The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
Over the past 30 years, Angola has developed into one of the world’s major oil producers, yet it still ranks among the world’s most impoverished countries. What has gone wrong?
Paul Collier has addressed this issue in Plundered Planet: Why We Must – And How We Can – Manage Nature for Global Prosperity. As Professor of Economics and Director of the Centre for the Study of African Economies at Oxford University, he is widely regarded as one of the leading authorities on the intractable economic problems besetting the world’s least developed countries.
In Angola, most oil production is managed by four major players – ExxonMobil, Shell, BP and Total. Some critics might suppose that these conglomerates have somehow contrived to siphon off most of the country’s oil-export revenues, while leaving little for the government and the people of Angola, but that is simply not the case.
Foreign multinationals could easily plunder the natural resources of less developed countries during the colonial era. Today, these same companies and their successors are usually confronted by independent governments with ready access to an array of international banks and law firms that are eager to help auction off natural resources on the most favourable terms.
In this respect, Angola is typical. In the 1970s, the Angolan government established a national oil-company monopoly, Sonangol, with a mandate to manage the country’s oil resources and acquire a 51 per cent interest in the subsidiaries of every foreign oil company operating in Angola. Since then, Sonangol has garnered huge revenues. Collier notes that in 2008, Angola took in more than twice as much in oil revenues than all the foreign aid dispersed to the world’s least developed countries.
Nonetheless, the United Nations Human Development Report for 2009 lists Angola at 143rd in the world, just three levels higher than Bangladesh. Correspondingly, the Institute for Democracy in Africa reports that while Angola has a GDP per capita of about $4,400(US), “some 70 per cent of the population lives on less than a dollar a day.”
Clearly, some people in Angola are getting hugely rich from oil revenues while the majority of the population subsists in dire poverty. And the main reason for this tragedy is also evident: crooked government.
Most of the billions of dollars paid to Sonangol by ExxonMobil, BP and other foreign companies for the right to produce and export oil from Angola has ended up in the bank accounts of the country’s dictatorial President Jose Eduardo dos Santos and his military and government cronies.
The oppressed people of Angola have no choice but to put up with this transparent plundering of the nation’s oil wealth by the country’s own corrupt politicians and bureaucrats? Dos Santos will not brook any effective opposition. He assures that elections are fixed, the media are censored and public protests are severely curtailed.
A few years ago, some intrepid members of Angola’s generally tame Parliament used to denounce government corruption. But even most of this parliamentary opposition to the regime fell silent after dos Santos started paying members $10(US) for every favourable vote,.
Angola is not uniquely bad. Most other least developed countries are also are ridden with corruption. To combat this evil, former British prime minister Tony Blair began the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, an international organization that promotes the voluntary disclosure of the payment, receipt and management of revenues from the oil, gas and mining industries.
While most of the major multinationals in the West have agreed to go along with this initiative, Chinese companies have not. And neither has the government of Angola. In 2004, China’s Eximbank extended a $2 billion loan to Angola for the ostensible purpose of rebuilding the country’s infrastructure, but so far, most of this money has disappeared without a trace.
The sad conclusion is inescapable: Judging from experience in Angola and elsewhere, no amount of foreign aid or natural-resource revenues can eradicate poverty among the hundreds of millions of people trapped in countries, where corrupt rulers enrich themselves at the expense of their deeply impoverished fellow citizens.
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Saturday, July 10, 2010
Progress in reducing poverty in Canada
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
The Conference Board of Canada ranks Canada’s record on poverty as “among the worst of developed countries – and slipping.” That’s appalling, if true. But is it true?
Citing the low-income measure (LIM) of poverty used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Conference Board observes: “With more than 12 per cent of the working-age population living in poverty, Canada is in 15th place out of 17 countries, ahead of only Japan and the United States.”
Perhaps so, but these figures are misleading, inasmuch as they apply only to Canadians of working age. The OECD reports that for all age groups, Canada actually has a lower rate of overall poverty than Greece, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Korea, Ireland, Japan and the United States.
Besides, LIM is only a relative measure of poverty based on the supposition that a person is poor if he or she is living in a household with an income that is less than half of the average income for all households of similar size in the country. By the LIM measure of relative poverty, almost all impoverished people in Canada would rank among the wealthiest in most low-income countries.
Note also that by the LIM standard, many, if not most, medical students in Canada are impoverished, because they are living in households with below average incomes. Is it reasonable for the Conference Board to include these medical students and others like them with temporarily low incomes in an indictment of Canada’s poverty record?
Given the limitations of relative measures of poverty like the LIM or Low-Income Cutoffs (LICO) devised by Statistics Canada, Chris Sarlo, an economist at Nipissing University, has developed a poverty standard based on the number of people living in households with insufficient income to cover all basic needs including a nutritious diet, satisfactory housing, clothing, health care, public transportation, household insurance and telephone service.
Sarlo reports that by this basic-needs measure, 4.9 per cent of Canadians were living in poverty in the mid-2000s, down from 6.8 per cent 10 years earlier. Also, during this same period, Canada’s child poverty rate declined to 5.8 per cent, down from 9.1 per cent.
Clearly, Canada does not have an exceptionally bad and ever worsening poverty problem as contended by the Conference Board of Canada. Yet it is also evident that there are millions of impoverished people in Canada who struggle with not enough income to cover all basic needs.
What can be done to help these genuinely impoverished Canadians?
John Richards has addressed this issue in a report published last month by C. D. Howe Institute, “Reducing Lone-Parent Poverty: A Canadian Success Story.” He points out that provincial work incentives for employable welfare recipients initiated by the conservative governments of Alberta and Ontario in the 1990s have proven enormously successful in persuading and empowering millions of impoverished Canadians to move from chronic welfare dependency to productive employment.
As a result, even by Statistics Canada’s LICO measure of relative poverty, the proportion of impoverished Canadians living in lone-parent families was reduced to 20 per cent in 2007, down from 50 per cent in 1996.
Nonetheless, the poverty rate remains four time greater for lone-parent families than for two-parent families with children. This is one among many good reasons for the federal and provincial governments to encourage Canadian couples to get married and to stay married.
In the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of welfare dependants in Canada were employable adults. In Ontario and some other provinces, most are now classified as unemployable “persons with disabilities.”
Richard explains: “A high-profile category is the urban homeless, most of whom combine mental illness with abuse of drugs or alcohol.” Many of these poor are victims of the cruel policy adopted by the provinces in the 1970s of deinstitutionalizing psychiatric patients without providing them with adequate support in the community.
Alleviating the misery of these neediest of impoverished Canadians will not be easy or inexpensive, but should get top priority in Canada’s ongoing struggle against the evils of real poverty.
By Rory Leishman
The Conference Board of Canada ranks Canada’s record on poverty as “among the worst of developed countries – and slipping.” That’s appalling, if true. But is it true?
Citing the low-income measure (LIM) of poverty used by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the Conference Board observes: “With more than 12 per cent of the working-age population living in poverty, Canada is in 15th place out of 17 countries, ahead of only Japan and the United States.”
Perhaps so, but these figures are misleading, inasmuch as they apply only to Canadians of working age. The OECD reports that for all age groups, Canada actually has a lower rate of overall poverty than Greece, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Korea, Ireland, Japan and the United States.
Besides, LIM is only a relative measure of poverty based on the supposition that a person is poor if he or she is living in a household with an income that is less than half of the average income for all households of similar size in the country. By the LIM measure of relative poverty, almost all impoverished people in Canada would rank among the wealthiest in most low-income countries.
Note also that by the LIM standard, many, if not most, medical students in Canada are impoverished, because they are living in households with below average incomes. Is it reasonable for the Conference Board to include these medical students and others like them with temporarily low incomes in an indictment of Canada’s poverty record?
Given the limitations of relative measures of poverty like the LIM or Low-Income Cutoffs (LICO) devised by Statistics Canada, Chris Sarlo, an economist at Nipissing University, has developed a poverty standard based on the number of people living in households with insufficient income to cover all basic needs including a nutritious diet, satisfactory housing, clothing, health care, public transportation, household insurance and telephone service.
Sarlo reports that by this basic-needs measure, 4.9 per cent of Canadians were living in poverty in the mid-2000s, down from 6.8 per cent 10 years earlier. Also, during this same period, Canada’s child poverty rate declined to 5.8 per cent, down from 9.1 per cent.
Clearly, Canada does not have an exceptionally bad and ever worsening poverty problem as contended by the Conference Board of Canada. Yet it is also evident that there are millions of impoverished people in Canada who struggle with not enough income to cover all basic needs.
What can be done to help these genuinely impoverished Canadians?
John Richards has addressed this issue in a report published last month by C. D. Howe Institute, “Reducing Lone-Parent Poverty: A Canadian Success Story.” He points out that provincial work incentives for employable welfare recipients initiated by the conservative governments of Alberta and Ontario in the 1990s have proven enormously successful in persuading and empowering millions of impoverished Canadians to move from chronic welfare dependency to productive employment.
As a result, even by Statistics Canada’s LICO measure of relative poverty, the proportion of impoverished Canadians living in lone-parent families was reduced to 20 per cent in 2007, down from 50 per cent in 1996.
Nonetheless, the poverty rate remains four time greater for lone-parent families than for two-parent families with children. This is one among many good reasons for the federal and provincial governments to encourage Canadian couples to get married and to stay married.
In the 1990s, the overwhelming majority of welfare dependants in Canada were employable adults. In Ontario and some other provinces, most are now classified as unemployable “persons with disabilities.”
Richard explains: “A high-profile category is the urban homeless, most of whom combine mental illness with abuse of drugs or alcohol.” Many of these poor are victims of the cruel policy adopted by the provinces in the 1970s of deinstitutionalizing psychiatric patients without providing them with adequate support in the community.
Alleviating the misery of these neediest of impoverished Canadians will not be easy or inexpensive, but should get top priority in Canada’s ongoing struggle against the evils of real poverty.
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Dutch show the way in immigration reform
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
In an epochal parliamentary election last week in The Netherlands, Geert Wilders led his recently formed, anti-Islamist Freedom Party (PVV) to a significant breakthrough that could have reverberations throughout Western Europe.
Wilders’ party came in third with 15.5 per cent of the national vote. That was 1.8 percentage points more than the centrist Christian Democratic Party (CDA) headed by former prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende. The conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) finished first with 20.4 per cent of the popular vote.
Wilders is a demagogue who plays upon widespread fears of Islamist extremism and elevated crime rates among Muslim youths in The Netherlands. Among his more bizarre policy proposals is an outright ban on the Koran and an annual excise tax on head scarves of 1,000 euros.
These are plainly frivolous suggestions intended to stir up public controversy. Given the proportional system of representation used in The Netherlands, Wilders stood no chance of winning a majority government. He also knows that there is no likelihood of any other parliamentary party supporting such radical, not to say absurd, policies.
However, there can be no doubt that there is considerable public support among the Dutch for Wilders’ proposals to close radical mosques, ban preaching in any language other than Dutch and impose a five year moratorium on immigration by non-Western foreigners as well as on the founding of new mosques and Islamic schools.
Many commentators outside The Netherlands have dismissed Wilders as a right-wing extremist akin to the neo-fascists in Austria, Italy and elsewhere. That is incorrect. There is better reason to believe that he is a sincere democrat, an exponent of gay rights and a stalwart champion of Israel who genuinely deplores racism and admires former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
On most social issues, Wilders has run well to the left of the CDA and VVD. For example, while both parties proposed to cut pension costs by increasing the retirement age to 67 from 65, he resolutely opposed the idea.
Nonetheless, on the day after last week’s election, Wilders announced that he had dropped his objections to increasing the retirement age. In a transparent bid to join a coalition government led by the VVD, he said: “We want to work together and make compromises.”
Meanwhile, Wilders is already having a considerable impact on public policy in The Netherlands, by persuading other parties to amend their immigration policies. During the election campaign, Mark Rutte, the leader of the VVD and most likely next prime minister, promised: “Everyone who comes to our country to contribute is welcome. But we need to put a stop to the influx of disadvantaged migrants who come here only to end up dependent on social security.”
To this end, the election platform of the VVD included a draconian pledge to bar immigrants from receiving social assistance during their first 10 years in The Netherlands. Any such policy would contravene the equality rights of immigrants as decreed by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but that is of no account to Rutte: He says The Netherlands should circumvent the court, if need be, by opting out of “antiquated European conventions" that inhibit restrictions on unproductive immigrants.
Canada faces a similar dilemma. Thanks to the calamitous ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1985 Singh case, all foreigners who arrive in Canada, including phoney asylum seekers with false documents, are now entitled to the same health and welfare benefits as Canadian citizens.
Herbert Grubel, emeritus professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, estimates the annual net cost to Canadian taxpayers of government benefits for immigrants amounted in 2002 to a monumental $18.3 billion.
That’s absurd. Following Rutte’s example, Canadian parliamentarians should invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to enact laws that both bar welfare benefits to immigrants for at least a few years and curtail appellant rights against deportation orders so that foreigners who break the law or pose a serious security threat can be expedited out of the country.
By Rory Leishman
In an epochal parliamentary election last week in The Netherlands, Geert Wilders led his recently formed, anti-Islamist Freedom Party (PVV) to a significant breakthrough that could have reverberations throughout Western Europe.
Wilders’ party came in third with 15.5 per cent of the national vote. That was 1.8 percentage points more than the centrist Christian Democratic Party (CDA) headed by former prime minister Jan Peter Balkenende. The conservative People’s Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD) finished first with 20.4 per cent of the popular vote.
Wilders is a demagogue who plays upon widespread fears of Islamist extremism and elevated crime rates among Muslim youths in The Netherlands. Among his more bizarre policy proposals is an outright ban on the Koran and an annual excise tax on head scarves of 1,000 euros.
These are plainly frivolous suggestions intended to stir up public controversy. Given the proportional system of representation used in The Netherlands, Wilders stood no chance of winning a majority government. He also knows that there is no likelihood of any other parliamentary party supporting such radical, not to say absurd, policies.
However, there can be no doubt that there is considerable public support among the Dutch for Wilders’ proposals to close radical mosques, ban preaching in any language other than Dutch and impose a five year moratorium on immigration by non-Western foreigners as well as on the founding of new mosques and Islamic schools.
Many commentators outside The Netherlands have dismissed Wilders as a right-wing extremist akin to the neo-fascists in Austria, Italy and elsewhere. That is incorrect. There is better reason to believe that he is a sincere democrat, an exponent of gay rights and a stalwart champion of Israel who genuinely deplores racism and admires former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
On most social issues, Wilders has run well to the left of the CDA and VVD. For example, while both parties proposed to cut pension costs by increasing the retirement age to 67 from 65, he resolutely opposed the idea.
Nonetheless, on the day after last week’s election, Wilders announced that he had dropped his objections to increasing the retirement age. In a transparent bid to join a coalition government led by the VVD, he said: “We want to work together and make compromises.”
Meanwhile, Wilders is already having a considerable impact on public policy in The Netherlands, by persuading other parties to amend their immigration policies. During the election campaign, Mark Rutte, the leader of the VVD and most likely next prime minister, promised: “Everyone who comes to our country to contribute is welcome. But we need to put a stop to the influx of disadvantaged migrants who come here only to end up dependent on social security.”
To this end, the election platform of the VVD included a draconian pledge to bar immigrants from receiving social assistance during their first 10 years in The Netherlands. Any such policy would contravene the equality rights of immigrants as decreed by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, but that is of no account to Rutte: He says The Netherlands should circumvent the court, if need be, by opting out of “antiquated European conventions" that inhibit restrictions on unproductive immigrants.
Canada faces a similar dilemma. Thanks to the calamitous ruling by the Supreme Court of Canada in the 1985 Singh case, all foreigners who arrive in Canada, including phoney asylum seekers with false documents, are now entitled to the same health and welfare benefits as Canadian citizens.
Herbert Grubel, emeritus professor of economics at Simon Fraser University, estimates the annual net cost to Canadian taxpayers of government benefits for immigrants amounted in 2002 to a monumental $18.3 billion.
That’s absurd. Following Rutte’s example, Canadian parliamentarians should invoke the notwithstanding clause of the Constitution to enact laws that both bar welfare benefits to immigrants for at least a few years and curtail appellant rights against deportation orders so that foreigners who break the law or pose a serious security threat can be expedited out of the country.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Thatcher was right on the euro
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
As a strategic political leader, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was often right – never more so than in her prediction 20 years ago that adoption of the euro would lead to a political and economic disaster.
Thatcher, of course, was not alone in foreseeing this calamity. Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist, took the same view. In a recent column for The New York Times, he wrote: “I remember quipping, back when the Maastricht Treaty setting Europe on the path to the euro was signed, that they chose the wrong Dutch city for the ceremony. It should have taken place in Arnhem, the site of World War II’s infamous ‘bridge too far,’ where an overly ambitious Allied battle plan ended in disaster.”
Ideologically, Thatcher and Krugman are poles apart: She is a consistent conservative, while he is a doctrinaire liberal. But on the euro, they independently arrived at the same conclusion: The euro could not be sustained without the creation of a strong, central European government that can impose fiscal discipline upon the member states.
At the summit of European leaders in 1990 that approved the euro, Thatcher was the lone dissident. She insisted that Britain would retain her sovereignty and the pound sterling. Upon returning to Britain, she declared to the House of Commons: “What is being proposed now --economic and monetary union -- is the back door to a federal Europe, which we totally and utterly reject.”
Thatcher paid a stiff price for this firm stance on principle. Geoffrey Howe, her deputy prime minister and a Europhile supporter of the euro, promptly quit the cabinet and helped provoke a backbench revolt among Conservative MPs that forced Thatcher to resign as prime minister.
Today, the euro is in a state of crisis brought on by years of profligate deficit spending by the Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish governments. On April 27, Greek government bonds were finally reduced to junk status with the result that the socialist government of Greece could no longer borrow enough money to cover essential operational expenditures and interest payments on the national debt.
Speaking to the Commons in 1990, Thatcher foresaw that eventually, “there would have to be enormous transfers of money from one country to another” to sustain the euro. Again, she was right. To stave off default by Greece and to reassure bankers about the financial stability of Italy, Portugal and Spain, the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have come up with a $900-billion plan to defend the Euro at the expense mainly of taxpayers in France, Germany and the United States.
Furthermore, as Thatcher and Krugman also predicted, the German and French governments are now calling for much tougher centralized controls to prevent any more members of the euro-zone from running up unsustainable budget deficits. Meanwhile, the Greek government is struggling with savage spending cuts imposed by the EU and IMF as a condition for bail-out assistance.
In February, Greece already had an unemployment rate of 12.1 per cent. That proportion is bound to go much higher as the government’s spending cutbacks take effect.
This, too, is as Thatcher predicted: “If we have a single currency, the differences come out substantially in unemployment or vast movements of people from one country to another,” she said. “Many people who talk about a single currency have never considered its full implications.”
Quite so. Now Krugman predicts that for Greece, not even a $900-billion bail-out will suffice. To revive economic growth and curb unemployment, the Greek government will soon be compelled to abandon the euro and re-establish its own hugely devalued national currency.
Will Italy, Portugal and Spain be next? That remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, given the international economic and financial turmoil brought on by the euro crisis, it’s evident that every major industrialized and trading country in the world is paying a huge price for the failure of EU leaders to heed the timely warnings by Thatcher, Krugman and others about the disastrous consequences of the euro.
By Rory Leishman
As a strategic political leader, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was often right – never more so than in her prediction 20 years ago that adoption of the euro would lead to a political and economic disaster.
Thatcher, of course, was not alone in foreseeing this calamity. Paul Krugman, the Nobel-prize winning economist, took the same view. In a recent column for The New York Times, he wrote: “I remember quipping, back when the Maastricht Treaty setting Europe on the path to the euro was signed, that they chose the wrong Dutch city for the ceremony. It should have taken place in Arnhem, the site of World War II’s infamous ‘bridge too far,’ where an overly ambitious Allied battle plan ended in disaster.”
Ideologically, Thatcher and Krugman are poles apart: She is a consistent conservative, while he is a doctrinaire liberal. But on the euro, they independently arrived at the same conclusion: The euro could not be sustained without the creation of a strong, central European government that can impose fiscal discipline upon the member states.
At the summit of European leaders in 1990 that approved the euro, Thatcher was the lone dissident. She insisted that Britain would retain her sovereignty and the pound sterling. Upon returning to Britain, she declared to the House of Commons: “What is being proposed now --economic and monetary union -- is the back door to a federal Europe, which we totally and utterly reject.”
Thatcher paid a stiff price for this firm stance on principle. Geoffrey Howe, her deputy prime minister and a Europhile supporter of the euro, promptly quit the cabinet and helped provoke a backbench revolt among Conservative MPs that forced Thatcher to resign as prime minister.
Today, the euro is in a state of crisis brought on by years of profligate deficit spending by the Greek, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish governments. On April 27, Greek government bonds were finally reduced to junk status with the result that the socialist government of Greece could no longer borrow enough money to cover essential operational expenditures and interest payments on the national debt.
Speaking to the Commons in 1990, Thatcher foresaw that eventually, “there would have to be enormous transfers of money from one country to another” to sustain the euro. Again, she was right. To stave off default by Greece and to reassure bankers about the financial stability of Italy, Portugal and Spain, the European Union (EU) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) have come up with a $900-billion plan to defend the Euro at the expense mainly of taxpayers in France, Germany and the United States.
Furthermore, as Thatcher and Krugman also predicted, the German and French governments are now calling for much tougher centralized controls to prevent any more members of the euro-zone from running up unsustainable budget deficits. Meanwhile, the Greek government is struggling with savage spending cuts imposed by the EU and IMF as a condition for bail-out assistance.
In February, Greece already had an unemployment rate of 12.1 per cent. That proportion is bound to go much higher as the government’s spending cutbacks take effect.
This, too, is as Thatcher predicted: “If we have a single currency, the differences come out substantially in unemployment or vast movements of people from one country to another,” she said. “Many people who talk about a single currency have never considered its full implications.”
Quite so. Now Krugman predicts that for Greece, not even a $900-billion bail-out will suffice. To revive economic growth and curb unemployment, the Greek government will soon be compelled to abandon the euro and re-establish its own hugely devalued national currency.
Will Italy, Portugal and Spain be next? That remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, given the international economic and financial turmoil brought on by the euro crisis, it’s evident that every major industrialized and trading country in the world is paying a huge price for the failure of EU leaders to heed the timely warnings by Thatcher, Krugman and others about the disastrous consequences of the euro.
Saturday, May 08, 2010
Progressive sex education
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
Under intense public pressure, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty may have withdrawn his government’s revised curriculum guidelines on sexual education for a “serious rethink,” but this battle is far from over.
Proponents of ever more explicit sexual education for young school children have been quick to mount a concerted counterattack. They commend the revised curriculum for proposing to normalize homosexuality in Grade 3, instruct youngsters on vaginal lubrication in Grade 6 and warn boys in Grade 7 to avoid “anal intercourse without a condom.”
Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s medical officer of health, was one of the first to urge reinstatement of the new curriculum. “Kids need clear, unbiased, age-appropriate information,” he said. “Research shows that when young people have good sexual health knowledge, they postpone sex and have lower rates of teen pregnancy, and they practice safer sex when they become sexually active."
Is that right? For more than 20 years, youngsters in the secondary schools of Ontario have been bombarded with propaganda about how the consistent use of condoms can prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STIs). It has all been for naught. As even McKeown acknowledges, “Rates of sexually transmitted infections are increasing.”
In this respect, Canada is not alone. Dr. Stephen Genuis, Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alberta, pointed out last year in a peer-reviewed article in Acta Paediatrica: “Despite more than two decades of relentless condomania, rates of HIV⁄ AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have skyrocketed. In the UK and Canada, for example, rates of some STIs have doubled or tripled over the last 20 years despite ubiquitous safe-sex education.”
Genuis emphasized: “Numerous large studies have demonstrated that concerted efforts to promote condom use have consistently failed to control rates of STIs, even in countries with advanced sex education programmes such as Switzerland and Sweden – nations sometimes considered paragons in progressive sexuality instruction.”
Regardless, reputed experts like McKeown insist that what we need is even more of the same failed safe-sex education starting with instruction of children in Grade 1 on the correct anatomical name for their sexual organs.
At least, the McGuinty Liberals and their expert advisers in the education ministry have stopped short of the approach taken by International Planned Parenthood Federation in a pamphlet entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot: A young person’s guide to their Rights, Sexuality and Living with HIV.” According to the experts who put together this guide, “Young people living with HIV have the right to decide if, when, and how to disclose their HIV status.”
That goes even for sexual partners. The guide suggests that people in long-term relationships have a right not to disclose their HIV status to their sexual partner if they have reason to “fear that their partner will react violently or end the relationship.”
Pity the victims of this deadly advice.
Sex education on the post-secondary level in Canada is not much better. According to the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 13 of Canada’s leading universities currently offer “Queer Programs.”
Last semester, for example, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario featured an undergraduate course in “Sex, Sexuality and Desire; Cross Cultural Explorations of Queer Lives.” In an outline of the course requirements posted on the department’s website, Associate Professor Douglass St.Christian (dr.d.) [sic] indicated that students must submit a photo essay on “the living history of your sexual selves.”
“Hmm,” dr.d commented, “you’re thinking – he wants amateur porn? Not quite but then again, maybe a pornographic gaze is something you will want to explore.”
Having assured that acceptable photos might be “accidental, staged, public or private, funny or dangerous and so on,” dr.d concluded: “Have fun, use your imagination, take chances, learn. It won’t hurt, honestly. I know these things.”
Who would challenge this assertion? The expert, dr. d, has spoken: He knows that taking even dangerous photos of one’s personal sexual experiences won’t hurt.
One wonders: Are there any limits to the depravity that can pass for acceptable instruction at Western?
By Rory Leishman
Under intense public pressure, Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty may have withdrawn his government’s revised curriculum guidelines on sexual education for a “serious rethink,” but this battle is far from over.
Proponents of ever more explicit sexual education for young school children have been quick to mount a concerted counterattack. They commend the revised curriculum for proposing to normalize homosexuality in Grade 3, instruct youngsters on vaginal lubrication in Grade 6 and warn boys in Grade 7 to avoid “anal intercourse without a condom.”
Dr. David McKeown, Toronto’s medical officer of health, was one of the first to urge reinstatement of the new curriculum. “Kids need clear, unbiased, age-appropriate information,” he said. “Research shows that when young people have good sexual health knowledge, they postpone sex and have lower rates of teen pregnancy, and they practice safer sex when they become sexually active."
Is that right? For more than 20 years, youngsters in the secondary schools of Ontario have been bombarded with propaganda about how the consistent use of condoms can prevent sexually transmitted diseases (STIs). It has all been for naught. As even McKeown acknowledges, “Rates of sexually transmitted infections are increasing.”
In this respect, Canada is not alone. Dr. Stephen Genuis, Clinical Associate Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of Alberta, pointed out last year in a peer-reviewed article in Acta Paediatrica: “Despite more than two decades of relentless condomania, rates of HIV⁄ AIDS and other sexually transmitted infections (STIs) have skyrocketed. In the UK and Canada, for example, rates of some STIs have doubled or tripled over the last 20 years despite ubiquitous safe-sex education.”
Genuis emphasized: “Numerous large studies have demonstrated that concerted efforts to promote condom use have consistently failed to control rates of STIs, even in countries with advanced sex education programmes such as Switzerland and Sweden – nations sometimes considered paragons in progressive sexuality instruction.”
Regardless, reputed experts like McKeown insist that what we need is even more of the same failed safe-sex education starting with instruction of children in Grade 1 on the correct anatomical name for their sexual organs.
At least, the McGuinty Liberals and their expert advisers in the education ministry have stopped short of the approach taken by International Planned Parenthood Federation in a pamphlet entitled “Healthy, Happy and Hot: A young person’s guide to their Rights, Sexuality and Living with HIV.” According to the experts who put together this guide, “Young people living with HIV have the right to decide if, when, and how to disclose their HIV status.”
That goes even for sexual partners. The guide suggests that people in long-term relationships have a right not to disclose their HIV status to their sexual partner if they have reason to “fear that their partner will react violently or end the relationship.”
Pity the victims of this deadly advice.
Sex education on the post-secondary level in Canada is not much better. According to the Canadian Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, 13 of Canada’s leading universities currently offer “Queer Programs.”
Last semester, for example, the Department of Anthropology at the University of Western Ontario featured an undergraduate course in “Sex, Sexuality and Desire; Cross Cultural Explorations of Queer Lives.” In an outline of the course requirements posted on the department’s website, Associate Professor Douglass St.Christian (dr.d.) [sic] indicated that students must submit a photo essay on “the living history of your sexual selves.”
“Hmm,” dr.d commented, “you’re thinking – he wants amateur porn? Not quite but then again, maybe a pornographic gaze is something you will want to explore.”
Having assured that acceptable photos might be “accidental, staged, public or private, funny or dangerous and so on,” dr.d concluded: “Have fun, use your imagination, take chances, learn. It won’t hurt, honestly. I know these things.”
Who would challenge this assertion? The expert, dr. d, has spoken: He knows that taking even dangerous photos of one’s personal sexual experiences won’t hurt.
One wonders: Are there any limits to the depravity that can pass for acceptable instruction at Western?
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Overhauling Canada's failed refugee system
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has moved quickly and effectively to improve Canada’s grossly inept refugee system. However, there remain several other fundamental reforms to Canada’s lax immigration procedures that are urgently required to safeguard national security.
When Kenney took over as immigration minister in October, 2008, close to half of the refugee claimants pouring into Canada were coming from just two countries – Mexico and the Czech Republic. That was plainly ridiculous. The overwhelming majority of these asylum seekers were economic migrants with no valid claim to refugee status.
So why did they come to Canada under the pretence of seeking asylum? The answer is evident: Word got around in Mexico and the Czech Republic that Canada’s screening system is so slow and cumbersome that it takes years – up to 10 years in come cases – from the time a bogus asylum application is made until the culprit is deported.
Meanwhile, asylum seekers are entitled to free legal counsel to process their claims as well as full health and welfare benefits. The estimated average cost of failed asylum claims to Canadian taxpayers is close to $50,000.
In 2008 alone, Quebec received close to 6,000 asylum seekers from Mexico at a cost to Quebecers of $171 million. According to the independent Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), 90 per cent of these claims were bogus.
That did not sit well with the Quebec government which demanded that Kenney take action to stop this scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money. He responded last June, by imposing visa requirements on all visitors from both Mexico and the Czech Republic with the result that refugee claims from these countries have slowed to a trickle.
Most of Canada’s immigration lawyers protested. They benefited hugely from the old system that allowed more than 10 times the number of asylum seekers per capita into Canada than into the United States.
Some church groups and other non-governmental organizations that assist in the resettlement of refugees in Canada have also decried Kenney’s crackdown on bogus asylum seekers. The leaders of these organizations would do better to concentrate their efforts on helping genuine refugee claimants from oppressive countries like Iran and the war-torn regions of Africa who have suffered terribly and face a real threat of persecution, torture and/or death should they be forced to return to their home country.
Imposing visa requirements on the Czech Republic and Mexico was only a stop-gap measure. Now Kenney has followed up with a comprehensive plan for overhauling the refugee system that aims to give quick protection to genuine asylum seekers while discouraging bogus claimants from relatively safe countries and expediting the removal of migrants who worm their way into Canada under false pretences.
It remains to be seen how effective the new system will be. Of primary concern is the threat of terrorism. The vast majority of the thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers who enter Canada every year from terrorist-producing countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria and Morocco are not screened for criminality or security.
In the current issue of C2C – Canada’s Journal of Ideas, James Bissett, former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service, contends: “All prospective immigrants of the Muslim faith should be interviewed to determine if they hold extremist views and if so, they should be refused entry. The politically correct criticism that such a policy would be racist or religious profiling should be set aside in the interests of public safety.”
Currently, Canada annually takes in more than 250,000 immigrants and asylum seekers. Bissett points out that “the volume of immigration is so high, the practice of individual interviews and counselling of immigrants has been carelessly abandoned. This, in itself, is a confession that immigration in the past 25 years has become primarily a question of numbers at the expense of all else -– including the safety and security of Canadians.”
The conclusion is inescapable: To safeguard Canadians, the Harper government must either vastly increase the resources available to screen immigrants and asylum seekers; or substantially curtail the number of people migrating to Canada from terrorist-producing countries.
By Rory Leishman
Immigration Minister Jason Kenney has moved quickly and effectively to improve Canada’s grossly inept refugee system. However, there remain several other fundamental reforms to Canada’s lax immigration procedures that are urgently required to safeguard national security.
When Kenney took over as immigration minister in October, 2008, close to half of the refugee claimants pouring into Canada were coming from just two countries – Mexico and the Czech Republic. That was plainly ridiculous. The overwhelming majority of these asylum seekers were economic migrants with no valid claim to refugee status.
So why did they come to Canada under the pretence of seeking asylum? The answer is evident: Word got around in Mexico and the Czech Republic that Canada’s screening system is so slow and cumbersome that it takes years – up to 10 years in come cases – from the time a bogus asylum application is made until the culprit is deported.
Meanwhile, asylum seekers are entitled to free legal counsel to process their claims as well as full health and welfare benefits. The estimated average cost of failed asylum claims to Canadian taxpayers is close to $50,000.
In 2008 alone, Quebec received close to 6,000 asylum seekers from Mexico at a cost to Quebecers of $171 million. According to the independent Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (IRB), 90 per cent of these claims were bogus.
That did not sit well with the Quebec government which demanded that Kenney take action to stop this scandalous waste of taxpayers’ money. He responded last June, by imposing visa requirements on all visitors from both Mexico and the Czech Republic with the result that refugee claims from these countries have slowed to a trickle.
Most of Canada’s immigration lawyers protested. They benefited hugely from the old system that allowed more than 10 times the number of asylum seekers per capita into Canada than into the United States.
Some church groups and other non-governmental organizations that assist in the resettlement of refugees in Canada have also decried Kenney’s crackdown on bogus asylum seekers. The leaders of these organizations would do better to concentrate their efforts on helping genuine refugee claimants from oppressive countries like Iran and the war-torn regions of Africa who have suffered terribly and face a real threat of persecution, torture and/or death should they be forced to return to their home country.
Imposing visa requirements on the Czech Republic and Mexico was only a stop-gap measure. Now Kenney has followed up with a comprehensive plan for overhauling the refugee system that aims to give quick protection to genuine asylum seekers while discouraging bogus claimants from relatively safe countries and expediting the removal of migrants who worm their way into Canada under false pretences.
It remains to be seen how effective the new system will be. Of primary concern is the threat of terrorism. The vast majority of the thousands of immigrants and asylum seekers who enter Canada every year from terrorist-producing countries like Afghanistan, Pakistan, Algeria and Morocco are not screened for criminality or security.
In the current issue of C2C – Canada’s Journal of Ideas, James Bissett, former executive director of the Canadian Immigration Service, contends: “All prospective immigrants of the Muslim faith should be interviewed to determine if they hold extremist views and if so, they should be refused entry. The politically correct criticism that such a policy would be racist or religious profiling should be set aside in the interests of public safety.”
Currently, Canada annually takes in more than 250,000 immigrants and asylum seekers. Bissett points out that “the volume of immigration is so high, the practice of individual interviews and counselling of immigrants has been carelessly abandoned. This, in itself, is a confession that immigration in the past 25 years has become primarily a question of numbers at the expense of all else -– including the safety and security of Canadians.”
The conclusion is inescapable: To safeguard Canadians, the Harper government must either vastly increase the resources available to screen immigrants and asylum seekers; or substantially curtail the number of people migrating to Canada from terrorist-producing countries.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Benedict a leader in fighting sexual abuse
The London Free Press
By Rory Leishman
In a rare display of political courage, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown defied public opinion in Britain, by reiterating his firm opposition to the legalization of euthanasia.
In England, as in Canada, the law now clearly provides that anyone who aids, abets or counsels another person to commit suicide is guilty of a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for up to 14 years. In Britain, a recent poll found that more than 80 per cent of the people believe this law should be amended "to allow some people such as doctors and/or close relatives to assist a suicide in particular circumstances."
Brown disagrees. In an article in The Daily Telegraph on Feb. 24, he noted that many people who support assisted suicide are misinformed. They do not understand that a patient already has a right in law to refuse any medical treatment and that the law as applied by the caring professions "supports good care, including palliative care for the most difficult of conditions."
Having worked with his wife as a volunteer in a hospice, Brown attested: "I know in my heart that there is such a thing as a good death. And I believe it is our duty as a society to provide the skilled and loving care that makes it possible; and to use the laws we have well, rather than rush to change them."
Granted, the quality of palliative care in Britain, as in Canada, is sometimes woefully inadequate. Brown warns that legalizing assisted suicide is not the answer: It would "fundamentally change the way we think about mortality.
"The risk of pressures – however subtle – on the frail and the vulnerable, who may feel their existences burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded. And the inevitable erosion of trust in the caring professions – if they were in a position to end life – would be to lose something very precious."
Over the past 80 years, the British Parliament has many times considered and, after thorough consideration, rejected proposals to legalize assisted suicide. That does not sit well with Debby Purdy, a woman afflicted with multiple sclerosis. In an attempt to do an end run around Parliament, she appealed to the courts for a ruling that she has a human right to know that her husband will not be prosecuted if he helps her to kill herself by traveling to a legal euthanasia clinic in Switzerland.
In the similar Rodriguez case in 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada came within one vote of striking down the Canadian law on assisted suicide on the grounds that handicapped Canadians have an equality right to assistance in killing themselves. The British courts are not so high handed: In a ruling last August for the Lords of Appeal in Purdy, Lord Hope of Craighead stated: "It must be emphasised at the outset that it is no part of our function to change the law in order to decriminalise assisted suicide. If changes are to be made, as to which I express no opinion, this must be a matter for Parliament."
Nonetheless, Lord Hope ordered Keith Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, to clarify the guidelines governing the prosecution of persons who assist in a suicide. In compliance with this order, Starmer issued a new set of guidelines last week that were welcomed by Purdy but stopped well short of providing her with the assurance she was seeking.
That's as it should be. Crown prosecutors have no more right than the courts to fail to uphold the law as enacted and intended by Parliament in compliance with the Constitution.
Brown is heading into an inevitable general election within the next few weeks. Win or lose, he can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that in dealing with the vital issue of euthanasia, he exercised his best judgment about what is right and best for the British people rather than allow his conduct to be governed by the latest vagaries of misinformed public opinion.
By Rory Leishman
In a rare display of political courage, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown defied public opinion in Britain, by reiterating his firm opposition to the legalization of euthanasia.
In England, as in Canada, the law now clearly provides that anyone who aids, abets or counsels another person to commit suicide is guilty of a criminal offence punishable by imprisonment for up to 14 years. In Britain, a recent poll found that more than 80 per cent of the people believe this law should be amended "to allow some people such as doctors and/or close relatives to assist a suicide in particular circumstances."
Brown disagrees. In an article in The Daily Telegraph on Feb. 24, he noted that many people who support assisted suicide are misinformed. They do not understand that a patient already has a right in law to refuse any medical treatment and that the law as applied by the caring professions "supports good care, including palliative care for the most difficult of conditions."
Having worked with his wife as a volunteer in a hospice, Brown attested: "I know in my heart that there is such a thing as a good death. And I believe it is our duty as a society to provide the skilled and loving care that makes it possible; and to use the laws we have well, rather than rush to change them."
Granted, the quality of palliative care in Britain, as in Canada, is sometimes woefully inadequate. Brown warns that legalizing assisted suicide is not the answer: It would "fundamentally change the way we think about mortality.
"The risk of pressures – however subtle – on the frail and the vulnerable, who may feel their existences burdensome to others, cannot ever be entirely excluded. And the inevitable erosion of trust in the caring professions – if they were in a position to end life – would be to lose something very precious."
Over the past 80 years, the British Parliament has many times considered and, after thorough consideration, rejected proposals to legalize assisted suicide. That does not sit well with Debby Purdy, a woman afflicted with multiple sclerosis. In an attempt to do an end run around Parliament, she appealed to the courts for a ruling that she has a human right to know that her husband will not be prosecuted if he helps her to kill herself by traveling to a legal euthanasia clinic in Switzerland.
In the similar Rodriguez case in 1993, the Supreme Court of Canada came within one vote of striking down the Canadian law on assisted suicide on the grounds that handicapped Canadians have an equality right to assistance in killing themselves. The British courts are not so high handed: In a ruling last August for the Lords of Appeal in Purdy, Lord Hope of Craighead stated: "It must be emphasised at the outset that it is no part of our function to change the law in order to decriminalise assisted suicide. If changes are to be made, as to which I express no opinion, this must be a matter for Parliament."
Nonetheless, Lord Hope ordered Keith Starmer, the Director of Public Prosecutions in England and Wales, to clarify the guidelines governing the prosecution of persons who assist in a suicide. In compliance with this order, Starmer issued a new set of guidelines last week that were welcomed by Purdy but stopped well short of providing her with the assurance she was seeking.
That's as it should be. Crown prosecutors have no more right than the courts to fail to uphold the law as enacted and intended by Parliament in compliance with the Constitution.
Brown is heading into an inevitable general election within the next few weeks. Win or lose, he can at least have the satisfaction of knowing that in dealing with the vital issue of euthanasia, he exercised his best judgment about what is right and best for the British people rather than allow his conduct to be governed by the latest vagaries of misinformed public opinion.
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