David Matas’ letter, posted in its entirety below, gives such free play to misdirection, tautology and double-standard that one hardly knows where to begin picking it apart. But let’s start at the heart of his argument, which is that since the staff of the organization had “no dispute over policy” with the board, the staff has no right to disagree with the board over anything.
First, some first principles. When one talks about “Rights and Democracy,” one is discussing three entities. There is the government, the board, and the staff. The government appoints the board; the board selects a president (UPDATE, Sunday: I got that wrong. Sorry. The government also appoints the president directly, as it did with Beauregard) who sits on the board and, through him, has influence on hiring and firing, though the staff has union and labour-law protection. Lines of authority move downward. When the staff published a letter calling for the departure of three board members, of course the staff had no power to make that happen. Employees were merely saying, as loudly as they could, what they thought of the bosses. To some extent there are two competing fictions in this dispute. (1) The staff claims a bogus independence from the board because it suddenly really doesn’t like the board. Matas, in an earlier piece, leveled some appropriate critiques at the staff’s claims of independence from the board. I’d argue, on the other hand, that if you had been treated the way this board has treated staff members for most of a year, in accounts that have not been credibly disputed, you’d be trying to claim independence from the board too.
But there’s another fiction. (2) The government asserts an entirely bogus independence of the board from government. Here’s Lawrence Cannon doing it in the day’s other big English-language article on Rights and Democracy, from the Star. When Cannon meets only with the board president, listens only to that man’s (highly contestable) version of events, and then calls the whole thing “an internal matter at an arms-length agency,” he is hiding behind Mommy’s skirts, a familiar posture for this minister.
The board didn’t spring fully-grown from the forehead of Jupiter; it was appointed, name by name, by the government. It’s easy enough to draw the connections. Brad Farquhar ran for the Conservatives. Ian Brodie thanks Marco Navarro-Génie in the acknowledgments of his doctoral thesis. And so on. Any government has a perfect right to name people it likes to boards. But that makes it all the more rich when the government suddenly proclaims that it has nothing to do with a dispute involving the board. In fact, I do believe Ian Brodie’s thesis had something to say about such things.
But onward. Here’s the nub of Matas’s argument:
It is most unusual for the staff of any organization to ask its leadership, those responsible for conduct and management of its affairs, to resign, and to justify that request by asserting independence. What to the staff seemed to be harassment by the Board leadership may have been no more than Board resistance to rejection by staff of accountability to the Board.
Whatever the subject matter of this dispute, one thing was clear. There was no dispute over policy. The editorial to which [R&D communications director] Charles Vallerand responded indicated that the dispute between the Board and staff was over policy. Vallerand wrote: “this is not the problem”.
A dispute over the role of a board arrives in a context. Where there is agreement in substance, there is no foundation for a debate over process. Debates about process flare up in the context of disagreements over substance.
Got it? (1) What looked like harassment “may have been” only the Board’s “resistance” to the staff’s “rejection… of accountability.” (2) But whatever. There was “no dispute over policy.” (3) Therefore “there is no foundation for a debate over process.” In other words, since everyone (now) agrees that Al Haq was a poor recipient of Rights and Democracy money — or at least, since Rémy Beauregard was cowed at the end of the last and worst eight months of his life into saying he wouldn’t make such a donation again — there is no disagreement between board and staff. Any debate is merely about process, and “there is no foundation for a debate over process.”
If this argument actually meant anything, it would go both ways. The staff would have no right to claim harassment. (Incidentally, here’s what “to the staff seems to be harassment by the Board leadership” these days. Three staff members are suspended with pay while a private detective investigates their work equipment and their activities. Several employees were questioned eight days ago at the Rights and Democracy office by the interim president in the presence of this detective, Claude Sarrazin, without Sarrazin’s profession or the reason for his presence being explained to them. They had to look the guy up on later, after the meeting was over, on LinkedIn. No staff member may now speak to me about any of this on penalty of dismissal. Aurel Braun goes on TV and spews all sorts of accusations right and left; to rebut him, staff members would have to seek his written permission. At this point, students of irony will want to remind themselves that the name of the place is “Rights and Democracy.”) None of this would matter; since the Al Haq thing is supposedly settled, there is no right to claim harassment.
But by the same token, the board would have no right to claim that the staff is rejecting accountability. Here, too, there would be “no foundation for a debate over process.” It’s worth pointing out here that the new board majority has systematically failed to demonstrate any case of the current staff “rejecting accountability” since 2008. They pop up here and there, portraying their dispute with the staff as a fight over accountability, but they can never show anybody fighting back. Meanwhile, DFAIT carried out a five-year review of Rights and Democracy in mid-2008 and found it tickety-boo. Rémy Beauregard showed up at the Commons foreign-affairs committee to offer more accountability; Farquhar and Elliott Tepper, who today sign op-eds calling the guy an opponent of accountability, sat in the room and watched him testify. That’s… bold.
But no matter. David Matas has now discovered a doctrine whereby, since Beauregard finally decided he wouldn’t do the Al-Haq thing if he had a do-over, the staff now has nothing to complain about. That the board gets to complain unfettered and unrebutted by either the staff or the government, well, that’s just a bonus.
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Speaking of "rights", let's take a look at the French Revolution's "The Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789", article 6 in particular, where the concept of equality is elucidated and elaborated upon:
"The law "must be the same for all, whether it protects or punishes. All citizens, being equal in its eyes,shall be equally eligible to all high offices, public positions and employments, according to their ability, and without other distinction than that of their virtues and talents."
Well we see that was a big lie, now every non-white non-male is demanding job quotas, with some women right in this thread *complaining* that R&D, ironically a group set up to safeguard rights, hires and appoints based on merit and competence, rather than by using discriminatory quotas. Human Rights VIOLATING quotas.
How is this comment on topic? Neither rights nor democracy are unambiguous goods, they are often "code words" or "balaclavas" used as a fake out to justify more nefarious actions. We need to stop scolding the world and imposing our largely untried and I would argue unjust values upon the rest of the world. We need to stop funding groups like R&D.
This ain't France.
You're right Holly…this isn't France.
They have a lot more riots, strikes, and Car-BQ's than we do.
Give us time though…..it will start in Montreal when it gets here.
And I bet you can't wait!
Actually only one poster mentioned democracy meaning equal numbers of women on the board, It wasn't on topic and thecomment was ignored by everyone but you, Why have you used it to launch another off-topic rant?
Because that's what he does. This guy is to the left of Marx, posing as a right wing nutbar to lure others of that ilk…or maybe to draw outrage for its entertainment value.
He is, bar none, the greatest troll we have ever seen. He's explosively creative, in the big things as in the little things. Do you remember the one where he claimed to be less racist than I am because he had made a Grand Tour of South American brothels? Genius!
Truly a classic.
I think you are misrecalling the event where I quoted both Simon Bolivar and article 37 of the Cuban constitution affirming the family as the fundamental unit of society to denounce your advocacy of a mandatory fisting curriculum for kindergarteners; nevertheless, let's try another tack: a tad cryptoneoimperialist and insuffciently celebratory of diversity, is it not, for us to scold the rest of the world on our interpretation of "rights" and demands for democracy – which has arguably made life worse for Afghanis and Iraqis, to name two recent examples – when there would appear to be no shortage of flies on us, as Trudeau might've put it?
Alternatively: fiddy six billion dollar deficit, guy, and if R&D doesn't strike you as an obvious candidate for the axe then you are complicit, in fact, in engaging in a crime against humanity by violating the enumerated and UN recognized human right to intergenerational equity that the next generation is entitled to and being deprived of due to malicious and willful deficit spending caused by the selfish special interest groups, which is to say Socialist-Separatist coalition supporters like you.
So we see how your support of R&D in particular and tax and spend socialism in general constitute crimes against humanity and violate UN enumerated and recognized human rights in and of themselves.
"I'm curious about this: was it intentional, or pure ham handedness that led Mr. Braun and company to be so clumsy as to blow this matter into a now long legged national news story?"
No he's not. He's a Reformer. That angry rant laced with vitriol is unmistakable.
That angry rant laced with vitriol is unmistakable.
Merely demonstrates the depth of his artistry.
B'Tselem, the Israel-based human rights group labeled "toxic" and "Israeli in name only" by the Chair of Rights and Democracy, Aurel Braun, has issued a stiffly-worded press release calling for an end to his on-going slander of the organization.
Are the two Board evaluations of Beauregard and R&D publicly available? The first version was successfully ATIPed so it makes sense both would be publishable. Has someone got a link to them?
I know the request has been made. Nothing has been released so far.
Thank you, Paul for drawing attention to this issue and to keep digging at it. It has significance well beyond what is obvious ar first blush.
Of course the staff has rejected accountability. They wrote a newspaper article trashing the board.
If the staff had not rejected accountability, then where's the issue? None of this makes any sense.
The issue is not the staff fighting over board policy. The issue is the staff objecting to the treatment afforded Rémy Beauregard, who was hounded to death. He was an individual who enjoyed an impeccable reputation as a public servant until certain individuals went after him and continue to do so after his death by denigrating his reputation. Unfortunately, the causes of his death get lost in all of this talk about mid-East politics.
If there was a crime committed, the staff should call the police. Otherwise, they need to shut up and do their jobs properly.
Harper appointed a bunch of religious fanatics to the board and they] harrassed the man until he died. Prolonged stress can cause heart attacks. Did they expect it to happen? Probably not. Are they responsible for his death? Probably partly.
Like I said before, they do not have the right to "object" to their bosses' decisions. It's called "work". That's how it works.
Evidently you've never been a boss…at least, not an effective one.
Welcome to a new 'theology' (daddy knows best) of business practice. Elsewhere it's called fascism.
Ed Broadbent isn't the one wielding a wedge, it's Aurel Braun and his right wing wrecking crew who tried to assasinate someone's character with a secret evaluation as part of other efforts to make the organization accountable to annexation nuts in Israel instead of Canadians.
Some think this is a story about Conservative ideology. What does that even mean when you have a government that doesn't lift a finger unless it can calculate the payoff? No, in the end, this is a story about special interests gone wild and a desperate party greedily trying to cling onto a voting block that may have proved less solid than first thought.
ooops, I meant "special aide." Sorry!
As for the detective, that makes perfect sense. There was a break-in with computer equipment stolen, and it's highly likely it was an inside job, with someone leaving the fire escape door unlocked from the outside, or something along those lines. So there's a high probability that a staff member was involved and it's not surprising they are trying to find out what happened.
In that case these interrogations were underhanded and illegal.
Yeah, I have to say, hiring a private detective to investigate a robbery at your workplace just seems extremely weird to me. I can't for the life of me see my employers hiring a private detective agency to investigate a break-in at my office, even if they suspected it was an "inside job". Hell, ESPECIALLY if they considered it an inside job. And on top of that, to bring me in and ask me questions in front of their private detective without telling me who he was or why he was in the room with us??? What the Hell!?!?!
Also, why do you say that it's "highly likely it was an inside job, with someone leaving the fire escape door unlocked from the outside, or something along those lines" given the apparent evidence that the front door was jimmied with a screwdriver? And again, if the suspicion is that it's an inside job, isn't that even more reason to leave the investigating to the police, rather than hiring a private agency to come in an investigate your employees privately on your behalf?
The private detective may make "perfect sense" to you, but it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever to me. To me, it's one of the absolutely strangest parts of this very strange story.
It may be another attempt to intimidate the staff – god these guys are odious.
My first thought, to be honest, was that the private investigator stole the laptops.
The staff have a pretty good alibi, being at the funeral and all. What about the Board members? Are they being investigated
… Aaand I just figured out what post you were referring to, my mistake. Posting that link was definitely helping the discussion – my apologies. I get so inflamed when I see the NGO Monitor that sometimes I can't see strait.
ahem *straight*
I loved him in White Christmas.
I'm dreaming of a wet liberalism
The kind that Whiggery adores
Yes, I'll go bananas
And sing hosannahs
In praise of property on all fours.
I'm dreaming of a wet liberalism
With every sip of port I take
Here at All Souls College the cake
Is so rich that none remain awake.
Irving Berlin's first name was Israel at birth. Is that how this fits into the thread topic?
I'm thinking that Topo something is loving the attention. Why give it to him?
Topo Gigio?
This "deep thinker" is referring to Sir Isaiah Berlin, I believe.
I suppose it's useless to point out that Berlin was, as philosophers must, exploring the alternates and extremes of philosophical concepts being considered … and that it is quite ironic that this criticism is most useful in countering neoconservative ethics, rooted in Strauss (Leo, not Richard) … Oh hell, why bother…
Yes it is Isaiah and Tony is correct that he was a mentor of Iggy. In fact, Iggy wrote a tome of a biography of Berlin.
Hey MacLeans … how about an expose on Leo Strauss, his philosophy, the connections with "The Calgary School" and his legacy in the form of PNAC, Bush/Cheney and now the Harper Regime.
If it's not on teevee it doesn't matter and stories revealing intellectual paternity and linkages don't make good teevee.
I love how Aurel Braun's German accent adds just the right texture to this theme of Gleichschaltung.
See, this is what I love about this dispute: on one side you've got The Lobby, who haven't lost a battle since like 70 AD. On the other side you've got Canadian leftists, who haven't lost a battle since 1867.
Both sides favour phosphorous-tipped fake claims of racism as their weapon of choice to burn their opponents , both sides completely unaccustomed to the other side responding in kind, neither side in the past having ever being held responsible for any of their actions or words, so effectively they deploy the parry of fake racism claims.
Watching the two sides go at it, to borrow from Plato's allegory of the cave, it's like two men who have spent their lives in a cave shadowboxing finally confronting for the first time an opponent featuring actual arms and fists that throws actual punches. They're both shocked that their one-two combo doesn't work so well against a similarly armed opponent.
Fascinating stuff.
Meth: It's a helluva drug.
You should stick to cutting and pasting lengthy quotes.
There is a fundamental mistake that the author makes in the beginning of this post. He obviously is not aware that the agency operates under the arm-length principal. I am sure someone in this magazine can explain this better than me, but essentially the government duties here are limited to hiring, firing and defining policies. The author wrongfully believes that the government can get involved into the day to day operation of this body. This misconception goes through the entire article. Let the board and its President to address what is essentially an internal problem. The government is correct by not intervening.
Yes, this stands up well until the Minister of Foreign Affairs meets with the President of the Board, and only the President of the Board, to get his side of the story, before then hiding behind the "arms length" nature of the institution in order to avoid commenting publicly.
Perhaps the Minister takes "arms length" literally, and insisted that the table that he sat down at with the President for their discussions be at least as wide as the length of his arm.
Which is a devastating critique, until you hear that the Associate Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs met with the staff to hear their concerns…
Which, is actually even MORE of a devastating critique of the "the government can't get involved because this is an "arms length" organization" argument, isn't it?
If the Minister is meeting with people, and alsodispatching Associate Deputy Ministers to meet with other people, doesn't that kinda put the lie to the "the government is correct by not intervening" argument?
Yes, that's also a silly argument, particularly since the Government needs to appoint a new President. Your comment read as if you were suggesting the Government was backing one side of the dispute.
That reads like written constipation.
"since Rémy Beauregard was cowed at the end of the last and worst eight months of his life "
With the backdrop to this whole debate being framed as ' Mr Braun was responsible for the death of Mr Beauregard', neutrality is not an option. I posit that had Mr Beauregard died in a traffic accident, we would have begun this discussion at an entirely different place, if we had begun it at all. As it stands now, even if facts do come to light that justify the Board's actions/conduct, they will still be considered the Bastards in the court of public opinion.
"I posit that had Mr Beauregard died in a traffic accident, we would have begun this discussion at an entirely different place, if we had begun it at all."
Yeah, but he didn't die in a traffic accident, did he? He died a few hours after a particularly difficult board meeting.
This is a good analysis, Paul. I was an evaluator on the earlier evaluation and the evaluation team carried out a very thorough assessement. R & D has maintained a set of policies and practices that have been maintained for some years. This approach was approved by government and R & D has been praised by MPs in various committee meetings. Now the Harpere government has appointed an extremely narrowly focused Board( two members of Bnai Brith!) and so there is little balance. How can anyone see this as a healthy situation unless you are committed to only the pro-Israeli position in all cases. This stacking of the Board makes a mockery of the long standing tradtion of appointing a balanced Board.
Who will be next-IDRC?
What was R&D's policy on informing the board (or the public) about individual grants? It seems the disputed grants were below R&D's public reporting threshold, but do you know by how much? Is ther a policy of seeking guidance from DFAIT on controversial grants, but not the board? That seems to be one of the staff's defenses for these grants and it's very difficult to understand. And given that the Conservatives have gone out of their way to advertise how much more pro-Israel they are than other parties (and the Liberals' only defense was to accuse the Conservatives of accusing them of anti-semitism), I don't think we can expect politics to restore balance to this board…
I don't remember now what the threshold is where proposed grants have to receive Board approval. Many organizations have set a limit of $50,000 beyond which proposed grants need to be taken to the Board. Clearly these three small grants of $10,000 each would have been below the threshold for Board approval.
In principle, R&D should not go to DFAT to get guidance but they may have decided to see if DFAIT had any negative evidence about the quality of these organizations. This might then have started out only asking for any info DFAIT had. It would not be surprising that DFAIT would give them a positive rating-CIDA has funded them a number of times in the past and Al Haq is an award winning organization.
I agree with you that it seems unlikely that the Conservative government will bend although they must be dismayed at the generally negative reaction this stacking of the Board brought about. Hence Lawrence Cannon's attempt to distance himself from this. By the way, Ignatieff did say that he knew B’Tselem was a quality organization from his own experience.
Thanks. The explanation for talking to DFAIT gives the impression this was the first time R&D funded these groups. Do you know if that's true?
The only reference I can find to Ignatieff speaking about B'Tselem is in the context of the Qana bombings. Has he spoken about it since then? It also seems the work funded by R&D is drawn on several times in the Goldstone report. Have the Liberals made any statements on that report? I may have missed it, but the UN reaction to Operation Cast Lead doesn't seem to have gotten much coverage in Canada.
I don't see any evidence of Canada outsourcing or ending its international work. Our aid and diplomacy budgets continue to grow.
This guy seems to dispute that the Conservatives have been silent about their stance on Israel: \\http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/11/27/liberals-play-...
You new? Seriously.
The Conservative government has cut off funds to a variety of groups. Mainly active in the Middle East. For example, they cut off the UN agency which deals with Palestinian refugees because they claimed it lacked accountability. There are many others. Do your own Googling.
I wrote ‘out-sourced’ primarily because Harper is installing neo-conservative right-wing attack dogs in positions where they can shape government policy. We are getting a foreign policy designed by groups like NGO Monitor. Not a foreign policy designed from concepts rooted in Canada’s national interest.
Harper is making small little changes to the way government operates, in ways very few notice. This has always been the overall point, the importance, of this story.
Harper should man up and defend these changes. Stop playing the victim.
You made the claim – I countered with a verifiable fact. You gave a single example of a defunded organization. And now you'll mention Kairos. I don't think my googling habits are the issue.
Harper is actively advertising the changes he's making on Middle East/Israel policy in ways that have been the subject of national news stories. Sadly, we have to wait for the Liberals to contradict him before the media can say there's a debate – and the Liberals won't do that on the substance here. And the media can't report this as a debate between the New Democrats and the other two, I think that's in the Constitution…
Wsam wrote:
"The Conservative government has cut off funds to a variety of groups. Mainly active in the Middle East. "
That's right wsam, they cut off funding to groups who's activities in the Middle East resulted in terrorist attacks against the only civilized country in the region, that being Israel.
The "variety of groups" you speak of include supporters / members of :
Hamas
Hezbollah,
for example.
Are you saying you are opposed to funding cuts to terrorist groups and their supporters?
Maybe it's my advanced age, but I'm starting to grow weary of the internet-enabling "here's every little bit of info as I work this story" approach to journalism. Mr. Wells, this story is important, but I don't think it's being served with the little postings every day, or every other day, of small bits of info. I hope the information packed into these posts will be contectualized in your larger column (as it was last week).
Cheerio.
For you, Kaplan, anything. Stay tuned.
Incidentally, you haven't seen all the stuff I haven't bothered to post on this. That'd have been really annoying.
actually many of us obviously thrive on these regular feedings … and the ensuing discussions are sometimes ..errr interesting and civil ?
It's not annoying. I just enjoy a writer's ability to contextualize this stuff, which you're rather quite good at. Your larger pieces in the magazine, I suspect, carry more weight and have more impact than the daily posts and updates.
I prefer the upates. Raw data. Rumour. Innuendo. Gossipy slang. Dirty Lymricks. That kind of thing.
It's my youth.
Context is for suckers.
Style wins the debate against wsam. I'll add that CIDA funding for the UN agency which deals with Palestinian refugees was redirected toward direct food aid for Palestinian refugees, which is even more helpful and less prone to misuse and abuse.
You seem to side with the Harper gov't on most issues that goes beyond my comfort level. And you are the most prodigious commenter here on Macleans.
A simple yes/no q: Are you getting compensated to comment here?
No. I've already answered this question from you several times before, Dot, so go f*ck yourself. I'm done with humouring you.
I'm not even a member of the Conservative party. If I often side with Canada's Conservative government, it's probably because I'm a small-c conservative. At times I've also been quite critical of Harper, various ministers, and the Conservative Party, and I can point you to the relevant comments if you like.
There's not a single politician or Conservative of any kind who knows who I am, although I'm sure some would like to. Aside from Maclean's staff, the only person who knows my real identity is Jack Mitchell.
I think it's a question of hierarchy and tact (shocking, I know). An Associate Deputy Minister is the highest civil servant within a department (essentially co-equal with the DM (and Len Edwards is most likely on his way out)).
I think it's a question of hierarchy and tact (shocking, I know). An Associate Deputy Minister is the highest civil servant within a department (essentially co-equal with the DM (and Len Edwards is most likely on his way out)).
Yes, but the ADM (even being co-equal with the DM) still isn't the M.
It's like if you held an Olympics and your largest trading partner sent Joe Biden and Janet Napolitano to pay their country's respects instead of Barack Obama and ANYONE WHO'S NOT JANET NAPOLITANO.
Well, you certainly impress with your depth of knowledge on most issues.
Le Droit has done its homework and carries a very different story than the english Canadian press. They analyze the background and links of Aurel Braun with right wing Zionist groups. See http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/canada/282338/o...
The International Federation for Human Rights, which groups 150 human rights organizations around the world,has condemned the new Board regime, saying that Al-Haq and B’Tselem, the Israeli human rights organization are members of FIDH and FIDH vouches for their professionalism. See http://www.fidh.org/Preoccupying-infringements-on...
That was beautiful.
What you need is a rights group to take up your cause.
For 3 years, in which they ran a cumulative $20 billion surplus, Harper's Conservatives were that rights group, and their most recent election platform was wonderfully fiscally conservative.
Then the coalition parties panicked and demanded a multibillion dollar spaz out or they'd form a government, which is to say Harper didn't want to fiscally spaz and only did so at the demand of the socialist coalition and on pain of handing the keys over to a coalition led by a Marxist (Dion), another Marxist (Duceppe), and Jack Layton.
So we see how Harper's Conservative regime was, until the Marxist/Separatist coalition's hijacking and looting of the treasury, a "golden age" of human rights in Canada, one where we were actually leaving Canada in better shape to the next generation than we found it.
Harper didn't want to fiscally spaz and only did so at the demand of the socialist coalition and on pain of handing the keys over to a coalition led by a Marxist (Dion), another Marxist (Duceppe), and Jack Layton.
I agree with Jack… beautiful artistry. Greatest troll ever!
However, it might be more accurate to characterize Dion and Duceppe as former Marxists, since Duceppe stopped being a Marxist in the Eighties and Dion stopped being a Marxist in the Seventies. You are correct that of the three men, Layton was the only one who was never a Marxist.
Yeah wouldn't it be dandy if we'd had those surpluses Jumbo Jim promised, they'd come in handy right now. But as they were drawn from the same bottomless well off fictional delusion as the majority of your posts, we'll neve get to find out what might've been.
You're getting funnier by the post. It's good to have a comedic break during a serious discussion.Harper – Golden Age – putting those together – hilarious.
Thanks, I've been working on my chops over at the G&M comment section, the deficit as human rights violation bit focus grouped well over there, so I went with it.
Being one of like twelve remaining Canadians who don't currently have their hand in your pocket and don't aspire to, however, I must insist on a better label than troll: I am, ultimately, by virtue of being a fiscal and therefore social conservative, a human rights advocate, Q.E.D.
Neither Dion nor Duceppe has ever publicly rescinded their support of Marxism, and their social agenda would've made Marx and Trotsky balk, so notwithstanding their apparent acceptance of limited free markets, I stand by my claim that they are both Marxists.
You'll recall of course that the Communist Manifesto featured demands like a steeply progressive tax rate and free education for all which would seem rather tame compared to the programs of today's social democratic parties; even the juvenile, petulant "free love" contained therein was tame compared to the freaking clown show that is the state of relationships and the family today.
I mean, if you had mentioned women's health to either Marx or Trotsky the first thing out of their mouths would've been "clinics" or "education", rather than "AstroCreep" Iggy and his curious and frankly perverse knee jerk health-abortion word association, just to name one example of how today's illiberal Liberal is creepier than even the creepiest and most hardcore proto-Marxists.
I've been working on my chops over at the G&M comment section
You don't say.
Encore, encore!
Well, I admit that was also part of my point (and I'm not sure it's invalidated by the Minister going to talk to one side, and an Associate Deputy Minister going to talk to the other, but I hadn't heard of the later before your comment.
However, the "taking sides" part of my argument was actually peripheral to my larger critique of Gary's "the government is correct by not intervening". I mean, even if one believes that the government would be correct to not intervene, they HAVE intervened.