Raging Duff

So it's Christmas. Chanukkah. Diwali. Kwanzaa. Whatever the hell it is you want to celebrate.
Have wonderful parties, eat to much, don't drive drunk and let this be a time of peace, not materialism and strife.
And remember this: 2007 will only bring more of the same as 2006. If you're fat or out of shape, if you smoke or drink too much, if your an abuser or an abusee, those patterns will continue into the next year, just as day follows night.
Break the chain. Tear up the envelope. Smash free. Jump. Trust me when I say nothing is as bad as regretting what you didn't do.
Because there's no doubt in my mind that if we don't grow, we die. As individuals. As a race.
I see symptoms of that failure all around me, beginning with how mankind has despoiled this Garden of Eden that God has given us.
There’s no doubt that weather patterns are going through profound and disturbing changes. Most scientists now agree that that we have passed the tipping point at which millennia-old cycles have been disrupted. Those disruptions are already triggering a cascade of effects which will alter our lives, and those of our descendents.
Those upheavals extend to the political sphere. The events which began with 9/11 are rewriting human history in a way that will almost certainly mean the end of Pax Americana. We are witnessing the redrawing of the Eurasian map, with the upsurge in militant Islam raising the possibility of a Muslim state stretching from North Africa to northern China. We are also witnessing the slow death of many of Africa’s states, beset by totalitarianism, civil war, corruption and disease. Can we remain oblivious to that strife and suffering?
We take far too much for granted. Cheap food, cheap oil (check out the price of a litre of gas in Europe), cheap housing, cheap goods. Most of us still believe that our privileged lifestyles are the rewards for our hard work, thrift and because God loves us more. How silly is that?
2007 will see us voting in a federal and a provincial election in which we will be asked to make choices that can’t begin to please most of us. The cynicism with which most of us greet this process is disheartening; it’s as if we’re going through the motions of picking a government on the basis of what they’ll do for us, rather than voting for people we think might make a difference.

Posted by Jim Duff at 8:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)

A friend of mine sent me this response to my blog on the ASS plan to close chronic-care hospital beds:

I read your blog from a few days ago and really appreciated it. My grandfather, who has Alzheimer‚s, was sent packing from the Jewish with only a couple of days notice. He was sent to a rehab hospital which is ill-equipped to deal with this disease, since there is of course no rehabilitation to be had.

But he was lucky a (temporary) bed was found in the first place. I can only assume that many Alzheimer‚s patients or others with degenerative diseases were sent back home. In our case, my grandfather's disease was taking a toll on my grandmother who has a heart condition. Waking up confused every night, wanting to visit his grandmother in Morocco, not knowing night from day, etc.

Even with the help of a caregiver 20 hours a week, the task of caring for him and others places an unreasonable and downright cruel burden on family members. 20 hours a week is virtually pointless - 24/7 supervision is what is needed - period.

My grandparents have 5 children and the cost of a private facility is still too much. Highlighting the need for more home care is fine, but there are many terminally ill patients who are too far gone for that to be a possibility - unless the government puts a caregiver there at all times, which isn't realistic. So, like you said, he is warehoused and will be moved at least once more before he dies.

I hope you continue bringing the issue of eldercare to the forefront because when the boomers start going, things will get really interesting. And what I've been wondering the last few days is how many facilities that could house the terminally ill and allow them to die with dignity could have been built with the $500 mil. handout given to Alcan? Corrupt or inept? I don't get it...

Posted by Jim Duff at 7:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I posted this on December 1, 2004 under the title: A desperate act of political cynicism.

It’s depressing to watch the Harper Tories jettisoning what few values they have left as they struggle to suck votes out of a fetid body of Quebec ultranationalists and opportunists. The perfect example was this past weekend’s meeting of the Quebec wing in la veille capitale, where Stephen Harper assured the crowd he’d break Canada’s Official Languages Act to ensure that Quebec could do whatever it wanted to protect the French language.
Is this the same Stephen Harper who, barely three years ago, was spearheading a National Citizens’ Coalition campaign to raise money to fight for the right of French parents to send their kids to English schools?
Last week, Harper spent a day vowing to de-expropriate 11,000 acres of farmland frozen to create a buffer zone around Mirabel Airport so that there wouldn’t be anybody to bitch and moan about the noise. Mirabel was, is and will be a good idea, badly executed. The world’s busiest, most efficient airports are all located well away from population hubs because their planners knew that curfews and forced noise-reduction patterns weren’t in the best interests of modern aviation. With few exceptions, the world’s busiest, most efficient airports are also served by direct highway access and/or dedicated rail shuttles.
Mirabel would have had both, and would be Canada’s busiest international airport today, if it hadn’t been for the secessionist Parti Québécois victory in 1976, Bill 101 and the subsequent exodus of capital and head offices that crippled Montreal’s progress for the next 28 years. This latest attempt to dismantle Mirabel’s protection zone is a desperate act of political cynicism that won’t garner Harper or his party a single Quebec seat.
This week, the House of Commons was to vote on a Conservative resolution that would see the 11,000 acres returned to the original owners or their heirs. Paul Martin’s minority Liberals have only 133 seats to the combined 172 of the united New Democrats, Tories and Bloc Québécois, so they would lose any such vote. Because it was not a confidence motion, the Liberals don’t have to call an election — but it says oodles about the collective morality of the three opposition parties.
The Bloc supported the Tories in this vote because it repudiated a decision taken by Pierre Trudeau and his public works minister of the time, André Ouellet. For the self-serving Bloc hypocrites, this was an act of petty revenge, coupled with the fact that many of their supporters are doubtless licking their chops at the prospect of building all those new subdivisions. The New Democrats vote for anything with the slightest green tinge, except in Ontario, where they vote for what the unions tell them to vote for.
Here are the questions nobody is asking:
 • Will those 11,000 acres immediately revert to green status under Quebec’s Agricultural Land Protection Act? Or will the municipalities in which they’re located petition Quebec to have them rezoned white, and therefore open to development? If you guessed white, you guessed right.
 • What prevents the land from being recycled into housing, repeating the Dorval stupidity if Mirabel is ever reactivated? It’s not as if young Quebeckers are clamouring to get back to the land; 30 years ago, farms extended from Ste. Eustache to the Laurentian foothills. Most of those farms are gone, replaced by some of the ugliest suburban sprawl in North America. None of that was Mirabel’s doing.
 • Do Mirabel’s former dairy farmers and chicken/egg producers get their quotas back?
Most of that land will never revert to farm operations once it falls into the hands of speculators and developers.
Transport Minister Jean Lapierre is correct when he says the Tory motion is not in the interest of Quebec, Canada, Mirabel, workers or economic development. He points out that Mirabel would be a natural home for the new plant that Bombardier needs to construct its next-generation 100-seat regional jet, a project that will save 2,500 aerospace jobs.
And what happens if les Aeroports de Montréal loses its legal fight to extend Dorval’s hours of operation and flights have to be moved back to Mirabel?
I refuse to label it Pierre Elliott Trudeau Airport, because I see no point in further mocking the late prime minister’s vision of an air terminal that could have been a model. Instead, Quebec’s political wars have made Mirabel a symbol of political myopia and short-term expediency. Harper and his Tories are proudly continuing in that tradition.

Posted by Jim Duff at 10:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Close 2100 long-term beds within four years? Has Montreal’s Agence de Sante et des services sociaux Health and Social Services Agency gone nuts? It was bad enough that Health Minister Philippe Couillard put Quebec through another of those vast bureaucratic reshufflings to create one more level of health and social services paperpushers and beancounters — the various regional ASSes — but this latest proposal to close 2100 long-term care beds makes no more sense than the Parti Quebecois government’s lackwitted plan to lay off health care professionals and close hospitals back in the early nineties.
Dr. Jean Rochon’s gormless scheme to shutter hospitals and buy out doctors and nurses happened more than a decade ago, but we’re still paying the price for the ‘virage ambulatoire.’
Remember that one? Sick and injured people, their surgical scars still weeping as they were forced out of hospital beds to their homes? Then, as now, the CLSCs were supposed to supply the homecare nurses. But nobody told the CLSCs. Caregivers were overwhelmed. The wealthy and the politically connected got looked after, but the poor bore the brunt. The system staggered under the shock and all those hospital beds vacated by Rochon’s moronic scheme were quickly filled with the same people forced out early. Only they were a lot sicker when they came back.
Now it’s the Liberals’ turn to screw it up. The ASS — oh, how sublimely named is that? — has decreed that henceforth, the chronically ill, including a disproportionate number of elderly, will be turfed out of those beds and sent home, to be looked after by — who? Family? Friends? Charity-based nursing services? Cats and dogs?
Here’s something we should all know:
Someone I know slipped away peacefully at home March 6, 2005 after a seven-year battle with ALS. His caregivers estimate they saved the healthcare system $32,512.
The figure was arrived at by comparing the cost of maintaining the same person in a palliative care facility at a cost of $330 per diem or supplying full-time caregiver services ($1418.56), professional home visits ($75/hr.) plus material resources ($4768).
Currently, the ASS allocates 21 hours of caregiver services per week — and only after a physician writes a letter to the CLSC stating the prognosis is three months or less.
Do the math. Many individuals requiring palliative care and wanting to remain in their home need much more than 21 hours per week of non-professional home care services. There are 168 hours in the week, so the unfunded time pays approximately 95 cents an hour. Who can afford to give up a job to work for that?
During the course of a debilitating illness, 21 hours isn’t even respite care. The individual and the family become responsible for both the hands-on care and the cost of replacing themselves for a time out. Caregivers become exhausted and their immune systems break down, leading them to seek healthcare services.
In 2005, B.C. and Quebec promised increases in funding for home care and home care support. This year, B.C. delivered $417.2 million in increased funding for both of these priorities; Quebec delivered $113 million for home care, for a maximum of three months. Even Ontario gives six.
I say build the homecare system, THEN move the patients. Slowly, bit by bit. Over time. Patiently. Then, and only then, close the hospital beds.
Of course, there is no institutional patience with the institutionalized elderly or the chronically ill. The lucky ones are those who have somewhere they can die with some semblance of dignity, tended by a circle of caregivers. The rest are warehoused.
And this from a society that condemns mercy killing as inhumane.
Merry Christmas, all you heartless bureaucratic bastards, and a Crappy New Year.

Posted by Jim Duff at 6:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

According to today’s La Presse, Crown prosecutors dealing with Montreal’s street gangs are living in fear.
Prosecutors overseeing the trials of the Pelletier Street Gang at the high-security Gouin judical centre in the north end have been under police escort day and night for four months.
One prosecutor in another case involving one of these thugs had his home vandalized and asked to be allowed to wear a bulletproof vest. Other prosecutors asked that they be allowed to park in the Palais de Justice underground garage, rather than having to use outdoor parking lots. Their demands were refused.
The entire Palais de Justice was closed down by a bomb threat against one prosecutor Oct. 20. There’s still no real security there, no checks for weapons or explosives and free entry for all. Nobody wants to go public, because they’re afraid of reprisals. Jean-Pierre Saint-Jean, one of the prosecutors in the Pelletier St. gang trials, says he didn’t feel this threatened when he was prosecuting the Hells Angels.
La Presse quotes Claude Chartrand, chief prosecutor at the Bureau de lutte au crime organisé (BLACO) as saying that prosecutors are afraid because the gangs are so unpredictable. They’ll fill an entire courtroom when a gang member is being arraigned. “Their simple presence constitutes a threat,” Chartrand tells La Presse.
The latest form of intimidation is the use of cellfone cameras to snap pix of prosecutors, which they can then e-mail to fellow gang members.
Chartrand can’t understand why the use of cellphone cameras is banned in all courthouses.
Christian Leblanc, the newly elected head of the Association des substituts du procureur général du Québec, is also concerned. “Why are they shooting these photos? To be able to identify us in a parking lot? Just to intimidate us? Either way, it’s unacceptable.”
The 420-member association is accusing the justice ministry of not doing enough to guarantee their security. The demand for protected parking, for example: it’s common in many parts of Quebec for prosecutors to have to share public parking lots with the accused and their families.
This is absolutely unacceptable, and Justice Minister Yvon Marcoux must act —immediately — to ensure the safety of those responsible for the administration of justice The reason the Gouin Blvd. facility was built in the first place was to ensure that Hells godfather Maurice ‘Mom’ Boucher and his thugs would be powerless to influence the course of justice with their threats after they conspired to murder prison guards. Why should it be any different for street gangs? These strutting littlde Hitlers must be neutralized, and their rights be damned. They don’t care about the rights of the victims they rape, beat, shoot or stab. Rein in this scum or face the threat of the legal system's collapse.

Posted by Jim Duff at 8:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Even if Stephen Harper didn’t accomplish anything else in his minority government’s rule, Senate reform alone would justify the Conservatives’ re-election.
As it now the Upper Chamber, the Venue of Sober Second Thought, is for the most part a wainscotted wasteland of hacks, toadies and droolers. The merest promise that Harper would think of changing the rules to allow plebiscites to elect senators, rather that seeing them appointed, brings so much joy to my heart, I’m already having Christmas.
And the very best of it is that Harper’s proposal won’t require one of those suicidal constitutional changes.
I daresay the Grits and the Bloc will oppose any such measure, the Grits because they’ve usually dominated the Senate through sheer numbers and the Bloc, because anything that would make the provinces happy is a threat to their ongoing policy of keeping Quebeckers reminded of how alienated and humiliated they are. As for the Knee-Dippers, Jack Layton’s crowd will probably push to have the Senate chambers converted into a daycare for the disadvantaged.
Come to think of it, that’s what it is now — a daycare for ex-whatevers. Stephen Harper’s proposed solution is a clear improvement.

Posted by Jim Duff at 5:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Nearly a year after the tragic fact, a Quebec coroner has revealed what we knew last February — that 13-year-old Stevie Reilly died after overdosing on the party drug ecstacy.
In her comments, Coroner Catherine Rudel-Tessier noted that Stevie would probably be alive today had she received medical attention when she first began exhibiting symptoms of overdosing.
The report went on with the usual shoulds — parents should talk to their kids about drugs without demonizing them and that schools should get serious about drug education.
Without attempting to sound too cynical, these are the usual do-nothing platitudes we hear from a system which has abdicated responsibility for drug education. For a month, the local media publicized a drug symposium for parents sponsored by a citizens’ committee for public security in one of the municipalities where Stevie's pusher plied his trade. The 43 parents who showed up were overwhelmed by the quantity and quality of the information they received from a panel of experts, many of whom have worked in this field for decades. Many wondered why these experts weren’t in their kids’ schools.
Fact is, they’re already working our schools, but parents aren’t welcome at these briefings, because that would start parents asking questions and we all know it’s far more important for educators to be buddies with their students than it is to lay down the law.
The truth? Most parents couldn’t begin to handle the truth. We’ve heard estimates that roughly half the kids at Westwood High, where Stevie was headed, use drugs either occasionally or regularly. Don’t tell us their teachers aren’t aware that a sizeable percentage of their student body gets buzzed before, between and after classes, because we can smell and see them passing joints in public. Kids as young as 12 are users, thanks to plenty of pocket money and lots of time home alone.
Drugs are everybody’s problem. We can’t compartmentalize the school segment, the home segment and the peer-group part. When Stevie died last February, there was far more energy spent spinning the happy fiction that there wasn’t a drug problem in their community than in openly, frankly discussing it. Why? Because our kids are all good kids. Other peoples’ kids are the stoners and dopers. That shit doesn't happen here.
The politics of denial extends to the very top. What the coroner didn’t say in the report was that the 16-year-old who supplied Stevie with the drug that killed her should have been charged with criminal negligence for failing to report her condition before it was too late. Last we heard, Stevie’s killer was headed to Cornwall, where he can get on with his squalid existence spent seducing little girls with drugs. But Quebec’s happy; he’s no longer our problem. See what we mean about abdication?

Footnote: Today on the DWD, I spoke with Alvin Powell, the director of prevention services with the Saving Station Foundation. Alvin is a former NFL player (Miami Dolphins, Seattle Seahawks) who came to Montreal to kill himself with cocaine. Instead, he's become one of the most outspoken anti-drug advocates I've ever met. I wonder why the Lester B. Pearson School Board doesn't have the balls to bring Alvin to their schools, where drugs are a huge and growing problem. I'll give them one less excuse: Alvin can be reached at 514-421-5510 local 222. www.savingstationfoundation.com

Posted by Jim Duff at 8:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

At 3:15 this past Saturday morning, residents of a quiet backwater in St. Lazare were awakened by a commotion outside. A car carrying four passengers in their late teens or early twenties slammed into a tree and caught fire. The flames were quickly extinguished by a neighbour after one or more of the men banged on his door. Nobody was hurt, but sources say all four were over the legal blood alcohol limit. The driver was arrested for driving under the influence.
No, driving drunk isn’t exclusive to young drivers. This past week, I must have seen half a dozen vehicles straddling lanes, weaving or otherwise being driven erratically. If I was a cop, I’d have reasonable cause to pull them over for a breathalyzer check. As I worked my way carefully past them, I’d try to catch a glimpse of who was at the wheel; most were middle-aged.
The problem isn’t just drunk driving.
Everyone thinks they’re a better driver than they are. We all think our response time is faster than it is, our peripheral and night vision is more acute and our defensive driving skills better than anyone else’s. And how many of us don’t think of ourselves as safe, courteous, responsible, law-abiding drivers?
In fact, I almost never see anyone come to a full legal stop any more. I’m referring to the stop-and-count-to-three-before-moving definition in the Highway Code, not the varying degrees of deceleration I see as local motorists glide through stop signs.
I know there are some safe, sober, courteous drivers out there, because I share our roads with them. They drive the speed limit, even in school zones. They come to full stops. They signal before turning or pulling out. At night, they reduce their high beams as soon as they see another vehicle. But I’d have to say they’re in the minority. Speeding is the norm, and I’m talking 60 and above in residential neighbourhoods. So’s talking on a cellphone, failing to signal one’s intentions or otherwise disrespecting other drivers.
I’m sorry to say I’ve come to expect that kind of behavior from younger drivers, male and female both. They’re aggressive, they’re rude and they’re in a rush, as if their missions were somehow more important than anyone else’s. Safe drivers learn to give them the right of way, because to do otherwise is to be involved in the kind of testosterone-induced incident that left St. Lazare resident Patricia Jolicoeur in a coma two weeks ago — or last Saturday’s booze-fuelled crash.
Doubtless, this’ll earn me a blast of righteous intolerance from the youth squad and their defenders, but I’m past caring. I’m especially fed up with drunks at the wheel. I’m fed up with drivers who don’t make their stops, who sit on my bumper as I’m doing 60 in a 40 zone, who flash their high beams in my rear-view mirror when I don’t blast away from a stop.
Many residential streets and far too many of our main arteries aren’t wide enough for two vehicles plus people out walking, jogging, cycling or whatever. In some municipalities, they’ve gotten past that with dedicated cycling and pedestrian paths, but in many neighbourhoods, the road is shared. At this time of year, it’s easy to overdrive one’s headlights and run down someone we can’t see at the edge of the road.
I’d rather see one-way streets than a single pedestrian killed or injured, but that’s not going to happen, because the car, truck and SUV are king. The best we can do from a legislative standpoint is to decree that any accidents in which alcohol, drugs, racing or road rage play a role should fall outside no-fault insurance, so that the victims and their families can sue.
Slow down, dammit! Make your stops. Your trip isn’t any more important than mine, or anyone else’s. If you think you’re good to drive after the party, you’re not. Take a cab, appoint a designated driver or call Nez Rouge. I can assure you that the Jolicoeur family’s Christmas will be a sombre one. We don’t need another.

Posted by Jim Duff at 5:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Andrew Coyne gets all righteous on us when he says Stephane Dion should give up his French citizenship.
I suspect Dion will eventually be forced e to dump the duality. If he shared his Canadian citizenship with some politically correct nation — say Jordan or New Zealand, or Uruguay — this wouldn't be an issue. But France is suspect to the anglo ROC. We know why. Those French...you just can't trust 'em. Marshall Pétain. Vichy. De Gaulle. The Rainbow Warrior sinking.
Quebec has less of a problem with this than ROC. Forgive me for this, but the nationhood/nationality duality is grasped here in Quebec better than it is in Ottawa. The Bloc has gone to bat for the 200,000 Canadian-born Americans, Brits, Begians, Dutch and other citizens who have been refused Canadian citizenship. Why? Their fathers renounced their Canadian citizenships between 1947 and 1977.
Yes, that's correct. Canada still hews to an ancient definition of citizenship which treats wives, children and idiot offspring as chattels, but only over a 30-year period.
Immoral? You bet. Unethical? Absolutely.
Compared to the Lost Canadians travesty, Dion's citizenship is a fart in a windstorm of outrage. But you can bet the Prairie Populists will be banging their fundamentalist drums for his renunciation, because they're the surrogate voices of the Harper Holier-Than-Thou Club.
As Robert Chambers Edwards, the editor of the Calgary Eye Opener wrote in 1920, Canada is ruled by the most hypocritical, sanctimonious, Bible-thumping gang of grifters on the face of the planet.
Seems to me that hasn't changed a whit.
This isn't about Stephane Dion's citizenship. It's aboput the hypocrites who lead this silly witchhunt.

Posted by Jim Duff at 6:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I received the following e-mail from one of our New 940 listeners that I think deserves to be shared:

I'm writing to comment on comments you made today with Michael Dean, when you made known your disdain for gays "prosyletizing" our lifestyle. I must say that although you are entitled to your opionion, as a 45-year-old gay man I take extreme offense. One can debate the ‘need’ for a gay pride parade each year, but I would like you to keep in mind a couple of things before you comment again. I agree that it is sad that in the world we live in it is neccessary to have a Gay Pride event annually, but the inescapable fact is that it is very necessary. It's nice that you acknowledge that you KNOW gays, WORK WITH gays, etc., but don't you see that right away you are endorsing a difference? Imagine the absurdity of me inferring that I’'m open minded because I WORK with straights, know straights, have friends that are straight.
When your children were born, did you honestly give a second thought to the idea that they might not be straight?
I live my life quite openly and honestly, but believe me when introduced to someone my sexuality is not one of the top ten first things I mention, for no other reason than for me it is a non-issue. Usually it never seems to be an issue at all unless the other person makes it one.
I have only participated in the parade here for the last six years, and although there are many facets to it, some I like, some I don’t, the one part that always strikes me hard is when I see the gay youth. I'm not one to lament on the past but every year this gives me cause to wonder what my life would have been like if such an organization existed when I was that age. This is particularly more important to me now as I have a 14 year old nephew who is in the process of coming out. That's another thing to think about. Would you ever have a fit and throw you kid out of the house when he or she announced he was straight? How many teenagers commit suicide each year because they are straight?
It might sound a little absurd but these things happen every day. Trying to enforce a positive sense of self worth is a pretty good reason for having a parade, don't you think?
Finally Jim, your comments regarding taxpayers’ money used to fund the parade were a little misleading. Yes public money does go into the Divers/cité festival and parade each year, but it is also the second largest tourist draw just behind the Jazz Festival. Furthermore, public money also comes from taxpayers who are gay.
I do hope the day arrives when there is no need for a parade, when people don't get beat up, screamed at, or laughed at simply for who or what they are. When memorials such as the one at Dachau prison camp honour all the victims of the Holocaust, including homosexuals. These memorials omit homosexuals, because apparently it's okay. to kill gays.
Thank you for your time Jim and I look forward to remaining a loyal listener.

I sent him this response:
After receiving your e-mail, I listened to an aircheck of my comments.
You make several excellent points.
First, I exercised none of the balance and intellectual rigor I expect from others. My comments were intemperate and inflammatory and reflect more my frustration with the time wasted on this debate than any deep-seated prejudices.
But I also have to say that I'm conflicted on a number of points raised in the original Rights Charter modifications or resurrected by Harper's cynical move to pay off an election promise to the religious right.
I have an aversion to the state defending one point of view over another. I'm of the Alan Dershowitz school of letting everyone have his or her say, because to do otherwise is to martyr extremists.
Silencing homophobes isn't the way to combat prejudice. I opposed the Martin government's use of the Supreme Court reference to raise the right to same-sex marriage to a constitutional right because I saw it as a heavy-handed attempt to legislate opinion.
That said, I unreservedly support the right of same-sex couples to be joined in both religious and civil marriage, to have or to adopt children and to enjoy the same benefits as heterosexual couples.
I see serious legal and religious issues in what will almost certainly be multiple tests of any refusal to do business with other individuals on the basis of their sexual orientation. We both know what would happen if a gay couple sued a mosque or for refusing to sanctify their relationship. Neither the Supreme Court nor Mr. Cotler's constitutional patch saw fit to address this eventuality. At the same time, I respect the fact that the rights of gays and lesbians to enjoy the same religious, social and cultural freedoms as other Canadians must somehow be protected. How do we make that happen?
I do not feel that public money should be spent on culture-specific public events. That goes for the St. Patrick's Parade, Gay Pride, Canada Day or la Fete nationale. This past summer's Outgames were just as frivolously wasteful of the public purse as any other multimillion-dollar expenditure that doesn't bring hard returns in the form of tourist dollars. For example, the Grand Prix, the Jazz Festival and Just for Laughs have all learned the hard way that they can't count on the taxpayer to bail them out. The Outgames was a terrible idea, not because it was culure-specific, but because organizers painted an unrealistic picture of the benefits.
Who pays the price for this failure? The gay and lesbian communities, because you can bet there won't be more money from Quebec or the feds for events that can't prove they can pay for themselves, nor should there be.
I am very torn over how gay and lesbian lifestyles are taught in schools. I have lived in small towns much of my life and know how difficult it is for those confused about gender. But there has to be a better way to deal with this than preaching Johnny-has-two-daddies and Kate and Sue are my moms. I've witnessed the cruelty firsthand.
I've also seen the damage done by gay predators and I've had my own experiences on that score, so I'm sure some of my prejudices stem from that.
I'm also torn about public health and morality issues. I'm what people would call a Puritan. I can't countenance state-sanctioned gaming, strip bars, swinger's clubs, gay bathhouses or other expressions of so-called moral tolerance, but neither can I tolerate the notion of police departments being used as the blunt instruments of public policy. If our society must play host to these activities, stick them all out on Ile Notre Dame and card everyone who wants access. Make AIDs/STD tests mandatory for all sex workers and ensure that self-exclusion pacts are enforced.
Sure, there's still prejudice out there. But intolerance works both ways — and there's a world of difference between permissiveness and tolerance. Let's not be confusing the two.

Posted by Jim Duff at 5:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)