Category: Life

Every other post.

  • Update: Bill 13 Passes Second Reading

    Update: Bill 13 Passes Second Reading

    Update: May 3, 2012. According to the CBC, Bill 13 has passed second reading. It will now head to committee. The end tally was 66 to 33, with the Liberals and NDP voting for its passage, and the PCs voting against it. This followed a piece by Xtra! yesterday stating that the Liberals were planning on using a rarely used maneuver to force a vote. According to MPP Glen Murray, a member of the PC party shouted “No to GSAs!” following the end of the vote.

    A member of the Progressive Conservative party voting against Bill 13, the "Safe Schools Act" on May 3rd, 2012.

    Original Story:  May 1, 2012. Of the 77 bills in this session of the Ontario legislature, the Accepting Schools Act is now in the top spot for the most debated, sharing the title with the Healthy Homes Renovation Tax Credit Act. You can find my previous coverage of the debates here and here.

    Such is the state of affairs that the education minister alleged that the PCs were intentionally blocking the bill by way of stalling tactics during second reading. I’d have to agree with her. It is quite clear from the contrast between the debate with Bill 13 and the PCs own Anti-Bullying Act that they don’t want the Accepting Schools Act to pass.

    No one should be surprised. The PCs ran on a homophobic and transphobic platform six months ago. In one of the earlier debates for this anti-bullying bill, they asserted that to oppose discrimination against children was to oppose religious freedoms.

    This is all because the bill includes references to sexual orientation and gender identity in addition to sex, disability, and race. I believe the strength of the opposition is emblematic of precisely there’s a need for its inclusion.

    Anyways, back to the debates. Yasir Naqvi, the Liberal MPP for Ottawa recited a letter he had received:

    Ruth wrote, “I support Bill 13 because no one deserves to be pushed, beaten, spit on, called names, shunned, segregated or bullied for any reason. We can’t be judged for race. We can’t be judged for religion. Why should we be allowed to be judged based on sexuality? Please help change this.”

    Liberal member John Gerretsen on the stalling tactics by the Progressive Conservatives:

    The first thing that I would ask the people of Ontario to do is to go to the legislative website and read Bill 13 and Bill 14. I would ask them if they can actually see a difference in those two bills. There’s very little difference. We’re all talking about the same thing: bullying.

    Now, you know, everybody is accusing everybody else of playing games with this, and there have been a lot of games played here and probably on all sides of the House—and I’ll be the first to admit that. But one of the games that the Tories have been playing with this bill—and that’s why it’s been debated here so often—is that whenever they talk about this bill, they make the bells ring for half an hour, wasting half an hour of everybody’s time. That’s why this bill is back here day after day, because every bill has to have so many hours of debate; I’ve forgotten exactly what it is but something like seven or eight hours of debate, etc.

    Liberal Bob Delaney on the same subject:

    Speaker, I say to my colleagues in the PC Party, if they really want to move forward on this, let’s let debate collapse. Let’s get it into committee. Let’s get it into committee today.

    Seven times, representing 12 hours and 55 minutes of delay, the PC Party has just rung the bells needlessly on this bill. There’s no cause for it at all.

    The PC explanation by Julia Monroe:

    We have a very serious issue on the floor of this chamber: the question of Bill 13 and the question of Bill 14. No one, I think, misunderstands that we also have a very serious issue in the need for a select committee. The bells are simply an opportunity to demonstrate the dissatisfaction of the opposition, and serve as a reminder of the need to look at the issue of Ornge. I certainly don’t think that I mixed those messages in my remarks.

    Ornge is the air ambulance service operated by the province. The auditor general had recently found serious issues with how it was handled. The PCs also alleged that the Liberals were obstructing Bill 14 in committee:

    Right now, Bill 14 has already passed second reading. It’s before committee. The government that talks about obstruction, and how they are opposed to obstruction, is the very group of people obstructing the passage of Bill 14 and its work through committee right now.

    The NDP offered to mediate the differences, but I’d be very surprised if anyone took them up on their offer. Not least of which because the PCs wouldn’t allow a bill that extends protections to queer kids. As they argued, preventing the Catholic schools from banning support groups for queer youth would be tantamount to bullying the schools:

    Let’s not force schools. Let’s not bully them into having these particular clubs of a particular name so that it satisfies a particular goal.

    The goal being related to a seemingly nefarious “agenda” when speaking of equity policies:

    I’ve listened and heard from schools, even now, about certain agendas that are being aggressively pushed in the school. I will put that on the record, and I can refute it from parents and students from high schools and elementary schools who are upset with the current curriculum driving an agenda.

    This type of logic either presumes that no kid in an Ontario high school is queer, or wilfully ignores their existence. It looks at policies of acceptance as a negative force from the outside being pushed on to administrators and parents. It is a refusal to help the very individuals who should benefit from legislation to make schools better: the students.

    There appears to be a shift in the framing of the opposition by the PC to make their stance seem more palatable. They are now presenting this as a matter of their bill being more inclusive. But their actions speak louder than their words, and their actions tell of a stance that sees inclusiveness as fine as long as it doesn’t include LGBT youth.

  • Linux Desktop & Android

    Linux Desktop & Android

    I just updated my laptop to Ubuntu 12.04, the latest version of the popular Linux distribution. I couldn’t say this ten or even three years ago, but it’s better than Windows. Everything just works out of the box, and the interface is intuitive. It also doesn’t lock me out of my own files, which Windows tends to do. The screenshots in this post were taken from my machine today.

    It isn’t all peachy though – while there’s a good selection of applications, it could be better. It also lacks association with applications that are known to mainstream users. Windows has Word, Mac has Garage Band, and the iOS has Instagram. When it comes to operating systems, apps are everything.

    I think now that we have a convergence between mobile and desktop operating systems, there’s a real opportunity here for desktop Linux distributions. Simply said: have a popular distro like Ubuntu be able to run Android apps out of the box. You can right now through the emulator that comes with the SDK provided by Google, but that doesn’t have a native feel to it. You want the Android app to appear to run like any other program (emphasis on appear.)

    Ride on the popularity of Android. It and the iOS are a developer hot bed with thousands making programs that people like you and me want to use. People go where the apps are, and I believe there’s a chance here to pull people away from Windows. Especially if you (or Canonical, the people behind Ubuntu) can market the fact that it can also run Windows applications anyways.

    Or perhaps I’m completely out to lunch.

  • Baklava Fun

    Baklava Fun

    I decided to try to make my own baklavas. I kind of screwed up the dough though, so it looks better than it tastes.

  • “Ethical Oil” Group Not Really Ethical

    “Ethical Oil” Group Not Really Ethical

    For the uninitiated, “ethical oil” is a the notion that the tar sands are actually the moral source of oil given Canada’s human-rights record compared to that of other producer nations. The term appears to be the brain child of Ezra Levant, the prominent conservative who wrote the book Ethical Oil: The Case for Canada’s Oil Sands.

    It’s an interesting criticism, and it’s true that we are fortunate enough to live in a region where oil production and violent crackdowns aren’t associated with each other. That said, this positive trait does not negate the question of whether things could be improved from an environmental perspective. It’s a very resource hungry process.

    Enter an organization that bears the name Ethical Oil. Right now, they’re levying a boycott against a banana producer for opting to fuel their transportation by what they see as more responsible means.

    Which means that despite their name, this organization really isn’t about ethics. If it were, they would acknowledge the environmental concerns of this company, even if they disagreed with the specifics. Instead, it’s a front for those blindly advocating development, and the only ethics to be found are in its name.

     

  • Accepting Schools Act (Continued)

    Accepting Schools Act (Continued)

    This was another day of debate for Ontario’s Bill 13, also known as the Accepting Schools Act. You can read my coverage for the previous debate here. You can read a transcript of today’s events here.

    The NDP through MPP Cheri DiNovo affirmed their support for the legislation, while re-iterating where they saw avenues for improvement. She also talked extensively about Gay-Straight Alliances. She quoted a student who felt rejected by his school administration, which had banned students from forming a GSA. She also went on to talk about statistics of suicide among LGBT youth, and the need for the support:

    We want to support these students, and part of supporting these students is to support them in supporting themselves. When they say—and they don’t all say, but when they do say—that they want a gay-straight alliance in their schools, we need to be behind them.

    DiNovo then spoke of the demonstrable benefits of having such support in schools:

    I want to just share some quotes, and these quotes are from various groups. First of all, let’s look at Egale. Egale Canada says, “GSAs … demonstrably improve the lives of LGBTQ youth, increasing their safety and improving their self-esteem.”

    By simply existing, GSAs present “students with the idea that LGBTQ identities have a place in the school, and society at large. Directly engaging LGBTQ youth and their allies within school, as well as those who are ambivalent regarding LGBTQ themes, is an excellent means towards addressing school climate, isolation, promoting social connectedness.” They cite a study in California that found gay-straight alliance presence and participation in high school to be highly correlated with decreased depression, substance abuse and lifetime suicide attempts among LGBTQ young adults.

    The Progressive Conservatives through MPP John O’Toole voiced their objection to Bill 13. O’Toole suggested that passing this law would be tantamount to bullying:

    I believe this document from the Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association, Respecting Difference, summarizes particularly how I feel about the issue. I believe that the secular society forcing views on non-secular society is in fact bullying.

    Perpetrators are being framed with the same language used to describe the victims, in an attempt to provide a sense that both positions are of equal merit. And yet, when you look at who is exercising control over the other, such illusions are quickly dispelled.

    The students are seeking to form a support group. They are not preventing other students from forming a support group. They are not preventing the school’s administrators from creating a support group. They are not making bigoted decisions that negatively impact others. On the contrary, they are the recipient of such prejudice. Contrary to the MPP’s assertions, the inability for a perpetrator to infringe on the well-being of others does not make them victims.

    I find it telling that the MPP quoted the Respecting Differences document, which forbids students from even speaking openly about matters of gender identity.

    As Liberal MPP Glenn Murray noted:

    The reason the GSAs, and not organizations for disabilities or black kids or aboriginal kids, are at the centre of this is because of our social discomfort with sexual orientation. That’s what the Hotwire—Charles McVety and a few thousand extremists are going to be out on the front lawn. They’re not here talking about kids with disabilities. They have no problem with stopping bullying against young folks who are unfortunately overweight or kids who are a little ungainly or awkward or a bit nerdy or whatever the thing is that brings on that horrible bullying.

    Then taking aim at the comments made by O’Toole, Murray said:

    You know, it isn’t bullying. There’s no one here that’s suggesting that we shouldn’t teach a Catholic perspective in our schools. Let me read Charles McVety, who is a person who, if you had to find the philosophical polar opposite to my world—this is what he recently said in a news article editorial he wrote. He said that Catholic teaching is defined in the document, by referring to the document Pastoral Guidelines to Assist Students of Same Sex Orientation in the 2006 CCCB statement, which the member from Durham mentioned before: “Basing itself on sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity” and a tradition that declared—he’s quoting from the bishop’s direction—“homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.”

    I have to say to the bishops: “You’re not allowed to do that anymore.” I’m not allowed to say to the Catholics—nor should I—or to other Christians or Muslims or Jews, that because of your faith you’re intrinsically disordered. I would never say to you that anything that goes on in your family with the person you love—can you imagine me describing a husband-and-wife relationship as inherently depraved? Can you imagine how it feels to gay and lesbian families and to our children in schools when people like Charles McVety say we’re unfit to be parents? How much do you love your children? How would you feel, as an Ontarian or as a Canadian? You feel a little less Canadian. I feel a little less welcome in my own country every time someone like that is endorsed.

    He concluded by stating he hoped both the Liberal Bill 13 and the PC Bill 14 passed. There was more commentary by other MPPs, and declaration that this debate would be continued another time.

    Then came the second reading for Bill 14. NDP MPP Rosario Marchese expressed her party’s support for the legislation, while PC MPP Lisa MacLeod told the audience where she thought it was better than Bill 13. More accountability and better at remediation, she said. Another Liberal, Liz Sandals, said she would support Bill 14. Other MPPs spoke up to support the private member’s bill. There was a motion to carry. With that, the PC bill passed second reading.

    It seems that Glenn Murray’s observations were spot on. Because Bill 14 did not explicitly cover LGBT students, it was devoid of the opposition that has plagued the Liberal bill. Its second reading debate lasted an hour, and then it passed to the next phase for legislation. Meanwhile, Bill 13 has been dragged in second reading debates for days, with no clear end in sight.

    I’m glad Bill 14 passed this stage. I’ll be more happy when Bill 13 does too.