and executes those whom it claims are enemies of the state. Let's talk about the Falun Gong, for example, a gentle religion that has millions of followers in China, but which has been officially proscribed.

China takes great offence at official recognition of Taiwan, of Tibet and the Dalai Lama. And of Falun Gong. But outside China, all are accorded great respect from other countries and individuals, as is their due. The City of Ottawa, the nation's capital, recognizes many festivals and makes many proclamations that duly recognize the legitimacy of heritage and cultural events; a tip of the hat at Canada's many and varied elements of our population.

In the past adherents of Falun Gong have mounted a Falun Dafa Day, a day of recognition and celebration, and never before has the city officially denied their right to freely celebrate; an official notice signed by the mayor proclaiming "Falun Dafa Day" in the city has always been forthcoming. Not this year. Mayor Larry O'Brien steadfastly refuses to honour the day, and will not sign the requisite proclamation.

His decision, he claims, is "in the interest of maintaining and developing a continuing stronger economic relation with a country that's going to be important to our future". For during that China trip, where Mayor O'Brien, with the diplomacy of his office in full gear, accompanied business leaders of the Capital, where some vital business contacts were made and even a contract signed. Along with pledges of enlarging on what already exists connecting the two countries' business and trade opportunities.

"Quite frankly, based on what I saw, the progress and the warmth and the happiness that I saw in China, it would be very difficult for me to try and create any kind of international incident", he explained to his questioners. That China qualifies the Falon Gong religion and movement as 'evil' and has officially outlawed it is one thing. Canada is a sovereign country where the movement is duly recognized and respected.

Mayor O'Brien is rather too invested with a personal sense of his inflated importance. Ottawa is a speck in the firmament of cities and countries of the world. We are also sovereign. And we give due respect to all the members of our population, as it should be done.