Bloc's opposition to religious exemption for hate speech makes sense

It's not that often that I agree with much that the Bloc Québécois says, but the Bloc's amendment to the Liberals' Bill C-9 (the Combatting Hate Act") does make good sense.

Bill C-9 promises to clamp down on hate speech and make hate-motivated crimes a specific offence. But the Liberals' original formulation allowed the current criminal code's religious exemption to continue. This specifies that something that would otherwise qualify as hate speech can be allowed, "if, in good faith, the person expressed or attempted to establish by an argument an opinion on a religious subject or an opinion based on a belief in a religious text". 

So, religion can be used as a cover for homophobia, antisemitism, anti-Islamism, you name it, so long as it appears to come from religious convictions or an interpretation, however tenuous, of a religious text.

As the Bloc Québécois points out, such an exemption makes a self-defeating mockery of the law, alllowing for all sorts of hateful utterances provided the perpetrator claims it is part of their religious beliefs, and the Bloc refused to support the government unless the religious exemption was removed. The Liberals need the Bloc's votes to pass the legislation, so it has agreed to remove the offending clause. The Conservatives, predictably enough, continue to insist that the religious exemption is just fine.

Some of the Bloc Québécois' strident views on secularism are a bit too strong for me, a confirmed atheist. (For example, the recent ban on religious garb and symbols for public sector workers.) But this one seems sensible to me.

Art and cobblers

I've been quite enjoying the page 2 item in the print version of the Globe and Mail newspaper in recent months, where they feature painting and other artwork form various Canadian art galleries.

Today's showcases a painting by Uktainian-Canadian William Kurelek called Lumberjack's Breakfast. 

What do you see as the dominant colours in this picture? Brown? Green, maybe?

The blurb that goes with the picture in the Globe says, "His use of blue and yellow, echoing the Ukrainian flag, subtly affirms the artist's cultural identity". 

Yes, there's a little bit of blue, but almost no yellow. Which subtly affirms my own observation that there's an awful lot of cobblers talked about art.

Why did Trump pardon a Honduran narco-trafficker and dictator?

A great many people are having a hard time understanding the logic of Donald Trump's official pardon for ex-Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernández.

Hernandez is serving a 45-year sentence in the high security USP Hazelton prison in West Virginia for his role in trafficking some 400 tons of cocaine into the USA. No-one is quite sure why Trump has pardoned him, given his administration's supposed strong anti-drugs stance (think bombing Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, punitive tariffs against Canada for its supposed role in the US fentanyl trade, etc).

Even members of his own party are questioning the action: "Why would we pardon this guy and then go after Maduro for running drugs into the United States?" (Republican Senator Bill Cassidy).

Perfectly good question, with no good answer. The best we can do is to assume that the pardon was Trump's attempt to meddle in the ongoing election in Honduras, in which Trump would prefer to see the right-wing National Party candidate triumph (Hernández's old party). That, and he would, of course, like to be seen as doing the exact opposite of whatever the Biden administration did (Hernández was tried and convicted by Biden's Justice Department).

It's not a very convincing explanation, although why we are still looking for logic and sense in Trump's decisions is beyond me. Maybe he just wants to sow doubt in people's minds about the whole US legal system, which is still attacking Trump on several fronts. Who knows what the guy is thinking?

How do we claw a way back to common sense and respectability after Trump?

Donald Trump, and his administration of amoral lackeys and yes-men, will probably be remembered by history for the big things he got wrong, from upending global free trade, to rolling back environmental protections in favour of the oil and gas industry, to repudiating and reversing the immigration that helped make the country great in the first place, to the flagrant disdain for human rights and international norms, to the concentration of executive power to accommodate the whims and obsessions of one man at the expense of the congressional system that has served the country for two and a half centuries. 

Of course, this list can be extended and expanded. What counts as egregious has undergone a stark re-definition during Trump's second term, so extensive and all-encompassing are the man's sins. Perhaps the single most important change he has wrought is the normalization of personal insults, crudity, lying and nepotism in the political sphere.

What might get lost in that larger history, though, are the smaller things that Trump brings to bear almost every single day. It seems like nothing is too small for his overbearing attention. In some ways, you have to admire the attention to detail and the sheer single-mindedness of the man, although we must still remember to stand back and look at the actual import of his attentions, lest we too become caught up in his personalty cult.

Most days, there is a social media posting (or 10!), a press release, or an executive order that just gets lost amid all the vileness and atrocity emanating from the White House in what now passes for the "normal" course of business in the USA. 

Whether it is redistricting congressional boundaries for party political gain, or weaponizing the Justice Department to get back at perceived enemies, or the gratuitous extra-juducial killing of purported drug carriers, actions that would have been considered outrageous and politically unconscionable just a few short years ago are now coming thick and fast. Browbeating countries into disadvantageous trade and investment agreements, changing the names and briefs of entire government departments, co-opting public institutions for personal gains and aggrandisement, issuing pardons to convicted criminals on purely political grounds, embracing dictators shunned by the rest of the civilized world, blatant interference in the running of private-sector companies, the abandonment of any and all diversity initiatives, deliberately lying about vaccine and other healthcare claims ... there seems to be no end to the depths Trump is willing to plumb.

Is anyone actually keeping track of everything that needs to be reversed in order to bring America back to normality and international standards? Whoever follows Trump - and we have to believe that this too shall pass one day, and that a majority of Americans will eventually wake up from their delusions - whoever follows Trump will have the unenviable task of methodically undoing all the harms that have been perpetrated by the Trump administration. As things stand, it's hard to see that ever happening.

And we also have to hope that the demons of back-door fascism and extreme populism that Trump's actions have allowed to take hold, and become normalized, across the world also die with him. Otherwise, we are are in for one ugly 21st century.

Trump's targeting of Venezuelan boats not likely to save any Americans from anything

America's crusade against drug-trafficking Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean is completely off-target.

US claims, that the Venezuelan boats targeted by the USA were involved in transporting fentanyl from South America to the US, flies in the face of all available evidence, which shows that the drug trade through the Caribbean is almost all in cocaine, not fentanyl, and that the cocaine is destined for Europe, not America. US-bound fentanyl almost all comes in from Mexico, not Canada, as Trump also claims, and certainly not through the Caribbean, and most of America's cocaine comes in through the Pacific.

President Trump and various members of his administration, as well as key spokespeople from the Pentagon (which is now largely staffed by loyal Trump supporters, and not necessarily experts in their field), have been loud in their claims that US strikes on Venezuelan boats in the Caribbean, of which there have been at least 20 in the last few months, are essential to break up drug flows into the US and to protect the drug-addled American population. Trump has claimed (without evidence, as per usual) that each boat bombed saves 25,000 American lives, which is just ludicrous.

It is more and more apparent that this is just a pretext for Trump's regime-change aspirations, and his desperate need to be seen to be doing something - anything - about America's drug problem.

The Trump regime has come under more and more criticism by allies for its activities int he Caribbean, which increasingly look to be against both US and international law. Some allies are even witholding intelligence on Latin American drug smuggling operational from the USA, as they are worried about the illegality of America's policy.

FIFA boss pleases Trump with his very own peace prize

The FIFA World Cup draw in Washington was the rather bizarre occasion for the presentation of the brand-new FIFA Peace Prize. 

The what, you say? FIFA is in the business of awarding prizes for world peace? I thought they were all about football? Good questions all.

It turns out that Gianni Infantino, the Swiss-Italian current boss of FIFA, is best buddies with Donald Trump, although nobody really knows why. From Trump's inauguration to the recent Club World Cup final to the signing of the supposed "peace deal" between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Infantino keeps popping up, Waldo-like, in Trump's environs, sometimes in the most unlikely circumstances.

Infantino's "style" was all over the the glitzy World Cup draw event. Trump's favourite entertainers, The Village People and Andrea Bocelli, were there too, as were a bunch of other actors, models and assorted hangers-on. There was much mutual back-slapping between Trump and Infantino, and some embarrassing one-sided abasement. Infantino even promised Trump "the support of the entire football community", which seemed a bit rich.

Even given all this, it was nevertheless a very strange moment when Infantino hijacked the lottery draw event, full of soccer personalities and sports talk, to present Trump with a cheap imitation peace prize, à propos of nothing at all. Given that it is very unlikely that Trump will ever earn the Nobel Prize, given his predilection for war, Infantino presumably felt sorry for him and thought he should have his very own peace prize. And it was just that: a prize created expressly for Trump and no-one else. No-one else on the 37-member FIFA Council seemed to know anything about it.

The President, though, was clearly deeply touched by all this nonsense. And, in one fell swoop, Infantino firmly positioned himself as Trump's bestie, even rivalling fallen Canadian Great One, Wayne Gretzky. It is hard to make this stuff up, isn't it?

Any "understanding" between the governments of Canada and Alberta will be hard won

A Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the Liberal government of Canada and the United Conservative government of Alberta was never going be an easy thing. There is very little common ground between the Liberals and Danielle Smith's United Conservative Party, although Prime Minister Mark Carney is in the process of dragging the Liberals much further to the right in his determination to kick-start Canada's economy, for example by avoiding awkward environmental reviews and such like.

There was lots of talk about "hinge moments" and "inflection points" and other such trendy buzzwords, and Carney and Smith were like a couple of giggling schoolkids at the official signing ceremony. However, the agreement may not actually be worth the paper it was written on.

This so-called "grand bargain" involves Ottawa giving the green light to a new pipeline from Alberta to the Pacific, a major sop to a fractious and trigger-happy Alberta. The only stipulations for Alberta are rather vague ones about pursuing carbon capture technology, stricter industrial carbon pricing rules, and of course getting the buy-in of British Columbia and First Nations, through whose territory the pipeline would run (which will not be easy, if indeed it is even possible). 

Carney is still insisting that it will all happen in a spirit of "cooperative federalism", in which "all stakeholders have to agree", including the province of British Columbia and several affected First Nations, but that seems naïve to me. He also seems to think that Alberta can still achieve its greenhouse gas emissions targets by 2050, apparently not realizing that Alberta has no intentions of chasing any such target.

Quite how Mr. Carney hopes to achieve this feat is not clear, and a lot of other people are equally skeptical. Many British Columbia Liberal MPs and their constituents are strongly opposed to the proposed carve-out of environmental protections for the ecologically-sensitive North West coast. Many First Nations rights holders are strongly opposed to a pipeline through their territory, and the transportation of oil through the pristine fjords and inlets of the BC coast. The exemption of Alberta from Canada's Clean Electricity Regulations has also raised the hackles of other provinces.

All this has driven a substantial wedge within the Liberal Party, because there are still many MPs in the Liberal caucus from the old environmentalist days of Justin Trudeau, including some MPs like Steven Guilbeault that were instrumental in drawing up some of the key environmental legislation that Carney is apparently now all too happy to trample over.

There have been some rather testy discussions between the Prime Minister's Office and Liberal MPs like Mr. Guilbeault and others, and particularly with many of the British Columbia Liberal MPs, who are having to explain this volte face to their electorate. BC Premier David Eby, whose province was inexplicably not included in talks, remains implacably opposed to it, particularly over the prospect of the federal government using its recently acquired power to grant exemptions to the current BC oil tanker ban. The Union of BC Indian Chiefs, as well as various individual Indigenous groups, issued a strong statement indicating their continued opposition to such a pipeline.

Carney and Smith are publicly portrating this as a done deal, even though no "private proponent" has yet shown any willingness to take on such a contentious project, and even though there are loud rumblings of discontent within the Liberal Party itself. Maybe Mr. Carney sees this as a way to reset fractured federal-provincial relations but, in attempting a rapprochement with Alberta, he has alienated other provinces, mainly BC and Quebec (which issued its own statement about how iniqutious it finds the Alberta deal, calling it the day Canada's commitment to climate action died).

So, is Mr. Carney just being naïve and idealistic by putting such a great emphasis on this deal with Alberta? What value is any kind of understanding between Alberta and the federal government if there is no chance of projects going forward, and if two of the major parties involved - British Columbia and First Nations -  were not even included in the negotiations.  He is normally a very pragmatic man, but in this case he seems to have let his heart rule in his head. 

Or maybe it's all just political theatre? Is Carney only pretending to want a new pipeline, as some have suggested. Either way, this is a vague promise not a practical plan, and promises can be broken or just fall by the wayside. The reality is: a pipeline to the BC coast seems no closer to reality than it was before the MOU, and Mr. Carney may have damaged relations with other provinces, and even his own caucus, in the process.

UPDATE

It's probably no surprise, but Steven Guilbeault, a lifelong environmental advocate, has resigned from the Liberal Cabinet over the Alberta deal. He will continue to represent his Montreal riding, but will no longer serve in Cabinet as Minster of Canadian Identity and Culture. 

There seems to be an irreparable rift between Carney snd Gilbeault over the environmental repercussions of the Alberta MOU. Kudos to Mr. Guilbeault for having the guts to stand up for his principles. Carney, once a stand-out apologist for climate action financing, seems to have drunk the Trump Cool-aid and gone all-in on fossil fuels and abandoned his old zeal for sustainable clean energy. You can see why Guilbeault reached the end of his tether.

Exposing false claims of native heritage is surely counter-productive

The latest Indigenous Canadian to be outed as not being Indigenous at all is successful author Thomas King.

California-born King, who has lived in Camada since the early 1980s, seems to have honestly believed all his life that he was of Cherokee ancestry. But he was recently presented with genealogical evidence to the contrary, a finding that has profoundly shocked and depressed the 82-year old author of popular books like Indians on Vacation and The Inconvenient Indian. He has withdrawn the publication of his next novel, due out in May 2026, and his whole life and legacy is in disarray after the revelations.

He was outed by a "whistle-blowing organization" called the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds, based in North Carolina. The organization exists, it seems, to expose false claims of Native heritage in America and Canada. Because - just like with Joseph Boyden, Buffy Sainte Marie and Michelle Latimer, before King - they wouldn't want people thinking that these successful artists and personalities, who have spent most of their lives trying to promote and boost Indigenous peoples, were Indigenous, would they?

I'm sure, where the Tribal Alliance Against Frauds and similar groups are concerned, there is a matter of principle involved here, even if that principle is exclusionary and bigoted and a bit fanatical. But I can't help but think that they are cutting off their noses to spite their faces.

UPDATE

And here we go: Vancouver School Board is pulling King's books from its school curriculum and libraries because, after all, he doesn't have any American Indian heritage, does he? I'm sure many others will follow. The usual argument is trotted out, that celebrating King/Boyden/ Sainte-Marie/etc is somehow "taking space away" from real Indigenous authors and performers (who are presumably not as good, otherwise they would have made it big anyway, especially given the built-in "authenticity bonus" that Native artists enjoy these days).

So, what's the message here? That the only reason Thomas King's books are so enjoyed and revered is because he is Indigenous? That all those prizes that were bestowed were only for the accident of his birth, not for his literary and story-telling chops? Ridiculous! At this rate, Indigenous people will have no role models left.