Caledonia: Hold the Olives

Insurrections can still have their comedic moments:

Early in the afternoon native leaders brought forward a symbolic olive branch and a war club. They asked residents to choose….The Caledonia residents didn’t budge. Then one of the front-end loaders on the native side began digging up the road.

Which of course removes any questions about the legality or morality of destroying a public highway. They didn’t choose the olive branch!

How Native are the Six Nations?

Matthew points out that the Six Nation’s ancestral claims to the disputed Ontario land are somewhat thin:

It’s important to add that when it comes to Six Nations that we’re not dealing with a group that was is as rooted to the land as some of Canada’s other First Nations. The Six Nations originally came up from the U.S. after that country had it’s War of Independence; the deal that they have with the government is purely contractual and not a matter of heritage as the group has been making it out to be. If the Natives in Caledonia really have a beef, they should settle it in a court of law and not on the streets of rural south-eastern Ontario.

Six Lessons from Caledonia

First, native protesters have no sense of irony. Following the initial dismantling of the native blockade, Caledonians responded by building their own blockade. Natives protesters were incredulous. They couldn’t use the road with the new blockade in the way! The roadblock was a manifestation of colonialism and racism, so the native protesters showed the Caledonians what’s what by re-constructing their own blockade and, for good measure, used a bobcat to dig up the road and dropped a power transformer into the hole.

Second, the police have no clear guidelines for when to arrest people for breaking the law and when to negotiate an end to the law-breaking. When natives in Saskatchewan set up a sympathy blockade, the police negotiated with the natives until the roadblock was taken down. RCMP big-wigs maintain that no firm rule exists and that individual detachments will make their own decision. That’s all well and good, but I strongly suspect that if drove to Saskatchewan and parked my car length-wise across the highway, the RCMP wouldn’t pull up and say, “Let’s talk about this.”

Third, Canadians have no clue what civil disobedience is. The reporting of David Peterson’s feminine mewlings make this obvious. Peterson was thrilled that the natives took down their roadblock, interpeting it as a “sign of goodwill.” If someone breaks the law and then stops breaking the law, that’s not a “sign of goodwill”; that’s a sign that the person has brought himself back within the realm of behavior expected under a lawful regime. If I break the law, the judge won’t interpret goodwill toward the law as a mitigating factor in sentencing.

Fourth, why was a former premier not brought in to negotiate with the Caledonian protesters over their roadblock?

Fifth, and more seriously: The only winners here are the natives. They didn’t have to benefit greatly, they just had to get better than the previous status quo. The moment that McGuinty assented to negotiation, the protesters had won. Which alters the incentives faced by natives in Canada. Post-Caledonia, Canadian natives know that they can always improve their position relative to the status quo by erecting a roadblock and waiting for negotiations. This isn’t such a big problem in Ontario, where natives had theit title extinguished long ago. But it’s a huge deal in B.C. where land claim negotiations are currently ongoing. It’s going to be a long summer in B.C. as a result of this, and we have only the spineless Dalton McGuinty to thank.

Sixth, and just as seriously: Natives can no longer expect to disturb the lives of “settlers” around them during the course of their law-breaking without provoking a back-lash. We saw this in Burnt Church when non-native fisherman watched as natives set out to rob them of their livelihood by destroying the lobster stocks there (thanks incidentally to a Supreme Court ruling). And we just saw it in Caledonia. Nor should we hear any intemperate and hypocritical whining from native protesters over non-natives breaking the law when the native protesters themselves are in the process of doing so.

Gerard Kennedy: Western Sensibilities to the Rescue

OK, let’s give Gerard Kennedy some credit: He is saying some interesting things so far in the Liberal leadership race. To bad all his pronouncements so far have been as shallow as a reflecting pool.

Kennedy seems to be focussed on breaking out of the Toronto power-base of the Liberals. Not a bad idea considering that all of the leadership contenders with the exceptions of Brison and Fry hail from there. Thus came his recent announcement that he would be moving to Quebec for the summer:

Liberal leadership candidate Gerard Kennedy is moving from Toronto to Quebec for part of the campaign in a bid to show he’s serious about reconnecting with the province.
“We look forward to doing that as a way to allow me to do a lot more grassroots things in Quebec,” says Kennedy.

This got a chuckle out of me. Quebecers are generous, but not generous enough to embrace a Torontonian who proclaims himself a pure laine Quebecer after a summer French immersion course.

Then came this:

Gerard Kennedy, one of eight Toronto-based candidates for the Liberal leadership, says he’s willing to consider seeking a federal seat in western Canada.

But Kennedy is casting himself as a quasi-western candidate who can finally lead the Liberals to their long-sought breakthrough in the West.

“I think part of what I’m bringing (to the leadership race) is a sensibility from the West, if not residency.”

First: It is incomprehensible that an Ontarian Liberal cabinet minister from Toronto could bring anything resembling a “western sensibility” to this leadership race. The fact that Kennedy thinks he could do so says quite a bit about how he views the region.

Second: The Pas is not the west. It’s Manitoba; it exists in limbo between east and west. It’s Ontario-lite.

Third: If Kennedy is so gung-ho on representing a western perspective, maybe he should run in a Calgary seat. Calgary is, after all, the “Heart of the New West”; what city could be more receptive to Kennedy’s refined western sensibilities.

And Calgary West still has an MP by the name of Rob Anders. The name should be familar to you because Liberals have sworn up and down in every election since 1997 that they would defeat Anders, with little success. But esteemed westerner Kennedy should have little trouble dispatching Anders. Hell, the empathy generated between Westerner Kennedy and the voters of Calgary should convince him to run in Calgary Southwest against Stephen Harper.

Or not. Maybe this is just another Ontarian who will not, cannot, conceive of the idea that Canada is not just a bigger more spread out version of the city of Toronto. That’s too bad, because the Liberal Party is already full of them.

ht: The Phanton Observer

Public Reaction to Afghanistan Vote

Mounties Always Get Their Man

Maybe a little immature but a bit of a laugh.

http://www.herald.ca/Front/504265.html

A nice story out of Nova Scotia on the RCMP's first gay nuptials; a storied love affair coming to the "ultimate" form of commitment this weekend at the Rodd Grand Hotel---only so ultimate as divorce laws are lenient. RCMP spokesman, Sgt. Skidmore, had nothing but praise for the couple, noting how this demonstrates that the force includes every sector of society. And the new bride-to-be agreed: "Const. Tree said being a Mountie was always his goal."

Does “Revenge for Airbus” mean anything to anyone?

Kate draws attention to today’s disturbing testimony at Chuck Guite’s fraud trial:

A former vice-president of Groupaction, told Charles Guité’s fraud trial Wednesday that he feared for his life if he were to blow the whistle on what he saw as suspicious goings on between his ad agency and former prime minister Jean Chretien’s office.

“I wasn’t interested in having a hunting accident in my living room,” he testified. Lambert, who quit Groupaction in 2001, said he felt like his was trapped in a system with many tentacles, at the centre of which was Chretien.

This is in addition to yesterday’s revelation:

When Guite cross-examined Conway, he made two points with the help of only two pieces of paper.

Guite pointed to the signature of former prime minister Jean Chretien at the bottom of a Treasury Board request to finance the sponsorship program.

Guite asked Conway if it was normal the prime minister would personally sign such a document.

“It’s extremely unusual,” said Conway, a top civil servant at Public Works. “In fact I have never seen it.”

The question is: How are these new suspicions about Chretien going to be resolved? For some reason, the persecution of Brian Mulroney over the Airbus nonsense is forefront in my mind right now.

Arnold Schwarzenegger: Is he writing Bush’s speeches?

This article from March sounds eerily familar after Bush’s address on immigration yesterday. Not only has the White House poached Schwarzenegger’s views, it looks like they lifted whole passages out of this article for the speech:

We can embrace the immigrant without endorsing illegal immigration. Granting citizenship to people who are here illegally is not just amnesty … it’s anarchy. We are a country of immigrants, yes. But we are also a nation of laws.

Screwtape on Da Vinci

In anticipation of the release of The Da Vinci Code, The Great Pumpkin reprints a very appropriate piece of advice from Screwtape.

I’m gay, I was a drug user, pay attention to me!

George Smitherman, Ontario’s health minister, is gay and a former drug user. He is probably lots of other things too, but these are the primary reasons for the Toronto Star’s celebration of him. Today’s installment:

The 42-year-old health minister is telling Ontarians that for five years in the early to mid 1990s he fought and beat an addiction to street stimulants used as “party drugs.”

Fearing the repercussions of his admission, Smitherman did not want to say what illegal drugs he used.

Publicity without responsibility. Smitherman must have studied at the knee of Svend Robinson.

And speaking of responsibility: Smitherman isn’t into it. In one interview, he blamed his drug use on a) his father’s death, b) booze, and c) his grandparents’ gambling habit.

I can’t say I can look back and say this is why drugs became an outlet, (but) when I review the period when they (were) a problem for me (it was) the period that followed the passing of my dad…

But he said alcohol played a factor as a trigger drug…

But both his grandfathers were gamblers and he wonders if that played any genetic part in his substance abuse.

You can’t make this stuff up. And what is his boss’ reaction to Smitherman’s fobbing off responsibility for his illegal actions?:

“McGuinty said he couldn’t be more proud of Smitherman for owning up to his addiction.”

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