In a pre-sentence report, Katsnelson said he hoped “some day the victim would be able to take something positive away from this, as he has … that maybe she will know to keep her doors locked,” Locke told the court.

All I can say is, well, fuck you, Katsnelson. Thanks for demonstrating how much you haven’t learned, though. The only person who needs to learn something from your actions is you, and that is to not go around raping women. It’s not that hard for most people.

It’s rare for me to read an article about a trial or a sentencing and root for the maximum. In this case, I certainly hope that the judge accepts the recommendation of the prosecutor. I don’t think three years is going to be long enough for this person to learn how to be a human being instead of a piece of shit, since apparently the first 25 years of his life weren’t sufficient – and neither was “coming from a good family” or his “good background” which apparently are some of the “mitigating factors” the judge will consider.

I really am surprised by this; given the clear nation-wide dissatisfaction with the decision to prorogue and Harper’s usual political acuity, I wouldn’t have expected quite such a blunt statement. And now I’m just waiting to hear Harper announce “L’état, c’est moi.”

“Prime Minister Stephen Harper is offering a new wrinkle on his reasons for suspending Parliament – the government can do more important work without MPs sitting in the Commons.”

In fact, it’s possibly true that the government can get more work done without the inconvenience of rowdy Opposition MPs demanding accountability. It’s just, you know, totally contrary to the democratic ideals that most Canadians hold. Parliaments exist to hinder the government in its quest to do whatever it pleases.

Although it’s an interesting new take on small government, I suppose, since the government does pay the MPs.

Mohamud is thankfully back in Toronto, and the diplomat who labeled her an “impostor” is, apparently, back in Ottawa, but Lawrence Cannon (who has finally emerged from hiding) says that it could take a month for the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Travel to determine what happened. Even if they do, he will not guarantee that the results will be made public (via Dr. Dawg’s Blawg).

Bull.

What conceivable reason could there be, Mr. Cannon, to keep those results secret? Do the people of this country not have a right to know what our officials consider to be a “conclusive investigation”, or to know how often “conclusive investigations” are skipped in favour of summarily rendering our citizens stateless?

Somehow, I suspect that the goal right now is to avoid a costly lawsuit that draws negative attention to the Conservative government, and to Harper, Van Loan, and Cannon in particular. I think that the best way to avoid such a lawsuit is to be upfront and open about the results of the investigation, and to offer and immediate apology and compensation. The investigation is needed, both to give Mohamud some peace and to reassure all Canadians that such a situation will not occur again. But it is very clear now that something went gravely wrong at the Canadian High Commission in Kenya, and there is no need for the government to wait for the results of the investigation to acknowledge that.

According to the Toronto Star,

Nothing in Canadian law stops the government from “picking and choosing” which Canadians it will help and who it will abandon, a former senior diplomat warns.

In the case of Suaad Hagi Mohamud, a Toronto woman who was detained in Kenya for 12 weeks, “overzealous” civil servants chose to abandon her, said former consular services chief Gar Pardy.

What’s worse, he said, is that Ottawa could just say, “`Sorry it happened’ and that’s the end of it” unless somebody ensures there is a “protection of Canadians act.”

That’s outrageous, and I believe it’s clearly true that the levels of support offered to Canadian citizens who are in trouble abroad is widely divergent.

Some of the clearest cases in point:

Suaad Hagi Mohamud: facing prison in Kenya or deportation to Somalia after the Canadian High Commission concluded she was an impostor and voided her passport, left hanging for nearly three months, fortunately helped by the level of vocal support she received from the local Somali community, the media, and a committed lawyer. Though she is not yet home, government officials have said that emergency documents are being prepared; it is not clear how long it will take. They have not yet said if she will be forced to pay for her own flight home,  and no one from the government has stepped forward to take responsibility and offer an apology.

Abousfian Abdelrazik: imprisoned in Sudan at the request of CSIS, released due to the absence of any evidence that he engaged in terrorist activity; unable to return home for more than five years as successive governments refused him help; constantly moving goal posts for what he would have to do to be allowed to return; finally brought home after a court order forced the current government’s hand. Abdelrazik was also helped by the community support that kept his case in the spotlight, and the admission (by everyone except our government, apparently) that there was no evidence to justify his presence on the no-fly list.

Maher Arar: on 26 September 2002, after he was detained at a stopover in the US on his way home to Canada from Tunisia, he became a victim of “extraordinary rendition” and was sent to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured, on the suspicion that he was a member of al Qaeda. Thanks to constant lobbying by his wife Monia Mazigh, Arar was freed and returned to Canada in October of 2003. Fortunately, there was an inquiry into his case and he was offered 10 million dollars in compensation; however, the US still refuses to allow him entry despite the total absence of evidence that he is a threat. (Obsidian Wings is one of the best resources on his case that I know of, aside from Arar’s website itself; it is worth the time to read all of Katherine and hilzoy’s posts.)

Omar Khadr: imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. Unlike Arar, Mohamud and Abdelrazik, his case is complicated because he was captured in Afghanistan and was certainly fighting with al Qaeda forces. However, he was captured at fifteen, and was brought to Afghanistan by his family, who are now known as al Qaeda sympathizers who engaged in militant activity. Khadr has no widespread community support. In fact, many Canadians appear to feel that he and his surviving family should be stripped of their citizenship. Because of this, he is the only Western prisoner still held at Guantanamo, and he is denied the help that is normally offered to child soldiers under international law. The Liberals, under Chretien and Martin, and the Conservatives, under Harper, have all refused to request that he be returned to Canada.

Brenda Martin: imprisoned in Mexico for two years after conviction for money-laundering. After her case was raised in the media, a government minister (Jason Kenney) personally intervened to bring her home so that she would not face five years in a Mexican prison – to the point that she was flown back to Canada in a government plane.

The difference is obvious, and it is unacceptable. A Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian; the government represents all of us, and owes the same level of responsibility to all of us. I’m glad that Brenda Martin received the level of assistance that she did, I wish it had not taken two years, and I want to know why Mohamud, Abdelrazik, Arar, and Khadr all have been treated quite differently.

From the Star article again:

“The buck stops with [bureacrats in Foreign Affairs], and the advice they give to the minister,” said MP Dan McTeague, a former parliamentary secretary responsible for Canadians abroad under former prime minister Paul Martin.

“When these matters become political, it’s entirely the discretion of the minister responsible in the case and they’re often told not to speak.”

Thus we have gems like this one from Lawrence Cannon, referring to Mohamud: “The individual … has to let us know whether or not she is a Canadian citizen…”. Since she had already provided a passport, a citizenship card, an OHIP card, a driver’s license, affidavits from her workplace and family in Canada, and her fingerprints, I would like to know what else Cannon expected her to do.

We do need a “protection of Canadians abroad” act, if ministers like Cannon can pick and choose who will receive assistance from Canadian consulates and who will not, and can invent impossible standards for people to meet before they can receive assistance. The act should stipulate what identification individuals can provide, mechanisms for validating the ID, and a process for obtaining vouches from people in Canada. It should also specify how long this should take (and it should not be three months or more). The government’s obligations in the event that a Canadian citizen is charged with a crime need to be clearly specified, and one of those obligations should be to repatriate citizens who are placed on the no-fly list. There should be no more double standards, and no excuses for bureaucrats or politicians who try to apply them.

However, unless we as a society pull together and demand that our government work for all of us, I don’t think we’ll get it. We will need to lobby our MPs until this legislation is brought forward.

Lawrence Cannon can be contacted here.

Contact information for MPs can be found here.

However, I won’t be satisfied until I hear something about an apology, and compensation, and preferably a resignation.

The short form appears to be: a Somalia-born Canadian citizen, in Kenya to visit her mother, was detained at the Nairobi airport when on her way home to Toronto. Airport security staff felt that she did not ressemble her passport photo, and apparently refused to accept Mohamud’s other identification, including several other pieces of photo ID, and she was not permitted to board her flight; she was held in airport custody for four days and in jail for eight before she was released on bail without travel documents. The Canadian High Commission in Nairobi was contacted.

At this point, in my opinion, events should have gone as follows: the consular officials arrange an interview with Mohamud, ask for references in Canada, and contact those people (it is, as will be described, quite clear that there were people in Canada who could vouch for her identity). Perhaps they examine her identification themselves. Then they help her get home.

Instead, the Canadian officials told the Kenyan authorities that Mohamud was an “imposter”, canceled her passport, and recommended that she be prosecuted; she was charged with fraud.

After the Toronto Star – which, along with the CBC, seems to be one of the few major media sources that has been covering the story at all* – got in contact with Mohamud’s family, including her ex-husband and son, and her work supervisor, among others, and began running articles about her, the government first insisted that she was not who she said she was, then agreed to check her fingerprints against the prints made when she arrived in Canada and made her refugee claim. More delays, and more people came forward in Canada to vouch for Mohamud.Then the Canadian officials said that the prints were no longer on file (“Officials then said they no longer had the file containing Mohamud’s fingerprints, taken during her immigration 10 years ago”, according to the Star. After more stalling, they agreed to a DNA comparison to Mohamud’s son in Canada. However, as of Saturday, “[S]pokespeople for the foreign affairs department and Canada Border Services Agency refused to say if the government would accept DNA tests as proof of identity”.

Our government has been stalling on this matter for two and a half months, while a child in Canada wonders if his mother will come home, and that mother wonders if she will face jail in a foreign country, or have a life to come back to here in Canada. (Incidentally, and disturbingly, no one from the federal government appears to have ever stated that, because people in Canada were asking for their loved one to come home, and they were alleging that the person who said she was that loved one was not, they were looking for her.)

There is no excuse for their stalling, and it must end, now. The results of the DNA test are in. Though DNA does not encode a name, the test results have told us that the woman stranded in Nairobi is the mother of a boy in Canada, whose identity and status as a citizen has also been ascertained. Enough is enough, and the government should recognize that they need to act now. Mohamud and her Canadian lawyer have already had to fight far more than they should have to get government officials to take action on her case, including filing multiple affidavits, providing multiple pieces of identification, and providing numerous references. The Canadian consulate should have new travel documents issued to Mohamud now, and they should pay for an immediate flight back to Toronto.

But the case should not end there. If Canadian citizenship is to mean anything, not one of us should let this go. The Harper government cannot redeem what has been done to Mohamud, and I for one have no doubt at all that it would not have happened to a white woman named Mary Smith.

I want to see a joint statement from both Harper and Lawrence Cannon on the front page of every newspaper in the country tomorrow, acknowledging that Mohamud was treated wrongly. “We wronged you, and we are sorry.” I want to see some indication that the consular officials who decided she was an “imposter” will be fired. Lawrence Cannon should resign from his post as Minister of Foreign Affairs; he is clearly unable to ensure that his department provides appropriate support to Canadian citizens. I want a statement that lays out what they will do in the future to ensure that Canadians in trouble abroad will receive adequate and timely assistance from their government (and without idle speculation from said government that perhaps a hypothesized sister is sharing a Canadian woman’s passport). I want to know how they will ensure that all Canadian citizens, regardless of whether they were born in Canada or are immigrants, regardless of whether they came here as refugees or through the points system, will receive that assistance and support.

I want to know that compensation will be offered to Suaad Hagi Mohamud for the lost time with her son, as well as the lost wages and the money she had to spend to obtain justice from her government for the two and a half months of her ordeal.

Mohamud’s lawyer has said that he will file for a court order to require her to be repatriated tomorrow, if necessary.

The just response is obvious. It shouldn’t take a court order.

*Though Dr. Dawg has, and that’s a blog that I’ll be following.

However, John Baird’s “off-the-cuff” remark that “Twenty-seven hundred people got it right. They didn’t. This is not a partnership and they’re bitching at us … They should fuck off…” with respect to Toronto’s request for federal funding for new streetcars? That’s definitely showing off the class I’ve come to expect from the Conservatives.

According to the Star article, Toronto submitted a single request for funds for a fleet of new streetcars, which are very much needed, and the request was rejected because it did not meet the local job creation criteria that were written into the stimulus bill. I think that the criteria were written too narrowly in this case, because although no jobs would be created in Toronto, several hundred jobs would be created at the struggling Thunder Bay Bombardier plant. I would have been quite happy if the city government had included a few other infrastructure projects in their funding application – perhaps including the maintenance facility that is mentioned here – but the streetcars are needed, the deal is already in place, and it would benefit a significant number of people in one of Ontario’s Northern cities. It’s a shame the federal government set such a dogmatic rule to qualify, and so openly expressed their contempt for the city while they were at it.

The rejection of the request for stimulus funds means that the Toronto Transit Commission will not be able to close the deal on the streetcars unless cash is forthcoming from somewhere else (the deal must be funded by June 27), and Thunder Bay will not be able to benefit from the jobs created by the deal.

Mr. Baird, if your party is trying to win seats in this city, you’re doing it wrong.

An opossum, as it turns out! (Way cuter than the mutant rat that was my first thought.)

Too bad it was munching on foodstuffs that were formerly in our green bin, but still, I’ve never seen an opossum before. I’m going to have to start carrying my camera with me all the time!

I suspect – or at least, I hope – that most of the people advocating for greater conservation in Canada are also wrestling with guilt, because setting aside land is not as simple as it sounds on paper.

Economic impact is an important problem, of course, especially in Canada, where there are still many towns based around a single industry, usually an extractive one. However, the questions about who can access designated parks, and what kinds of activity can be permitted in designated parks (leaving aside logging and mining, both of which are permitted in parks across this country), strikes me as more pernicious, because they are more forgettable. Nonetheless, the way we as a society answer those questions can have a major impact on how much land is protected, and where that land is, and how effective the protection is.

For example, I currently have access to a car, and the financial means to go camping a few times a year; it’s easy for me to visit Ontario’s parks (assuming my designated driver feels like roughing it for a bit, at least). I’m all for designating more lands strictly as parks, with restricted access for camping and hiking and no extractive industry. But I’m lucky, and it’s easy for me to forget that it’s a luxury to be able to agitate for more land to be set aside for me to pursue an activity I enjoy. If I didn’t have the financial means to consider leaving town for a weekend, and easy access to transportation, well, I doubt that it would be important to me whether or not there were public parks available.

Part of the answer to this is that we need to encourage people to think about the ecosystems that are around where they live. In this view, the David Dunlop Observatory lands should be understood to be as important as a place like High Park. Spaces that are in the middle of cities are always going to be more significantly impacted by human activity, but they can still serve as habitats and as nodes in a network of wildlife corridors; they can still be places where indigenous ecosystems can be preserved. The only difference between these two parks is that one is an official park and is not under threat, and one is owned by a developer, and the deer and birds do not pay rent.

It’s still important to agitate for strong protection of undeveloped wilderness, but I think that part of the answer to the problem of who is able to enjoy nature is to remember that nature is all around us, if we permit it to be. We need to petition for a policy to encourage large city parks with a range of natural habitats, linked wherever possible by greenbelts.

Michael Martin, Canada’s ambassador for climate change and the country’s chief negotiator at the conference, denies obstructionism, saying Canada is playing a constructive role.

Michael Martin apparently has an idiosyncratic definition of “constructive”.

For example, Canada is currently working – along with Australia and Japan – to move away from the firm targets for carbon emission reduction that were adopted in Bali, according to Montreal’s La Presse.

L’ensemble des pays a accepté de faire allusion à la cible de réduction des émissions de gaz à effet de serre de 25 à 40% d’ici 2020, sous leur niveau de 1990. Mais il a refusé, à la demande expresse du trio [Canada, Japan, and Australia], que cet objectif devienne obligatoire.

Targets will be noted, but not required, for signatories to the treaty that will replace Kyoto. A country with a government like ours, which advocates for a “made in Canada” solution, uses 2006 as the baseline for emission reduction, and supports intensity targets instead of hard targets, will not have government-supported initiatives to seriously combat climate change. We have also made it far easier for other countries to choose not to pursue hard emission reductions. I applaud our constructive contribution to solving the problem of climate change.

Another example of the disconnect between what our leaders say about climate change and their actions:

A display set up by the Canadian Youth at the UN climate negotiations in Poznan, Poland exploring Canada’s tar sands was torn down today at the demand of the Canadian government delegation.

I would like to see Canadians taking the lead on climate change. This is not going to happen without honesty, both on the part of our citizenry and our government. These two elements of our society are, of course, closely linked: if Canadian citizens are unwilling to look clearly at the global costs of the way we live, we are not going to elect a government that will do so for us. The firm rejection of Stephane Dion in the October election is proof of that.

That honest look will require us to move beyond regional bickering, as I alluded to in my last post, because if Alberta’s tar sands are a major and growing source of greenhouse gas emissions (and they are), so too is Ontario’s industrial base a problem. It’s not a matter of one province wanting to knock down another, but a matter of all of us needing to support changes in the way we do things.

I think that translates into clear emissions targets, support for the development of alternative industry in the oil-producing regions, research and development – preferably across the country – into alternative energy and efficient local production to meet local needs, and an immediate effort to help individuals make the small changes that are already possible, such as switching to smart metering of electricity use.

Right now, our “constructive” contribution to climate change mitigation and prevention seems to be working to avoid a treaty that would require a commitment from us to change. Honesty might be painful, but it would create an opportunity to look for real solutions instead of pretending that the problems of climate change and our contribution to it do not exist.