Mitchel Raphael on politicians and drugs, plus the metalhead MP
By Mitchel Raphael - Thursday, December 9, 2010 - 7 Comments
A Tory’s take on the drug war
NDP MP Libby Davies spearheaded, and MPs from all parties co-hosted, what was billed as an Expert Panel on Drug Policy Reform. All panellists agreed the war on drugs has been a huge disaster and a waste of money. Portuguese Ambassador Pedro Moitinho de Almeida spoke of his country’s success with decriminalizing drugs. Conservative MP and host Scott Reid noted that Prohibition killed his great-grandfather, who drank alcohol that was distilled improperly. Reid also remarked on the similar effects cocaine and caffeine have on the brain, yet with caffeine we “developed commercial products, regulations and a free environment.” Reid confessed he’s never taken illegal drugs or even smoked tobacco. (He does, however, host an annual beer tasting party, one of the most popular events on the Hill.) He declared he was “perplexed” by “hypocrites who used cocaine themselves, like Barack Obama, and then [allow] someone else to go to prison for life” for doing the same thing. Reid’s guest Pierre Lemieux, an economist with the Université du Québec en Outaouais, stressed that casualties of the drug war include civil liberties: the state now has licence to invade citizens’ privacy. This, Lemieux said in his speech, is inconsistent with a free society. He added that as governments continue to go bankrupt, the time may be ripe to end the wasteful war on drugs. This meeting took place as the Conservatives push on with Bill S-10, which toughens drug sentencing rules.
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Where the responsibility belongs
By Aaron Wherry - Thursday, November 25, 2010 at 1:18 PM - 52 Comments
The House is debating today the Bloc motion on Afghanistan. In his remarks this morning, the NDP’s Jack Harris recalled a private member’s bill that would have subjected all peacekeeping missions to debate and a vote in the House. The mover of that bill was Chuck Strahl, the current Minister of Transport.
Bill C-295 is a good idea, worthy of all party support because it would not cut off or even reduce Canada’s peacekeeping role in the world. Rather, it would affirm and institutionalize the role of peacekeeping in Canada’s foreign policy and strengthen Canada’s place as a leader among the United Nations.
Neither would it reduce the power of the government to make decisions about the deployment of Canadian troops. The bill deals strictly with peacekeeping and allows cabinet full authority to act on a temporary basis. However, it also places the responsibility for our long term commitments squarely where it belongs, in the capable hands of the Canadian people through their members in the House of Commons.
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Norman Bethune vs. Lester B. Pearson
By macleans.ca - Thursday, September 16, 2010 at 10:05 AM - 0 Comments
A battlefield doctor goes head to head with a peacekeeper
Norman Bethune
Why he’s famous: Bethune revolutionized battlefield medicine.
Why he deserves to win: During the Spanish Civil War in 1936, Bethune invented a mobile blood transfusion service which could collect blood from donors and deliver it wherever it was needed. His “mobile blood bank” is considered the greatest medical innovation from the war. Later, Bethune would take his battlefield medicine expertise to China, where he became the Red Army’s Medical Chief and taught his techniques to new doctors and nurses. Think of Bethune as the Canadian Florence Nightingale.
Lester B. Pearson
Why he’s famous: Putting the peacekeeping bug in the UN’s ear, though the blue helmets were somebody else’s idea.
Why he deserves to win: Pearson was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 1957 for his role in establishing an international police force aimed at quelling lingering tensions from the previous year’s Suez Crisis. In doing so, Pearson effectively created the concept of peacekeeping, not only transforming the UN’s raison d’être, but also altering Canada’s role on the world stage. The former Canadian prime minister didn’t quite get soldiers to make love, but he showed they were good at making things other than war.
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Canada's most wanted: women
By Cathy Gulli - Tuesday, July 6, 2010 at 2:00 PM - 0 Comments
The pitfalls of gender imbalance among peacekeepers
Getty Images
Scandal buffs may recall that when a UN peacekeeping mission got under way in Cambodia in the early 1990s, the number of brothels suddenly spiked. The new patrons, it turned out, were male troops. Rather than condemn their actions, the head of the mission uncouthly replied: “Boys will be boys.”
That fiasco highlighted just one of the pitfalls of gender imbalance among peacekeepers. Experts began to realize that the presence of female officers can modify male behaviour in a positive way. For instance, when female peacekeepers are present, the number of brothels and even cases of HIV/AIDS declines, says Nicolas Lemay-Hébert, director of peace missions research at the Université du Québec à Montréal. Which helps explain why, nearly 20 years post-Cambodia, the tide has shifted: “People are trying to change the gender balance in UN peacekeeping missions,” says Lemay-Hébert.
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Horror in Haiti
By Michael Petrou in Port-au-Prince with Charlie Gillis, Jonathon Gatehouse and Luiza Ch. Savage - Monday, January 25, 2010 at 9:54 AM - 12 Comments
Maclean’s cover story: after the earthquake, the desperate fight for survival amid the ruins
The earthquake that broke the back of an already ailing nation struck just before 5 p.m., a time when many Haitians were still at work or school. The 7.0-magnitude tremor was centred near Port-au-Prince, Haiti’s capital, and lasted a mere 45 seconds—a temporal eyeblink that will go down as the nadir of the Caribbean country’s long history of misery and chaos. Shantytowns that litter the island’s southwest peninsula went down domino-style. Larger buildings comprised of cinderblock and unreinforced concrete collapsed like wedding cakes, in many cases with a full complement of their day-to-day occupants inside. The ones left standing quickly emptied; survivors scrambled to help those still inside, tugging at the shards of cement with bare hands.Fredson Demostherma, a resident of Léogâne, 30 km west of the capital, Port-au-Prince, jumped to safety from a second-floor window in his house when the ground started to rumble. He turned around and watched the building collapse, trapping seven members of his family inside, including an infant. He paid someone with a sledgehammer to help him dig his family, who survived, out. “Haiti’s future is in the hands of other nations, and God,” Demostherma told Maclean’s. Pierre Cherami, who ran an auto parts business in Gressier, just outside of Port-au-Prince, was in his house with his wife and daughter, who perished. “Their names are Denise and Myrline,” he said. “Myrline wasn’t feeling well and was sleeping. My wife was with her. When the quake hit, I saw the wall begin to topple. I tried to hold it up but couldn’t. I recovered both of their bodies. It will be difficult to rebuild my life. I’ve lost everything.”
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‘Bogus’ peacekeeping?
By Martin Patriquin - Friday, July 17, 2009 at 2:00 PM - 144 Comments
It wasn’t long ago that Michael Ignatieff had harsh words for Canada
Michael Ignatieff, Liberal leader, is lavish in his adoration for the country and the people he wishes to lead. His recently published book, True Patriot Love, which dovetailed with his ascension to the Liberal party leadership, is replete with fuzzy bromides about Canada and its “quietly but intensely patriotic” citizens.Yet Michael Ignatieff, Harvard professor and public intellectual, was once slightly more harsh toward his native land. Following a 2005 lecture at the University of Dublin’s Trinity College, Ignatieff excoriated Canadians for trading on Canada’s “entirely bogus reputation as peacekeepers” for 40 years and for favouring “hospitals and schools and roads” over international citizenship. “If you are a human rights defender and you want something done to stop [a] massacre, you have to go to the Pentagon, because no one else is serious,” Ignatieff said. Continue…
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Shane Anthony Gordon Schofield 1980-2009
By Nancy Macdonald - Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 1:00 PM - 3 Comments
He survived four tours of duty, and looked forward to a job that allowed more time with his family
Shane Anthony Gordon Schofield was born on June 19, 1980, in Halifax, the first of two sons born to Catherine and Charlton, an officer with the Halifax Regional Police. Famous for his wit and wide smile, the big, strong, stay-at-home defenceman grew up in suburban Sackville, with a hockey-filled childhood. Shane joined the military after graduating from Millwood High School, where he earned the loudest applause at convocation. He trained at St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., where his day began at 5:30 a.m. Soon, he’d logged thousands of push-ups, learned to march, salute and fire weapons, and memorized the military’s esoteric finer points: protocol and rank.Shane shipped to Bosnia on his first overseas mission, serving with the Second Battalion Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, based in Shilo, Man. Peacekeeping changed the young private, who came home mature and self-confident. Shortly after, he met Rene Boughton, a dark-haired Winnipegger he would later surprise with a proposal. “We were at my parents, trying to eat, and he was just sweating,” she says. Once home, to the little military-issue house they shared on base, Rene popped upstairs to put on her PJs. Shane, a burly six foot two with big, cherry-red lips, waited for her on one knee at the bottom of the stairs. His best man—and best friend—was a fellow Princess Pat, Paul Davis: another Sackville son who’d signed up at 18 and wed a Winnipegger. With funny, easygoing East Coast personalities, they were a “riot” together, says Paul’s dad, Jim. Soon, each had two kids: Paul girls, Shane boys. In the hospital, Shane cradled Teegan, his firstborn, so gingerly that he was gently chided by the attending nurse: “He’s not an egg,” she said. “You can hold him tighter than that.”
