Monday, March 4, 2019

so, i sent an email to the oiprd directly, bypassing the "co-ordinator" i'd been using.

i'll try to call tomorrow, if i get no response.

for right now, i've found some snapshots of my carleton site that takes me back to mid-2001:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010616043437/http://chat.carleton.ca/~jparent2/

that would have been the summer after first year, and i'm willing to believe there was nothing there before that.

the site gets increasingly complicated for many years...

there was something at crosswinds before that, something at fortune cities and i think something at geocities, as well, going back to i think 1998.

pulling all this down should help me date things a little better.
this is the right way to do this.

https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/03/politics/rand-paul-trump-national-emergency-declaration/index.html
the exemption is not carte blanch to discriminate any way that you want, which is how religious groups often want to interpret it.

"i have religious freedom! i can smite my enemies!"

nope. not at all. quite the opposite - these rules exist primarily to stop people from being oppressed by religion. that's really what a bill of rights is, a way to stop puritanical cromwellianism, and by extension any other kind of fundamentalism. but, we live in the time of orwell, so ideas are often mangled and manipulated into their contradictions, and the neo-liberal concept of "religious freedom" is a prime example of it. thankfully, our judicial branch is still operating, even if our legislative branch is slowly caving in on itself.

a religious exemption in the law has to be very narrowly defined as intended to protect the purpose of an organization. there has to be a deeply persuasive argument that the charter should be suspended. and, it is for that reason that the argument almost always fails....
http://www.thechristianleftblog.org/blog-home/premarital-sex-is-it-a-sin-or-not
this is the specific clause in ontario, which is not bc, but nonetheless:

Special employment  

24. (1) The right under section 5 to equal treatment with respect to employment is not infringed where,

 (a) a religious, philanthropic, educational, fraternal or social institution or organization that is primarily engaged in serving the interests of persons identified by their race, ancestry, place of origin, colour, ethnic origin, creed, sex, age, marital status or disability employs only, or gives preference in employment to, persons similarly identified if the qualification is a reasonable and bona fide qualification because of the nature of the employment;
(b) the discrimination in employment is for reasons of age, sex, record of offences or marital status if the age, sex, record of offences or marital status of the applicant is a reasonable and bona fide qualification because of the nature of the employment;
(c) an individual person refuses to employ another for reasons of any prohibited ground of discrimination in section 5, where the primary duty of the employment is attending to the medical or personal needs of the person or of an ill child or an aged, infirm or ill spouse or other relative of the person;
(d) an employer grants or withholds employment or advancement in employment to a person who is the spouse, child or parent of the employer or an employee;
(e) a judge or master is required to retire or cease to continue in office on reaching a specified age under the Courts of Justice Act;
(f) a case management master is required to retire on reaching a specified age under the Courts of Justice Act;
(g) the term of reappointment of a case management master expires on the case management master reaching a specified age under the Courts of Justice Act; or
(h) a justice of the peace is required to retire on reaching a specified age under the Justices of the Peace Act. R.S.O. 1990, c. H.19, s. 24 (1); 1999, c. 6, s. 28 (11); 2001, c. 32, s. 27 (5); 2005, c. 5, s. 32 (14); 2005, c. 29, s. 1 (2).

....and it is easy enough to see that a commission or judge would rule pretty easily that an individual's personal sex life has nothing to do with the nature of the employment.

an example of a situation where this clause would apply would be in telling a jew he can't teach at a christian school, because he doesn't believe in the resurrection of christ.

who you fuck, and how often, doesn't have any kind of causal connection on your ability to work in a library, or whether you identify as a member of a faith or not. it's just flat out discrimination - plain and simple.
this article is terribly written, though.

you have to remember that canada's constitution came into force in 1982, so there were no charter rights before then. the charter is retroactive, but it took a while to kick in. citing a 1984 case as precedent is consequently exceedingly bad form. what your supposed to do in a situation like this is point out that the issue "hasn't been tested in the charter era".

that said, i'm not sure that it hasn't been, and i disagree with the opinion provided by the commission. this would be more along the lines of an issue that has minimal amounts of case law around it due to it being so exceedingly rare, but we're also talking about a broad mindset, here, and the idea of religious exemption has generally not stood up to courts in canada, when challenged. i can't know what they were thinking from such a great distance, but it sounds like the commission didn't want to open a can of worms. my own legal opinion would be that any legislation that provides for a religious exemption of this sort would be ruled unconstitutional, if tested - and that's an issue that civil liberties unions should really be trying to pick up on, if there are laws in existence with language of that explicit nature. it's nice to see that alberta is addressing the issue, at least.

i'd suggest actually reading the article on the buterman case, which i've read about before. the offered settlement was an appropriate remedy, if maybe a little low. i'd think something like five years of salary is more appropriate than $80,000, which is probably in the 1-2 year range. but, the applicant didn't bring the case to commission, and it was ruled as abandoned. so, to suggest that the case was lost is both disingenuous and wrong, and the settlement itself is reason to think that the lawyers involved assumed there was reason to think he'd have won.

the trinity case is a better example of a ruling in the charter era in canada, and should be consulted as existing precedent for similar issues, not the pre-modern 1984 case.

i would encourage ms. kraats to file.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christian-school-forces-resignation-over-community-standards-policy-1.5035804
yeah, that's absurd.

i don't think you can rehire her, but you can write her a large check, and cut off funding to the board.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/christian-school-forces-resignation-over-community-standards-policy-1.5035804
if we're seriously talking about this, there is a tradition in the liberal party to alternate between francophone and anglophone leaders, but it hasn't been a very successful strategy since the 80s. since pearson, you've got:

- trudeau (francophone). pm, from...i think it was 68-84....
- john turner (anglophone). lost badly to the francophone mulroney. twice.
- chretien (francophone). pm from 1993-2003.
- paul martin (anglophone). pm from 2003-2006, then lost to harper, partly due to declining support in quebec.
- stephane dion (francophone). dion was badly smeared for his poor english language skills, but was competitive in 2008, holding harper to a minority.
- ignatieff (anglophone). he was completely annihilated in 2011, even losing to the ndp in quebec. this was the worst showing in the liberal party's history,
- trudeau (francophone). pm, 2015-?.

the tory media will no doubt recoil at the thought, as will certain aspects of the liberal party establishment, but i think that dion would have bettered his 2008 results if he were still at the helm in 2011. i think there's little question that he would have held off the dreaded harper majority, at least.

the liberals are consequently in somewhat of a tough spot, in terms of picking a successor. they're supposed to pick an anglophone - but it's an easy prediction to make that, if they do, they'll end up in opposition.

it would probably be a better idea to let an older politician like goodale or bennett take over as an interim leader, and then run a convention.

freeland is toxic. & mckenna is no doubt in trouble in her own riding.

but, a caucus revolt is also defined by it's leaders. we haven't seen any fracture points erupt in public, so it's hard to tell what's going on.

i mentioned a while back that it wasn't clear to me if we were witnessing a revolt by the chretien faction (the old party, which was borderline social democratic) or the continued primacy of what should now be called the ignatieff faction (the neo-liberal branch, of which freeland seems to currently be the face of). i'm still not sure what the truth of it is, but if there are divisions happening, they will present themselves in time.

https://www.thestar.com/business/opinion/2019/03/03/who-will-lead-if-the-liberals-toss-trudeau.html
if he tried something like this nowadays, he'd get doxxed.