The Teachers Dilemma

Nobody wants to give in to a bully. Indeed teachers teach students not to give in to bullies and teachers are expected to be role models and teach by example.

So the teachers, when the bully took away their collective bargaining rights with draconian legislation that took away their right to strike, used the only legal avenue they had to fight back against the bully and refused voluntary activities.

They knew the government had pushed them into a corner so that their only legal way of fighting back would impact students and keep them from doing things they loved to do. I am sure they were looking individually and collectively for a way to bring things back to normal for their students while still taking a stand against the bully government.

When they found another way to make a last stand against the government with minimal impact on students, Dalton McGuinty said no that is illegal, the only protests we will allow you to undertake are ones that harm your students.

So what next.

Teachers Political Protest Not a Strike and Not Illegal

First of all it is not a strike because it is not part of the collective bargaining process because with a government imposed contract, imposed under a draconian law whose constitutionality is under challenge, there is no collective bargaining process. Secondly the political protest is aimed at the government as policy maker and legislator, not as employer.

It is not illegal because political protests are not illegal in Canada, even if Stephen Harper and Dalton McGuinty wish they were.

Not that the teachers are completely free of consequences. For one they will not be paid for the day, and secondly their contract provisions may provide for discipline for absences not approved by the employer. But any such action will be subject to the grievance and appeal provisions of their contracts. That being said the usual discipline by employers for such absences is suspension from work without pay. So theoretically the school boards could force the teachers to take time off work without pay as punishment for taking time off work without pay. Sort of like suspending students for truancy.

The biggest irony, or perhaps more appropriately described as hypocrisy, is that Dalton McGuinty has his knickers in a knot over teachers taking a day off without pay to protest a process that has imposed a contract on them that requires them to take days off without pay.

Dumping Shit in The Ottawa River

This blog post contains graphic language because there is no way to pretty up dumping shit in the city's drinking water source.

If I were to walk into the Ottawa River and take a crap I would probably be arrested, and not just for indecent exposure but for polluting the river with human excrement.

However the City Of Ottawa routinely dumps shit in the Ottawa River due to a an inadequate and outdated sewage system. Yes, the City has been fined for some of these occurrences, but the fines are not paid by the decision makers who set the city's spending priorities but by citizens and taxpayers. Indeed the people who drink the water and swim in the Ottawa River, the victims of this environmental crime, are the ones who are punished for it, not the decision makers responsible for it.

Should there not be a law, or at least a policy, that the City spend money on improving the system responsible for this environmental crime before giving it to developers to build a shopping mall, condominiums and professional sports facilities. Should there not be a law that requires the City to spend federal and provincial infrastructure funding on reducing the amount of shit they dump in the Ottawa River before they spend it on building a road that destroys the most bio-diverse and environmentally important area in the city just to serve the desires of developers.

Indeed, should it not be legislated public policy that the City's decision makers must put the interests of taxpayers and citizens before the wishes of developers.

Why Is Bill Blair Still Toronto Police Chief

If there is one thing I thought all Canadians agreed on, in it was the rule of law and that the role of the police was to enforce the laws made by our elected governments not make up their own.

I find it hard to understand how a chief of police could admit to making up his own law and instructing the police to enforce it, while lying to the public about it, without adding "therefore I resign immediately". It does not even matter whether the law was enforced fairly or appropriately, which in this case the evidence indicates it was not - the police do not make up their own laws. It seems to me there can be no greater crime that a police chief could commit than to do that and upon admitting that there is no choice but immediate resignation.

Am I missing something. Why is there not total and complete public outrage over this. Are there really that many people that think a police state is acceptable, even for a weekend.

Legalizing Spousal Rape In Afghanistan – Not So Foreign to Canadian Law

As the CBC reports, Afghanistan's proposed law to legalize spousal rape, or to put it in other terms “make it illegal for women to refuse their husbands sex”, has rightly been widely condemned.

However, we would be wrong to characterize this as some sort of Islamic barbarism foreign to western civilizations.

Indeed, as the Globe and Mail reports, the same provision existed in Canadian law up until 1983.

Indeed, the concept has had a long history in the jurisprudence of the United Kingdom, Commonwealth countries, Canada and the United States, as the following articles record:

Historical Development of the Offence of_Rape (Bruce A. MacFarlane, Q.C. Deputy Minister of Justice Deputy Attorney General for the Province of Manitoba)

Making Marital Rape A Crime: A Long Road Traveled, A Long Way to Go (Lynn Hecht Schafran, Director, National Judicial Education Program; Stefanie Lopez-Boy, Program Associate, National Judicial Education Program; Mary Rothwell Davis)

It took a long time to banish from the law books of the west, It should not be allowed to be put on the law books of Afghanistan at a time when Canadian soldiers are dying there, supposedly in the name of women's rights and human rights.