Appendices:
1. A Real Bill for the Climate, NYT Editorial, August 9 2009.
2. Climate change odds much worse than thought, David Chandler, MIT News Office, May 19 2009.
3. Climate Change Odds Much Worse Than Thought, Science Daily, May 20 2009.
3a. Probabilistic Forecast for 21st Century Climate Based on Uncertainties in Emissions (without Policy) and Climate Parameters, (%$#$! pdf), January 2009.
4. How to Lick a Slug, Nicholas D. Kristof, August 1 2009.
5. How to Recharge Your Soul, Nicholas D. Kristof, August 8 2009.
5a. The Face of Slavery, YouTube.
5b. Sex and Lies - South Africa, YouTube.
5c. The Business of Brothels, Kristof video at NYT.
5d. The Face of Slavery, Kristof video at NYT.
6. Get down to the strike 'essentials', Tim Armstrong, Monday August 10 2009.
7. Best interests still best, Editorial, Monday Aug 10 2009.
8. The enticements of green carrots, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Saturday August 8 2009.
9. Poll shows leaders have lost our trust, Vancouver Sun Editorial, August 11 2009.
10. Pray for the United Church, Vancouver Sun Editorial, August 11 2009.
10a. United Church, 40th Council.
10b. Canadian Jewish Congress, B'nai Brith Canada.
10c. Atlantic Proposals M&O 7, TOR 9, TOR 10, TOR 13.
M&O 7 Implementation of Measures towards Peace in the Middle East
TOR 9 Pathway to Peace in Israel/Palestine
TOR 10 Seeking Peace through Justice: Institutional and Academic boycott of Israel
TOR 13 Working for Peace in Israel/Palestine Using Methods Used for South African Apartheid
10d. Pour oil on troubled waters, Phrase Finder.
10e. Oil-on-Water Calming Effect, YouTube.
10f. UCC Social Justice.
10g. UCC World Affairs Committee.
10h. UCC Holy Land Awareness and Action (sub) Committee.
11. How Israel became South Africa, Margaret Wente, Thursday Aug 13 2009.
12. United Church resolution is anti-Semitic, CJC says, Wendy Cox, Wednesday Aug 12 2009.
13. At the RCMP, the thin blue line is alive and well, Don Martin, August 12 2009.
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A Real Bill for the Climate, NYT Editorial, August 9 2009.
Every two years, like clockwork, Congress seems to pass an energy bill, each one marginally better than the one before. What this country does not need in 2009 is another energy bill, even a better one. What it needs is a climate bill, one committed to reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in a way that engages the whole economy and forces major technological change.
Without such a bill, America will lose the race against time on climate, lose the race for markets for new and cleaner energy systems, and forfeit any claim to world leadership in advance of the next round of global climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December.
The bill approved by the House last month is a start. It calls for greater efficiency and alternative energy sources. But at its heart is a provision that would cut greenhouse gases by 17 percent by 2020 and 83 percent by midcentury. It would do so by imposing a steadily declining ceiling on emissions — raising the cost of dirtier fuels while steering investments to cleaner ones.
Yet there are small but disturbing signs that what this country might have to settle for is another energy bill. The atmosphere in the Senate is just short of mutinous. The mandatory cap on emissions has virtually no Republican support. There is talk of a turf war between two key Democrats, Barbara Boxer and Max Baucus, whose committees share jurisdiction over the bill. On Thursday, 10 Democrats from states that produce coal or depend on energy-intensive industries said they could not support any bill that did not protect American industries from exports from countries that did not impose similar restraints on emissions.
The White House seems oddly disengaged. It has been a while since President Obama has issued a full-throated plea for a climate bill, and when his aides talk about the issue, they talk about things that are easy to sell — “energy security” and “green jobs” — rather than pushing for tough measures needed to cap emissions.
They must start doing so, if not tomorrow, the moment the Senate returns after Labor Day. The planet cannot wait much longer for serious action. The last few months have brought a mountain of new data, including an M.I.T. study suggesting that the planet could be warming much faster than previously thought. The only possible response is a strong, demanding climate bill.
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Climate change odds much worse than thought, David Chandler, MIT News Office, May 19 2009.
New analysis shows warming could be double previous estimates
The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.
The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well - such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.
Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important "to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science," he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. "In that sense, our work is unique," he says.
The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming effect. In addition, measurements of deep ocean temperature rises, which enable estimates of how fast heat and carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and transferred to the ocean depths, imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.
Prinn says these and a variety of other changes based on new measurements and new analyses changed the odds on what could be expected in this century in the "no policy" scenarios - that is, where there are no policies in place that specifically induce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, the changes "unfortunately largely summed up all in the same direction," he says. "Overall, they stacked up so they caused more projected global warming."
While the outcomes in the "no policy" projections now look much worse than before, there is less change from previous work in the projected outcomes if strong policies are put in place now to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without action, "there is significantly more risk than we previously estimated," Prinn says. "This increases the urgency for significant policy action."
To illustrate the range of probabilities revealed by the 400 simulations, Prinn and the team produced a "roulette wheel" that reflects the latest relative odds of various levels of temperature rise. The wheel provides a very graphic representation of just how serious the potential climate impacts are.
"There's no way the world can or should take these risks," Prinn says. And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback "is just going to make it worse," Prinn says.
The lead author of the paper describing the new projections is Andrei Sokolov, research scientist in the Joint Program. Other authors, besides Sokolov and Prinn, include Peter H. Stone, Chris E. Forest, Sergey Paltsev, Adam Schlosser, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, John Reilly, Marcus Sarofim, Chien Wang and Henry D. Jacoby, all of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, as well as Mort Webster of MIT's Engineering Systems Division and D. Kicklighter, B. Felzer and J. Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.
Prinn stresses that the computer models are built to match the known conditions, processes and past history of the relevant human and natural systems, and the researchers are therefore dependent on the accuracy of this current knowledge. Beyond this, "we do the research, and let the results fall where they may," he says. Since there are so many uncertainties, especially with regard to what human beings will choose to do and how large the climate response will be, "we don't pretend we can do it accurately. Instead, we do these 400 runs and look at the spread of the odds."
Because vehicles last for years, and buildings and powerplants last for decades, it is essential to start making major changes through adoption of significant national and international policies as soon as possible, Prinn says. "The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies."
This work was supported in part by grants from the Office of Science of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and by the industrial and foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
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Climate Change Odds Much Worse Than Thought, Science Daily, May 20 2009.
The most comprehensive modeling yet carried out on the likelihood of how much hotter the Earth's climate will get in this century shows that without rapid and massive action, the problem will be about twice as severe as previously estimated six years ago - and could be even worse than that.
The study uses the MIT Integrated Global Systems Model, a detailed computer simulation of global economic activity and climate processes that has been developed and refined by the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change since the early 1990s. The new research involved 400 runs of the model with each run using slight variations in input parameters, selected so that each run has about an equal probability of being correct based on present observations and knowledge. Other research groups have estimated the probabilities of various outcomes, based on variations in the physical response of the climate system itself. But the MIT model is the only one that interactively includes detailed treatment of possible changes in human activities as well - such as the degree of economic growth, with its associated energy use, in different countries.
Study co-author Ronald Prinn, the co-director of the Joint Program and director of MIT's Center for Global Change Science, says that, regarding global warming, it is important "to base our opinions and policies on the peer-reviewed science," he says. And in the peer-reviewed literature, the MIT model, unlike any other, looks in great detail at the effects of economic activity coupled with the effects of atmospheric, oceanic and biological systems. "In that sense, our work is unique," he says.
The new projections, published this month in the American Meteorological Society's Journal of Climate, indicate a median probability of surface warming of 5.2 degrees Celsius by 2100, with a 90% probability range of 3.5 to 7.4 degrees. This can be compared to a median projected increase in the 2003 study of just 2.4 degrees. The difference is caused by several factors rather than any single big change. Among these are improved economic modeling and newer economic data showing less chance of low emissions than had been projected in the earlier scenarios. Other changes include accounting for the past masking of underlying warming by the cooling induced by 20th century volcanoes, and for emissions of soot, which can add to the warming effect. In addition, measurements of deep ocean temperature rises, which enable estimates of how fast heat and carbon dioxide are removed from the atmosphere and transferred to the ocean depths, imply lower transfer rates than previously estimated.
Prinn says these and a variety of other changes based on new measurements and new analyses changed the odds on what could be expected in this century in the "no policy" scenarios - that is, where there are no policies in place that specifically induce reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Overall, the changes "unfortunately largely summed up all in the same direction," he says. "Overall, they stacked up so they caused more projected global warming."
While the outcomes in the "no policy" projections now look much worse than before, there is less change from previous work in the projected outcomes if strong policies are put in place now to drastically curb greenhouse gas emissions. Without action, "there is significantly more risk than we previously estimated," Prinn says. "This increases the urgency for significant policy action."
To illustrate the range of probabilities revealed by the 400 simulations, Prinn and the team produced a "roulette wheel" that reflects the latest relative odds of various levels of temperature rise. The wheel provides a very graphic representation of just how serious the potential climate impacts are.
"There's no way the world can or should take these risks," Prinn says. And the odds indicated by this modeling may actually understate the problem, because the model does not fully incorporate other positive feedbacks that can occur, for example, if increased temperatures caused a large-scale melting of permafrost in arctic regions and subsequent release of large quantities of methane, a very potent greenhouse gas. Including that feedback "is just going to make it worse," Prinn says.
The lead author of the paper describing the new projections is Andrei Sokolov, research scientist in the Joint Program. Other authors, besides Sokolov and Prinn, include Peter H. Stone, Chris E. Forest, Sergey Paltsev, Adam Schlosser, Stephanie Dutkiewicz, John Reilly, Marcus Sarofim, Chien Wang and Henry D. Jacoby, all of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, as well as Mort Webster of MIT's Engineering Systems Division and D. Kicklighter, B. Felzer and J. Melillo of the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole.
Prinn stresses that the computer models are built to match the known conditions, processes and past history of the relevant human and natural systems, and the researchers are therefore dependent on the accuracy of this current knowledge. Beyond this, "we do the research, and let the results fall where they may," he says. Since there are so many uncertainties, especially with regard to what human beings will choose to do and how large the climate response will be, "we don't pretend we can do it accurately. Instead, we do these 400 runs and look at the spread of the odds."
Because vehicles last for years, and buildings and powerplants last for decades, it is essential to start making major changes through adoption of significant national and international policies as soon as possible, Prinn says. "The least-cost option to lower the risk is to start now and steadily transform the global energy system over the coming decades to low or zero greenhouse gas-emitting technologies."
This work was supported in part by grants from the Office of Science of the U.S. Dept. of Energy, and by the industrial and foundation sponsors of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.
Journal reference: A.P. Sokolov, P.H. Stone, C.E. Forest, R. Prinn, M.C. Sarofim, M. Webster, S. Paltsev, C.A. Schlosser, D. Kicklighter, S. Dutkiewicz, J. Reilly, C. Wang, B Felzer, H.D. Jacoby. Probabilistic forecast for 21st century climate based on uncertainties in emissions (without policy) and climate parameters. Journal of Climate, 2007; preprint (2009): 1 DOI: 10.1175/2009JCLI2863.1
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How to Lick a Slug, Nicholas D. Kristof, August 1 2009.
While backpacking here with my 11-year-old daughter, I kept thinking of something tragic: so few kids these days know what happens when you lick a big yellow banana slug.
My daughter and I were recuperating in a (banana slug-infested) wilderness from a surfeit of civilization. On our second day on the Pacific Crest Trail, we were exhausted after nearly 20 miles of hiking, our feet ached, and ravenous mosquitoes were persecuting us. Dusk was falling, but no formal campsite was within miles.
So we set out a groundsheet and our sleeping bags on the soft grass of a ridge, so that the winds would blow the mosquitoes away. Our dog looked aghast (“Ugh, where’s my bed?!”), but sulkily curled up beside us. As far as we could tell, there was no other hiker within a half-day’s journey in any direction.
We debated whether to put up our light tarp to protect us from rain. “No need,” I advised my daughter patronizingly. “There’s zero chance it’ll rain. And it’ll be more fun to be able to look up at shooting stars.”
It was, until we awoke at 4 a.m. to a freezing drizzle.
The rain not only punctured the doctrine of Paternal Infallibility but also offered one of nature’s dazzlingly important lessons in perspective, reminding us that we’re just tenants — and ones without much sway.
Such time in the wilderness is part of our family’s summer ritual, a time to hit the “reset” switch and escape deadlines and BlackBerrys. We spend the time fretting instead about blisters, river crossings and rain, and the experiences offer us lessons on inner peace and life’s meaning — cheap and effective therapy, without the couch.
All this comes to mind because for most of us in the industrialized world, nature is a rarer and rarer part of our lives. Children for 1,000 generations grew up exploring fields, itching with poison oak and discovering the hard way what a wasp nest looks like. That’s no longer true.
Paul, a fourth grader in San Diego, put it this way: “I like to play indoors better, ’cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.” Paul was quoted in a thoughtful book by Richard Louv, “Last Child in the Woods,” that argued that baby boomers “may constitute the last generation of Americans to share an intimate, familial attachment to the land and water.”
Only 2 percent of American households now live on farms, compared with 40 percent in 1900. Suburban childhood that once meant catching snakes in fields now means sanitized video play dates scheduled a week in advance. One study of three generations of 9-year-olds found that by 1990 the radius from the house in which they were allowed to roam freely was only one-ninth as great as it had been in 1970.
A British study found that children could more easily identify Japanese cartoon characters like Pikachu, Metapod and Wigglytuff than they could native animals and plants, like otter, oak and beetle.
Mr. Louv calls this “nature deficit disorder,” and he links it to increases in depression, obesity and attention deficit disorder. I don’t know about all that, although his book does cite a study indicating that watching fish lowers blood pressure significantly. (That’s how to cut health costs: hand out goldfish instead of heart medicine!)
One problem may be that the American environmental movement has focused so much on preserving nature that it has neglected to do enough to preserve a constituency for nature. It’s important not only to save forests, but also to promote camping, hiking, bouldering and white-water rafting so that people care about saving those forests.
One sign of trouble: the number of visits to America’s national parks has been slipping for more than a decade. Likewise, Europe and Canada have both done an excellent job of building networks of long-distance hiking trails, while the U.S. has trouble maintaining the trails it has.
One of our family’s annual backpacks is the 40-mile Timberline Trail circuit around Mount Hood, crossing snowfields and dazzling alpine fields of flowers. In years when we’re particularly addled, we hike it as many as three times. But a washout almost three years ago left part of this gorgeous trail — completed in the 1930s — officially closed, and unofficially rather difficult to get by. Here’s a spectacular trail that was built in the last depression, and we can’t even sustain it.
So let’s protect nature, yes, but let’s also maintain trails, restore the Forest Service and support programs that get young people rained on in the woods. Let’s acknowledge that getting kids awed by nature is as important as getting them reading.
Oh, and the slug? Time was, most kids knew that if you licked the underside of a banana slug, your tongue went numb. Better that than have them numb their senses staying cooped up inside.
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How to Recharge Your Soul, Nicholas D. Kristof, August 8 2009.
Camping in the woods sounds gloriously refreshing! But I wouldn’t know where to begin, and, ugh, what if I get eaten by a bear?
Skip to next paragraph
Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times
That was roughly the reaction I had from some readers after my column a week ago about “nature deficit disorder” — the problems that accrue when young people spend their time indoors, deprived of the chance to catch frogs or throw rocks at wasp nests. When I was a kid, being cooped up inside was called “juvenile detention”; now it’s called “leisure.”
So this is a how-to column: Here’s how to pry yourself and your family off the keyboard and venture into the wild — without feeding a bear. In the same way that you recharge your BlackBerry from time to time, you also should recharge your soul — by spending part of August disconnected from the Web and reconnected with the universe.
In short: Go take a hike! Backpacking is the cheapest of vacations, and it links you intimately and directly to the world around you. It reminds us that we are just a part of the natural order, not lord of it, and that humble acknowledgment is the first step to improve our stewardship.
Backpacking means you take on your shoulders everything you need to hike and camp. The key is to carry very little, say 10 pounds not including food and water. I frequently see tortured backpackers stumbling along as they lug gargantuan packs that dangle frying pans; in their torment, they gaze enviously at my small pack and mistake me for a day-hiker.
So here’s a basic how-to guide:
1. Follow Robert Frost and take the path less traveled by, for that makes all the difference. In the evening, camp where no one else is around. You don’t need a campground: just stop anywhere that is flat. Indeed, the ground in the woods and fields is much softer than the packed dirt of campgrounds. But when you leave in the morning, make sure that you leave no trace.
2. Wear an old pair of running shoes, not a new pair of hiking boots that just give you blisters. One way to tell neophyte weekend hikers from Mexico-to-Canada through-hikers is that the beginners have huge packs and heavy boots, while the through-hikers have sneakers and tiny packs.
3. Try the “ultralight” gear that is revolutionizing backpacking. My beloved basics are the 1-pound G4 pack from Gossamer Gear, with a sleeping pad that doubles as pack frame, and a 1-pound, 13-ounce Ultralite sleeping bag from Western Mountaineering that is warm to 20 degrees.
4. Skip a tent. To keep off rain, carry an ultralight tarp that you tie between two trees and stake to the ground, like a pup tent. But if there’s no rain, sleep under the stars. God made stars so that humans could fall asleep admiring them.
5. A tiny backpacking stove can boil water for freeze-dried dinners that are unpalatable at home and delectable in the field. My kids’ favorite food is “anything cooked in the woods.”
6. Bring a fleece and a rain jacket or poncho, for being cold and wet will ruin a hike and can be dangerous. I also carry a fleece cap and gloves, as well as plastic trash bags to keep things dry — above all, the toilet paper.
7. Skip a change of clothes, except a pair of dry socks to sleep in. You’ll never stink to yourself.
8. If you have aging knees, hiking poles are a lifesaver. They are also useful in getting across raging creeks, in setting up a tarp where there are no trees, and in fending off ravenous bears.
9. Ah, yes, the bears. In black bear country, avoid camping in car campgrounds, which are regarded in ursine circles as snack joints. Cook your dinner on the trail in late afternoon, and then hike a few more miles to camp where there are no cooking smells. You may also want to use a rope to hoist your pack out of reach of bears; anyone who uses a food sack as a pillow may be kissed awake at 3 a.m. by a visitor both hungry and hirsute.
10. In grizzly or polar bear territory, carry bear spray (which is a bit like mace). Frankly, the spray is unlikely to stop a 1,000-pound bear hurtling toward you, so experienced hikers respond to a menacing bear by using the spray in one of two ways. The first option is to spray yourself in the face, so you no longer care what the bear does to you. The second option is to spray your best friend beside you, and then run.
The truth is, bears are far better behaved than humans (like the man who tried to stuff a bear into his car, so he could photograph the animal beside his wife). Black bears are small and mostly fearful, and though grizzlies can be aggressive, they are rare outside Alaska and avoid groups of several hikers. Don’t worry about them.
There’s more backpacking advice on my blog, nytimes.com/ontheground. So before the summer ends, try overcoming nature deficit syndrome and recharging your soul — and happy trails!
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Get down to the strike 'essentials', Tim Armstrong, Monday August 10 2009.
Tim Armstrong is a former Ontario duputy minister of labour.
Understandable concerns about recent lengthy public-sector strikes - York University (84 days), Windsor (101 days), Toronto (39 days), and Ottawa transit (51 days) - are mounting. However, rather than declaring such services "essential" and banning strike or lockout options, one needs to take a deeper look at the dynamics of the disputes to determine what went wrong and why.
Take Toronto's six-week shutdown and consider the following: The five Toronto/CUPE collective agreements expired on Dec. 31, 2008. When Locals 79 and 416 commenced their strikes this summer, dozens of issues, including a multitude of concession proposals by the city, remained outstanding. What was accomplished in the intervening six months? Apparently very little. Why?
Obviously a work stoppage in the summer months, if necessary, is preferable for the unions. But what is the city's explanation for six months of unproductive bargaining? The Labour Relations Act permits either party to apply for the conciliation services that must be exhausted before strikes or lockouts are legal. Why didn't the city take action to expedite matters when it became clear that no progress was being made?
The city claims that its unorthodox public announcement, in mid-July, of the details of its "fair and affordable" proposal led, for the first time, to the serious substantive bargaining that resulted in the settlements ratified July 31. But why were weeks of work stoppage required before the city formulated that offer? Given the length of negotiations, should it not have been formulated and tendered weeks, if not months, earlier?
Both sides repeatedly asserted that they opposed binding arbitration. Why? Via Rail and the Teamsters, hardly neophytes, agreed to binding arbitration after a two-day walkout. The city's position is that arbitrators inevitably "split the difference" to the detriment of the employer. But is this correct? In 2002, as arbitrator in the city dispute, I rejected the union's wage claim and accepted the employer's, except for a premium supplement for ambulance workers.
The Ministry of Labour has the ablest group of conciliation and mediation officers in Canada, led by director Reg Pearson. But in rare instances, the parties' intransigence may justify extraordinary measures, especially where vital public interests are at stake. For example, the existing law permits the Minister of Labour to appoint an external, bipartisan, blue-ribbon disputes advisory committee to work with mediation staff to bring pressure to bear on both sides. And in the past, ministers of labour - and in some cases, premiers - have exerted their considerable powers of persuasion to settle strikes. Has this practice of carefully calibrated provincial involvement in sensitive public-interest disputes ceased, and if so why?
In finally settling the Toronto dispute, both sides engaged in counterproductive "triumphalism." Declaring total annihilation of one's bargaining opponent may have transitory political appeal, but in the mid- to long-term, it is deeply injurious in re-establishing the climate necessary for a productive ongoing relationship. In my award in 2002, I was harshly critical of the Toronto/CUPE adversarial environment. I proposed a number of remedial options, some of which are available through the Ministry of Labour's relationship-improvement programs. Were these proposals pursued? If not, why not?
Toronto, Windsor, Ottawa, and York University have left the public deeply skeptical about aspects of the public-sector bargaining system. Any flaws in the system will not be satisfactorily resolved by precipitate, knee-jerk legislative action, which some are suggesting. Nor should the problems simply be swept under the rug. Instead, why not use these cases as the basis for an independent, in-depth deconstruction of the dynamics of the bargaining that occurred to determine what went wrong - and what is required to rectify situations like these that go badly off the rails?
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Best interests still best, Editorial, Monday Aug 10 2009.
The unwilling return of an 11-year-old boy to Ireland after a decision last month of the British Columbia Court of Appeal should lead provincial legislatures in Canada to reconsider their unqualified enactment of the terms of an international treaty.
Although the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction begins by asserting the paramountcy of the best interests of children in custody matters, that principle, which should indeed be the governing one, can lose its priority when judges interpret the convention.
Outright child abductions tend not to give rise to the cases that are hardest to decide; these are likely to be in a grey area. Thus, the parents of "A," the 11-year-old in the recent B.C. Court of Appeal decision, had joint custody, but the boy's primary residence was to be in Ireland, where his mother, Deirdre Beatty, lives.
The father, Ernst Schatz, who lives in B.C., applied for sole custody in the Irish courts. That case was still pending when A came to visit Mr. Schatz, who had signed a solemn, sworn undertaking to the court that the boy would return to Ireland to continue living with Ms. Beatty.
A then said he wanted to stay with his father in Canada. When Ms. Beatty applied to the B.C. Supreme Court, a judge found that Mr. Schatz had "wrongfully retained" his son - the Hague Convention deals with such retentions, as well as the far more outrageous phenomenon of child abduction.
On the other hand, a court-appointed psychologist accepted that A had made his own decision; there was no "overt influence" from the father. But the judge, and later three appellate judges, ruled that he should go back to his mother.
The convention is designed, to a large extent, to stop parents from "forum-shopping": choosing the courts of a jurisdiction they hope will be friendly to them - and where they can make a good impression on local expert witnesses.
Based on the legislation, which is similar throughout Canada, the B.C. judges drew a sound conclusion. But what was apparently decisive for the judge of first instance was that it "would send the wrong message" to let A stay in Canada when a case was still pending in an Irish court. That entirely legitimate procedural and jurisdictional issue, however, should not be treated as more important than the best interests of the child.
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The enticements of green carrots, Thomas Homer-Dixon, Saturday August 8 2009.
Nudging people with environmental incentives may work better than imposing costs and penalties
We Canadians like to think we are green, but when it comes to protecting the environment, we are among the world's worst actors. Whether the metric is carbon output per capita, toxic waste emissions or protection of endangered species, Canada regularly ranks near the bottom of the list of similarly wealthy countries.
If our economy's incentives start pulling in the same direction as our ethical impulses, Canadians can do better. At present, they are pulling in opposite directions.
Most of us feel at least a twinge of an ethical obligation to take care of our natural environment. We know in some general way that the goods and services nature provides – clean air, regular rainfall, pollination of crops and the like – are essential to our health and prosperity. Most of us also feel some moral responsibility to protect these vital resources for our children and grandchildren.
But doing so generally doesn't pay. Despite a patchwork of provincial and federal subsidies, when we do insulate our homes, buy fuel-efficient cars or install energy-saving appliances, we usually bear a high upfront cost, gaining any savings in small increments over many years. For most of us, money in the hand seems to be worth a lot more than the prospect of savings some time in the future. So although we feel we should do our bit, the changes we actually make are slight.
Conventional economists say the underlying problem is that nature's goods and services are too cheap. Partly because these goods and services cannot be easily sliced into pieces and bought and sold in a marketplace – because we can't apply property rights to them – the economy treats them as essentially free. Following conventional economists' advice, the standard response of politicians and policy-makers is to make nature's goods and services more costly. For instance, cap-and-trade policies for dealing with climate change essentially propose to slice into pieces the atmosphere's capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, and then have the pieces priced in a market.
Such policies have a flaw; they tend to emphasize sticks (higher costs) rather than carrots (things we want). And while sticks may get us to change our behaviour, we don't change with any enthusiasm, which means our changes are often less extensive and creative than they could be.
Conventional economists are right in their diagnosis – that nature's goods and services are too cheap – but sometimes off the mark with their prescriptions. On the other hand, behavioural economists, who study how people behave in response to various incentives, can give us insights into what will work better. They have found that people generally respond more readily to carrots than sticks, that they tend to avoid risk, and that they act faster when they have easy access to clear information about how their behaviour compares with others'.
A former student of mine recently put these insights to use on the job.
Working in a federal ministry in Ottawa, she was bothered by the casual, everyday inefficiencies and waste in her co-workers' office practices – such as copying documents on only one side and leaving unused computers and other equipment running for long stretches. So, being an activist at heart, she decided to try to change these behaviours. She went around to her co-workers and asked them individually to volunteer to have their office practices monitored, rated and publicly advertised. A colour-coded badge was then posted outside each volunteer's office, indicating that person's progress in reducing his or her environmental impact.
The result was dramatic. A friendly competition developed to see who could do the best. Doing well became a matter of pride and reputation, and new norms started to take root.
Most importantly, participants' use of resources like paper and energy and their output of waste dropped sharply.
EARNING ECO-MILES
Nudging people to change their behaviour in an office building is one thing. Getting a whole country to change is quite another. But some people are developing the ideas needed to make it happen. One is Ron Dembo, founder and CEO of Zerofootprint, a Toronto-based, not-for-profit organization that helps people, corporations, cities and whole societies reduce their environmental impact.
Mr. Dembo is among a handful of Canadians (Greg Kiessling, founder of Bullfrog Power, and Stewart Elgie, head of Sustainable Prosperity, are others) applying extraordinary creativity and entrepreneurial skill to make modern capitalism work to save the environment rather than destroy it. A mathematics genius, Mr. Dembo began his career in computational finance, taught computer science and management for a decade at Yale and founded a company marketing risk-management software to leading banks around the world. He sold his company well before the risk-management fiasco that led to the current economic crisis – a crisis that arose from practices he decries – and then invested much of his fortune in Zerofootprint.
Mr. Dembo is tall, slim and athletic – an intense fifty-something social entrepreneur bursting with inspiration about how to use new technologies and incentives to save the environment. Among his best ideas, and one that he has developed in great detail, is “green credits.”
Green credits would be very similar to frequent-flyer miles.
Participation in the program would be voluntary. People could accumulate their credits over time and use them to get things they want. But unlike frequent-flyer points, people would earn their green credits by reducing their environmental impact, not by increasing it. Buying an energy-saving appliance or a fuel-efficient car, turning lights off, driving less, installing insulation, turning down the thermostat in the winter or reducing household water use would earn us points.
A green credits system would probably be most successful and comprehensive if governments set up the basic infrastructure of monitoring, information exchange, accounting, and financing. In this case, credits could be redeemed annually for cash or for a reduction of gross taxable income (at the rate of, say, one credit per taxable dollar). Governments would establish how many credits a given action, like buying a high-efficiency clothes dryer, would earn, perhaps by tying the total number of credits issued to the achievement of policy goals, such as national carbon-emission targets. The system could be financed from the savings it produced in infrastructure spending; for instance, lower electricity consumption would mean the government wouldn't have to spend so much on revamping and expanding the electricity grid. An even better arrangement might be to finance the credits from revenues generated through a carbon tax or cap-and-trade system that is applied only to large emitters, like smelters, cement plants and tar-sands oil producers.
WHAT YOUR DRYER HAS TO SAY
But the private sector could also set up, run and finance a green credits system. It might operate something like this: The manufacturer of an appliance such as a high-efficiency clothes dryer would entice buyers by attaching a certain number of credits to any sale. As well, each machine would be fitted with a computer chip allowing it to communicate back to the manufacturer data about its use and performance through new “smart” wall plugs that talk to the Internet. The manufacturer would gain in two ways: by selling one of its dryers and by receiving a stream of real-time data on where, when and how its machine is being used – data that would be invaluable for further product development. The buyer would get credits that could be applied to the purchase of green goods and services from a designated list accepted by all participating firms.
The data on the dryer's use – hours of operation per week, temperature settings and the like – could also be combined with data from similar dryers in use across a population to create average-use statistics. Users who beat the average by a certain amount would be awarded additional credits.
The best arrangement would be a public-private partnership where both government and firms co-operate to create the pool of credits.
Eventually the credits could be traded in a market. “Such a market would encourage those who are able to make the easiest and most economical reductions to move quickly,” Mr. Dembo writes, “and it would reward those who are most active in taking green actions.”
The system would gather, communicate and interpret data to provide a fine-grained and constantly updated picture of people's behaviour affecting the environment. Such data make it possible to reward beneficial behaviour.
Some people may think this all sounds very Orwellian. Our machines would be constantly reporting on us. Participants would also have to agree to release information on such things as their household energy and water consumption, so that they could be issued credits if their consumption declines over time. But this is an opt-in program. No one would be coerced to join. And the information provided would be vastly less personal and revealing than the private details many people casually release daily in their blogs and Facebook profiles.
The bottom line is this: Mr. Dembo's green credits idea is exciting and worth exploring in detail. We should probably take it for a test run somewhere in Canada; a system along these lines might eventually revolutionize the Canadian economy. But it is only one idea. Once we put our heads together, we'll probably come up with countless ways to encourage green behaviour by aligning what we want to do ethically with what it pays us to do economically. There is no reason for Canada to be at the back of the pack. We should be at the front.
Thomas Homer-Dixon holds the CIGI Chair of Global Systems at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo.
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Poll shows leaders have lost our trust, Vancouver Sun Editorial, August 11 2009.
Neither Premier Gordon Campbell nor provincial NDP leader Carole James are likely to be happy with the results of the recent Angus Reid Strategies' poll on support for B.C. political parties and their leaders. But all British Columbians ought to find the results troubling.
The poll, which surveyed 802 adults across B.C. between July 31 and Aug. 2, found that support for Campbell and the Liberals has plummeted dramatically since the May election.
According to the survey, the Liberals garnered only 34-per-cent support, down 12 points from the 46 per cent they enjoyed just three months ago. The premier's approval rating also dropped 12 points, to just 24 per cent from 36 per cent in May. More than three in five British Columbians now disapprove of Campbell's performance.
While damning, these results really aren't surprising given that the Liberals have been dogged by a number of controversies. Probably the least popular recent move is the planned introduction of the harmonized sales tax, something opposed by 75 per cent of those surveyed in a previous Angus Reid Strategies poll.
The previous poll also found that 57 per cent of respondents believe Solicitor-General Kash Heed should step aside -- something he has declined to do, with the blessing of the premier -- until he is cleared of allegations that he acted improperly while he was chief of West Vancouver police.
When we consider these controversies, along with the ballooning provincial deficit and the fraud and corruption trial involving ministerial aides Dave Basi and Bob Virk, it's little wonder Campbell and the Liberals have seen their support plummet.
But what is surprising is that Carole James and the NDP have failed to benefit from the Liberals' newfound unpopularity. While the NDP now holds a significant lead over the Liberals -- 42 per cent to 34 per cent -- NDP support has not budged from where it was three months ago.
Even worse for James, the NDP leader's support has dropped nine points to 27 per cent, meaning she enjoys little more support than Campbell. And 59 per cent of poll respondents say they believe the NDP needs a leadership change -- exactly the same percentage as believe Campbell should be replaced. Worse still, 51 per cent of those who voted for the NDP in the last election think the party needs a new leader.
The beneficiaries of the Liberals' nosedive and the NDP's stagnation were the "other" parties, including the Green party, whose support rose to 12 per cent from eight. Yet despite that good news, support for leader Jane Sterk declined five points, to just 13 per cent.
The party receiving the best news was the B.C. Conservative Party, about which most British Columbians know little, which more than tripled its support, to seven per cent from two per cent. Similarly, five per cent of respondents said they would support independent candidates or fringe parties, also up from two per cent in the last election.
None of this is good news for B.C.'s two main political parties or their leaders, though they can take solace in the fact that the next election is still nearly four years away.
Yet the poll's results are troubling in that they reveal deep dissatisfaction with our parties and our leaders. Consequently, and as is often the case when people lose confidence in their leaders, British Columbians seem to be looking for someone -- anyone -- to fill the void, even if they know little about the people or parties they plan to support.
And this is not good for democracy. A functioning democracy requires, not merely that people exercise their right to vote, but that they have confidence in the people who seek their votes.
British Columbia's politicians ought therefore to take this poll as motivation, not to do whatever it takes to win the next election, but to do whatever it takes to win back the confidence of those they serve.
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Pray for the United Church, Vancouver Sun Editorial, August 11 2009.
Reports that anti-Semitism is incubating in some corners of the United Church of Canada are generating anger toward the church, from both Christians and Jews. But the anger might be misplaced, because the church could end up the principal victim.
Anti-Semitism is a virus that destroys its host organism. In this case, the anti-Semitism seems to be masking itself as "anti-Zionism," that is, hatred of Israel. Now, it is true that criticism of Israel does not automatically signal antipathy toward Jews. Many Jews themselves question Israeli government policies. It's wrong to assume that critics of Israel are by definition anti-Jewish.
But it's also true that every anti-Semite is most assuredly an anti-Zionist, so there is overlap between the groups. Identifying instances when the campaign to delegitimize Israel is a cover to attack Jews has always been a challenge. One giveaway is the appearance of age-old anti-Semitic tropes.
That brings us back to the United Church of Canada, which is holding its General Council in Kelowna this week. The church will consider numerous resolutions, among them several that express extreme hostility to Israel.
It's not just the double standard -- singling out Israel, a liberal democracy, as the world's greatest outlaw state -- that raises old memories of scapegoating the Jews. No, it's the language in the background materials, available on the United Church's website, that has shocked so many people.
One document warns that "some Members of Parliament are affiliated with the State of Israel" and "have sensitive roles in Canada." Is this a coded reference to Jewish MPs, in an attempt to raise the ancient accusation that Jews are duplicitous and have dual loyalties?
It gets worse. The church document accuses the Commons of harbouring MPs who are citizens of Israel. This is a lie. So far as anyone knows, there are no MPs who hold Israeli citizenship. But what if there were? Parliament is a multicultural and diverse place, like Canadian society generally. It's conspicuous that the United Church is not witch-hunting South Asian or Muslim MPs to out those who hold dual citizenship. Only Jews constitute an enemy within.
The head of the church, moderator Rev. David Giuliano, has acknowledged that all of this is causing "pain and hurt to Jewish people in Canada," yet refuses to disown the architects of this campaign.
The United Church isn't the first organization that hatemongers have tried to convert into a vehicle for attacking Israel. Labour unions, student associations, even a camping store (Mountain Equipment Co-op) have had to fight off similar hijackings, not always successfully.
People with radical or hateful ideas know that by themselves they will remain marginal voices, so they infiltrate respectable institutions in order to give legitimacy to their agenda. The United Church is a great institution, and Canadians should pray that it is able to fight off those who would shame it.
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How Israel became South Africa, Margaret Wente, Thursday Aug 13 2009.
Which evil regime finds itself in the crosshairs of Canada's largest church? Israel, of course
It's a bad old world out there. Tens of thousands are being raped in war-torn eastern Congo. In Sudan, a woman faces 40 lashes for daring to wear pants. The Iranians have brutally suppressed a peaceful uprising and shot protesters in the streets. The tyrants who run Burma have sentenced the brave Aung San Suu Kyi to more house arrest.
So which evil regime finds itself in the crosshairs of Canada's largest church? Israel, of course.
The United Church of Canada (which seems to be more interested in social justice than in God) is engaged in one of its periodic wrangles over Israel. Is Israel really, really bad, or just sort of bad? Should the church call for a boycott of Israeli universities or just stop buying Jaffa oranges? These questions are consuming a large portion of its general council meeting this week in Kelowna. To their credit, delegates have backed off from the most offensive stuff. They've decided not to refer to Israel as an “apartheid state.”
The United Church is just one of many institutions obsessed with tiny Israel. There's also the Presbyterian Church in the U.S., the Church of England, Britain's National Union of Journalists, Ireland's largest public-sector union, various British academic groups, and our own beloved CUPE, all of which have passed anti-Israel resolutions. Israel Apartheid Week is a tiresome staple of campus life. In Paris, activists invaded the retail chain Sephora to protest against the sale of Israeli face cream. In Wales, they rampaged through supermarkets and sprinkled Israeli melons with fake blood. In Montreal, gay and lesbian activists promise that this weekend's Pride Parade will include a protest against Israel's “racist apartheid” policies. (Israel is the only country in the Middle East that believes in civil rights for homosexuals, an irony that seems to have eluded them.)
How did Israel become the new South Africa?
After the old South African regime collapsed, social justice seekers in the West needed a new cause – preferably one that extended the narrative of Western racism, occupation and colonialist oppression. After the Middle East peace talks broke down in 2000 (because of Palestinian rejectionism), the “apartheid” label picked up steam. Desmond Tutu, the South African archbishop and Nobel Peace Prize winner, gave the term his blessing in a series of articles he wrote condemning the Israeli occupation of the territories. Jimmy Carter wrote a book, Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid, in which he argued that some Israeli policies were even worse than South Africa's. The barrier built to stop the deadly flow of suicide bombers into Israel from the West Bank was nicknamed the Apartheid Wall.
But the analogy with South Africa is badly flawed. Under apartheid, non-white South Africans were denied the right to vote, to organize, to live where they wanted or to marry across racial lines. A small white minority ruled a large black underclass. They settled in South Africa not to escape persecution but to get rich.
In Israel, Israeli Arabs make up 20 per cent of the population, and are full citizens. The conflict is not racial. It is a national-religious struggle for land, not unlike many others around the world. There's another difference, too. As pundit Michael Kinsley put it, “If Israel is white South Africa and the Palestinians are supposed to be the blacks, where is their Mandela?”
Israel can be condemned for many things, including bad judgment, botched military campaigns, unnecessary harshness and occasional brutality. So can lots of other countries. But Israel is often characterized as uniquely awful – scarcely better than the Nazis who ran Hitler's Germany. And so, when someone like Naomi (No Logo) Klein says “Israel has been steadily escalating its criminality” and recommends a global boycott such as the one that brought an end to apartheid in South Africa, I feel like running to the store and buying all the Jaffa oranges I can get.
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United Church resolution is anti-Semitic, CJC says, Wendy Cox, Wednesday Aug 12 2009.
KELOWNA, B.C. — The Canadian Jewish Congress says its relationship with Canada's largest Protestant denomination is in jeopardy because of resolutions to be debated at the United Church's general meeting next week.
Bernie Farber calls the four proposals anti-Semitic.
"Anybody that votes in favour of this, votes in favour of anti-Semitism," Mr. Farber, the group's chief executive officer, said in an interview.
Mr. Farber, as well as other congress members, are on their way to the United Church's general council in an effort to lobby the 400 delegates to reject the proposals.
The four resolutions are among 105 to be debated at the meeting in Kelowna, B.C.
They call on the United Church "to advocate a comprehensive boycott of Israeli academic and cultural institutions."
Another urges the church to "support the international campaign of boycott ... divestment and sanctions until Israel meets its obligation to recognize the Palestinian people's inalienable right to self-determination."
Mr. Farber said he is most concerned about statements made in the background portion of the resolutions, which in one case refers to "questionable positions of Canadian members of Parliament."
The document notes that some MPs have accepted sponsored trips to Israel, "which might be called bribes," and said "some members of Parliament are affiliated with the state of Israel."
"Never in my life would I have thought I would see such accusations coming from one of Canada's mainstream church organizations," Mr. Farber said. "It is mind-boggling, really."
The church's moderator, Rev. David Giuliano, acknowledged the proposals are controversial, but he noted once they have been brought forward by one of the church's 13 regions, they must be debated.
"We're a church that debates these things in the open, and while some people may have put a proposal forward, it by no means says at this point that it is endorsed by the national church," Rev. Giuliano said.
"It's something that we're being asked to discuss and consider, and, by some people, approve."
Rev. Giuliano acknowledged the proposals "at face value, are quite offensive to some people in the Jewish community because of the implications for Israel and are perceived even as anti-Semitic."
He said when the proposals came in, his office recognized there would be concern and alerted the Jewish congress.
Mr. Farber said he tried for three weeks to get a meeting with church leaders, but his calls were not returned.
Rev. Giuliano said the debate will go ahead.
"One of the things that's core to our identity is our willingness to wrestle with hard issues."
Three of the proposals were brought forward by the church's Toronto region and the fourth was proposed by the Montreal and Ottawa conference.
All decried Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, but the Montreal-Ottawa submission also urged the church to publicly state that the Palestinians must acknowledge Israel's right to exist and must stop suicide bombings and other violent attacks on the Israeli people.
Among the other 105 resolutions to be debated during the church's general council meeting next week are proposals on the environment, free trade with Colombia, and organ donation.
At the end of the meeting, the 400 delegates will choose a new moderator, who will serve as the church's leader for three years.
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At the RCMP, the thin blue line is alive and well, Don Martin, August 12 2009.
Pity any RCMP officer given the task of investigating a fellow Mountie accused of a serious crime.
Compound the conflict of interest by assigning that person to probe a senior officer and make it someone who plays in your district golf tournament or works out in the local gym.
The temptation for that junior officer to turn the investigation into an exoneration would be almost impossible to resist, particularly if the internal code of silence on matters of police misconduct is not just a Hollywood myth.
The actual number of times an RCMP officer has been forced to probe a superior accused of career-ending misbehaviour is not known. These sorts of national records are apparently and inexplicably not kept.
Yet in a modest sample of 28 serious RCMP allegations reviewed by Public Complaints Commission chairman Paul Kennedy and released yesterday, one-third were found to have been conducted by lower-ranking officers, with a quarter of them actually knowing the officer under investigation.
That was enough for Mr. Kennedy to declare the question of whether cops should investigate cops accused of serious crime to be rhetorical. It's wrong, of course, even though it came as somewhat of a revelation to RCMP brass.
The potential for either intimidation by superiors or conflict of interest between friends clearly tilts the balance in favour of serving and protecting officers over mistreated civilians.
Yet despite the closed-loop nature of the RCMP internal process he describes as "partially or entirely inappropriate," Mr. Kennedy still concluded the investigating officers in almost all 28 cases did a fair and thorough job of assessing the evidence and handing it off to the prosecuting authorities.
The problem, of course, is the squeamish perception of it all, particularly in alleged civilian deaths, sexual assaults or brutality while in police custody.
The case nagging in the back of everyone's mind while reading the report, even though it wasn't part of the analysis, was hapless Robert Dziekanski, who died after a Tasering by four RCMP officers in the Vancouver airport in 2007.
Watching the RCMP lineup at the inquiry was a study in rehearsed fabrication supported by senior brass, a police-testimony soundtrack completely out of sync with what was happening in the infamous video of the Dziekanski takedown.
Without that video of the Polish immigrant's death, any internal RCMP investigation would undoubtedly have determined it was a justified police response instead of an obvious case of overkill.
Yet despite the logic of putting serious RCMP allegations under independent investigation to enhance the reliability of its findings and to improve its transparency, footdragging continues.
It has been almost two years since another review of the RCMP urged a national independent oversight commission to stickhandle complaints and offer conclusions and recommendations that would be binding on the force.
That is apparently still in the works, yet RCMP Commissioner William Elliott sounded mighty cool to Mr. Kennedy's similar and seemingly logical recommendations, talking in terms that suggest the report's fate rests on a dusty shelf somewhere while he develops his own internal investigations policy.
Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan also sniffed it off as "important input" for the department's review, with little direct comment on the substance of the report.
It's all very odd. Some provinces, such as Alberta, Ontario and Saskatchewan, already have arm's-length ways to investigate allegations against police. It shouldn't be hard, then, to have a national police force with a common cross-Canada investigation process.
So far, Paul Kennedy does not have a great track record for having his recommendations put into force. His commission posts a list of reports that have been ignored by the government, including one on Taser use and another into an RCMP income-trust investigation that was blamed for altering the 2006 federal election.
Let's hope this report does not join his list. In the fight to clean up a once-proud force with an increasingly dirty reputation, the push to curb police investigating police should not be ignored.
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REPORT FINDINGS
Canwest News ServicePolice Investigating Police, a report released by the Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP
Select findings from a review of 28 cases
-In 25% of cases, the primary investigator had personal knowledge of the subject her or she was investigating. In 4% of cases, the primary investigators were from the same detachment as the subject member.
-Overall, the number of team members assigned to the 28 investigations was inadequate.
-Most investigations were completed in a timely manner. The files that took significantly longer to complete were not due to a lack of interest, but rather to the heavy workload of the investigator in addition to general hindrances encountered.
-The structure and reporting relationships of the cases reviewed was partially or entirely inappropriate in 68% of the cases.
-The section or unit tasked with member investigations (including their mandates) lack uniformity across the country.
-The qualifications of the investigators varied greatly. Some had all the major crime and related courses; others had as few as two years experience in the General Investigation Section.
Select recommendations
-Criminal investigations into members should not be treated the same as any other criminal investigation.
-The rank of the primary investigator must be at least one rank higher than that of the subject member.
-The RCMP should assign senior investigators with a proven track record in court who have completed appropriate courses.
-Given the sensitivity and transparency required for member investigations, administrative reviews should be undertaken in all cases of serious injury, sexual assault or death.
QUOTED
"We are not saying that the RCMP should never investigate itself. But we are saying that in certain circumstances, they should not."
-- Paul Kennedy, head of the Commission for Public Complaints against the RCMP
"If we are going to continue to have confidence in the RCMP as a national institution, these are the kinds of changes that have to be brought forward and done so immediately."
-- Mark Holland, Liberal MP and public safety critic
"While the intention of the RCMP requesting that member investigations be handled like any other investigation may be an honourable one (meaning without bias), the very nature of an investigation by one police officer into another is fundamentally different from the police investigation of a member of the public for the exact same crime."
-- Police Investigating Police report
Source: Commission for Public Complaints Against the RCMP,
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