[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[Barrister]

2. I can already see evil regimes worldwide salivating at the whattaboutism they can now indulge in, every time Canada attempts to call them out on their bad behaviour (or even when they don't). Myanmar's government busy massacring its Muslim minority? Who is Canada to say that's bad - Canada, who publicly admits *they* are currently committing "genocide"? I can already see the leader of Myanmar now: "We'll stop committing acts you label "genocide" when you do, Canada" or "We are just as evil as Canada".

Evil regimes already do exactly that.  Any time we call out some nation for mistreating minorities, they always reply with "well look how Canada treats its First Nations!".

[viper37]

What they failed to consider is that coming to conclusions that make no sense to the reader, either casually or who takes the time to read their report, undermines whatever useful recommendations they may have had.

this.

and we already had another, past inquiry on indegenous relationships in Canada.
Cultural genocide for this was appropriate.

Genocide for the murder&disapearance of indian women is not representative of the situation, and the report does not examine the lack of cooperation with "white" policemen from indian nations&individuals.  To talk of general indifference specific to indian disapearance is a gross misreprensentation of what is happenning.  They get just as much police attention as any white woman disapearing from a remote village in Quebec.  We can look at past examples, like the recent serial murders of gay people in Toronto that went on for years, or murder of prostitutes that generally end up nowhere.  It ain't a question of race, it's a question of work and location.  You get a lot more chances of being found if you're a secretary from Montreal than a prostitute for Val D'Or, indian of white. Resources ain't the same to begin the investigation and until further elements are found, if no one knows anything or simply flat out refuse to tell anything to the police because they don't trust them, because they have a code of silence, because they fear for their lives (happenned recently with 3 juvenile prostitutes in Montreal, they refused to testify against their agressor, the cp asked for a warrant to make them appear in court).

Indian-white relationships are extremely difficult, for obvious reasons of racism, and a colonial past that extended well into the very late 20th century.  The police isn't trying to deliberately sabotage the investigations, nor is it refusing to investigate.  And mistrusts goes bothsides.  And RCMP/OPP/SQ are supposed to tell the reservation police corp in advance before they question a witness... since it's often the cousin/brother/stepbrother/friend of another cop, he/she gets advanced notice and flees.  And cops being wrongly accused of racism or indecent acts they couldn't have possibly committed doesn't help their trust of indian sources...

[Malthus]

Evil regimes already do exactly that.  Any time we call out some nation for mistreating minorities, they always reply with "well look how Canada treats its First Nations!".

True, I remember Saudi Arabia doing this when we got into a fight with them over murdered women activists.

Having our PM publicly admit to committing genocide just feeds them ammunition, though. I mean, murdering activists is bad, but genocide is worse! Right?

[Valmy]

Ok indifference to crimes being committed on a population is certainly a very bad thing but to claim this is the same as actively slaughtering them in an attempt to exterminate them from the face of the earth does nothing less than provide cover for just those activities. Well there is also the fact that by treaty the United States is now required to intervene to stop this wanton slaughter. I will inform Donald Trump that the invasion needs to begin at once.

[Malthus]

This article puts it well I think:

In its report the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls has conflated the recent murders of women and girls with the entirety of the Indigenous experience in Canada, past and present, then framed its conclusions under the powerful rubric of genocide, for which both past and present federal governments are held directly responsible.

But these extrapolations are overly broad. The men who killed Indigenous women were not génocidaires set on destroying a group. They were commonplace domestic criminals – murderers and predators who ought not to have been elevated to fit a paradigm.

We forget, at our peril, that genocide is a legal term, not a societal term. It is the worst crime in the lexicon of international law, the apex of "crimes against humanity," the most powerful criminal designation ever codified. Genocide is a crime whose proper referent is the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) of 1948, and its most important characteristic is intent: "The deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group." Genocide, as opposed to cultural genocide, is the planned extermination of peoples. It is not, as asserted by the Inquiry, "the sum of the social practices, assumptions, and actions detailed within this report." Genocide (like all crimes) is an act. To lose sight of this fact is to jeopardize the usefulness of one of the most important tools of international criminal law.

In recent years, the abuse of the word genocide has become almost commonplace, almost like a Twitter hashtag, an epithet and, in some places, a propaganda tool. State-controlled television in Russia is a prime (though not unique) illustration; for example, in 2017 both Ukraine and Latvia were accused of planning a "genocide" of minority Russian speakers. One is reminded of Lewis Carroll's sly observation: "'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said..., 'it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.' 'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.' 'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master – that's all.'"

The Inquiry's conclusion that Canada is a genocidal state lines up with the distortion of language characterizing much of contemporary political discourse. It may also be an assertion of power, à la Lewis Carroll. In the era of Donald Trump, where insult is normalized, where journalists are characterized as "enemies of the people" and where Canada's negotiable trade demands are improbably described as a "national security issue," shock-and-awe language may be seen as a way of propelling one's words above the din.

That this may be true is suggested by the surprising fact that although "genocide" was the framing concept of the report, many of its defenders have subsequently downplayed its import.

But words do matter. They matter because they have commonly agreed-to referents and because once they are stripped of these through misuse, we are in Humpty-Dumpty land.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-the-mmiwg-report-was-searing-and-important-marred-only-by-its/

[Malthus]

It's starting - the Organization of American States (OAS) wants an independent inquiry into "Canadian Genocide":

Luis Almagro, secretary-general of the organization, which is based in Washington and represents the 35 independent states of the Americas, wrote to Foreign Affairs Minister Chrystia Freeland saying the report laid out "evidence of genocide" and that since Canada has supported independent probes of atrocities in other countries, it should support the creation of one here too.

https://globalnews.ca/news/5354323/oas-mmiwg-genocide-report-probe/

[Oexmelin]

In finance, if your conclusion is invalid, we got zero on our work, even if the rest was valid.

This isn't finance. And the conclusions are larger than the issue of genocide.

[Malthus]

I haven't read the whole report (it is very lengthy) but I did read the recommendations, found here:

https://www.mmiwg-ffada.ca/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Calls_for_Justice.pdf

Some are sensible, many call for increased funding, some go way too far.

For example - they call to make the life of an Indigenous woman worth, legally, more than that of a non-Indigenous woman (or for that matter an Indigenous man) in that the offence of killing one be punished more severely, all else being equal.

This is found here:

5.18 We call upon the federal government to consider violence against Indigenous women,
girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA people as an aggravating factor at sentencing, and to amend
the Criminal Code accordingly, with the passage and enactment of Bill S-215.

The bill in question states as follows:

1 The Criminal Code is amended by adding the following after section 239:
Sentencing — aggravating circumstance
239.‍1 When a court imposes a sentence for an offence referred to in section 235, 236 or 239, it shall consider as an aggravating circumstance the fact that the victim of the offence is a female person who is Indian, Inuit or Métis.

The sections of the Criminal Code referenced deal with the punishment for the offences of murder, manslaughter etc.

In short - when a judge is considering punishing three murderers, all of whom have exactly the same motives, level of violence, premeditation, etc. - the first murdered (say) a Chinese woman, the second murdered an  Indigenous  man, and the third murdered an  Indigenous  woman - the first two should, in theory, get exactly the same sentence as punishment, while the third receives a more severe sentence, because murdering an  Indigenous  woman is an "aggravating circumstance".

It is important to note that this doesn't mean that the murder was motivated by the fact that the victim was an Indigenous woman - merely that the victim was an Indigenous woman. It isn't necessary that the perpetrator be aware of this fact. 

This does disservice to the notion that all are equal under the law.

I understand why they want to do this - because of an observed tendency for courts over the years, staffed largely by non-Indigenous judges, to treat Indigenous victims as less important than non-Indigenous, so there's a need to 'redress the balance' - but even in those terms, it makes no sense (historically, the courts equally treated Indigenous men as victims badly). Moreover, other groups who have fared badly historically will be sure to seek the same - why are Blacks lumped in with Whites here? So the "slippery slope" effect will be hard to resist.

[crazy canuck]

It is another move toward status based justice and one further step away from liberalism and the rule of law.  I agree that there is a slippery slope problem but perhaps more profound than you have identified.  The Commission has rejected the notion that liberal democracy can work if its institutions are strengthened and instead have gone for a model of preference based on status.  The most disturbing part is I am not sure they are aware of what they have done and the long term damage this could do to the concept of the rule of law.  It's all well and good when you agree with who should be protected by giving preferred status but what happens when the state, freed of the shackles of the rule of law, picks a group that already has significant power.

Does liberalism work perfectly? Of course not.  But this is not the way to strengthen it.

[Camerus]

Some of the seeds for this have already been sown as regards looking at historical and contemporary societal factors as mitigating details when sentencing Natives (though not only Natives) convicted of crimes. 

Of course this would represent a whole new step by using some of those same historical and contemporary societal factors when sentencing to now also place value on the lives of the victims .

What happens when a Native man kills a Native woman?

In other words, once we bring these types of factors into sentencing and punishing crimes, our justice system becomes something rather different.

[viper37]

Latest polls seems to point toward a Liberal's defeat.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/

[Malthus]

Latest polls seems to point toward a Liberal's defeat.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/

Also a Conservative majority. Unfortunately, I've seen nothing from the current Conservatives that makes this joyful news. 

[Barrister]

Latest polls seems to point toward a Liberal's defeat.

https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/elections/poll-tracker/canada/

Also a Conservative majority. Unfortunately, I've seen nothing from the current Conservatives that makes this joyful news.

What it would take for you to see the Conservatives as "joyful" is what would cause untold others to flee to other parties.

[Grey Fox]

The CP shedding it's alt-right to, let's say the CPP, would actually be a great thing for Canada.

[Barrister]

The CP shedding it's alt-right to, let's say the CPP, would actually be a great thing for Canada.

Splitting the right has never proven to be a winning electoral strategy.

Alt-right types should be seen and not heard as part of the overall Conservative coalition.