A confused judicial treatise on polygamy

By Emmett Macfarlane - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 8:57 PM - 0 Comments

Today’s decision by the British Columbia Supreme Court upholding the constitutionality of Canada’s anti-polygamy law serves as a quintessential example of the difficulties inherent in having courts resolve fundamentally moral issues implicated by the Charter of Rights.

Justice Robert Bauman’s judgment is an exhausting and comprehensive display of philosophy, social scientific inquiry, history, religious and cultural studies. It serves to demonstrate, yet again, that judges are experts in law and tend not to be very good at any of these other things.

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B.C. judge upholds polygamy ban

By macleans.ca - Wednesday, November 23, 2011 at 2:51 PM - 0 Comments

The B.C. Supreme Court has ruled to uphold Canada’s polygamy laws, adding that minors in polygamous marriages shouldn’t face prosecution as a result of this law, the CBC reports. Chief Justice Robert Bauman ruled in favour of a section of the Criminal Code barring polygamous unions after 42 days of legal arguments on the constitutionality of this section of the code. B.C. Attorney General Shirley Bond called it a “landmark” ruling, but opponents said it went against freedom of religion and freedom of association guaranteed in the charter.

CBC

On polygamy, child brides and why the stakes in B.C. are so high

By Luiza Ch. Savage - Wednesday, March 30, 2011 at 12:00 PM - 20 Comments

Carolyn Jessop, 43, was born in the U.S. into a radical polygamist cult, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints (FLDS). At 18, she became the fourth wife of a 50-year-old man and bore eight children. She recounts the abuses she endured and her harrowing flight in a book, Escape. She recently testified before the Supreme Court of British Columbia, which is considering whether polygamy laws violate religious freedom under the Charter and whether they can be used to prosecute FLDS leaders in Bountiful, B.C.

Q: Critics of anti-polygamy laws say that the state should not interfere with the religious beliefs or lifestyle decisions of consenting adults. Do you agree?
A: This is not about consenting adults. My position is it is sexual slavery. I was never asked. I was told what I was going to do. My husband Merril never asked me to marry him. The purpose of marriage is not to fall in love but to provide righteous children. They say it’s a victimless crime. I have not seen a polygamous situation that is not abusive to someone in the relationship.

Q: Ironically, you describe your husband, who had more than a dozen wives and 54 children, as emotionally monogamous.
A: If a man gets many wives, he’ll find one he has chemistry with. Once they fall in love, things get difficult for the other women. If he’s not having sex with you, your status in the family goes down. When he shuts you out, they know you are just a prime target for whatever abuse they want to throw at you because he won’t protect you or your kids.

Q: Did you witness child abuse?
A: Systematic abuse. There is a lot of violence toward kids. Merril did a lot of water torture on his babies.

Q: What is water torture?
A: The concept is that you have to break a child’s will before the age of 2. If you don’t, you’ll never be able to control them at the level that their salvation depends on. A baby may be crying because it is hungry. They would take the baby and spank it to really get it going. Then they hold the baby face-up under cold running water for 30 seconds, and as soon as it gets its breath and starts crying, they’d spank it again. A session like that could last an hour until the baby quits fighting from fatigue. That can happen frequently until the parent feels the baby is sufficiently broken.

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This week: Newsmakers

By macleans.ca - Monday, March 14, 2011 at 10:06 AM - 0 Comments

Dancing all the way to freedom

Following in the delicate footsteps of the great Mikhail Baryshnikov, who slipped away from his Soviet handlers during a ballet performance in Toronto in 1974, five Cuban ballet dancers appear to have defected to Canada following a performance in Montreal last month. Four are taking classes in Toronto with the National Ballet of Canada, while the fifth is in Montreal. Elier Bourzac, one of the lead performers of the National Ballet of Cuba, told the Montreal Gazette his reasons for leaving his troupe had more to do with artistic freedoms than escaping a Communist regime. It’s the same reason, virtually word-for-word, that Baryshnikov gave during his first post-defection interview at the height of the Cold War.

Leo Mason/Corbis

Time to pay le piper

For more than 20 years, former French president Jacques Chirac avoided prosecution for misusing public funds in order to fuel his rising political star. Between 1977 and 1995, while mayor of Paris, investigators say, the 78-year-old misused city money, having 28 phantom jobs on the payroll at city hall. Protected by presidential immunity until the end of his second term in 2007, he will now be tried in the courtroom in which Marie-Antoinette was sent to the guillotine. If he’s found guilty, his sentence would be lighter: a fine, up to 10 years in prison, or a 10-year ban on holding office. For now, the trial is delayed by three months, following an objection from the defence.

A blow for reform in Pakistan

News that Shahbaz Bhatti, Pakistan’s only Christian cabinet minister, had been assassinated on March 2 hit Jason Kenney hard. On a visit to Ottawa in February, Bhatti had told the Canadian immigration minister he expected to be killed for advocating changes to Pakistan’s harsh blasphemy laws, which are used as a pretext to persecute religious minorities. Kenney told Maclean’s Bhatti even asked Canada to help his family when he was dead. In a strange twist, while Kenney was in Pakistan to attend Bhatti’s memorial service, his staff broke parliamentary rules by issuing a partisan fundraising letter on his ministerial letterhead—resulting in calls for Kenney’s resignation.

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Bountiful women defend polygamy

By macleans.ca - Thursday, January 27, 2011 at 3:30 PM - 25 Comments

In a case to determine whether Canada’s polygamy laws are constitutional, several women from the fundamentalist Mormon community in Bountiful, B.C. testified in the province’s Supreme Court in defence of plural marriage. The women were unidentified and testified via video link and did not show their faces. One woman, 24, described having a dream about her future husband, whom she married at 17, saying, “I felt like my marriage was a revelation from God because it happened to be the same person I had seen in that dream and I accepted that.” Many of the women who appeared in court were in their teens when they married, and had come to Canada from the U.S. on student visas. A 22-year-old unmarried woman testified that she feels she would have a choice of whether or not to marry. The provincial government argues that polygamy encourages human trafficking and subjugates women. The case arose from the prosecution of Bountiful’s leaders, Winston Blackmore and James Oler, in 2009.

CBC News

B.C. polygamy case to hear from women

By macleans.ca - Monday, January 24, 2011 at 12:07 PM - 24 Comments

Women from the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful, B.C. will testify in court on Monday on the constitutionality of Canada’s anti-polygamy law. For the last two months, the B.C. Supreme Court has heard testimony from people who have parted ways with Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) and left Bountiful. They decry the practice of polygamy as physically and emotionally abusive to women and their children. However, women belonging to the fundamentalist Mormon community in Bountiful who are testifying are expected to defend polygamy as an essential component of their faith that has not been forced on them. “Although I know I have the option to say yes or no to the person I am called to the prophet to marry, I believe the prophet is inspired of God on these matters,” wrote a 25 year-old woman known only as witness No. 11 in an affidavit. Police charged Winston Blackmore and James Oler, two FLDS leaders, with polygamy two years ago, but the charges were dropped. Mainstream Mormons renounced polygamy more than a hundred years ago.

CBC News

Why should polygamy be a crime?

By Andrew Coyne - Friday, November 26, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 306 Comments

Joe Sales/CP

I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that I’m against polygamy. I think it’s wrong, and harmful, for all the usual reasons: that it devalues women, impairs the trust on which marriage and family life depends, upsets the sexual balance in society at large, and is broadly incompatible with the egalitarian, individual-based political values of Western civilization.

So when it came to opening statements in the landmark British Columbia Supreme Court reference on the issue, the government lawyer had all the best arguments, in my view. And yet I found myself agreeing with the conclusions of the amicus curiae, the lawyer hired by the court to represent the other side of the case.

The specific question the court is being asked to answer is whether the Criminal Code ban on polygamy is in violation of the Charter of Rights. But at bottom the issue is the role of the criminal law in regulating conduct. If the reference helps to clarify our thinking on that, it will have served a much broader purpose.

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Polygamy ban goes before B.C. court

By macleans.ca - Monday, November 22, 2010 at 1:02 PM - 10 Comments

Canada’s ban on polygamy will come under the scrutiny of the B.C. Supreme Court following the failed prosecution of religious leaders from the Mormon community of Bountiful. B.C.’s attorney general is asking the court to rule on whether a law against polygamy violates religious protections outlined in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and whether all polygamy should be illegal, or just marriages involving minors or exploitation. The B.C. Civil Liberties Association, which is against the ban, and the West Coast Legal Action Fund, which says the current law helps protect vulnerable women and children, are both expected to take part in the trial. Canada would become the first developed country to decriminalize polygamy if the law is struck down.

CBC News

Making their bed

By Ken MacQueen - Wednesday, March 17, 2010 at 9:00 AM - 45 Comments

Photograph by Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press

The British Columbia government’s decision to test the legality of Canada’s 120-year-old polygamy law led to a shocking revelation for Karen and her two male partners. The 37-year-old Winnipeg-area mother, her husband of 15 years and a second male partner concede their arrangement is unconventional. She calls it a plural union based on equality, not religious ideas of male dominance. What she didn’t realize, until the B.C. court reference drew attention to the issue, was that they’re breaking the law by sharing a home. “This has been a real learning experience,” she says.

Karen, who doesn’t want her surname used in order to protect her children, is part of a constituency of polyamorists, one of many groups seeking standing in the B.C. Supreme Court. The case will determine if the polygamy law—Section 293 of the Criminal Code—is constitutional. It was triggered by the province’s failure to prosecute two polygamous bishops in the fundamentalist Mormon community of Bountiful, B.C., but its outcome could affect the rights of thousands.

Some 16 groups have submitted affidavits seeking permission to argue for or against 293 when a trial date is set—proving, if nothing else, that polygamy creates strange bedfellows. Some groups see the polygamy law as the foundation of the traditional family and a defence against the exploitation of girls forced into multiple marriage, as the province alleged happened in Bountiful. Others argue the law is unenforceable, does nothing to help the women of Bountiful, and that it imposes a moral code out of step with Canada’s modern, multicultural society.

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What Canadians really believe

By Ken MacQueen - Friday, November 20, 2009 at 4:11 PM - 80 Comments

An Ontario court judge will soon decide if Canada’s prostitution laws should be struck down. In British Columbia, the Supreme Court will decide if laws prohibiting polygamy can still be enforced. And in the House of Commons, a private member’s bill would make it legal for the profoundly ill to seek a doctor’s help to commit suicide. As a nation we are reinventing, refining—or undermining—our morality in dramatic fashion. In some instances we are asking the courts to do our thinking for us. But in most cases we forge a national sense of right or wrong in the millions of individual judgment calls we make every day—increasingly without the guidance of organized religion.

With so many moral issues at a crossroads, Angus Reid Strategies undertook a national survey last month asking Canadians to consider 21 ethical issues. Their answers—on issues as diverse as animal rights, prostitution, homosexuality and illegal drug use—show some profound divisions by gender and region. But taken together, they seem to reveal a rather astounding liberal tilt in our morality, albeit with some exceptions. Each Canadian steers by his and most certainly her moral compass, and the wonder is we don’t bump into each other more often.

Consider these six sticky moral situations. Which are the most and the least acceptable to you, and to most Canadians?

1. You plan to have an abortion.
2. You wear a mink coat.
3. You favour killing convicted murderers.
4. You think the dying have the right to commit suicide with a doctor’s help.
5. You don’t care if the drugs you buy have been tested on animals.
6. You support medical research using the stem cells of human embryos.

Let’s start by saying there’s never been a better time to be a Canadian mink, or a seal, or a lab rat. Canadians today are more likely to moralize about the treatment of animals than about the lives of our fellow humans. Just 22 per cent oppose euthanasia, but 41 per cent condemn medical testing on animals, the survey found. Abortion is considered morally wrong by 22 per cent of Canadians, fewer than the 31 per cent who have moral qualms about wearing fur. But while four in 10 oppose animal testing, only 17 per cent take issue with researchers using human embryonic stem cells. As for capital punishment, 53 per cent of Canadians consider it “morally acceptable,” a jump of six percentage points since Reid last asked the question in 2007.

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What Canadians think of Sikhs, Jews, Christians, Muslims . . .

By John Geddes - Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 4:45 PM - 200 Comments

Canadians like to think of their country as a model for the world of how all sorts of people can get along together. But when it comes to the major faiths other than Christianity, a new poll conducted for Maclean’s finds that many Canadians harbour deeply troubling biases. Multiculturalism? Although by now it might seem an ingrained national creed, fewer than one in three Canadians can find it in their hearts to view Islam or Sikhism in a favourable light. Diversity? Canadians may embrace it in theory, but only a minority say they would find it acceptable if one of their kids came home engaged to a Muslim, Hindu or Sikh. Understanding? There’s not enough to prevent media images of war and terrorism from convincing almost half of Canadians that mainstream Islam encourages violence.

The poll, by Angus Reid Strategies, surveyed 1,002 randomly selected Canadians on religion at a moment when issues of identity are a hot topic in Ottawa. Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has led a push by the Conservative government to revamp citizenship law, emphasizing the need for real bonds to Canada, and Kenney is looking for ways to encourage immigrants to integrate faster and more fully into Canadian society. But as federal policy strives to encourage newcomers to put down roots and fit in, the poll highlights an equal need for the Canadian majority to take a hard look at its distorted preconceptions about religious minorities. “It astonishes and saddens me as a Canadian,” said Angus Reid chief research officer Andrew Grenville, who has been probing Canadians’ views on religion for 16 years. “I don’t think the findings reflect well on Canada at all.”

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We’re in the fast lane to polygamy

By Mark Steyn - Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 11:10 AM - 266 Comments

What’s my line on legalized polygamy? Oh, I pretty much said it all back in 2004, in a column for Ezra Levant’s Western Standard. Headline: “It’s Closer Than They Think.”

Well, a mere half-decade down the slippery slope and here we are, with the marrying kind of Bountiful, B.C., headed for the Supreme Court of Canada. Five years ago, proponents of same-sex marriage went into full you-cannot-be-serious eye-rolling mode when naysayers warned that polygamy would be next. As I wrote in that Western Standard piece:

“Gay marriage, they assure us, is the merest amendment to traditional marriage, and once we’ve done that we’ll pull up the drawbridge.”

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Red meat! Get your red meat here!

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, March 25, 2009 at 12:46 PM - 58 Comments

A couple of days’ worth of headlines…

Tories ‘prepared to defend’ polygamy ban

Toews supports new crime rate measure

Tories want to kill ‘two-for-one’ prison-time credit

Spike in refugee claims shows ‘abuse’ of system, Kenney says

There you go, Tory base. We may be spending at all-time record levels. We may be running $40-billion deficits, and bailing out auto companies, and ditching across-the-board tax cuts in favour of dozens of little social-engineering tax credits. We may have abandoned everything we ever stood for on Afghanistan, on Quebec, on corporate welfare, on foreign investment. We may have set up a regional development agency for southern Ontario.

But we’ll still protect you from a lot of imaginary threats like polygamy. We’ll still beat up on refugees, and prisoners. We’ll still whip up hysteria over crime. Because sometimes you just have to do the unassailably popular thing, when it’s the unassailably popular thing to do.

Why we don’t need to make polygamy a crime

By Andrew Coyne - Wednesday, February 18, 2009 at 4:45 PM - 59 Comments

Whatever you may have heard, the case of Winston Blackmore and James Oler, the fundamentalist Mormon preachers from Bountiful, B.C. whose polygamy trial begins next week, is not about religious freedom. Nor is it about gay marriage, or child abuse, or any of the other extraneous issues with which partisans of one stripe or another would like to festoon the debate.

It certainly isn’t about whether the two men are guilty of the crime of polygamy under Section 293 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits “any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage.” The defence does not contest the charges, but rather intends to argue the law is a violation of their freedom of religion as guaranteed under the Charter of Rights.

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If the polygamists prevail

By Charlie Gillis - Friday, January 9, 2009 at 10:00 AM - 57 Comments

When questions of morality arise, “slippery slope” arguments follow close at heel. No surprise, then, that fear ran wild this morning that Canada’s criminal prohibition of polygamy will soon fall to a constitutional challenge—our weakness for religious freedom being what it is.

Then what? A nationwide rash of multi-spouse relationships? Half-siblings for everyone? Chaos in the family courts? Anarchy? Continue…

Blogging from Bountiful: Winston Blackmore in his own words

By kadyomalley - Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 7:15 PM - 23 Comments

“If you are married and minding your own business, looking after your family and the two of you are virtuous people, should some other virtuous woman(I will add who is old enough to make her own choices in life)want to join your family, and all are agreed, then whose business is that.  No one is hurt, no society is hurt,no family is broken, no vows are violated. Celestial implies virtuous.”

-Winston Blackmore, December 10 2008

It hasn’t been updated since his arrest, but even so, Winston Blackmore’s  blog makes for fascinating reading, particularly in the context of his comments to the media earlier today. You can also check out back issues of The North Star, his self-published newsletter, on his website.

From the macleans.ca archives: No Big Love Lost (originally posted 6/25/2007)

By kadyomalley - Thursday, January 8, 2009 at 4:42 PM - 1 Comment

Is British Columbia finally ready to take on the polygamists of Bountiful?

Kady O’Malley

This month marked the second-season debut of Big Love, the surprise HBO hit about a modern-day polygamous family which thrives in secret under an otherwise conventional suburban existence. The series has received rave reviews not only for its smart storyline and sharp acting, but for successfully portraying the complex interrelationships between husband, wife, wife and wife without resorting to easy parody.

But in British Columbia, there is little love lost between the provincial government and the tiny hamlet of Bountiful, better known as the home of the Blackmore clan. The town’s hundred denizens, adherents of a U.S.-based breakaway Mormon sect, comprise Canada’s best known – and most controversial – polygamous community.

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UPDATED: Breaking: Bountiful's Big Love headed for the Big House?

By kadyomalley - Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at 2:19 PM - 42 Comments

Ooh. So BC’s Attorney General Wally Oppal may have finally mustered up the courage to give Canada’s anti-polygamy law a  long overdue road test:

Followers say Winston Blackmore, the leader of the controversial polygamous sect in Bountiful, B.C., has been arrested.

Details were not immediately available but B.C. Attorney General Wally Oppal and the RCMP have scheduled a news conference this afternoon in Vancouver.

According to a court document filed in nearby Creston, Blackmore is facing a charge of practicing polygamy. [...]

Last June, Oppal appointed a special prosecutor to look into allegations of criminal abuse at Bountiful, saying that renewed public concerns compelled him to act.

That came despite two earlier legal opinions that said it would be difficult to proceed with charges of polygamy, with one suggesting a court challenge of the laws surrounding polygamy instead.

After the special prosecutor was announced, Blackmore accused Oppal of religious persecution.

“It can’t possibly be about polygamy,” Blackmore wrote in an email to The Canadian Press last June.

“It must be about his own religious bias and now he wants the Liberal government to persecute some of the citizens that they have an obligation to serve and protect.”

Blackmore has said he has tried to meet with Oppal in the past, but that the attorney general has refused.

UPDATE: It’s not just Winston Blackmore, according to the Globe’s Robert Matas:  Apparently Jim Oler, who replaced Blackmore as Bountiful’s bishop, has also been charged.

MORE INFO: The Globe and Mail has posted the indictment, which includes the names of the nineteen women with whom he is accused of having practised “a form of polygamy” and just so we’re all clear on how the law currently stands, here’s the relevant section from the Criminal Code:

Polygamy

293. (1) Every one who

(a) practises or enters into or in any manner agrees or consents to practise or enter into

(i) any form of polygamy, or

(ii) any kind of conjugal union with more than one person at the same time,

whether or not it is by law recognized as a binding form of marriage, or

(b) celebrates, assists or is a party to a rite, ceremony, contract or consent that purports to sanction a relationship mentioned in subparagraph (a)(i) or (ii),

is guilty of an indictable offence and liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding five years.

Evidence in case of polygamy

(2) Where an accused is charged with an offence under this section, no averment or proof of the method by which the alleged relationship was entered into, agreed to or consented to is necessary in the indictment or on the trial of the accused, nor is it necessary on the trial to prove that the persons who are alleged to have entered into the relationship had or intended to have sexual intercourse.

R.S., c. C-34, s. 257.

Megapundit: Rosie DiManno vs. the U.S. Army

By selley - Monday, June 9, 2008 at 1:58 PM - 0 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Rosie DiManno on female police in Afghanistan, and on American troops’ enemy-making skills; Scott Taylor on Kandahar prison; Daphne Bramham on the children of the FLDS: Lawrence Martin on Liberal incivility; Thomas Walkom on Roy Romanow; Dan Gardner on pesticides and science; Greg Weston on the lost promise of openness and accountability.

Ils accusent
It’s official: the pundits have absolutely nothing good to say about federal politics. And away we go…

If anyone’s going to investigate the unlikely prospect that Maxime Bernier’s left-behind documents represented a security breach, Lysiane Gagnon suggests it be the foreign affairs department, and if necessary CSIS and the RCMP. Committee hearings would be “a joke,” she writes in The Globe and Mail—a “partisan circus,” just like they’ve been at the Schreibergelder hearings. If MPs are really this desperate for something to occupy their well-paid time, she suggests they discuss military equipment, Omar Khadr and the private members bills “that many fear might eventually lead to the criminalization of abortion.”

The Toronto Star‘s Chantal Hébert says Stephen Harper’s “crafting [of] a bipartisan consensus on the future of the Canadian mission in Kandahar” was a rare snapshot of successful “Conservative statesmanship”—a triumph of “finesse” over his manifest preference for “brute strength.” This recollection seems a tad airbrushed to us, but she’s quite right that the government’s been pretty much crap since then, if not before. The positive contributions of Jim Prentice and David Emerson in cabinet are routinely undone by Peter Van Loan’s “overly partisan tone,” she argues, and it’s needlessly damaging the government’s reputation.

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Megapundit Extra: Restraint, thy name is Bramham

By selley - Monday, June 2, 2008 at 6:32 PM - 0 Comments

No, British Columbians, you haven’t gone back in time. Your attorney-general, Wally Oppal, is indeed appointing a third special prosecutor to examine the Bountiful/polygamy file in hopes he’ll finally get the opinion he  wants—which is (a) that Section 293 of the Criminal Code, which prohibits polygamy, would withstand a Charter challenge and (b) that charges should be laid against one, some or all of the polygamists in Bountiful.

Incorrect opinions have so far come from Richard Peck, who agreed with (a) but believed there was “no substantial likelihood of conviction,” and Leonard Doust, who also agreed with (a) but thought it would make more sense for the courts to rule on Section 293 in the abstract before dragging polygamists into court. Now it’s Terrence Robertson‘s turn. What will he decide? We shall see. But it’s a safe bet he won’t decide quickly.

In any event, we are somewhat amused to see the Vancouver Sun‘s Daphne Bramham—scourge of polygamists and British Columbian attorneys-general alike—file a totally straight-up news story about this tragicomic turn of events. That’s hard to do, in our experience, when you’ve got burning-hot steam coming out your ears and nose. We salute her even keel and look forward to what ought to be a hum-dinger of a column denouncing this latest chapter in BC’s epic history of dithering.

Megapundit Extra: What do a backwoods polygamist and an Ontario CabMin have in common?

By selley - Thursday, May 29, 2008 at 6:32 PM - 0 Comments

Over at the National Post‘s Full Comment blog, John Turley-Ewart brings our attention to an intriguing exchange from yesterday’s Question Period at the Ontario Legislature:

Ms. Lisa MacLeod (PC MPP for Nepean–Carlton): To the minister responsible for women’s issues: Can she inform this House where she stands on Toronto’s dirty little secret, the illegal polygamous marriages that are taking place right under her nose at the expense of gender equality in Ontario?

[Through the vagaries of parliamentary procedure, the question is redirected to the Minister of Government and Consumer Services.]

Hon. Ted McMeekin: Polygamy is a serious crime in Ontario. It’s not something that’s tolerated. As you know, the best advice I can give the honourable member opposite is that if she has any evidence that someone is engaging in multiple marriages, she should report it, because our Registrar General and our official reporting mechanisms have no evidence that that’s happening.

As you know, marriage is a contract. A contract requires a licence. Once a marriage occurs, it has to be registered. There are no multiple marriages being registered in the province of Ontario.

“In essence,” an unimpressed Turley-Ewart comments, “Ontario’s government is turning a blind eye to the practice as long as imams like [Aly] Hindy do not attempt to register the marriages under Ontario law.”

Indeed. And McMeekin is keeping very odd company in making such an argument—notably that of Winston Blackmore, Canada’s best-known and not-so-much-loved polygamist. “I hope our government has enough respect for the freedoms of its citizens to not allow a Texas-style religious persecution to happen under the skinny pretext that some polygamy law meant anything to anyone,” he told The Globe and Mail this week. “Hell, none of us are even married under definition of the law, and most don’t fit the definition of a common-law relationship either.”

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They still love him in the Beauce, we hear

By selley - Tuesday, May 27, 2008 at 1:44 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Jonathan Kay on racist child services policies; Rosie DiManno on opium-addicted Afghan children.

The end of an error
You can take Maxime Bernier’s portfolio, and his ex-girlfriend, and his reputation and his dignity. But you’ll never take his…fashion sense!

The government will be “damned if it does and damned if it doesn’t in the coming days, if not weeks,” says Sun Media’s Greg Weston. The “salivating” opposition will be peppering Harper and Co. with questions—about what was in the documents, who saw them, how long they were at “[Julie] Couillard’s pad,” etc.—in full knowledge they couldn’t divulge the answers even if they knew them. And at Bernier’s former office, Weston says, it “doesn’t take a lot of imagination to picture the phonelines buzzing [from] Washington and other capitals around the world” seeking assurances that the ministry, and the government as a whole, isn’t being run by monkeys.

Indeed, The Globe and Mail‘s Lawrence Martin points out, for once it turns out “the opposition was doing its job” in hammering the government over Bernier’s relationship with Couillard, and the government’s righteous indignation now looks rather stupid. There is always the chance that “greater embarrassments” lie ahead as the story unfolds, too—and just as Harper sets out on his tour of all those foreign capitals, no less. This is what happens, Martin concludes, when a Prime Minister with a “tight ship” reputation appoints a “total greenhorn” for purely political reasons.

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All is well in Quebec. And here's how to fix it.

By selley - Monday, May 26, 2008 at 1:17 PM - 0 Comments

WEEKEND ROUNDUP

Must-reads: Dan Gardner on African agriculture; Rosie DiManno on Khale Farm and Mazar-i-Sharif; Rex Murphy on the Democratic campaign; Thomas Walkom on Omar Khadr; Barbara Yaffe on apologies; Don MacPherson and Lysiane Gagnon on Bouchard-Taylor; Don Martin on the Lynch Report.

What Charles and Gérard hath wrought
Lysiane Gagnon, writing in The Globe and Mail, believes the perception that Gérard Bouchard and Charles Taylor “put Quebec’s 400-year-old culture on the same footing as the various cultures of newcomers” in their landmark report will prove excellent fodder for the likes of Mario Dumont and Pauline Marois. And while the report is “an interesting reflection on immigration and the need to provide jobs for immigrants,” Gagnon can’t help thinking that having concluded the reasonable accommodations debate was almost entirely a fabrication, its authors might have abided by the “if it doesn’t itch, don’t scratch it” principle rather than “rewrit[ing] the landscape.”

The Toronto Star‘s Haroon Siddiqui can’t understand how Bouchard and Taylor could on one hand argue that “the right to freedom of religious includes the right to show it,” and that legislating otherwise would alienate certain communities from the public service, and on the other hand suggest judges, crown prosecutors, police officers and certain other officials be “barred from wearing religious signs and clothing on the job.” He suggests this was a “sop” to the Bloc Québécois and the Council on the Status of Women.

The Globe‘s Jeffrey Simpson agrees the whole mess was “much ado about nothing” in that the incidents that gave rise to it were “exaggerated to the point of deformation by journalistic sensationalism and political opportunism.” But by “talk[ing] these tricky matters through,” he suggests Quebec society “may have slain certain demons in the process.”

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May 9 shall henceforth be known as National Embarrassment Day

By selley - Friday, May 9, 2008 at 1:01 PM - 0 Comments

Must-reads: Daphne Bramham on polygamy; Jeffrey Simpson on the refugee system; Susan Riley and Chantal Hébert on l’affaire Bernier-Couillard; Rosie DiManno on the Afghan food shortage; Colby Cosh on uniting the Alberta left.

Bad, Canada. Bad!
From the Creston Valley to the Alberta oil sands to Ottawa—especially Ottawa—we should all be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves.

“Two generations have grown up during the period the B.C. government has hidden behind undisclosed legal opinions that polygamy is the cost of religious freedom and because someone somewhere says the government might lose in court,” the inimitable Daphne Bramham writes in the Vancouver Sun. Texas prosecutors have “plenty of evidence that abuse is endemic” among the dozens of children seized from their parents, she notes, but the province still hasn’t sent “any lawyers or social workers down to check on [Canadians among the victims], find out whether they went there willingly or even to take a look at what evidence Texas has collected.” It is time, she argues—still, again, and always—to put an end to this national embarrassment. (We particularly like her idea that the children of Bountiful might eventually launch a class action suit against the B.C. government for allowing them to be treated like low-grade veal. It would be the perfect comeuppance, we think.)

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