Liberals vs Conservatives vs Liberals . . .

Or, only one shall be leader:

I had fun last week with a few days of pre-election (?) interviews comparing Libs and Conservatives, and regretted losing a particular anecdote when the story ran Saturday. (Journalists are always mourning missed paragraphs for space in print.) Anyway, there was a section of the story where Liberals said (rather, had said) nothing can be worse than it was this time last year, in terms of rivalries among the warring Dion-Ignatieff camps within the party. This year under Ignatieff, the only serious confusion came in June with the EI days when it seemed for a bit there he might force a non-confidence vote in the Commons.

A Conservative strategist said he ran into a senior Liberal on the Hill a couple of weeks later.

"What happened to you guys?" he asked.

Replied the Liberal: "What do you mean 'you guys?' It's he-guy.' "

I thought it was funny.

Manitoba task force into murder of aboriginal women

This is a start. The Manitoba goverment, police forces and RCMP have announced a task force to investigate these ongoing murders and disappearances. ( See Tuesday's blog post.)  Ron Evans, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, welcomes the move but it is only a start. Until the federal government starts investigating and laying out the statistics and the cases on a national basis in an full-scale inquiry,  Manitoba is examining only a slice of the problem.

I offer a couple of videos that deal with the issue:

These clips talk about the "Highway of Tears" in B.C.,about women just vanishing off the face of the Earth and about how the public doesn't react because it's "just another dead Indian."

More to Love - more woman to loathe

Sigh! Fox has some summer filler froth called "More to Love" in which 20 plus-sized women fight for the attention of bachelor Luke Conley  and a chance to "spend the rest of our lives together." Oh yuck.

We've seen so much of that formulaic slop with The  Bachelor and Bachlorette. But this one! I haven't seen a show so knowingly cruel to women since I was on assignment in Britain and happened to catch a plastic surgery series from the States in which women were literally being sliced up for "tummy tucks" on the operating table while doctors giggled and made fun of their unconscious patients. I forget what it was called (if I ever knew), but it was clearly too much for even an American audience.

This show is sad, just so sad.  Here you have these great looking women (who of course don't believe it for a second) confiding to the camera their lives were hell until they "learned to love themselves," as they've done now because this incredible man sees them and appreciates them for who they are.  These transformations appear to have taken place over the previous 36 hours. So many tears, so much emotion my flat screen leaked. That's what they say, except their confidence looks about as shaky as More to Love's chances as a repeat series (or should be anyway). Then a woman gets eliminated and she sobs: "Was it because of my weight?"

It's self-flagellation with the cherry of sadism on top, sends a horrible message to girls - the exact opposite of the message it's supposed to be sendng - and is so incredibly patronizing to women, well I, well I . . .turned it off!

Here's a Fox interview with Conley - the latest expert on love - who confides he's interested in a woman "with some meat on her bones." His goal is to meet someone "special," blah-blah, and he  expects a woman that can challenge him. Now there's a Herculean task.

Young, female, aboriginal and dead

"How many girls have to go missing?" said the headline in the Toronto Star today about yet another young aboriginal women found dead in Manitoba. That quote came from a relative of Cherisse Houle, 17, who was found dead in a creek near Winnipeg last month. The latest victim of homicide is Hillary Angel Wilson, whose body was found this week. Aboriginal leaders called again for a task force to examine what's happening in a ongoing atrocity in which, according to the Native Women's Association of Canada, there are 520 native women missing or murdered in Canada.

It's hard to trust the numbers because so many young women are unaccounted for by their families, but not listed as officially missing by police. However, the numbers have being slowly going up from 500 since at least 2002 when the Toronto Star ran a front-page story on missing aboriginal women in Canada.  Police always discount that less attention is paid to cases involving aboriginal women than non-aboriginal, however it surely would be a nationally recognized scandal if these were young women of another racial background. It is a national scandal, it's just not recognized as such. Really, how dare politicians, including the federal justice minister, be unavailable for comment? Priorities are so out-of-whack.

In the same vein, if some 300-plus women had been found dead in El Paso, as have been found murdered in Ciudad Juarez across the Rio Grande, there would be a state of emergency called until the killer/s could be caught. In Mexico, that has not happened and the only reasonable conclusion is that these women were young, Indian, poor and unimportant. Sound familiar to what's happening in Canada?

In Ottawa, everything is too often generalized. The government, the opposition, offer sweeping promises for across-the-board action that has included improving conditions on reserves and eliminating poverty among native peoples. It hasn't happened and the Department of Indian Affairs controls most resource spending with an iron fist. Other than an occasional victory - the apology for residential schools - there is seldom specific, detailed policy applied to social issues. (Concerns of the Canadian financial community are an entirely different matter.) Why can't there be an inquiry only into the murders and disppearances of aboriginal women over the past, say 15 years? With names, dates, family stories and, most importantly, recommendations for police forces, including the RCMP. When it takes years, as it did in the case of the Willie Picton "Pig Farm" murders, for the Vancouver Police to even take seriously the disappeance of close to 30 women - and there were surely more - something is desperately wrong. It appears the outcome of those murders was a good plot for the TV crime series, Criminal Minds, but no lessons learned by police or politicians in Canada. The headlines coming out of Manitoba this summer are another sad reminder.

What if Canadians actually did something about foreign affairs policy?

There's a novel thought. I wrote for Saturday about problems Canadians have with their own foreign affairs, citizenship and immigration and related agencies, including the Canadian Border Services Agency in a piece headlined, Stranded, Abandoned. The story covered several cases, from Canadians abandoned abroad (Suaad Muhamud) to the thousands stripped of citizenship because of arcane rules, including a 10th generation Canadian. It's been particularly frustrating in my career — with a focus on national reporting and foreign postings — to cover the same subject repeatedly and not see any significant change. I've witnessed the differences between how Canadians are treated by their consulates and embassies in other countries, compared to nations that puts the focus on their citizens, such as Denmark or Sweden, and talked to many readers who personally told me their own stories in the wake of such tragic events as the murders of Dominic and Nancy Ianiero in Mexico.

Here's what I don't understand: we seem to have little understanding in Canada that we as citizens have the right to choose the kind of foreign affairs department we want, and then insist it be delivered. This is a democracy, right? A government that ignores the mandate of its citizens should pay the price at the polls. You know what they say about getting the government you deserve. 

The focus of our government's facilities in other countries (at least in my experience) is to help selected business people abroad. Now, that's fine. But if Canadians want at least an equal focus — if not a priority focus — on offices to solve problems and make life easier for Canadians outside our borders, then citizens have the right to demand that be consistently done. Until that happens, I expect to write many more stories about Canadians being abandoned. Outrage on the horizon.

It's worth mentioning the blanket refrain from our government officials — that Canada can't meddle in the affairs of other countries — seems an excuse for inaction. Other countries aren't hesitant to speak up for their citizens, even going to extraordinary lengths to help them. 

This does not negate, by the way, the excellent work of dedicated foreign service officials who do what they can within guidelines given them. Nor is one party better than the other; I've seen the same wild "Who's on First?" antics from both Liberal and Conservative governments.

Citizens can start perhaps by writing to the government, as well as making their views known to their own MPs and candidates.

Conservative government: Here's your start for linking to the numbers and addresses of the politicians you want. I notice the government's website doesn't make it easy for citizens to contact anybody. Surely an oversight.

Liberals: Their "contact us" link is rather hidden too. A trend.

NDP: What do you know, easier to find numbers.

Bloc: Easy links to English.

Green Party: Also user friendly.

* * *

This is such a recurring issue for journalists in their work, I almost feel I should run myself to try and fix it. Then I think of the record of journalists in Parliament. Enough said.

Toronto cabbies get another kick in the teeth

I had an earful today from a cab driver about the latest blow to their industry in Toronto. The Ontario government slipped through a change to the City of Toronto Act to allow airport limousine drivers to pick up fares in the city. On the surface, it seems like a logical service to citizens in the city, and most online comments about today's story at thestar.com (linked above) were from satisfied limousine customers talking about their great service.

But the issue, said the cabbie, is one of fairness. Toronto cabdrivers aren't allowed to take fares to Pearson International Airport and pick up a customer for the return trip, instead being forced to drive back to the city empty. Exceptions are made when the driver already has an order to meet a customer and pays $10 at the airport. My driver says this is second-class treatment. I've driven in a lot of Toronto cabs in recent years and have gone through the litany of their problems, from the city rule change that wiped out a priority list for drivers who'd been waiting for years to purchase new cab licences to the sudden arrival of the new Ambassador fleet that slashed livelihoods.

From the customer standpoint, I can't count the number of times I've been at Pearson and heard passengers complaining about the lack of cabs at the Arrivals terminal and the long lines to get a limo. It's not as if great service is being offered for all of these rule changes.

Only in Toronto On the subway going east from Chester Station today, a guy with a guitar started singing, "Let's Go to the Ex," and the refrain was picked up by another couple of singers at the other end of the car. Obviously a promo for the upcoming Ex, and one that put a smile on the face of a whole load of workaday passengers. But what gave the event that certain Toronto elan was when a TTC rider joined in with the jingle. He said he's a singer too but mostly in Arabic, whereupon he began to sing a favorite song in that language. From across the aisle, another man picked up on the second verse and and the two sang all the way to Yonge St., occasionally throwing in a line in English, "I love you, I love you, I love you." Throughout the car, a half dozen other passengers softly sang along in Arabic.

Brightened my day.

Obama's health care dream was nice while it lasted

President Barack Obama is on schedule with his Democratic predecessor Bill Clinton in abandoning election campaign health care promises. It took Clinton about six months in 1992 to realize he wasn't going to be able to bring in a health care plan for Americans because the insurance company lobby was too strong. Then, Canada was a  scapegoat of the Capitol Hill lobby campaign , with horror stories about Canadian universal health care. It's been deja vu all over again in recent months on that score too, although now the battle is fought with videos on YouTube.

For Obama, it all ends with a euphemism. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters (with a straight face) a new government alternative to private health insurance is "not the essential element" of a health-care overhaul by the administration.

Not the essential element. That's like saying oxygen is not the essential element of breathable air, or sun not the essential element of photosynthesis.