“There is a point of privacy here.”

 

Yes, in addition to being unnecessary, bullying, discriminatory, and an attempt at mislabeling EI recipients, the new spy visits home audits are an outrageous invasion of privacy.  Nice of Wallin to point that out!

Oh wait…she’s…let’s see…upset that tax payers want to know if she’s sucking up public funds from a province she says she doesn’t live in because she’s also sucking up public funds on a claim she lives in another.

Right.

Any time anyone is using or claiming public funds and there is bizarre activity or they make bizarre claims, it should be investigated.  Unless there is a security issue involved, the public has the right to know how their money is being spent, and question activities that appear fraudulent.

Wallin shows a great deal of contempt for Canadians, for laws, and for the Senate by portraying indignation at being asked for the transparency and accountability non-parliamentary Canadians are expected to provide.

Meanwhile, clients – legitimate recipients of EI are having their privacy invaded, because, you know, some people might abuse public funds.

Don’t we know it!  Right, Pamela?

Friday nite ode to damn good lyrics

Questions for the Privacy Commissioner concerning the EI audits/house invasions visits

First of all, let’s make something clear. EI recipients are clients. They have paid their insurance premiums and are clients, making insurance claims. Certainly some may commit fraud, but there are laws as to how agencies are allowed to investigate possibility of fraud.

First, before beginning an investigation that goes beyond the standard approval process, they need a reason to suspect fraud – a complaint, suspicious activity...They can’t simply treat every client as potential fraudsters by randomly auditing them through surprise visits in which they gather unspecified information.

Questions which the Privacy Commissioner needs to get answers to:

What information are federal employees told to gather through house visits?

How is this information gathered? (silent observation, questions, questioning and/or observing people other than the client at the home?

What information is included on any reports given to HRDC?

What is the format of this information?

To what use is this information put? How is the information applied?

What privacy rating is assigned to this information?

Who has access to this information?

Where, how, and for how long is this information stored?

What training have employees who gather the information, and employees who have access to it received in privacy issues and security issues?

What information is given to the clients prior to a visit and during a visit concerning information that will be gathered?

What privacy considerations are specifically given to non-EI claimants sharing the home being visited?

I’m sure there are many more privacy concerns than these that come quickly to my mind. These need to be answered. They are of concern to all Canadians whether or not they ever file an EI claim. We need assurances that a government can’t simply implement a poorly thought through program without making sure that our rights are not being violated. If we let this one pass without serious scrutiny, who knows what will come next?

"We have telephones, you know. And post offices."

Yes they do. So why have 50 federal employees been assigned to knock on EI recipients’ doors to hand deliver requests to appear at regular EI interviews?

In an email to CP, Human Resources Development Canada confirmed the intimidation visits saying they are "An examination to ensure the integrity of the Employment Insurance program is currently underway."

Uh-huh. Maybe HRDC can just hire those vile people insurance companies use to discourage people from making legitimate claims on policies they have paid into for years.
The federal government has begun visiting Employment Insurance recipients at home as part of an "examination" being conducted while the program undergoes an overhaul. About 1,200 recipients are receiving invitations, in person, to appear at their customary EI interviews.

Quite obviously, these intimidation tactics visits are meant to make recipients of their rightful insurance feel intimidated, feel like criminals, feel as though they are so irresponsible (because paying into EI for years is just that) that they need to be monitored like delinquent trouble makers.

..."It's abusive," said Alma Breau-Thibodeau, of the Employment Insurance Action Committee In Defence of Workers. "They're abusing us like crazy. We all feel targeted by this law. . . You know it's gone too far when you're being checked upon at home. We have telephones, you know. And post offices."

HRDC is also putting their staff in an uncomfortable, potentially dangerous situation. Remember the federal census taker found hanged in Kentucky with the word “fed” scrawled across his chest? 

"Even though he was with the Census Bureau, sometimes people can view someone with any government agency as 'the government.' I just was afraid that he might meet the wrong character along the way up there," Acciardo said.

NDP MP Yvon Godin, warned the government to stop the house calls — which he described as "intimidation." He said people are angry and in no mood for a visit from the feds. "I wouldn't recommend for representatives of the government to go knocking on doors right now. It's dangerous," Godin said.

Why the Office of Religious Freedom needs to specifically, clearly state it also recognizes and defends to right of freedom from religion.

Father Raymond J. De Souza’s mockery of that idea is a perfect example of why this is so.

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By the way, de Souza was one of the six panelists who advised the harper government on this new office. (that post by Alison is very good, showing what thinking harbours in the mind of the new “ambassador” and how this can affect all Canadians)
As the childless father de Souza sings praises to Harper crediting him for an “old Canada passing away, and a new Canada emerging,” “A religious Canada, strong and free, “ as he puts it, he berates the media for wondering how this office will affect atheists.

“A particularly bizarre media preoccupation was what the ORF would do for atheists. It is an interesting intellectual exercise - like how the minister of sport might serve the aggressively sedentary - but rather beside the point when actual mosques are bombed, or when Christians have to hold midnight Mass in the daytime where it is too dangerous to go to Mass after dark. People are being killed for their faith, Canada's government is sounding the alarm, and the national media is preoccupied with questions only relevant in the highly secular circles that consider religious liberty akin to the freedom to choose one hobby over another. “

It is not beside the point. Freedom of religion is not possible unless you are also free not to have other religions forced on you. It isn’t enough to grant Christians the right to practice Christianity if you also force them to pray to another god and in ways that violate their own beliefs.

Atheists want that same freedom, the freedom not to have to practice any religion or pretend to follow any god without facing discrimination, punishment, or even death.

It seems that many religious people fail to understand that not only do atheists cherish the freedom not to have someone else’s religious beliefs forced upon them as adamantly as religious people do, they fail to recognize that atheists are persecuted world-wide for not pretending to believe according to what some religious groups demand.

Atheists and other religious skeptics suffer persecution or discrimination in many parts of the world and in at least seven nations can be executed if their beliefs become known… "unbelievers" in Islamic countries face the most severe - sometimes brutal - treatment at the hands of the state and adherents of the official religion.

But it also points to policies in some European countries and the United States which favor the religious and their organizations and treat atheists and humanists as outsiders… "there are laws that deny atheists' right to exist, curtail their freedom of belief and expression, revoke their right to citizenship, restrict their right to marry."

Other laws "obstruct their access to public education, prohibit them from holding public office, prevent them from working for the state, criminalize their criticism of religion, and execute them for leaving the religion of their parents."

…In at least seven U.S. states, constitutional provisions are in place that bar atheists from public office and one state, Arkansas, has a law that bars an atheist from testifying as a witness at a trial, the report said.

By the stupid analogy comparing atheist to “the aggressively sedentary” and their relationship with a sports Minister, de Souza is being very dishonest and deliberately spreads contempt for the atheist’s right not to be forced to pretend to believe in a god. If we must use his rude analogy, let’s correct it:

“ It is an interesting intellectual exercise - like how the minister of sport might serve the aggressively sedentary” if the aggressively sedentary is being forced to pretend to love sports, must engage in sports, must pay taxes for sports they are opposed to, and must never, ever express any concerns they have about sports.

I, like many Canadians, see no reason for an Office of Religious Freedom in Canada, but if there is one, it must also include strong statements on freedom from religion or it will be used to set religion as the norm, the greater right, the Canadian way, a necessary part in shaping our laws.

Religion affects non-believers, especially when someone like de Souza comes along and declares our country is now a religious Canada. This strongly implies that religion is the basis for our laws. It also implies that religion is the normalcy, by decree.

Stating that a country is better if it is religious falsely claims that being non-religious is undesirable and harmful to the country. What impact will such a belief, if widely held, have on non-believers and how they are treated? We know that answer: persecution, exclusion, even the threat of execution.

Had de Souza said that Canada is a Canada that respects freedom of religion, I would not object. I would have been happier if he would have said it is a country that respects freedom of, and freedom from religion, but men like him are blind to any beliefs but their own and so cannot fathom the harm others can suffer by having those beliefs forced upon them, or how this violates the rights of non-believers.

3,000 children dead, some found in mass graves, many not even identified? This is not the past and we shouldn’t just move on.

These numbers are coming out and these are only the results of the first systematic search of government, school and other records.  That number is likely going to be shown to be very low considering this – 

The annual death reports were consistently done until 1917, when they abruptly stopped.  "It was obviously a policy not to report them," Maass said.

At least 3,000 children, including four under the age of 10 found huddled together in frozen embrace, are now known to have died during attendance at Canada's Indian residential schools, according to new unpublished research.

Despite these horrible, nightmarish numbers and this report, we have Canadians trying to trivialize this unspeakable government and church engineered, widespread abuse of children.  Their rationale?  White kids died too, ya know.  Look at the comment section, but be prepared.

Sure, white kids died.  But did eight and nine year olds die freezing to death in each others' arms in an attempt to walk home, scantily clad during the winter because the abuse was so horrible in the white run schools?

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Did they die without the love and comfort of family, community, even a language they were familiar with?

Were they buried in mass graves, so that their families could not grieve over them, could not give them last rights or bury them, might not ever even know what happened to them?

Did the government and churches consider them of so little value that their deaths weren’t even reported?

As for it happening in the past, and hey, time to move on…there are survivors who witnessed these atrocities and they deserve to have their friends and siblings deaths dealt with as though they mattered, because they did matter.  And this is not ancient history we’re talking about.  If there’s even a slight possibility that anyone responsible for any of these deaths is alive, shouldn’t they be investigated?  There’s no statute of limitation on murder or child abuse.  At least not when it comes to white kids.

Do Canadians make these excuses because the sheer number of children dead at the hands of our government and churches is just to overwhelming to come to terms with?  That may be part of it, but considering how people still think we should track down any living Nazis and put them on trial, and how the Jewish genocide must never be forgotten, I don’t think that accounts for all of the dismissal.  Many Canadians still don’t think a dead Indian is a big deal.

What kind of inhuman bastards can read this article and just shrug their shoulders?

The same ones who just feel so driven to write hateful comments related to any article that mentions aboriginals, I think.

I don’t give a damn if it was 40 years ago, or if the kids were brown, white or fucking green.  There are over 3,000 confirmed deaths of children, torn from their families and communities who were buried with less respect than a family pet.  Not only do survivors need some kind of closure through this being addressed openly, the rest of Canada needs to look at it in a very bright light, unfiltered, or we will continue to fail addressing problems that exist in how our government continues to dismiss Aboriginal concerns.

Weak, defensive arguments simply make them look guiltier

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The two high profile Senators facing massive public criticism offer up weak arguments for what appears to be fraudulent use of public funds.  Duffy has been staying away from the press, so it was an avowed “pal” of his, Times Colonist Iain Hunter to tries, but fails to defend the ex-journalist who won’t defend himself publicly.

That’s probably why all the snide and vexatious comments that have been made recently about my pal Michael Duffy are made outside the Red Chamber: No one in that august place has the guts to make them there — at least not directly to his happy face.

Let’s leave aside “his happy face” as other words come to mind.  Of course no one in the Senate will say certain things in Chamber to his face.  He is under investigation and Hunter knows there are rules about what can be said in either House.

It saddens me, too, that members of what was once our common craft have joined the hue and cry against Duffy and Pamela Wallin, both former “journalists,” trying to run two or more households in addition to their Senate duties and trying to keep track of the cost of having to fly between them as those duties require.

Excuse me?  Are journalists part of an exclusive club with some unspoken rule that they must never criticize current or former members even when those members have serious allegations against them?  Journalists are supposed to be impartial, and that includes not shying away from honestly reporting on those of their “common craft.”

Have those of us who have waited by our telephones for a summons from the Prime Minister’s Office in vain had our perspectives clouded by jealousy?

Oh, I see…Hunter shows his nature here and why he has such empathy for Duffy.  He’s like that self-serving ex-journalist, hoping his biased work as a journalist will earn him a Senate appointment.

At the end of an impressive career, (Duffy) found himself in a place where respect is expected and honour pretty well taken for granted.

Wrong, Hunter.  Respect must never be expected, but earned, and Duffy has failed miserably on that score.  Senatorial appointments, although they are often used that way, must never be a reward for past, partisan services, waiving responsibility and accountability from that point on.  Some excellent Senators have earned and held our respect, others have not.  That is their doing.  We owe them nothing, unless they earn it in their current service to the public.

A lot of the Senate rules were written long before airplanes began to foul the air and “resident” needed defining. If today those rules appear rather open-ended, it’s natural that parliamentarians with weighty affairs of state on their minds might stumble through the opening.

Cry me a river.  Wrong again.  According to Senator Carstairs, the expense rules were recently updated and are very clear.  And if certain Senators are too overcome by “weighty affairs” to take the time to spend public funds responsibly, then they should quit.

Pamela Wallin chose to publicly attempt to defend herself against allegations of porkbarreling and chooses to obfuscate through misdirection. 

 

She says she is happy to be in public service but believes she deserves some privacy.

 “There is a point of privacy here and people don’t appreciate what they’re asking of you when they ask that. I don’t think anyone would want to go and put their credit card numbers on line and I don’t want to put those (health card) numbers.”

When you have to be that obviously deceptive with your rhetoric by using false analogies, you end up looking guilty.  No one is asking for her health card number, only proof of what provincial health card she holds.  Fair request considering the questions related to her place of residence and the related use of public funds.

“The reality is the Senate is changing and it’s no longer the image of old white guys sitting around smoking cigars. We are active, I can’t do my job sitting at a desk in Ottawa.”

Again, this is separate issue.  We know that travel is required and we offer travel allowances for that reason, but these travel expenses need to be scrutinized to avoid abuse of public funds.  Easy matter for Wallin to clear up if she is not at fault - simply opens her expenses to scrutiny.

But nice attempt at gaining sympathy by mentioning “old white guys.”